The Biblioracle Strikes Again
While the Tournament of Books hangs on a thread until Monday, the Biblioracle steps in to ease the pain. At 3 p.m. Eastern, list the last five books you read, and he’ll tell you what to read next.
Oh, Biblioracle, how long since you got in touch, I need you so bad. I’ve missed you, too. We should do this more often.
It’s been so long, I’ve forgotten how this works. For those of you who don’t know the drill (see here for a longer explanation of what’s going on), visit the comments below and list the last five books you read. I will give you a recommendation for your next read based on that list.
Do you have any special stipulations for today? Since we’re in the midst of the Tournament of Books and many of you might be fans and/or followers, let’s exclude any tournament books from your list.
Well, let’s get going then. We’ll be open for an hour starting at 3 p.m. Eastern. Once we get just past 4 p.m., I’ll post a comment/cut-off where I won’t be able to offer any more recommendations. (We’ve got a Rooster to award Monday, don’t you know.)
And if I still don’t get it, or if I want to send you a cake? If you have any questions, comments, thoughts, complaints, huzzahs, you can reach the Biblioracle at biblioracle at gmail.com or on Twitter.
List the last five books you’ve read, and the Biblioracle tells you what to read next.
The Biblioracle will be open today, April 1, from 3 to 4 p.m. Eastern. This is not an April Fool’s Day joke. These comments are now closed.
246 comments
Confederates in the Attic by Tony Horwitz
Amsterdam by Ian McEwan (but I hated the ending!)
The Namesake by Jhumpa Lahiri
A Gate at the Stairs Lorrie Moore
Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot
Blame - Michelle Hunevan
The Passage - Justin Cronin
Major Pettigrew's Last Stand - Helen Simonson
Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie - Alan Bradley
The Hunger Games Trilogy - Suzanne Collins
Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte
Ms. Hempel Chronicles - Sarah Bynum
Is this thing on? I think it's on. Bring it on. Last five books read (excluding those from the ToB) and I'll tell you what to read next.
The Passage (Cronin)
A Dance to the Music of Time (reread) (Powell)
The Little Golden Calf (Ilf & Petrov)
Anathem (Stephensen)
The Habitation of the Blessed (Valente)
The Windup Bird Chronicle (Murakami)
The Enchanted April (von Arnim)
Have read, but doesn’t hit the spot for me: Mieville, Bacigalupi
Number 9 Dream - David Mitchell
Go Bibloracle!
Yiddish Policemen's Union by Michael Chabon
Motherless Brooklyn by Jonathan Lethem
Mistborn by Brandon Sanderson
Wise Man's fear by Patrick Rothfuss
Homicide by David Simon
The Intuitionist - Colson Whitehead
david mitchell - cloud atlas
flann o'brien - the third policeman
james hannaham - god says no
jonathan franzen - the corrections
edward tufte - the visual display of quantitative information
...go cocks.
This is a big one, but I think you'll dig it.
JR - William Gaddis
The People’s Act of Love, by James Meek
The Ninth by Ferenc Barnas
Night Watch by Sarah Waters
Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell
Wake Up, Sir! by Jonathon Ames
The Broom of the System - DFW
The House of Mirth – Edith Wharton
To the End of the Land – David Grossman
The Passage – Justin Cronin
Let the Great World Spin – Colum McCann
Villette – Charlotte Bronte
I mentioned this one is yesterday's ToB commentary.
Night and Day - Frederick Reiken
OK, here goes!
Teju Cole - Open City
Ward Just - Exiles in the Garden
E Lockhart - The Disreputable History of Frankie Landau-Banks
Daniel Handler - The Basic Eight
Joshua Ferris - Then We Came to the End
Drop City - T.C. Boyle
The Imperfectionists – Tom Rachmen
Major Pettigrew’s Last Stand – Helen Simonson
Stardust – Neil Gaiman
Sweetness in the Belly – Camila Gibb
Possession – AS Byatt
Cutting for Stone - Abraham Verghese
1 Life of Pi by Yann Martel
2 Collected Stories of Saul Bellow
3 The Interpreter of Maladies by Jhumpa Lahiri
4 The London Train by Tessa Hadley
5 The Report by Jessica Francis Kane
I'd share my lollipop with 1, 4, and 5. Numbers 2 and 3 drove me up the fricking proverbial. Both were cases of detail pollution. With 2 there was too much that didn't quite cohere, and with 3 I felt that if I wanted that much lavish visual I'd watch TV instead.
