Why Do You Do It the Way You Do It?
The Biblioracle will be open today from 1 to 3 p.m. After explaining the secret behind oracling, the Biblioracle takes the last five books you read and tells you what to read next.
Thoughts on choosing books from the Biblioracle:
Why do you ask people for their most recently read books, as opposed to their favorite books of all time? This was the main question asked of me by Laura Miller in her recent article on book recommending, and while you can read my response there, I’d like to expand on it a little further while also betraying some secrets of the oracling business.
The key for any soothsayer/fortune teller is to, above all, keep it vague. This is why horoscopes mention “mysterious strangers” or “unexplained ailments.” Armed with such predictions, the individual is likely to go into the world, and thanks to confirmation bias, have such predictions fulfilled. The bar is low.
If I was setting myself up to provide one of your top reading experiences of all time, I would invariably fall short. Think how rarely those books come down the pipeline. My most recent “life-changing,” “so good I’d skip the season premiere of Mad Men for it” read was David Mitchell’s Cloud Atlas and I read it more than five years ago. I’ve read many truly excellent books since then, but to get into the personal pantheon takes some doing.
My goal, then, is to provide value by recommending a book that you will simply enjoy if read it next. It’s modest, but also real. My theory is that what you’re going to respond to, reading-wise, at any given time depends on all kinds of things, but one of the most important variables, I believe, is what you’ve been reading most recently.
It’s like this. The Biblioracle just got back from vacation. While on vacation, the Biblioracle ate like Mr. Creosote from Monty Python’s Meaning of Life. The food was plentiful. The food was good. One morning during vacation he ate his breakfast at the Farmhouse Bakery in Vandalia, Ind., and chose something called The Farm Boy, which is a combination of ham, sausage, bacon, peppers, sausage, onion, sausage, hash browns, cheese, sausage, and eggs smothered in sausage gravy. The portion provides sufficient calories for a hardworking farm hand to do their entire day’s labors. The Biblioracle went home and took a nap of the near-coma variety, which is to say, it was amazing and delicious, but the thought of eating the same thing the next day had me reaching for a bucket.
Upon arriving home from vacation, it was the Biblioracle’s job to prepare dinner for Mrs. Biblioracle, and as he paged through their book of recipes, what looked good to him was “beet salad.”
Under normal circumstances, the Biblioracle does not particularly care for beets, and definitely not in salad form, but his body was crying out for a break, a break from cholesterol and calories and I’m proud to say that the salad (marinated beets, arugula, goat cheese, toasted walnuts) was delicious and his arteries thanked him.
To extend the analogy to reading, one of my most treasured reading experiences of all time was David Foster Wallace’s Infinite Jest. I shared my experience reading that book in a different forum, but long story short, I read it during a time when I could give it the attention it demands, when it provided a counterpoint and quasi-antidote to what I’d been recently reading (and writing). At many other times in my life, I quite easily could’ve picked that book up and put it right down.
Dumb luck means I’m going to hit the sweetest of spots with some of these recommendations, just as some will be complete whiffs, but mostly, I think what any of us is looking for from a book is the experience of feeling like it was time well spent.
Time to twist again like we did last month. Put your five most recent reads in the comments below and I’ll tell you what to read next. The Biblioracle will be open for business today from 1 to 3 p.m. Eastern time.
As always, if you have any feedback on the Biblioracle’s recommendations, write at biblioracle@gmail.com. Also, we’re now at the magic number of 100 Twitter followers, which means he’ll start providing bonus book recommending content between Biblioracle appearances.
List the last five books you’ve read, and the Biblioracle tells you what to read next.
The Biblioracle will be open today, July 27, from 1 to 3 p.m. ET. These comments are now closed.
322 comments
The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet - David Mitchell
Burgess Book of Lies - Adrian & Alan Burgess
Tinkers - Paul Harding
Eiger Dreams - Jon Krakauer
The Silver Swan - Benjamin Black
Winter's Bone - Daniel Woodrell
Thanks! i recently read about a minor scandal related to the cover art but i haven't heard anything about the book itself. Can't wait to pick it up and start reading!
Glad you're doing this again! Starting with the least recent:
Thomas Pynchon - Gravity's Rainbow
Margaret Atwood - The Year of the Flood
Alice Munro - Too Much Happiness
Hilary Mantel - Wolf Hall
Douglas Adams - Last Chance to See
The Intuitionist - Colson Whitehead
I've never heard of the book or the author. Excellent!
Ah, an easy solution for the "what to read next" dilemma... :)
Last 5:
The Passage, Cronin
The Master and Margarita, Bulgakov
I Am Legend, Matheson
Parable of the Sower, Butler
The Odyssey, Homer
*Edited to include authors...
The City and The City - China Mieville
Great! I've needed a good reason to start reading Mieville. My first shot at Perdido St. Station got derailed, but I always meant to go back. Looks like I'll start here. Thanks!
The City & The City - China Miéville
The Invisible Bridge - Julie Orringer
Camera Lucida - Roland Barthes
The Imperfectionists - Tom Rachman
The Conqueror - Jan Kjærstad
Dipping into the past for you.
The Magus - John Fowles
1. Wizard and Glass: The Dark Tower 4 by Stephen King
2. Sh*t My Dad Says by Justin Halpern
3. The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde
4. Pygmy by Chuck Palahniuk
5. For the Thrill of It by Simon Baatz
Breakfast of Champions - Kurt Vonnegut
Last five books completed:
Charles Bukowski - Ham on Rye
Hans Fallada - Every Man Dies Alone
Ernest Hemingway - The Sun Also Rises
Darcey Steinke - Jesus Saves
Tom Drury - The Driftless Area
Currently reading:
Ron Currie Jr. - Everything Matters!
