what kind of books do you like reading?
My favorite era is 19th century Russian literature. Some of my favorites from there are Dead Souls by Gogol, Fathers and Sons by Ivan Turgenev, Eugene Onegin by Alexander Pushkin, and Oblomov by Ivan Goncharov (I was utterly baffled as to why everyone was talking about Ivan Goncharov when I came back to Tumblr!). I loved a lot of early 20th century American literature, in particular F. Scott Fitzgerald, who was an early hero, and I also read a lot of Joseph Heller and Vladimir Nabokov (Russian/American). I've read everything by Franz Kafka—even the bizarre stuff, like Amerika—and loved it all. My favorite writer of all time is Virginia Woolf, and I love reading writers who experiment with style (Lewis Carroll, of all people, has a nice early example of stream of consciousness with Sylvie and Bruno). I think the best piece of writing I've ever seen from America is Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison.
I've also read and enjoyed some stuff from the 16th-18th centuries (in particular, Ludovico Ariosto's Orlando Furioso, Edmund Spencer's The Faerie Queene, and John Milton's Paradise Lost), but a lot more that's a lot older. Giovanni Boccaccio's The Decameron is a great collection of tales like The Canterbury Tales, but better (note: I haven't yet read 1,001 Nights. Thomas Malory's Le Morte d'Arthur was a lot of fun. I slowed down a lot about eight years ago). I even love the fake ones that are tales within tales like Jan Potocki's The Manuscript Found at Saragossa. But I love chasing down and reading older works, like sagas and epics. Some of my favorites are The Nibelungenlied, The Kalevala, Njal's Saga, and The Epic of Sundiata. Gilgamesh is absolutely incredible. I've read some clunkers, though, like The Song of Roland, which I found dry, dull, and short.
As my reading slowed, I liked to read books aimed at young readers. Growing up, I loved the Oz books, which I find to be an utterly fascinating example of uniquely American (and non-European) fantasy. We have that and Little Nemo, but most other fantasy you get (outside of modern times) is distinctly European, and owes more to Lord Dunsany and Tolkien than anyone else. I loved The 13 1/2 Lives of Captain Bluebear, which I just finished ready to my daughter (Walter Moers). Michael Ende's The Neverending Story is probably the best book for young readers I've read. And then there's the Moomin books by Tove Jansson... What a find those were! Written for kids, but so unbelievably melancholic and subtle! Every page is packed with so much loneliness and longing! I couldn't even believe what I'd read after reading Tales from Moomin Valley. "The Fillyjonk who Believed in Disasters" is something I think every adult should read. It reminds me a bit of The Magic Mountain (see below) in how subtly it captures a character or series of character traits that are quite natural and recognizable, but so hard to pin down! Tove Jansson was brilliant.
For utter, nonsensical, bizarre, indulgent, and absurd escapism, I read E. T. A. Hoffmann. It's hard to even describe how ridiculous his stuff is. Like...you read this stuff, and are saying, "You can't DO that! You'd be laughed off AO3 for that!" And yet he does. And he doesn't care. He had an audience of one, and that was himself. I have no idea how his works are even remembered. Utterly bizarre.
That captures a lot of it. Here are some that don't fit elsewhere:
The Buru Quartet by Pramoedya Ananta Toer (masterful)
Death of a Salesman by Arthur Miller (wrecked me)
Moby Dick by Herman Melville (tore through it!)
Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra (this one, too! Thick book, but such a quick and joyful read—and written with such exquisite detail!)
Frankenstein by Mary Shelley (one of the best of the 19th century)
The Magic Mountain by Thomas Mann (so subtle... Let me tell you, this is a long book, and like, it's 90% over, and suddenly this new character is introduced, and it's like, "What even is this…?", and yet, somehow, he takes like 50 pages, and you suddenly care about this guy... Astonishing)
The House of Mirth by Edith Wharton (tour de force; her best, in my opinion)
Cat's Cradle by Kurt Vonnegut (his best that I've read, and the one I'd recommend to everyone)
Forest of a Thousand Daemons by D. O. Fagunwa (terrible translation, but so wonderfully inventive!)
Black Elk Speaks (I want to mention this, because I really loved it, but it has a problematic history, so fyi)
True Grit by Charles Portis (one of the most beautiful short novels I've ever read; the Cohen Bros. adaptation is actually very, very close to it)
The Awakening by Kate Chopin (what a smack in the face that one is!)
The Tempest by Shakespeare (my favorite of his)
The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass (best written work from America in the 19th century)
The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin (by contrast, one of the most ridiculous things I've ever read in my life; HILARIOUS)
Journey to the West by Wu Cheng'en (read the whole thing, and...wow. lol So much repetition with humor throughout capped off by brilliance)
The Bostonians by Henry James (the best demonstration of exactly what he aimed to do: produce an ending that has two equally plausible and utterly opposite interpretations that can both be supported textually)
Nohow On by Samuel Beckett (the culmination of his work, and a worthy one)
Three Tales by Gustave Flaubert (I bawled—loudly—after reading "A Simple Heart"; I couldn't help it)
Thanks for asking this! It's been so long since I've really read... It's nice to remember. I wanted to read the Studs Lonigan trilogy for ages now... Oh, and I went through a Gabriel García Márquez phase! And Tom Robbins! And, of course, I've read all the wonderful comic novels by my friend Nina Post, whose wit astounds me.
Okay, now I'm just not getting to sleep. But this is some of what I've read that I've loved. Also, for certain things, I've read a lot (like 19th century Russian literature and Samuel Beckett), so I can tell you what not to read. For example, A Hero of Our Time by Lermontov? Pass. Same with The Golovlovs by Saltykov-Shchedrin. You can probably pass on War and Peace, as well, due to its girth, but you're going to miss some good stuff (amidst a lot of dry stuff).
Okay, hitting the button now! I'm done.
(Oh, but if you were assigned Their Eyes Were Watching God and kind of passed on it because it was a "school book", that was a mistake!!!)
(Oh, Cane by Jean Toomer!)
(Oh, and if you want a short one that has a "wah-wah!" ending, check out As I Lay Dying by Faulkner! lol That rascal...)
(OH! And the "school book" thing? Hard ditto on Of Mice and Men. Holy shit, that book... Wow.)
(OMG BABBIT!!!!! I loved it!!! Pass on Main Street, though.)
(Oh, and John Updike can miss me with his Rabbit stuff... YIKES!)
(Oh, and if you like Woody Allen's style but not Woody Allen, try Portnoy's Complaint.)
(Last one: Jasmine by my short fiction professor Bharati Mukherjee, who sadly passed away far too soon. On the last day of class, she'd forgotten she was going to have us read Notes from Underground by Fyodor Dostoevsky. As we were walking out the door, she made us promise to read it. I never saw her again, but I did, Ms. Mukherjee, and it was tremendous. Thank you so much for what you gave me. I had so much trouble showing my work to other people before that class. You helped me so much, and I wish I could've told you. You may think those who have influenced you will be around forever for you to thank one day, but they're not. Today's the day. Tell them what they meant to you. You'll regret it if you don't.)
