Literature
From Wiki Gonzalez
Need something to read? Primates discuss literature fairly often, and many of them have well-considered suggestions on what to try.
| Table of contents |
Commentary
(Note: Wouldn't it be useful to provide a brief description of what makes these books enjoyable?)
RCheli: Andre Dubus rocks. He's one of my favorite modern short story writers. He, Carver, Richard Ford, Michael Chabon, and Andrea Barrett are some others.
Athletic Supporter endorses Donald and Frederick Barthelme, and cautions everyone against the worst book of all time, Mason and Dixon, even though he likes Thomas Pynchon a lot in general.
Dan Werr is partial to Kurt Vonnegut, John Irving, Joseph Heller, and Graham Greene.
Ernie Camacho's Elbow thinks Bill Drummond (http://www.firstfoot.com/good%20scottish%20pop/klf.htm) is a wildly underrated writer. Elbow is also a fan of nearly everything McSweeney's (http://mcsweeneys.net) has published. Other favorites include Dave Eggers (http://flakmag.com/features/eggers.html), Richard Brautigan (http://www.brautigan.net/brautigan/), and Robert Pirsig (http://www.levity.com/corduroy/pirsig.htm). He strongly suggests Eggers's first novel, You Shall Know Our Velocity (http://www.salon.com/books/review/2002/10/31/eggers/).
Ramblin' Gamblin' Dave likes Neil Gaiman's "Sandman" series, and Frank Zappa's autobiography, "The Real Frank Zappa Book."
b is a Joycean who suggests that you at least read Dubliners. He also fully endorses contemporary/20th century writers like Paul Auster, John Banville, Jorge Luis Borges, Umberto Eco, William Faulkner, Joseph Heller, Mark Helprin, Thom Jones, Mark Leyner, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Flann O'Brien, and Tim Sandlin. Oh, and read some Shakespeare if you haven't. He also suggests Tristram Shandy, Don Quixote, The Life and Opinions of Tomcat Murr, and the like.
Benji Gil Gamesh: Michael Chabon, Nick Hornby, Tim Cahill (adventure travel), Jack Finney (Time and Again and Time After Time), Watership Down, Tolkien, William Gibson (Neuromancer, Idoru).
Repoz swears by Jim Shooter, Charles Nutt and Nat Hiken.
Kevin Sweet Child Romine (aco) has been known to laugh out loud at P.G. Wodehouse while riding the subway. He enjoys William Trevor, J.M. Coetzee, Robertson Davies, Evelyn Waugh and John Updike. He also just plain didn't care for Gravity's Rainbow.
John Brattain is trying his best to comprehend the works of Dr. Seuss and Robert Munsch.
GGC is partial to detecitve and mystery fiction. A partial list of works that he likes cover the gamut from the Sherlock Holmes canon of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Who Killed Roger Ackroyd by Agatha Christie, The Maltese Falcon by Dashiell Hammett, Raymond Chandler's Philip Marlowe series, and some of James Ellroy's work. Scoraino Flitcraft turned him on to Paul Auster, as well.
Buford J. Sharkley enjoys reading Dashiell Hammett, (in particular Red Harvest and The Continental Op,) Lewis Carroll, as well as John Steinbeck (especially Tortilla Flat) And Heller. Why not? In general, he has no time to read. Because he reads the entirety of the New Yorker (http://www.newyorker.com) weekly. That takes a toll. ....Hey, you know what else is great? Chris Balchelder's Lessons in Virtual Tour Photography. Chris Balchelder in general-- that guy's great. ...One more I forgot: J.D. Salinger. Especially Franny and Zooey. And Poe. And all the McSweeney's Quarterly Concerns. 14 was especially good.
Devin McCullen likes more female authors and genre stuff than other Primates, apparently. Sharyn McCrumb, Lois McMaster Bujold and Barbara Hambly (the Benjamin January series) are his favorite current authors. Also, he likes Jane Austen (if you'd care for that sort of thing), Raymond Chandler(w/thanks to GGC for going on about the hard-boiled stuff last year), Arthur Conan Doyle, Margery Allingham, P.D. James, and Bill Watterson. And he'll second the mentions of Hammett, Tolkien, and Wodehouse. Oh, and All Quiet on the Western Front and Childhood's End are great books.
Scoriano Flitcraft likes Milan Kundera, Russell Banks, Paul Auster, Sam Shepard and E. L. Doctorow. He is about to read the Wessex novels of Thomas Hardy. Thumbs up? We'll see.
Malcolm Little likes Robertson Davies, Douglas Coupland, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Isabel Allende, Joseph Heller, Art Spiegelman, and F. Scott Fitzgerald.