Thanks!!!
Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
Already read it and loved it immensely. Any other suggestion? Thanks again!
The World According to Garp - John Irvining
Never read Irving but have always figured I should. It's next on my list now!
Let's rock, reading people.
Kafka on the Shore - Haruki Murakami
Running With Antelope - Scott Carrier
Catch 22 - Joseph Heller
House of Leaves - Mark Z. Danielewski
Crime and Punishment - Feodor Dostoevsky
Pattern Recognition - William Gibson
Money - Martin Amis
Summer Lighning - P.G. Wodehouse
The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins
Run River - Joan Didion
The Shadow-Line - Joseph Conrad
Goldengrove - Francine Prose
For the Soul of France: Culture Wars in the Age of Dreyfus, Frederick Brown; The Brothers Karamazov, Dostoyevski; Proust's Binoculars, Roger Shattuck; The Ambassadors, Henry James; Bartelby & Co, Enrique Vila-Matas.
Nightwood - Djuna Barnes
If I've already read it?
Wise Blood - Flannery O'Connor
Here are my last five:
Lucky Jim by Kingsley Amis
The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie by Muriel Spark
Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison
Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell
The Magic Mountain by Thomas Mann
I’m going on vacation on Thursday. What should I bring? Thanks!
What Was She Thinking - Zoe Heller (Good involving plot, but not too heavy. Perfect for vacation.)
Eva Hesse by Lucy Lippard
She by Saul Williams
Leaves of Grass by Whitman
Catcher in The Rye by Salinger
The Perks of Being a Wallflower by Stephen Chbosky
Kapitoil - Teddy Wayne
Sex Lives of Cannibals by J Maarten Troost
Faithful Place by Tana French
Disgrace by JM Coetzee
The Elegance of the Hedgehog by Muriel Barbary
Smilla's Sense of Snow by Peter Hoeg
The Sea - John Banville
Thank you!
100 Years of Solitude
The Road
H. Potter & Deathly Hallows (entire series)
Twilight: You can kill yourself now. (entire series, no idea why)
Fierce Invalids Home from Hot Climates
A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole
Thank you!
You Lost Me There - Rosencrans Baldwin
Tinkers - Paul Harding
Freedom - Jonathan Franzen
Everything Here is the Best Thing Ever - Justin Taylor
Citrus County - John Brandon
I am jealous of this reading list as two of these books aren't out yet (Baldwin and Franzen) and I want to read them. You'll have to tell me your hookup.
36 Arguments for the Existence of God - Rebecca Goldstein
I’m excited!
The Shadow of the Wind- Carlos Ruiz Zafon
Mists of Avalon- Marion Zimmer Bradley
The Memoirs of Cleopatra- Margaret George
The Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love- Oscar Hijuelos
The Red Tent- Anita Diamant
Remarkable Creatures - Tracy Chevalier
danke!
How I Live Now by Meg Rosoff
I Shudder: And Other Reactions to Life, Death, and New Jersey by Paul Rudnick
Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit by Jeanette Winterson
The Rum Diary by Hunter S. Thompson
The Passage by Justin Cronin
Thank you for your excellent previous recommendations (Among the Missing and Let the Northern Lights Erase Your Name). Both books were exactly what I required.
The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test - Tom Wolfe
Both Ways is the Only Way I Want It, Maile Meloy
The Glass Castle, Jeannette Walls
The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, Junot Diaz
The Imperfectionists, Tom Rachman
The Glass Room (currently reading), Simon Mawer
Let the Great World Spin - Colum McCann
Thank you so much for doing this!
Here are mine:
1. Secret Life of Bees, Sue Monk Kidd
2. The Time-Traveller's Wife, Audrey Niffenegger
3. The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald
4. SuperFreakonomics, Steven Levitt & Stephen Dubner
5. 20 Something Essays By 20 Something Writers, Matt Kellogg and Jillian Quint
A Gate at the Stairs - Lorrie Moore
Thank you!
The Ground Beneath Her Feet, Salman Rushdie
Birds of America, Lorrie Moore
The Two-Income Trap, Elizabeth Warren
Self-Help, Lorrie Moore
currently: The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet, David Mitchell
The Lonely Polygamist - Brady Udall
My last five books:
The Groucho Letters, by Groucho Marx
Lush Life, by Richard Price
The Spot, by David Means
A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again, by David Foster Wallace
The Lost City of Z, by David Grann
The Crying of Lot 49 - Thomas Pynchon
I read it ten years ago. Maybe I'll give it another go. Does the oracle recommend anything else?
John Henry Days - Colson Whitehead
Thank you.
CASTLE, J. Robert Lennon (your first rec for me; thanks, I liked it, though a strong whiff of "ripped from the headlines" at the end)
THE PASSAGE, Justin Cronin (abridged audiobook edition, sorry)
THE ROSE LABYRINTH, Titiana Hardie (for my Bad Book Book Club)
SCOTT PILGRIM'S FINEST HOUR, Bryan Lee O'Malley (plus a reread of the previous five volumes)
KRAKEN, China Miéville (halfway done, pretty awesome)
Thanks!
Horns - Joe Hill
HORNS was actually one of the books I'd read on which you'd based your recommendation of CASTLE ....
We're in a cul-d-sac.
Never Let Me Go - Kazuo Ishiguro
Thanks!
World according to Garp - John Irving
Ayaan - Ayaan Hirsi Ali
Millenium Trilogy - Stieg Larsson
Havfruen - Camilla Lackberg
Flygtningen - Olav Hergel
I want to give you another suspense/mystery title, but I think a palate cleanser is in order.