Triangle - Katharine Weber
I dunno. Will that make me a disaster porn reader?
Taking out Skippy Dies, my last 5 books were:
Swamplandia - Karen Russell
The Quantum Theif - Hannu Rajaniemi
Gold Boy, Emerald Girl - Yiyun Li
Ship Breaker - Paolo Bacigalupi
Tethered - Amy MacKinnon
The Colony - Jillian Weise
Excellent. Thanks. It's one I haven't heard of.
Await Your Reply, Dan Chaon
The Little Stranger, Sarah Waters
Nana, Emile Zola
The Intuitionist, Colson Whitehead
The Keep, Jennifer Egan
Carter Beats the Devil - Glen David Gold
The Blindness of the Heart, by Julia Franck
The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet, by David Mitchell
Cutting for Stone, by Abraham Verghese
Love and Summer, by William Trevor
What is Left the Daughter, by Howard Norman
Endless Love - Scott Spencer (don't be scared by the cheesy movie)
Thanks, I'll check it out.
Death in Breslau, Marek Krajewski
Caspian Rain, Gina B Nahai
Equations of Life, Simon Morden
Hard-boiled Wonderland and the End of the World, Haruki Murakami
The Art of Asking Your Boss for a Raise, Georges Perec
Oryx and Crake - Margaret Atwood
Thank, but I've already read that one, and I'm not sure it merits rereading yet.
If you haven't already, then you can move on to its quasi-sequel, The Year of the Flood
Yeah, I have already. Maybe I should stop reading until she writes the next quasi-sequel.
These are some of my recent books, omitting the books I didn't at least like. thank you!
Reading now: Burnt Shadows - Kamila Shamsie
When the Killing's Done - T.C. Boyle
Paradise - Toni Morrison
Watchmen - Alan Moore
Cat's Cradle - Kurt Vonnegut
Becoming Odyssa - Jennifer Pharr Davis
A Study in the Scarlet / The Sign of Four / The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (I'm counting this as one and I must say these are really the only "mystery" I read...and I don't necessarily need more.)
The Known World - Edward P. Jones
One of my all-time favorite books.
Good, but rats.
John Henry Days - Colson Whitehead
The Savage Detectives – Roberto Bolano
The Corrections – Jonathan Franzen
Let the Great World Spin – Colum McCann
Netherland – Joseph O’Neill
Good Omens – Terry Pratchett & Neil Gaiman
Illustrado - Miguel Syjuco
The Canal, Lee Rourke
The Afterparty, Leo Benedictus
Cedilla, Adam Mars-Jones
Visitation, Jenny Erpenbeck
The Stray Sod Country, Patrick McCabe
The Fates Will Find Their Way - Hannah Pittard
nice to see your thumbs up on Pittard, I've had my eye on this.
Long Ships (Bengtsson)
Tiger's Wife (Obreht)
The Wise Man's Fear (Rothfuss)
Swamplandia! (Russell)
Stranger Things Happen (Link)
Geek Love - Katherine Dunn
Your Voice In My Head by Emma Forrest
Working The Room by Geoff Dyer
The Imperfectionists by Tom Rachman
It Seemed Important At The Time by Gloria Vanderbilt
Tiny Hands Clapping by Dan Rhodes
Housekeeping - Marilynne Robinson
Great book! (Already read.)
Crap sandwich!
Tinkers - Paul Harding
The House of Mirth. Edith Wharton
The Transit of Venus. Shirley Hazzard
This Vacant Paradise. Victoria Patterson
Who Was Changed and Who Was Dead. Barbara Comyns
The Chrysalids. John Wyndham
Old Filth - Jane Gardam
Thanks!
So good! Also, The Man With the Wooden Hat.
Yay! Darn glad to be here again. Loved my two previous recommendations, Pattern Recognition and Imperfectionists. My last five non ToB books were
Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks
Life with Jeeves
The Road Cormac McCarthy
Carter Beats the Devil by Glen David Gold
I Think I Love You by Alison Pearson
I'd love a recommendation, please, and will be interested to see what you make of this odd bunch! Thanks in advance!