Retardo enjoys the works of Umberto Eco, Italo Calvino, Richard Brautigan, H. P. Lovecraft, Arthur Conan Doyle, the French Symbolists, Vladimir Nabokov, Gore Vidal, Arthur C. Clarke, Oscar Wilde, Dylan Thomas, Paul Bowles, George Orwell, Aldous Huxley, W. H. Auden. Mostly, however, he likes to read for pleasure literate non-fiction and essays, such as those of Christopher Hitchens, Martin Amis, A.J.P. Taylor, Marvin Harris, Stephen Jay Gould, Edmund Wilson, H. L. Mencken and Angela Carter.
Voxter enjoys James Joyce, at least in theory; Dubliners, at least is great. Also, Neal Stephenson's cerebral post-cyberpunk scifi, pretty much rules; start with Snow Crash, which takes place in a futuristic dystopia, before plunging into the excellent Cryptonomicon or The Baroque Cycle, which are voluminous but rewarding tomes for those who enjoy Stephenson's hybrid of wit and dissertation. Roddy Doyle's A Star Called Henry and Oh, Play that Thing follow street kid-cum-assassin-cum-body-guard-to-Louis-Armstrong Henry Smart from his childhood in Dublin to middle age riding the rails of depression-era America. The Harry Potter books are better than you probably think. Ken Kesey ruled until his brain blew up (sometime after writing Sometimes a Great Notion). Great poets include William Stafford, Richard Hugo, Rilke, and Paul Celan. Robert Pinsky sucks. And David Foster Wallace is a pretentious punk.
WillieMays Haze recommends the works of Pulitzer-Prize winner Jared Diamond. Pick up any one of his books The Third Chimpanzee, Guns, Germs, and Steel, Collapse) and you'll have a changed perspective on everything.
Rich Rifkin recommends the work of Edgar Award-winning novelist David Liss, starting with "A Conspiracy of Paper" or "The Coffee Trader." He considers Don DeLillo a bore, based on reading DeLillo's White Noise.
Come to think of it, Primate opinion on DeLillo is badly split (source: here (http://www.baseballthinkfactory.org/files/newsstand/discussion/37470/)).
Summary
Here's a short directory of authors and books you may or may not like.
Positive reviews for authors
- Isabel Allende - Malcolm Little
- Margery Allingham - Devin McCullen
- Jane Austen - Devin McCullen
- Paul Auster - b, UCCF, Scoriano Flitcraft, Nuf Sed McGreevy.
- Chris Balchelder - Buford J. Sharkley.
- John Banville - b.
- Russell Banks - Scoriano Flitcraft
- Donald Barthelme - Athletic Supporter.
- Frederick Barthelme - Athletic Supporter.
- Andrea Barrett - RCheli.
- Richard Brautigan - Ernie Camacho's Elbow.
- Emily Bronte - dahlian.
- Jorge Luis Borges - b.
- James Finney Boylan - b.
- Lois McMaster Bujold - Devin McCullen
- Tim Cahill (adventure, travel) - Benji Gil Gamesh.
- Lewis Carroll - Buford J. Sharkley, Pops Freshenmeyer
- Raymond Carver - RCheli, UCCF.
- Michael Chabon - Benji Gil Gamesh; RCheli; UCCF.
- Raymond Chandler - Devin McCullen, Pops Freshenmeyer
- Andrei Codrescu - dahlian.
- Douglas Coupland - Malcolm Little, Der Komminsk-sar.
- J.M. Coetzee - Kevin Sweet Child Romine (aco).
- Robertson Davies - Kevin Sweet Child Romine (aco); Malcolm Little.
- Don DeLillo - salvomania, Shooty, Stevens
- Arthur Conan Doyle - Devin McCullen
- Bill Drummond - Ernie Camacho's Elbow.
- Andre Dubus - RCheli.
- Umberto Eco - b, Athletic Supporter, dahlian, Pops Freshenmeyer.
- Dave Eggers - Ernie Camacho's Elbow, Buford J. Sharkley, WillieMays Haze, Nuf Sed McGreevy, Der Komminsk-sar.
- James Ellroy - Nuf Sed McGreevy.
- William Faulkner - b, Pops Freshenmeyer
- F. Scott Fitzgerald - Malcolm Little.
- Jack Finney - Benji Gil Gamesh.
- Richard Ford - RCheli.
- Neil Gaiman - Ramblin' Gamblin' Dave.
- William Gibson - b; Benji Gil Gamesh, dahlian.