Agaat - Marlene Van Niekerk
Thank you, I can't wait!
Biblioracle--my most recent reads:
Joshua Ferris, Then We Came to the End (currently reading)
Ben Goldacre, Bad Science
Margaret Atwood, The Handmaid's Tale
Gretchen Rubin, The Happiness Project (I hated this, stopped after 50 pages)
Charles P. Pierce, Idiot America
CivilwarLand In Bad Decline - George Saunders
Thanks, but that's already one of my favorite books. Any other suggestions?
The story of Edgar Sawtelle - David Wroblewski (your recommendation)
Fool - Christopher Moore
Dress your family in corduroy and denim - David Sedaris
Me talk pretty one day - David Sedaris
Naamah's kiss - Jacqueline Carey
The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini
Thank you so much!
Fantastic!
Portnoy's Complaint - Philip Roth
The Crying of Lot 49 - Thomas Pynchon
Eating Animals - Jonathan Safran Foer
A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius - Dave Eggers
Into the Wild - Jon Krakauer
Everything Matters! - Ron Currie
The Extra Man (Jonathan Ames)
Rock n' Roll (Tom Stoppard) (Do plays not count?)
Mariette in Ecstasy (Ron Hansen)
The Children's Book (A. S. Byatt)
Ada, or, Ardor (Vladimir Nabokov)
Plays can count, as long as you read as opposed to watched them.
The Known World - Edward P. Jones (This is a bit of a cheat since I could recommend it to every sentient being on the planet, but looking at your list makes me think you'll dig it extra especially.)
Thank you very much!
1. The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot
2. A Swiftly Tilting Planet by Madeleine L'Engle
3. The House on Fortune Street by Margot Livesey
4. Miles from Nowhere by Nami Mun
5. Hicksville by Dylan Horrocks
Jesus' Son - Denis Johnson
Hard Rain Falling, Don Carpenter
The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet, David Mitchell
C, Tom McCarthy
The Friends of Eddie Coyle, George Higgins
The Bathroom, Jean-Philippe Toussaint
And thank you very much in advance.
The Anthologist - Nicholson Baker
Fantastic. I've been meaning to read something by Baker for a long time. Then two days ago I saw this book in a store and thought, I should read that at some point. Your mental powers are frightening, O' Biblioracle.
Turn, Magic Wheel - Dawn Powell
The Lonely Polygamist - Brady Udall
Everything Lovely, Effortless, Safe - Jenny Hollowell
Dying Light - Stuart MacBride
Our Tragic Universe - Scarlett Thomas
(Currently: The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet - David Mitchell. Though does that make six?)
Stop-Time - Frank Conroy
This was unexpected. I like unexpected; thank you.
Excellent! Here are my books:
Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
Very Good, Jeeves - PG Wodehouse
Democracy - Joan Didion
The Catcher in the Rye
Collected Short Stories of Lydia Davis
(And, if you're ever feeling like a special bonus biblioracular challenge, I'm always looking for things that I can recommend to my 15-year-old sister so we can continue to bond over our mutual disdain for Twilight.)
The House of Tomorrow - Peter Bognanni (Should work for you and your sister.)
An Introduction to Zen Buddhism (Suzuki),
Senselessness (Moya),
Second Skin (Hawkes),
Jakob von Gunten (Walser),
The Psychology of Kundalini Yoga (Jung)
Pale Fire - Vladimir Nabokov
Already read that. Thanks though!
We shan't give up so easily.
Austerlitz - W.G. Sebald
Slow Fire: Jewish Notes From Berlin, Susan Neiman
Austerlitz, W. G. Sebald
The Moviegoer, Walker Percy
Zeitoun, Dave Eggers
Nothing to Envy: Ordinary Lives in North Korea, Barbara Demick
The Heart is a Lonely Hunter - Carson McCullers
Werewolves of Montpellier by Jason
The Making of a Marchioness by Frances Hodgson Burnett
Beasts of Burden by Evan Dorkin & Jill Thompson
House of Dolls by Francesca Lia Block and Barbara McClintock
Nods and Becks by Franklin P. Adams
I'm seriously at sea with this list having no familiarity with any of the titles, but doing some quick searching to familiarize myself, and excluding any graphic novel recommendations since I think you'd be far more versed in that area than me, I'm going with:
Cruddy - Lydia Barry
Rupert Gethin - The Foundations of Buddhism
The Arabian Nights (the Penguin edition released this year)
Roberto Calasso - The Marriage of Cadmus and Harmony
Don DeLillo - The Names
Kobo Abe - The Face of Another
Norwegian Wood - Haruki Marukami
Self-Portrait with Woman - Andrzej Szczypiorski
Nine - Andrzej Stasiuk
De Profundis - Oscar Wilde
Salamandar - Thomas Wharton
The Book of the City of Ladies - Christine De Pizan
The Private Lives of Trees - Alejandro Zambra
Blue Highways - William Least Heat Moon (currently)
When Everything Changed - Gail Collins
Infinite Jest - David Foster Wallace (ongoing)
The Plague - Albert Camus
The Joke - Milan Kundera
Journey to the End of Night - Celine
The Last Days of Judas Iscariot, Stephen Adly Guirgis
Saturday, Ian McEwan
The Beautiful Things that Heaven Bears, Dinaw Mengestu
The Museum of Innocence, Orhan Pamuk
Lucky Jim, Kingsley Amis
Thanks.