What Was She Thinking? - Zoe Heller
thank you!
Wicked Appetite, Janet Evanovich
The Blue Castle, L.M. Montgomery
The Metropolis Case, Matthew Galloway
The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie, Alan Bradley
Harmonic Feedback, Tara Kelly
Thank you!
My Antonia - Willa Cather
Anthropology of an American Girl
Solar
The Thousand
Straight Man
Madame Bovary
The End of Vandalism - Tom Drury
A book that apparently I cannot get from my county library or the large academic institution for which I work, unless I want to read it in their special rare book reading room. However, this makes it even more appealing.
Rhythm Science - dj spooky
Electronic Monument - greg ulmer
The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo - steig larrsen
Into the Wild - jon krakhauer
A Writer's Life - gay talese
Newjack - Ted Conover
A Beautiful Place to Die (Malla Nunn)
Hotel on the Corner of Bitter & Sweet (Jamie Ford)
When You Reach Me (Rebecca Stead)
Friends Like These (Danny Wallace)
Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie (Alan Bradley)
Last Things - Jenny Offill
Looked it up, sounds like I will love it. Thank you so much!
How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe, Charles Yu
Inherent Vice, Thomas Pynchon
The Grand Design, Stephen Hawking and Leonard Mlowdinow
Everything Matters!, Ron Currie Jr.
The Wave, Susan Casey
Thanks, Biblioracle!
Things We Didn't See Coming - Steven Amsterdam
An Exact Replica of a Figment of My Imagination, McCracken
I Think I Love You, Pearson
Russian Winter, Kalotay
The Rhetoric of Death, Rock
The Metropolis Case, Gallaway
(I read The Finkler Question more recently, but it's a ToB pick)
Bel Canto - Ann Patchett
yup, I'm a Patchett fan (I've read all her books). =)
Olive Kitteridge - Elizabeth Strout
I loved that one too!
Hmmm....
Mrs. Bridge - Evan S. Connell
haven't read it! I'm adding it to my to-read list. Thanks!
Tea Obreht - The Tiger's Wife
Karen Russell - Swamplandia!
Joshua Foer - Moonwalking With Einstein
David Levithan - The Lover's Dictionary
Margaret Atwood - The Handmaid's Tale
When the Killing's Done - Boyle
Have You No Shame?, Rachel Shukert
The Mysteries of Pittsburgh, Michael Chabon
Never Let Me Go, Kazuo Ishiguro
The Canal, Lee Rourke
Mariette In Ecstasy, Ron Hansen
Wise Blood - Flannery O'Connor
O, Bilioracle, I submit to you
Summer by Edith Wharton
War by Sebastian Junger
Homecoming by Bernhard Schlink
Generosity by Richard Powers
Solar by Ian McEwan
Thinks... - David Lodge
John, thanks for Thinks . . . Not what I was expecting at all. Thought I'd get something I've already read or at least know about. Never heard of this one but looks right up my alley. Thank you, Kristine
Thanks for saving me from TOB withdrawal.
Bottomless Belly Button by Dash Shaw
Aliens in the Prime of Their Lives by Brad Watson
The Mammy by Brendan O'Carroll
My Booky Wook by Russell Brand
Picture This by Lynda Barry
From the ToB a couple years ago
The Northern Clemency - Philip Hensher
Winter's Bone, Daniel Woodrell
The Best American Science and Nature Writing 2010
Old Man's War, John Scalzi
The Gunslinger, Stephen King
A Soldier of the Great War, Mark Helprin
I feel like I should also include my more honest list of last 5, so you can recommend something for my 1 year old...
Freight Train, Donald Crews
Good Night, Gorilla, Peggy Rathmann
I'll See You in the Morning, Mike Jolley
Goodnight Moon, Margaret Wise Brown
Very Hungry Caterpiller, Eric Carle
The Dart League King - Keith Lee Morris
Cool. I actually remember this being fairly well liked in TOB commentary a couple of years ago, right? Looking forward to it.
