#read??

People keep asking me for long novel recommendations! Here are my go-to answers, none of which are Victorian, sorry, you don’t need me to tell you that Dickens is long:

- I can’t remember which literary publication it was but right as this was all kicking off someone used “science” (it was not science, but I get what they were doing) to find the perfect novel to read during isolation and their decision was The Count of Monte Cristo and you know what that is correct.

- Want another sweeping epic with more magic and The Duke of Wellington but (tragically) less swords? Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell is a literally perfect work of fantasy.

—— if you get really into the Napoleonic era because of this, I know several people who are reading War & Peace right now, too, and I understand that it’s great, idk, the Russians except for the one below & Chekhov tend to depress me, but I am just one melancholic speck in the wind of history! Tolstoy prevails!

- Want biting social satire, a kickass heroine, and a demonic talking cat who is constantly drunk off his ass on vodka? The Master & Margarita is your poison!

- Want a book with the same sort of feeling of unreality as the above, but more contemporary/postmodern and nostalgic, with an existential sort of hope baked into its bones even as the social satire barely even registers because this is us, now, and there might be no getting away from it? The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle

—— or Kafka on the Shore, or really most of Murakami’s work; he loves the long novel

- Want something full of fantasy and pop culture and story, something you’ll race through without any older literary conventions or prose flourishes to distract you? American Gods

- Want a nonfiction work to sink into, one that takes you deep into time and wonder and this strange beautiful planet itself, one that makes a strong case for our need to change, while also managing to be deeply comforting? Robert Macfarlane’s Underland

- Want something that is the opposite of comforting, something that slaps you awake with its wild prose and holds you horrified but transfixed? 2666

—— the more joyful option for Bolaño is The Savage Detectives which is just as wild and apocalyptic but much more raucous; a road trip and a party and a couple of lost poets at the end of the world

- Want a novel that is shorter than the above but much denser, a novel that needs an extended, unbroken sort of focus to get theough, a novel that needs you to fully surrender to it, that is perfect for the strange, suspended, interior state many of us currently find ourselves in, if you’re not looking for an easy escape? Woolf’s The Waves

what do i do?

who am i?