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Please help me pick my next book to read!
Hello fellow readers! I am finally close to finishing the book I am reading (maybe 2 weeks away or so - I am kind of a slow reader). That book is 1Q84 by Haruki Murakami. However, I am already getting excited about the next book and I have a few on my "to read" list. I have read nothing by any of these authors, so I am going in blind, based only on some browsing and very basic non-spoiler reviews. Please, no spoilers. I thought it might be fun to post this here and see if your thoughts can help me prioritize my "to read" list and pick the next book I'll read. I think I am leaning towards "The Tunnel" or "The Seventh Function of Language", but anything on the list will be very fresh to me.
| Title | Author |
|---|---|
| Life: A User's Manual | Georges Perec, David Bellos |
| Lives Other Than My Own | Emmanuel Carrère, Linda Coverdale |
| The Door | Magda Szabo, Len Rix +1 |
| The Melancholy of Resistance | László Krasznahorkai |
| The Seventh Function of Language | Laurent Binet |
| The Tunnel | Ernesto Sabato |
| The Pillars of the Earth | Ken Follett |
Putting The Seventh Function of Language on my list. I very much enjoy work that deals with neurolinguistic hacking or the power of language. Examples being Snowcrash by Neal Stephenson and Lexicon by Max Barry.
I loved Snowcrash. Have not read Lexicon (my to-read list grows yet again!).
What a weird coincidence. I literally bought a copy of Life: A User's Manual last week!
I read ebooks nearly exclusively, so I've been trying to branch out by reading books that either can't be read as ebooks or are simply better as physical books.
I spent some time digging around the internet for recommendations for titles that aren't House of Leaves because, yeah, I ALREADY KNOW (great book though).
This title popped up somewhere, it sounded interesting, and I bought it on a lark.
Then it arrived and I realized it's HUGE -- classic case of not realizing the actual size of something you order until it gets there.
Anyway, if I had to vote I would give an entirely selfish one for Life, if only because it would be great for you to read it before me and let me know if it's worth the significant investment I now realize it requires. XD
I haven't read Life, but I have read a couple others by Carrère and they were great! One was a biography-ish of Philip K Dick, and the other was The Mustache. The latter is fairly short, and available for free on archive.org, but there's also this video if you'd rather go that route: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=2CJowTpZTiw
I'd say read and then watch with The Mustache, but either will probably help you decide if you're up for Life. (Lemme know how Life is if you read it, and how urgently it should be added to my TBR list)
This is pretty ironic... I just recently started reading more on my e-book reader. I had an very old one, upgraded recently, and have been loving it (especially the dictionary feature and ability to even pull up Wikipedia). So, this book may have to wait, now that I know it's bad on e-book readers. Knowing myself, I will likely tire of the e-book reader after a little while, and crave the physical book yet again. Thanks for the insights regarding this book!
I've read two of these, here are some thoughts:
The Melancholy of Resistance is an extreme book. The characters are opposing, the story is dark, the narration is wandering and surreal, and the sentences are long. It's heavy, but beautiful. The promise made by the title is fulfilled.
The Pillars of the Earth is very fun. It's a good choice for escapism, some architectural musings, and an unconventional coming of age story. Unfortunately, it does feel a lot longer than it is deep. Still a nice time set in the trappings of mainstream historical fiction, for better and worse.
Hope that helps!
Thank you - that helps! "Heavy, but beautiful" may be "perfect for the dark winter months" as another commenter put it.
My vote is László Krasznahorkai's 'The Melancholy of Resistance'. He just won the Nobel prize, because of this I am choosing to read Satantango (because I already have it) as my next book. I have never personally read any of his work but I would expect 'The Melancholy of Resistance' to be difficult and dark, perfect for the dark winter months. I would take Ken Follett off your list completely, it is not worth your time.
What did you think of IQ84? I have read a few Murakami books (The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, Sputnik Sweetheart, Hard-boiled Wonderland, and Kafka on the Shore) and enjoyed all of them. I have not read IQ84 and have heard very mixed reviews. Have you read any other books by Murakami and how did they compare to IQ84?
Thanks, "perfect for the dark winter months" sounds timely as it's getting colder where I am by the week.
I still have a little bit left of 1Q84, but so far I liked it. It did not wow me, but I liked it far better than A Wild Sheep Chase. I started The Wind-up Bird Chronicle several years ago and did not finish. There were some war-time scenes and descriptions that were a little much for me at that time. I do remember being intrigued by the story otherwise. I should have stuck with it.
1Q84 to me is "fun". Easy to read for the most part, enough puzzle and mystery elements to "go deep" if I want to, or if not, just keep reading for the story without analyzing each detail. There were a few spots where I thought to myself "that's really cool" or "that's really touching", but I can't say I feel a deep connection to the characters. Maybe it will change in the last stretch? This may sound like a weird analogy, but sometimes I feel like I'm reading a text-only version of a Japanese manga (in a good way). If I were a fast reader, it would feel even more like that. I would imagine comic book panels in my head instead of a "movie" so to speak. It's mainly due to his weaving of fantastic elements. Not too heavy, but enough of that fantastic element to give it all a slight supernatural and floaty feeling, enough to add a constant layer of "what is really real?" to the whole story.
As it's not on your list, I can't help but suggest adding anything by Jorge Luis Borges to that list.
Unhelpful, I know... But I'm not going to turn down the opportunity to suggest his works to people.
While not on this list, he is on my larger list of writers to explore. I did briefly encounter his work in a class in university. The reading was "The Garden of Forking Paths". That was back in 2008, so I forgot much of it.