The Last Hero: The Life of Henry Aaron – Howard Bryant
The Girl Who Kicked The Hornets Nest – Stiegg Larsen
Stories – edited by Neil Gaiman
Duel At Dawn: Heroes, Martyrs, and the Rise of Modern Mathematics – Amir Alexander
The Great American Novel – Phillip Roth
Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norell - Susannah Clarke
Wallace - Infinite Jest
Dahl - Danny the Champion of the World
Pynchon - The Crying of Lot 49
Murakami - After the Quake
Birdsall - The Penderwicks
I read to my kids alot
True Grit - Charles Portis
You Shall Know Our Velocity - Eggars
The Instructions - Levin
The Girl With the Curious Hair - Wallace
Sex, Drugs, and Cocoapuffs - Klosterman
Everything Matters - Currie
The Imperfectionists - Tom Rachman
I'm doing this for my husband while he's at work in meetings.
Trouble is my Business - Chandler
The Commodore - Patrick O'Brian
Chronicles of Master Li and Number Ten Ox - Barry Hughart
The Whiskey Rebels - Liss
Newton and the Countefeiter - Levenson
Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell (It has a little of just about everything in your list)
Margaret Atwood- Year of the Flood
Jonathan Franzen - Freedom
Amanda Davis - Wonder When You'll Miss Me
Joan Didion - Where I Was From
Rebecca Solnit - Infinite City
Blindness - Jose Saramago
The Intuitionist - Colson Whitehead
In Patagonia (Bruce Chatwin)
Just Kids (Patti Smith)
A Fire Upon the Deep (Vernor Vinge)
The Talented Mr. Ripley/Ripley Under Ground/Ripley's Game (Patricia Highsmith)
2666 (Roberto Bolaño)
Lush Life - Richard Price
Rashomon and 17 other stories
The Book Thief
Kissing the Witch - Emma Donoghue
Drop City
Eva Luna
Let the Northern Lights Erase Your Name - Vendela Vida
Jacob's Room - Virginia Woolf
French Leave - Anna Gavalda
We Think the World of You - JR Ackerly
Wise Man's Fear - Patrick Rothfuss
A Sport and A Pasttime - James Salter
Revolutionary Road - Richard Yates
(Something tells me you've read it, though.)
Something tells me you'd be right. (Twice right, actually). It's up there in terms of favorites. If it helps - not counting TOB books I've also read The Tiger's Wife, The Cloud Atlas and Colm Toibin's The Empty Family in recent months.
Heyday - William Spackman
In Patagonia by Bruce Chatwin
The Sense of an Ending by Frank Kermode
The Treasure of the Sierra Madre by B Traven
The Eyes of the Overworld by Jack Vance
Oblivion by David Foster Wallace
Great Plains - Ian Frazier
The Hotel New Hampshire by John Irving
Sag Harbor by Colson Whitehead
Nobody's Fool by Richard Russo
Swamplandia by Karen Russell
The Pale King by David Foster Wallace.
And I already have waiting: Next by James Hynes, Thousand Autumns by David Mitchell, and Mr. Peanut by Adam Ross.
The Imperfectionists - Tom Rachman
Loved it. Can I push you to try again?
A Fan's Notes - Frederick Exley
Aah. Thanks, will try.
One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
Ender's Game - Orson Scott Card
Cities of the Plain (and the rest of the Border Trilogy) - Cormac McCarthy
Musicophilia - Oliver Sacks
Sometimes a Great Notion - Ken Kesey
Pattern Recognition - William Gibson
"The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet" by David Mitchell
"What He's Posed to Do" by Ben Greenman
"Memento Mori" by Muriel Spark
"Madam Bovary" by Gustav Flaubert
"Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman" by Haruki Murakami
Too bad we can't include ToB; I really enjoyed "A Visit from the Good Squad" and "Next".
Home Land - Sam Lipsyte
You're good. Read it and loved it!
Dammit.
The Columnist - Jeffrey Frank
Now that I have not read. Quick! To the Amazon!
Thanks for the do-over, too.
The Lost Books of the Odyssey: Zachary Mason
The Third Bear: Jeff Vandermeer
Florence of Arabia: Christopher Buckley
Johannes Cabal The Necromancer: Jonathan Howard
Paranoia: Joseph Finder
Another one I recommend upthread, but it strikes me as right here:
The Colony - Jillian Weise
Looks promising, thanks Biblioracle.