The Imperfectionists - Tom Rachman
The God in Flight-Laura Argiri
1776- David G. McCullough
The Alienist- Caleb Carr
David Bowie-Mark Spitz
Memoir of a Revolutionary Soldier: The Narrative of Joseph Plumb Martin- Joseph Plum Martin
Stoner - John Williams
Brideshead Revisited, Evelyn Waugh
Breakfast of Champions, Kurt Vonnegut
The Princess and the Goblin, George Macdonald
The British Museum is Falling Down, David Lodge
The Man Who Was Thursday, G.K. Chesterton
The Lecturer's Tale - James Hynes
The Story of the Amulet, E.Nesbit
Half-Broke Horses: A True-Life Novel, Jeannette Walls
America's Women, Gail Collins
Catching Fire, Suzanne Collins
Awakening, S. J. Bolton
Still Missing - Chevy Stevens
Lunar Park - Bret Easton Ellis
Scott Pilgrim's Finest Hour - Bryan Lee O'Malley
Play It As It Lays - Joan Didion
The Brief and Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao - Junot Diaz
Talking to Girls About Duran Duran - Rob Sheffield
Juliet, Naked - Nick Hornby
Hunger Games (Suzanne Collins), Catching Fire (Suzanne Collins), Old School (Tobey Maguire),The Suicide Club (Robert Lewis Stevenson), Uncorporate Identity (MetaHaven)
Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep - Philip K. Dick
Stone of Tears -Terry Goodkind
Wizard's First Rule -Terry Goodkind
Eye of the World - Robert Jordan
The Name of the Wind - Patrick Rothfuss
The Glass Bead Game - Herman Hesse
Finch - Jeff VanderMeer
Never The Bride- Paul Magrs
The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy- Douglas Adams
The Vesuvius Club- Mark Gatiss
Outlander- Diana Gabaldon
American Psycho- Bret Easton Ellis
Geek Love - Katherine Dunn
Thank you so much! I have a long flight to the west coast tomorrow and a return early next week so this will fill the time nicely.
Distant Star-Roberto Bolano
The Portrait of an Artist as A Young Man- James Joyce
M. Pain - Roberto Bolano
Demons- F. Dostoyevski
The Master and Margartia - Mikhail Bulgakov
Under the Volcano - Malcolm Lowry
Hard Rain Falling (Dan Carpenter) - LOVED this
Mr. Peanut (Adam Ross) didn't love this
The Thousand Autumns of Jacob De Zoet (David Mitchell) - disappointed - Cloud Atlas was so utterly amazing, this one fell short
Vox (Ann Carson) yes, yes, yes
I'm Gone (Jean Echenoz)
The Tanners - Robert Walser
The Luck of Ginger Coffee - Brian Moore
Middlesex - Jeffrey Eugenides
Slaughterhouse Five - Kurt Vonnegut
The Magicians - Lev Grossman
You Suck - Christopher Moore
Oops, I was all business, no manners. Thank you! Your gift is remarkable. Also, why wouldn't Mrs. Biblioracle keep her maiden name?
Day for Night - Frederick Reiken
How Did You Get This Number? - Sloane Crosley
Out of Sheer Rage - Geoff Dyer
Both Ways Is the Only Way I Want It - Maile Meloy
A Time to Be Born - Dawn Powell
Time Out of Mind - Leonard Michaels
Desperate Characters - Paula Fox
The Crying of Lot 49 - Thomas Pynchon
The Mysterious Stranger - Mark Twain
Unless - Carol Shields
The White Tiger - Aravind Adiga
The Painted Veil - W. Somerset Maugham
Scoop - Evelyn Waugh
The Surgeon by Tess Gerritsen
Wishful Drinking by Carrie Fisher
A Beautiful Place to Die by Malla Nunn
The Odds by Kathleen George
Superbug: The Fatal Menace of MRSA by Maryn McKenna
Sharp Objects - Gillian Flynn
I love reading what other people have been reading!
The Help, Wench, Midnight Rain (Holly Lisle), Bird by Bird (Anne Lamott), A Field Guide on Burying Your Parents (Liza Palmer)
Father of the Rain - Lily King
Collected Stories of Lydia Davis
The Girl Who Played with Fire, Stieg Larsson
The Little Stranger, Sarah Waters
Cloud Atlas, David Mitchell
Original Bliss, A. L. Kennedy
(now reading Mitchell's The Thousand Dreams...)
Case Histories - Kate Atkinson
Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World - Haruki Murakami
The Adventures of Augie March - Saul Bellow
Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov
The City and The City - China Miéville
American Gods - Neil Gaiman
In Cold Blood - Truman Capote
Inglorious, Joanna Kavenna
Next, James Hynes
One DOA, One on the Way, Mary Robison
Subtraction, Mary Robison
Civilwarland in Bad Decline, George Saunders
Waveland - Frederick Barthelme
Every Man Dies Alone- Hans Fallada
What is the What- Dave Eggers
The Cleft- Doris Lessing
The Saffron Kitchen- Yasmin Crowther
Her Fearful Symmetry- Audrey Niffenegger
The Cookbook Collector - Allegra Goodman
stroy of b (dan quinn)
cloud atlas (david mitchell)
ishmael (dan quinn)
omnivore's dilemna (michael pollan)
skinny legs and all (tom robbins)
It's a commitment, but it's time for you to make a run at:
Infinite Jest - David Foster Wallace
Oof. I guess the untouched copy I optimistically purchased for last year's Infinite Summer needs to be dusted off and given a chance!
Really, go for it, and use Infinite Summer as a kind of reading companion. It'll help.
Weight - Jeanette Winterson
Hopscotch - Julio Cortazar
No 44: The Mysterious Stranger - Mark Twain
The Good Man Jesus and the Scoundrel Christ - Philip Pullman
Ella Minnow Pea - Mark Dunn
The Recognitions - William Gaddis
Thank you!
