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I should have been more scrupulous about confining my list to more current reading, but it just seems like yesterday that I read some of the oldies. I admire you for Finnegans Wake. I wish I had the knack for it. Really. Maybe one day. And here I thought you were going to be the Virginia...

And /gasp!/ some weren't even around when I was reading them. Hard to believe, but there are newly-minted people on the planet. :D Detective/spy aficionado I have always been; just left out most of the names because I thought everyone must know about/read Len Deighton, John LeCarré and Kim...

Yes, I wondered about listing the authors you mention. Many people have read them. They are popular. Just not very much in my reading circle I don't think, beginning with here. We'll see which other ones get questioned. I enjoyed the other McDonald too and I think he might have been more...

I've read just a very few authors from your lists. I'm sure that is my loss. Meadow: Xinran Xue (your recommendation), Haruki Murakami, John Fowles (all) Richard Hannay: Scarlet Pimpernel a loooong time ago, For my own list, here goes: Gustave Flaubert George Eliot James Salter Saul Bellow...

Done, unless you wanted to. Just watch! It will be the thread nobody responds to. :D

Do you ever get the feeling that you read books that nobody else reads. Like nobody ever responds or mentions them?. Right now, for me, I think it might be Daniel Deronda by George Eliot. Why? Just because I wanted to read an obscure (to me) Victorian novel published in the 1870's by an...

He's gotta earn some money somehow. As if! :eek:

The thought had occurred to me. :D Right now, for me, I think it might be Daniel Deronda by George Eliot. Just because I wanted to read an obscure (to me) Victorian novel published in the 1870's by an author I had at least heard of. Two volumes, too! :( I hope I live through it, because...

ROTFL. :D Thanks very much, but yes and no. I do other constructive things, and not all would have agreed. Still ROTFL.

Thanks Meadow. P.S. Cristina, there are threads here that list books people have liked. Please browse this forum.

Well, I am off on my own reading tangent also, which is why I don't say much here anymore. :(

Hi Cristina, Are you interested in quick reading, or challenging reading? For Scientific, have you tried any of Stephen Hawking? For Literary Fiction, any of Joyce, Beckett, Faulkner, Nabokov, Pynchon? Or more Camus? Reading first chapters is not necessarily a bad idea, if it doesn't cost...

Second that, Ell. The current discussion of Stoner, for example -- overwhelmingly 5 stars -- really "gets it."

Thanks for your confidence. I hope you enjoy it. It is off the beaten track by way of story line, but an overwhelming favorite on a different forum. I'll be glad to hear your reactions.

Sorry, Chris, it's still on that mountain.

That short choppy style usually turns me off, too, seeming to me like an indicator of immaturity in writing. The emphasis in my schooling was certainly on more fluid and graceful expression of ideas. But in Meadow's example it seems to work. I've often wondered how to describe writing "style"...

Well, again perhaps tangential, I've just finished reading Madame Bovary, and Flaubert is nothing if not vividly and visually descriptive. But we writes in long sentences and paragraphs, rather than short choppy beats. But I also understand he has been called the father of narrative prose...

Ah, now I see your point! That is indeed a brilliant piece of visual writing. And as you say, you can just see the moving images. But, as to your general question, I'm still at a loss for an answer.

Just finished a book that stands out head and shoulders above any other novel I can remember reading: Stoner by John Williams. It looks like it may be headed for my Best of the Best for 2014.