Interpreter of Maladies - Jhumpa Lahiri
Drowning Ruth - Christina Schwarz
The Story of Edgar Sawtelle - David Wroblewski
Case Histories - Kate Atkinson
Empire Falls - Richard Russo
Half Broke Horses - Jeannette Walls
Booking Passage, Thomas Lynch
The Imperfectionists, Tom Rachman
Heresy, S. J. Parrish
The Weed that Strings the Hangman's Bag, Alan Bradley
Cleopatra: A Life, Stacy Schiff
Remarkable Creatures - Tracy Chevalier
I haven't read anything by Tracy Chevalier. Thanks for the suggestion. Even if you just respond randomly, this is fun.
Never random. Always very mystical and powerful. Do not doubt the Biblioracle!
(Cue maniacal laugh.)
The Instructions, by Adam Levin
All the Living, by C.E. Morgan
Nothing to Envy, by Barbara Demick
What is the What?, by Dave Eggers
The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, by Haruki Murakami
I know this list, looking at it, might conjure up themes of oppression and poverty; I think that's not quite what I enjoyed about the middle three books on that list.
Big Machine - Victor Lavalle
Big Machine is a terrific book -- I read it after it was selected for the ToB a couple yrs ago (or was it last yr?)
Big Bad Love - Larry Brown
Dancing After Hours - Andre Dubus
My Booky Wook 2 - Russell Brand
Lust - Susan Minot
Days out of Days - Sam Shepard
The Blindfold - Siri Hustvedt
Moonwalking with Einstein – Joshua Foer
Luka and the Fire of Life – Salman Rushdie
The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake – Aimee Bender
The Tiger’s Wife - Tea Obreht
The Good Man Jesus and the Scoundrel Christ – Phillip Pullman
The Invisible Bridge - Julie Orringer
Beginning with the most recent and excluding TOB books...
Volt by Alan Heathcock
The Invention of Morel by Adolfo Bioy Casares
Open City by Teju Cole
To the End of the Land by David Grossman
The Secret History by Donna Tartt
The Group - Mary McCarthy
I have no idea how you got The Group from this list, but I have actually read and enjoyed it.
My powers are...powerful. Just not powerful enough to know when someone's already read a book.
The Adults - Alison Espach
(Hopefully you're not Alison Espach herself. That would be silly for me to recommend your own book to you.)
I am not Alison Espach! And I have been going back and forth about whether to read that book, so this puts it firmly on my "to read" pile.
And also, thanks!
The Star of The Sea, Joseph O'Connor
Unlocking the Air: Stores, Ursula K LeGuin
The Ambassadors, Henry James
A Lesson in Secrets: A Masie Dobbs Novel, Jacqueline Winspear
The Maser, Colm Toibin
Let the Great World Spin - Colum McCann
Cookbook Collector by Allegra Goodman
The Good, the Bad, and the Barbie by Tanya Stone
By Nightfall by Michael Cunningham
Mockingjay by Suzanne Collins
Scenic Route by Binnie Kirshenbaum
Eat the Document - Dana Spiotta
Thanks--looks interesting. I just put a hold on it.
Thanks--looks interesting. I just put a hold on it.
"Let the Great World Spin" - Colum McCann
"Cloud Atlas" - David Mitchell
"Picking Cotton" - Jennifer Thompson-Cannino and Ronald Cotton
"A Lesson Before Dying" - Ernest J. Gaines
I have "Black Swan Green" - David Mitchell waiting
Another vote for wanting to include ToB -- I read "The Finkler Question" and "Skippy Dies" and loved them.
The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie - Muriel Spark
Stoner (John Williams)
Pictures from an Institution (Randall Jarrell)
The Imperfectionists (Tom Rachman)
The Manual of Detection (Jedediah Berry)
The Siege of Krishnapur (J.G. Farrell)
I really liked "The Siege of Krishnapur". You might like Farrell's "Troubles".
The Financial Lives of Poets - Jess Walter
You had suggested Other Rooms, Other Wonders last time which I totally did not like. Anyway, here goes.
American Gods - Neil Gaiman (reading)
V for Vendetta - Alan Moore
Sin City (The Hard Goodbye) - Frank Miller
Sloth - Gilbert Hernandez
Watchmen - Alan Moore
Cat's Cradle - Kurt Vonnegut
Let's hope I get up to .500.