Atlas Shrugged - Ayn Rand
1984 - George Orwell
Great Expectations - Charles Dickens
Babbitt - Sinclair Lewis
I've got a nice big pile of what I *might* read next but I'm always excited to deviate from it -- particularly right now, when I'm so tempted to keep reading more by the same authors I've already been reading lots of.
My last 5:
Henry Green, Nothing
Sylvia Townsend Warner, The Corner That Held Them
Flann O'Brien, The Third Policeman
Stanley Crawford, Gascoyne
Fr. Rolfe, The Desire and Pursuit of the Whole
The Book of Evidence - John Banville
Thanks!
City of Saints and Madmen - Jeff VanderMeer
Finch - Jeff VanderMeer
The Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas
The Walking Dead Compendium 1 (Volumes 1-8) - Robert Kirkman
Starship Troopers - Robert Heinlein
One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest - Ken Kesey
Oops, meant to reply here, thanks again!
The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo
Suspicions of Mr. Whicher
The Meaning of Night
The Glass of Time
The Monsters of Templeton - Lauren Groff
OOps, posted too early.
Atlas Shrugged - Ayn Rand
Great Expectations - Charles Dickens
1984 - George Orwell
Galapogos - Kurt Vonnegut
East of Eden - John Steinbeck
See upthread. Seeing the whole list, I'm going to stick with the recommendation.
The Savage Detectives - Roberto Bolaño
Columbine - Dave Cullen
Never Let Me Go - Kazuo Ishiguro
Mr Palomar - Italo Calvino
Foucault's Pendulum - Umberto Eco
I've got a hunch you've read this. If so, let me know.
Blindness - Jose Saramago
I've read it. : ) May I have another, please?
The Book of Disquiet - Fernando Pessoa
Changes - Jim Butcher
Queen of Demons - David Drake
War of Honoer - David Weber
Fallen Dragon - Peter F. Hamilton
Armor - John Steakley
Old Man's War - John Scalzi
Brooklyn - Colm Toibin
The Children's Hospital - Chris Adrian
History of Love - Nicole Krauss
The Sea - John Banville
The Story of Edgar Sawtelle - David Wroblewski
I think you'll enjoy this new one:
The Lovers - Vendela Vida
Strange Things Happen - Stewart Copeland
Fire - Sebastian Junger
Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire (didn't get very far) - JK Rowling
The Professor's House - Willa Cather
The Razor's Edge - W Somerset Maugham
The Sportswriter - Richard Ford
Days of the French Revolution - Christopher Hibbert
A Short History of Nearly Everything - Bill Bryson
Class - Paul Fussell
By Night in Chile - Roberto Bolano
The Savage Detectives - Roberto Bolano
Oh, man, Class. I forgot all about that book. It is so good. So funny. I haven't read it in years. I wonder if it holds up. Does it hold up?
The Solitude of Prime Numbers - Paolo Giordano
As a social commentary, it doesn't hold up (no one really aspires to be like the classy rich anymore, because today's rich are so trashy : http://gawker.com/5597738/t.... Humour-wise, it's wicked.
A History of Housing in New York City, Richard Plunz
Under the Banner of Heaven, John Krakauer
Taking Our Places, Norman Fischer
The Curve of Binding Energy, John McPhee
A Place of My Own, Michael Pollan
Clearly a narrative non-fiction fan here. I'm tempted to try to give you a work of fiction that will work, but that's a tougher assignment. I'm going to give you two choices one nonfiction:
The Orchid Thief - Susan Orlean
and one fiction:
We Need to Talk About Kevin - Lionel Shriver
O Pioneers! - Willa Cather
The Spider's House - Paul Bowles
A Drink Before the War - Dennis LeHaye
A Princess of Mars - Edgar Rice Burroughs
Adam, Eve, and the Serpent - Elaine Pagels
Ragtime - E.L. Doctorow
Franz Kafka - The Trial
John Steinbeck - East of Eden
Haruki Murakami - Kafka on the Shore
Haruki Murakami - Norwegian Wood
Paramahansa Yogananda - Autobiography of a Yogi
Of Human Bondage - W. Somerset Maugham
Thanks for all your work and your suggestion John!
David Shields, 'Reality Hunger'
Cheever, 'Journals of...'
David Lipsky, David Foster Wallace, 'Although of Course You End Up Becoming Yourself'
Tennessee Williams, 'Shorter Plays'
Wyndham Lewis, 'Time and Western Man'
The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay - Michael Chabon
My Horizontal Life: A Collection of One-Night Stands - Chelsea Handler
Last Scene Alive - Charlaine Harris
A Fool and his Honey - Charlaine Harris
The Ruins - Scott Smith
Dead Men Don't Jog - Chris Forman
The Blade Itself - Marcus Sakey
The Power Broker - Robert Caro
The Crisis of Capitalist Democracy - Richard Posner
Killing Floor - Lee Child
Cryptonomicon - Neal Stephenson
The Bridge: The Life and Rise of Barrack Obama - David Remnick
I don't know what he'll tell you, but I'd recommend The River of Doubt by Candice Millard or The Modern Mind by Peter Watson (or maybe Watson's latest book on Germany, which I haven't yet read).
All the King's Men - Robert Penn Warren
From recent-->old (not sure if that factors in)
Jesus' Son (Johnson)
Motherless Brooklyn (Lethem)
Set in Darkness (Rankin)
A Tale of Two Cities (Dickens)
Wolf Hall (Mantel)
The Little Stranger - Sarah Waters
1. The Elegance of the Hedgehog - Muriel Barbery
2. The Six Wives of Henry VIII - Alison Weir
3. The House of the Spirits - Isabel Allende
4. And the Band Played On - Randy Shults
5. The Naked and The Dead - Norman Mailer
Thanks!