- Barbara Hambly (the Benjamin January series) - Devin McCullen
- Dashiell Hammett - Buford J. Sharkley, Devin McCullen, Nuf Sed McGreevy, Pops Freshenmeyer.
- Joseph Heller - b; Dan Werr; Buford J. Sharkley; Malcolm Little, Pops Freshenmeyer, Dan The Mediocre.
- Herman Hesse - dahlian
- Mark Helprin - b.
- Nick Hornby - Benji Gil Gamesh.
- Henrik Ibsen - Nuf Sed McGreevy.
- Shirley Jackson - Nuf Sed McGreevy.
- P.D. James - Devin McCullen
- Thom Jones - b; UCCF.
- James Joyce (at least read Dubliners) - b, Pops Freshenmeyer.
- Milan Kundera - Scoriano Flitcraft
- Mark Leyner - b.
- Federico García Lorca - Nuf Sed McGreevy.
- Carson McCullers - Nuf Sed McGreevy.
- Gabriel Garcia Marquez - b, Athletic Supporter; Malcolm Little.
- H.L. Mencken (technically not literature) - dahlian
- Flann O'Brien - b.
- Arturo Perez-Reverte - dahlian
- Robert Pirsig - Ernie Camacho's Elbow, dahlian.
- Terry Pratchett - dahlian
- Edgar Allan Poe - Buford J. Sharkley.
- Thomas Pynchon (except for Mason and Dixon) - Athletic Supporter, UCCF, Pops Freshenmeyer.
- Philip Roth - UCCF, Scoriano Flitcraft
- J.D. Salinger Buford J. Sharkley, Scoriano Flitcraft, Pops Freshenmeyer, Der Komminsk-sar.
- Tim Sandlin - b.
- William Shakespeare - b, Scoriano Flitcraft.
- Art Spiegelman - Malcolm Little.
- John Steinbeck - Buford J. Sharkley.
- J.R.R. Tolkien - Benji Gil Gamesh, Devin McCullen.
- William Trevor - Kevin Sweet Child Romine (aco).
- John Updike (read the Rabbit books) - Kevin Sweet Child Romine (aco), UCCF.
- Bill Watterson - Devin McCullen
- P.G. Wodehouse - Kevin Sweet Child Romine (aco), Devin McCullen.
Positive reviews for books
- All Quiet on the Western Front - Devin McCullen, Dan The Mediocre
- A Box of Matches - UCCF
- Childhood's End - Devin McCullen
- Continental Drift - Scoriano Flitcraft.
- The Continental Op - Buford J. Sharkley.
- The Crying of Lot 49 - UCCF
- Don Quixote - b.
- Franny and Zooey - Buford J. Sharkley, Scoriano Flitcraft, Pops Freshenmeyer.
- Goodbye, Columbus - UCCF, Scoriano Flitcraft
- Gravity's Rainbow - Los Angeles Waterloo of Black Hawk, Pops Freshenmeyer
- The Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark - Scoriano Flitcraft (not a book, per se, but literature, yes).
- In Our Time - b.
- Immortality - Scoriano Flitcraft.
- Infinite Jest - UCCF, Pops Freshenmeyer
- The Joke - Scoriano Flitcraft.
- Libra - Los Angeles Waterloo of Black Hawk
- Lessons in Virtual Tour Photography - Buford J. Sharkley.
- The Life and Times of Tomcat Murr - b.
- McSweeney's Quarterly Concern 14 - Buford J. Sharkley.
- Middlesex - UCCF
- The Moon is a Harsh Mistress - Cabbage.
- The Mysterious Stranger - Nuf Sed McGreevy.
- The Natural - Nuf Sed McGreevy.
- Pilgram at Tinker Creek - b
- Pop. 1280 - Nuf Sed McGreevy.
- The Real Frank Zappa Book - Ramblin' Gamblin' Dave.
- Red Harvest - Buford J. Sharkley, Scoriano Flitcraft.
- The Selfish Gene - b
- Tortilla Flat - Buford J. Sharkley.
- Tristram Shandy - b.
- The Unbearable Lightness of Being - Scoriano Flitcraft
- Watership Down - Benji Gil Gamesh.
- White Noise - PreservedFish, Stevens
- Wuthering Heights - dahlian
- You Shall Know Our Velocity - Ernie Camacho's Elbow, WillieMays Haze
Negative reviews for books
- Ceremony - Buford J. Sharkley.
- The Davinci Code - dahlian
- Gravity's Rainbow - Kevin Sweet Child Romine (aco).
- Madame Bovary - UCCF, Pops Freshenmeyer
- Mason and Dixon - Athletic Supporter.
- Watership Down - Buford J. Sharkley.
- White Noise - Rich Rifkin
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