Wolf Hall – Hilary Mantel
Mockingjay – Suzanne Collins
The Widow’s War – Sally Gunning
The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks – Rebecca Skloot
Born Round – Frank Bruni
In a previous round you recommended Ragtime by Doctorow and I really enjoyed it – thanks!
More narrative non-fiction
The Warmth of Other Suns - Isabel Wilkerson
Jacob's Room by Virginia Woolf
Spurious by Lars Iyer
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man by James Joyce
C by Tom McCarthy
Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf
Nightwood - Djuna Barnes
(It's going to seem weird. Wait for it to kick in.)
I'm always up for weird...thanks for another recommendation!
Nightwood was John's recommendation for me last year and I loved it.
magic for beginners- kelly link
collected stories - amy hempel
partial list of people to bleach -gary lutz
swamplandia! - karen russell
lemon - lawrence krauser
Looking at the list, it's possible you've read this:
What He's Poised to Do - Ben Greenman
Beautiful Children by Charles Bock
Everything that Rises Must Converge by Flannery O'Connor
Chronic City by Jonathon Lethem
The Lay of the Land by Richard Ford.
The Boat by Nam Le
Netherland - Joseph O'Neil
Oh this is is making my day!
The Good Soldiers by David Finkel
Behemoth by Peter Watts
The Spy Who Came In From The Cold by John le Carre
Solitaire by Kelley Eskridge
Broker, Trader, Lawyer, Spy: The Secret World of Corporate Espionage by Eamon Javers
The Tourist - Olen Steinhauer (not related to the Depp/Jolie movie, I don't think, anyway)
Thanks John! I've never read any of Steinhauer's work but this looks good. Off to the bookstore I go...
Five recently read (and all loved):
A Sport and a Pasttime, James Salter
The Italian Secretary, Caleb Carr
The Possessed, Elif Batuman
Essays, Montaigne
One DOA, One on the Way, Mary Robison
Thank you
The Talented Mr. Ripley - Patricia Highsmith
(Always pleased when I can find the right person to recommend Highsmith to.)
The Lost Books of the Odyssey -- Zachary Mason
Men in the Off Hours -- Anne Carson
The Lover -- Marguerite Duras
The Loser -- Thomas Bernhard
On Kissing, Tickling, and Being Bored -- Adam Phillips
Edwin Mullhouse - Millhauser
The Poet, Michael Connelly
Gideon's Sword, Preston & Childs
A Red Herring without Mustard, Alan Bradley
The Complaints, Ian Rankin
Edge, Jeffery Deaver
I think you'd enjoy my ToB colleague Kevin Guilfoile's
The Thousand
Skippy Dies - Paul Murray
Ender's Game - Orson Scott Card
The Remainder - Tom McCarthy
The Magicians - Lev Grossman
A Wild Sheep Chase - Murakami
Ghostwritten - David Mitchell
Raymond and Hannah, Stephen Marche
Holes, Louis Sachar
Sunset Park, Paul Auster
Notes from No Man's Land, Eula Biss
How to Live, Sarah Bakewell
Disgrace - J.M. Coetzee
You were wrong -- sharpe
Orion you came and you tool all my marbles
The magus -- fowles
Jd Salinger: a life
The instructions -- levin
Deus Ex Machina - Andrew Foster Altschul
How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe - Charles Yu
Cloud of Witnesses - Dorothy Sayers
The Wise Man's Fear - Patrick Rothfuss
Same Kind of Different as Me - Ron Hall & Denver Moore
The Imperfectionists - Tom Rachman
You bypassed a few up there, biblioracle! thanks
Discus is having trouble with some of my posts. I'm trying to work back once I get the bottom, but some just won't take.
The Illumination - Kevin Brockmeier
Housekeeping - Marilynne Robinson
Hunger Games trilogy - Suzanne Collins
Angle of Repose - Wallace Stegner
Y: The Last Man - Brian K. Vaughan
Parasites Like Us - Adam Johnson
C, Tom McCarthy
The Emigrants, W.G. Sebald
The Echo Maker, Richard Powers
The Skating Rink, Roberto Bolano
Brief Interviews with Hideous Men, David Foster Wallace
Many thanks once again -- always a good recommendation from the Biblioracle.