Half Broke Horses - Jeannette Walls
The Chosen - Chaim Potok
The Great Gatsby - F. Scott Fitzgerald
Netherland - Joseph O'Neill
The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet - David Mitchell
The Manual of Detection - Jedediah Berry
St. Lucy's Home for Girls Raised by Wolves - Karen Russell
Thanks!
Peony in Love by Lisa See
The Story Sisters by Alice Hoffman
The Beautiful Things that Heaven Bears by Dinaw Mengestu
The Elegance of the Hedgehog by Muriel Barbery
Olive Kitteridge by Elizabeth Strout
The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake - Aimee Bender
Thanks for the recommendation. I just read a short review of it the other day and had thought it sounded intriguing. Now I'll seek it out when I'm next at the bookstore!
Hello.
The Sportswriter - Richard Ford
We Are Not In This Together - William Kittredge
The Beautiful Language of My Century - Tom McDonough
First Love and Other Sorrows - Harold Brodkey
A Way of Life, Like Any Other - Darcy O'Brien
Thanks!
Miss Lonelyhearts and the Day of the Locust - Nathanael West
Hmm, already read. I love that book, though.
Portnoy's Complaint - Philip Roth
The Thousand Autumns of Jacob De Zoet - David Mitchell
Big Machine - Victor LaValle
Fever Chart - Bill Cotter
The Good Man Jesus and the Scoundrel Christ - Philip Pullman
A Gate at the Stairs - Lorrie Moore
Citrus County - John Brandon
Dune - Frank Herbert
The Bridge on the Drina - Ivo Andric
Violence - Slavoj Zizek
Sophie's World - Jostein Gaarder
Zaat - Sonallah Ibrahim
Things Fall Apart - Chinua Achebe
Chronic City - Jonathan Lethem
Let the Great World Spin - Colum McCann
Solar - Ian McEwen
For the Time Being - Annie Dillard
Transit of Venus - Shirley Hazzard
Triangle - Katharine Weber
The Glass Books of the Dream Eaters - Gordon Dahlquist
Carter Beats the Devil - Glen David Gold
Under the Dome - Stephen King
Bradbury Stories: 100 of His Most Celebrated Tales - Ray Bradbury
The Colorado Kid - Stephen King
Billy Bathgate - E.L. Doctorow
The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao -- Junot Diaz
The Salt Smugglers -- Gerard de Nerval
The End -- Salvatore Scibona
Log of the S.S. The Mrs. Unguentine --Stanley Crawford
The Sweet Hereafter -- Russell Banks
60 Stories - Donald Barthelme
Better than Delphi. I've been meaning to get to this.
Cousin Bette - Balzac
Nothing to Envy: Ordinary Lives in North Korea - Barbara Demick
Under the Banner of Heaven: A Story of Violent Faith - Jon Krakauer
The Road - Cormac McCarthy
Heroes and Villains: Essays on Music, Movies, Comics, and Culture - David Hajdu
Beloved - Toni Morrison
Books of Swords Series - Fred Saberhagen
The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle - Haruki Murakami
The Princess of Mars - Edgar Rice Burroughs
The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon
The Yiddish Policeman's Union - Michael Chabon
The Plot Against America - Philip Roth
Thank you!
The Dud Avocado - Elaine Dundy
Lucky Jim - Kingsley Amis
Scoop - Evelyn Waugh
The Death of Ivan Ilyich - Leo Tolstoy
Their Eyes Were Watching God - Zora Neale Hurston
The End of Mr. Y - Scarlett Thomas
Zeiton - Dave Eggers
The Three Muskateers - Alexandre Dumas
Brief Interviews with Hideous Men - David Foster Wallace
Complete Sherlock Holmes - Doyle
The Angel's Game - Carlos Ruiz Zafon
Motherless Brooklyn - Jonathan Lethem
Haven't read it (or heard of it). Thanks!
Shutter Island - Dennis Lehane
Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck
A Tree Grows in Brooklyn - Betty Smith
The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao - Junot Diaz
Hons and Rebels - Jessica Mitford
The Infinities - John Banville
The Unbearable Lightness of Being - Milan Kundera
How To Breathe Underwater - Julie Orringer
Olive Kitteridge - Elizabeth Strout
Middlesex - Jeffrey Eugenides
City of God - E.L. Doctorow
thanks! :)
The History of Love - Nicole Krauss
The Girl Who Played with Fire-stieg larsson
Half Broke Horses-jeannette walls
The Help-kathryn stockett
Game Change-mark halperin and john heilemann
Sex, Drugs and Coca Puffs-chuck klosterman
What the Dead Know - Laura Lippman
The Botany of Desire - Pollan
House Of Leaves - Danielewski
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance - Pirsisg
Lila - Pirsig
Imagined Communities - Anderson
Big one, but I think you'd like it.
Imperial - William T. Vollman
The Broom of the System by David Foster Wallace
The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet by David Mitchell
Everything That Rises Must Converge by Flannery O'Connor
The Heart is a Lonely Hunter by Carson McCullers
Miles From Nowhere by Nami Mun
Serena - Ron Rash
Thanks! From a 1-Star Amazon review: "To much evilness for me"....can't wait to read it! :)
Beloved -- Toni Morrison
The Endless Steppe -- Esther Hautzig
The Member of the Wedding -- Carson McCullers
A Lost Lady -- Willa Cather
The Return of the Native -- Thomas Hardy
Possession - A.S. Byatt
Hamlet - Shakespeare
Lowboy - John Wray
A Simple Plan - Scott Smith
Interpreter of Maladies - Jhumpa Lahiri
The Girl Who Played With Fire - Steig Larsson
Lush Life - Richard Price
Mao's Last Dancer - Li Cunxin
The Caves of Steel - Isaac Asimov
A Distant Mirror: The Calamitous 14th Century - Barbara Tuchman
As One Is - Jiddu Krishnamurti
Pere Goriot - Honore de Balzac
Lots of people reading this here, including me.
