The Literary List

[harmony_bites]

I've been reading off this list from The Complete Idiot's Guide to the Ultimate Reading List and did posts on the The Romance List and the Fantasy List. I now just polished off the Literary Fiction List so thought I'd post on those

Comments

[shiv5468]

It's a very American centric list. Anyone would think that there is no English litfic.

I've not read a lot of them and those I have read I thought were tedious. Possession is a bit like Wagner - it has good bits but by god they're thinly strung.

I loathe all great American novels on principle. Middle aged white men trying too hard and no story.

But then my reading pretty much stops after ww2

[harmony_bites]

It's a very American centric list. Anyone would think that there is no English litfic.

Oh, I don't know. There's plenty of Booker prize winners here. And some Brits. Byatt, McEwan, de Bernières, Haddon, Smith--out of 35 and considering the relative populations I don't think Brits are all that under-represented here given the emphasis on novels written in the last 25 years. There are books here by a Mexican and German national and books by people with a background in China, India, Afghanistan... Who do you think is missing who should be here among Brits writing in the last 25 years?

Possession is a bit like Wagner - it has good bits but by god they're thinly strung.

Heh. I don't disagree actually. What I loved I did love--but I got through it by skipping pretty much all the pastiches and the entire epistolary chapter.

I loathe all great American novels on principle. Middle aged white men trying too hard and no story.About half of the list--16 out of 35 are written by women you know--and some of those middle aged men can even write

[shiv5468]

THe great American novel comment is aimed more at delillo and his ilk.

I tell you who I actually like who writes lit fic - Julian Barnes. Clever witty and entertaining.

But I'm surprised not to see amis for one, for two really. Iris murdoch. Muriel spark. Angela carter. Rushdie some of which I actually like. John fowles.

[shiv5468]

I didn't say I liked them just I'd expect to see them there.

I really did like Barnes though.

[harmony_bites]

With just two exceptions, all the authors above were living at the time of publication of the book in 2008--Murdoch, Spark, Carter, Fowles and Kingsley Amis died before that (Although there's Martin). As for Rushdie, they probably felt they filled their Anglo-Indian slot with Roy--with bonus PC points for her being a woman. Shame because any novel of Rushdies just *has* to be less miserable than The God of Small Things which makes King Lear feel cheery.

[harmony_bites]

Oh, and forgot to look up Barnes. He's actually among the living. I'll put him on the list to try since you like him so much :-)

[harmony_bites]

Now I'm going to *have* to get that. Chabon is a champion of genre writing - he even got together a bunch of writers and edited a collection of genre/adventure stories--I read the introduction--it was practically a reader's manifesto against plotless inaccessible literary writing and in defense of genre writing. He's one of those that defends fanfic too--I think I have a new hero...

The Alice Hoffman, Practical Magic if you haven't read it is positively sunny compared to any book on this list so you might enjoy it--if it weren't stocked in General Fiction I could see it in romance. I think Middlesex is ultimately upbeat and has a lot of humor. There are others on the post that have humor and warmth above too but then tend to have fairly downbeat endings.

I was determined to expand my boundaries so I stuck through most of these if I could stand the style at all. The one exception really was The God of Small Things where the misery index was just way too high for me

[harmony_bites]

Practical Magic was my first Hoffman.

Definitely not the last. Was one of the keepers.