The Glass House - Simon Mawer
The Name of the Wind - Patrick Rothfuss
Born to Run - Christopher McDougall
Black Swan Green - David Mitchell
The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet - David Mitchell
Selected Non-Fictions - Jorge Luis Borges
Kraken - China Mielville
War Dances - Sherman Alexie
Luncheon of the Boating Parting - Vreeland
Visit from the Goon Squad - Egan
The Pox Party - Anderson
Next - Hynes
sorry I did that wrong
War Dances - Sherman Alexie
Luncheon of the Boating Party - Vreeland
The Pox Party - Anderson
Pilgrim at Tinker Creek - Dillard
Immortal life of Henrietta Lacks - Skloot
Love Medicine - Louise Erdrich
I did like that one. Thanks!
The Emperor of all Maladies by Siddhartha Mukherjee
Matterhorn by Karl Marlantes
The Surrendered by Chang-Rae Lee
Wolff Hall by Hilary Mantel
Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet by Jamie Ford
TMN contributing writer Anthony Doerr's
Memory Wall
...will be up your alley.
The Patterns of Paper Monsters -- Emma Rathbone
Tinkers -- Paul Harding
The Fates Will Find Their Way -- Hannah Pittard
Rabbit Redux -- Updike
Confidence-Man, His Masquerade -- Melville
I know you.
You're going to read Alison Espach's The Adults (also recommended upthread) and you're going to like it.
All Clear - Connie Willis
A Discovery of Witches - Deborah Harkness
Ship of Destiny - Robin Hobb
Dreadnought - Cherie Priest
Echo Burning - Lee Child
You previously recommended Rum Punch - Elmore Leonard. I tried to like it, but I could not get into it and dreaded picking it up each time until I finished. Just didn't like any of the characters enough to care what happened to them.
Let's give it another shot.
Water for Elephants - Sara Gruen
Unbroken by Lauren Hillenbrand
The Googlization of Everything: (And Why We Should Worry) by Siva Vaidhyanathan
Blood, Bones & Butter: The Inadvertent Education of a Reluctant Chef by Gabrielle Hamilton
Unfamiliar Fishes by Sarah Vowell
Football Dynamo - Marc Bennetts
Walk on Water - Michael Ruhlman
Let the great world spin - McCann
Ape House
Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet
As Always, Julia - DeVoto
Red Herring Without Mustard
Recommended upthread, but fits here as well.
Case Histories - Kate Atkinson
I just got around to finishing the book you recommended to me last year, Wise Blood!!! Such a great book! So:
Wise Blood
Richard Yates (Tao Lin, loved it)
The latest Sarah Vowell book
Bouvard et Pécuchet
What Was the Hipster? (N+1's tract-let)
This is a goofy book, but I think you'll like it.
Help! A Bear Is Eating Me - Mykle Hansen
The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao - Junot Diaz
The Fall of Madrid - Rafael Chirbes
The White Tiger - Aravind Adiga
Inherent Vice - Thomas Pynchon
The Third Reich - Roberto Bolaño
Nobody Move - Denis Johnson
The Dead Travel Fast - Deanna Raybourn
1968: The Year That Rocked The World - Mark Kurlansky
Border Songs - Jim Lynch
Turn Coat - Jim Butcher
Her Fearful Symmetry - Audrey Niffenegger
And Only to Deceive - Tasha Alexander
Lilus Kikus-- Elena Poniatowska
The Language Instinct-- Steven Pinker
Notes from No Man's Land-- Eula Biss
Summer Will Show-- Sylvia Townsend Warner
Operation Shylock-- Philip Roth
Dusk - James Salter
Freedom - Jonathan Franzen
Sputnik Sweetheart - Haruki Murakami
The Master and Margarita - Mikhail Bulgakov
The Omnivores Dilemma - Michael Pollan
The Imperfectionists - Tom Rachman
I know you asked read, but I'm currently reading Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
This may be a risk, but
Pale Fire - Nabokov
Other People We Married by Emma Straub
Swamplandia! by Karen Russell
Things I Learned About My Dad (in Therapy) edited by Heather Armstrong
Ulysses by James Joyce
The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul by Douglas Adams
Stranger Things Happen - Kelly Link
The Queen of Whale Cay - Kate Summerscale