The Thousand Autumns of Jacob DeZoet - David Mitchell
Little Earthquakes, Jennifer Weiner
Jar City, Arnaldur Indridason
Island beneath the Sea, Isabel Allende
Nature Girl, Carl Hiassen
The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest, Stieg Larsson
One Day - David Nichols
storm track by margaret maron, la's orchestra saves the world by alexander mccall smith, fever by bill pronzini, the sleepers of erin by jonathan gash, the silent spirit by margaret coel.
The Thief of Time - Tony Hillerman
Kraken, by China Miéville
The Omnivore's Dilemma, by Michael Pollan
The Night Life of the Gods, by Thorne Smith
Shivering Sands, by Warren Ellis
The Axeman's Jazz, by Julie Smith
A Friend of the Earth - T.C. Boyle
Thanks! I'll check it out.
Young Romantics: The Tangled Lives of English Poetry's Greatest Generation by Daisy Hay
Let the Great World Spin by Colum McCann
The Wind-Up Girl by Paolo Bacigalupi
The Passage by Justin Cronin
The Magicians by Lev Grossman
Big Machine - Victor LaValle
Thanks!
Latest reads:
The Whiskey Rebels (Liss -- good)
Teach Like Your Hair is on Fire (Esquith--good)
Cosette (Kalpakian---ackkkk--this was a gift from an older lady and I read it to be polite since we both loved Hugo)
The Help (Stockett--loved)
The Things They Carried (O'Brien--troubling)
Olive Kitteridge - Elizabeth Strout
Read it--loved it--thanks
Bel Canto - Ann Patchett
The Help - Stockett (loved)
Cosette - Kalpakian (bleah--obligatorily read--a gift from a mutual Hugo lover)
The Things They Carried - O'Brien
Teach Like Your Hair Is on Fire - Esquith
The Whiskey Rebels - Liss (great)
Thanks
The Sparrow- Mary Doria Russell
Wolf Hall- Hilary Mantel
Catching Fire- Suzanne Collins
Dance Dance Dance- Haruki Murakami
Speciman Days- Michael Cunningham (your recommendation)
Thanks!
A Prayer for Owen Meany - John Irving
Farming: A Handbook by Wendell Berry
Leyendas de Espana (a cast off textbook of short stories from my college's language lab. Spanish is my minor)
The Broom of the System by David Foster Wallace
A Good Man Is Hard to Find by Flannery O'Connor
2666 by Roberto Bolano
Catch -22 - Joseph Heller
The Life and Opinions of Tomcat Murr by E.T.A. Hoffmann
World of Wonders by Robertson Davies
Notes from Underground by Fyodor Dostoevsky
The Sound and The Fury by William Faulkner
The Iceman Cometh by by Eugene O'Neill
The Invisible Bridge - Julie Orringer
The Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas
The Magicians - Lev Grossman
Shades of Grey - Jasper Fforde
Devil in the White City - Erik Larson
Little Bee - Chris Cleave
The Help - Kathryn Stockett
The Shack - William P. Young
Buffy The Vampire Slayer season 8 comics - Joss Whedon
The Diary of Anne Frank
The 22 Immutable Laws of Marketing - Al Rise, Jack Trout
Boundaries - Cloud and Townsend
The Story of Edgar Sawtelle - David Wroblewski
Pale Fire (Nabokov)
This Much Is True (Wally Lamb)
The Secret Lives of Somerset Maugham (Selina Hastings)
A Great Unrecorded History (Wendy Moffat)
2666 (Roberto Bolano)
Postcards - E. Annie Proulx
The Book of Basketball - Bill Simmons
After Dark - Haruki Murakami
The Alchemist - Paulo Coelho
What the Dog Saw - Malcolm Gladwell
The Fountainhead - Ayn Rand
Sorry, please change The Fountainhead to The Brief Wonderous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Diaz
East of Eden - John Steinbeck
London Fields - Amis
Savage Detectives - Bolano
Transparent Things - Nabokov
Schultz - Donleavy
Jeeves and the Feudal Spirit - Wodehouse
Topic of Cancer - Henry Miller
Good call - though I have read it. (Maybe it's time to revisit?)
V – Thomas Pynchon
Travels with Charley – John Steinbeck
The Prime of Miss Jean Brody – Muriel Spark
The Final Solution – Michael Chabon
Boss – Mike Ryoko
The Man in the Wooden Hat - Jane Gardam
Something totally new and different for me - I have never heard of it. Thanks!
The Little Book - Seldon Edwards
The Bastard of Istanbul - Elif Shafak
Little Bee - Chris Cleave
That Old Cape Magic - Richard Russo
The Lacuna - Barbara Kingsolver
Wolf Hall - Hillary Mantel
The Ghost Map by Steven Johnson
Quincunx by Charles Palliser
Matterhorn by Karl Marlantes
The Rider by Tim Krabbe
The Collected Stories of Lydia Davis by Lydia Davis
The Trial - Franz Kafka
Anatomy of a Murder - "Robert Traver"
2666 - Roberto Bolano
Wolf Hall - Hilary Mantel
The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay - Michael Chabon
Zeitoun - Dave Eggers
[Oops, had to remove "Blood Meridian," I forgot all about reading Zeitoun (even though I liked it more) until I saw someone else mention it.]
The Women - T.C. Boyle
Thanks. Never heard of it, but it looks interesting.
Infinite Jest - David Foster Wallace
Pastoralia - George Saunders
Let the Great World Spin - Colum McCann
The Fortress of Solitude - Jonathan Lethem
The God of Small Things - Arundhati Roy
hello
The Cheese Monkeys - Chip Kidd
Thank you - I have already read and enjoyed The Cheese Monkeys!
Wonder Boys - Michael Chabon
The Valley of Fear - Arthur Conan Doyle
Cat's Cradle - Kurt Vonnegut
The Iliad - Homer
Stiffs - Mary Roach
Devil in the White City - Erik Larson
More nonfiction?
Methland - Nick Reding
The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay - Michael Chabon
Beethoven was One-Sixteenth Black: And Other Stories - Nadine Gordimer
Of Love and Shadows - Isabel Allende
The Art of Detection - Laurie R. King
The Corrections - Jonathan Franzen
Disgrace - J.M. Coetzee
Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte
Lament - Maggie Stiefvater
The Vampire Lestat - Anne Rice
Perchance to Dream - Lisa Mantchev
White Cat - Holly Black
Soulless - Gail Carriger
"Hidden Moon" - James Church
The Pursuit of Love & Love in a Cold Climate" - Nancy Mitford - two separate novels bound in one paperback? Counts as two I guess?
"The Whispering Room" - Amanda Stevens
"Tinkers" - Paul Harding
Gilead - Marilynn Robinson
The Post-American World by Freed Zakaria
The Myth of American Exceptionalism by Godfey Hodgson
The Good Man Jesus and the Scoundrel Christ by Philip Pullman
Midnight's Children by Salman Rushdie
The Places in Between by Rory Stewart
The White Tiger - Aravind Adiga
2666 (Bolaño)
Yarborough (BH Friedman)
Snow Flower and the Secret Fan (See)
Cutting for Stone (Verghese)
Poisoner's Handbook: Murder and Birth of Forensic Medicine in Jazz Age NY
Half of a Yellow Sun - Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
The City and The City - China Mieville
The Imperfectionists - Tom Rachman
Play It As It Lays - Joan Didion
The Big Short - Michael Lewis
The Friends of Eddie Coyle - George V. Higgins
The Savages - Don Winslow
Scott Pilgrim Vol's 1-4 - Bryan Lee O'Malley
Damnation Alley - Roger Zelazny
The Warded Man - Peter Brett
Shadow's Edge - Brent Weeks
Beyond the Shadows - Brent Weeks
Crap. Catching Fire by Suzanne Collins goes between Shadow's Edge and The Warded Man.
Nature: Poems Old and New, by May Swenson
The Body, by Jenny Boully
Reality Hunger: A Manifesto, by David Shields
Nox, by Anne Carson
The Granite Pail, by Lorine Niedecker
Thanks, Biblioracle! Last time I popped in to see you, you recommended "About a Mountain." You were spot-on. Much appreciated!
The Year of Magical Thinking - Joan Didion
Infinite Jest--David Foster Wallace
Let the Great World Spin--Colum McCann
Hitch-22--Christopher Hitchens
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn--Mark Twain
The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet--David Mitchell
A Visit from the Goon Squad - Jennifer Egan
Sabbath's Theatre - Philip Roth
The Inheritance of Loss - Kiran Desai
The Road - Cormac McCarthy
Hindoo Holiday - J.R. Ackerley
The Uncommon Reader - Alan Bennett
Unaccustomed Earth - Jhumpa Lahiri
The Windup Girl - Paolo Bacigalupi
Clockers - Richard Price
Skinny Legs and All - Tom Robbins
Columbine - Dave Cullen
The Lathe of Heaven - Ursula Le Guin
The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams
Fish - Gregory Mone
Rum Punch - Elmore Leonard
61 Hours: A Reacher Novel - Lee Child
King Dork - Frank Portman
The Forever War - Joe Haldeman
I read Rum Punch on your recommendation. It was okay. I enjoyed enough while reading and had trouble putting it down, but kind of dreaded picking it up each time. Trying to remember the ending right now and cannot. Didn't really like any of the characters, even Max Cherry.
What have you got for me this time?
The Tourist - Olen Steinhauer
Nox, by Anne Carson
The Body, by Jenny Boully
The Granite Pail, by Lorine Niedecker
Nature: Poems Old and New, by May Swenson
Reality Hunger: A Manifesto, by David Shields
Thanks, Biblioracle! Last time I popped in to see you, you recommended "About A Mountain." A spot-on choice!
Meredith
Sacred Games - Vikram Chandra
Love and Longing in Bombay - Vikram Chandra
Down Under - Bill Bryson
Notes from a Big Country - Bill Bryson
Notes from a Small Island - Bill Bryson
In Other Rooms, Other Wonders - Daniyal Mueenuddin
Okay, I'm drawing my line in the sand for recommendations I'll be able to get to today. Everyone posting above this message, I'll be working to get you a book. If you post below this comment, I'll have to get to you next time.
Flann O'Brien, The Third Policeman
Marilynne Robinson, Gilead
Jose Saramago, Death With Interruptions
Paul Harding, Tinkers
Kazuo Ishiguro, Never Let Me Go
Monsieur Pain - Roberto Bolano
The Pregnant Widow - Martin Amis
Wittgenstein's Mistress - David Markson
Slow Learner - Thomas Pynchon
Essays 1 & 2 - Ralph Waldo Emerson
American Sphinx - Joseph Ellis
The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter - Carson McCullers
For Whom The Bell Tolls - Ernest Hemingway
Six Cousins At Mistletoe Farm - Enid Blyton
The Gastronomical Me - M.F.K. Fisher