A Feast for Crows - George R. R. Martin
Voltaire in Love - Nancy Mitford
Mildred Pierce - James Cain
February House - Sherril Tippins
In Cold Blood - Truman Capote
Ok, last 5 books:
Rick Geary, "Trotsky: A Graphic Biography"
George R.R. Martin, "Game of Thrones" series
Graham Greene, "Brighton Rock"
C.V. Wedgewood, "The Thirty Years War"
Andre Dubus, "Townie"
Crooked Letter, Crooked Letter - Tom Franklin
Ivan and Misha: Stories--Michael Alenyikov
Open City--Teju Cole
Special Exits--Joyce Farmar
Illumination--Kevin Brockmeier
An Exact Replica of a Figment of My Imagination--Elizabeth McCracken
Saul and Patsy - Charles Baxter
"Saturday Night and Sunday Morning", Alan Sillitoe
"C" Tom Mccarthy
"Tintin and the Secret of Literature" Tom Mccarthy
"Pastoralia" George Saunders
"Things We Didn't See Coming" Steven Amsterdam
Time's Arrow - Martin Amis
The Road-Cormac McCarthy
The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks-Rebecca Skloot
Carter Beats the Devil--Glen David Gold
A Skeptic's Guide to Writer's Houses--Anne Trubek
In the Woods-Tana French (also read The Likeness and already plan on reading the third one)
So Much Pretty - Cara Hoffman
Half Broke Horses - Jeanette Walls
Born to Run - Chris McDougall
Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen
Little Bee - Chris Cleave
Hunger Games - Susanne Collins
This one comes courtesy of Mrs. Biblioracle
These Is My Words - Nancy Turner
1000 Autums of Jacob de Zoet by David
Elementary Particles by Michel Houellebecq
Dangerous Laughter by Steven Millhauser
Lowboy by John Wray
The Orange Eats Creeps by Grace Krilanovich
Europa - Tim Parks
Okay, anyone who posts below this, my apologies, but I won't be able to get to you today.
But I promise that the Biblioracle won't be gone so long this time.
Darn it! I would have made it, but I clicked "Sign in with google" and iceweasel crashed and I had to get back on and then... Darn it. Oh well, next time.
Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
The History of Love - Nicole Krauss
A Visit from The Goon Squad - Jennifer Egan
The Uses of Enchantment - Heidi Julavits
One Day - David Nichols
Thank you.... this is so much fun.
Damn! Just missed you - and last year you were spot on with Bad Things Happen.
In case you cave to pleading, or for possible early consideration when the great Biblioracle returns to our realm:
Between the Acts, Virginia Woolf
The Professor and the Madman, Simon Winchester
Breakfast of Champions, Kurt Vonnegut
The Pursuit of Love (et al), Nancy Mitford
The Sherlockian, Graham Moore
Cheers.
Funeral for a Dog -- Thomas Pletzinger
How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe -- Charles Yu
Saul Bellow: Letters
Heads You Lose -- Lisa Lutz and David Hayward
1000 Autumns of Jacob de Zoet by David Mitchell
I've been looking forward to this for a year!
Resistance
World Made by Hand
Good Son
City of Thieves
The Fall
Sarah's Key
I love this! I wonder if some people never go into bookstores and have their favorite bookseller play oracle on them. John, you grew up in a bookstore--is that right?
Anyway--here are mine:
Bound by Antonya Nelson
The Post-Birthday World by Lionel Shriver
The French Lieutenant's Woman by John Fowles
Madame Bovary (Lydia Davis translation)
Patterns of Paper Monsters by Emma Rathbone
Thank you!
I know I'm late oh great, Oracle, but I didn't know! If you are still available:
Next, by James Hynes
Thelonious Monk: The Life and Times of an American Original, by Robin D.G. Kelley
A Visit from the Goon Squad, by Jennifer Egan
The Things They Carried, by Tim O’Brien
The Wilding, by Benjamin Percy
Oops, too late!
My apologies to everyone I didn't get to. The dogs are doing the little dance that means they're about to make me rent a rug shampooer.
Until next time. And don't forget the winner of the Rooster is announced Monday.