6 feb 2008

I need suggestions for novels / novelists for the 100 novels project. Anything's fair game, but I don't want to re-read too much or read the kind of thing I normally do ("poet" novels). I want novel novels.

17 comentarios:

TT dijo...

Some novels I dig:

Marilynne Robinson, Housekeeping
Jim Harrison, Returning to Earth
James Crumley, The Last Good Kiss
Daniel Woodrell, Winter's Bone
Barry Hannah, Ray
Djuna Barnes, Nightwood
Ben Marcus, Notable American Women

TT dijo...

Oh, actually, the trio of novellas in Jim Harrison's Legends of the Fall are exactly my kinds of novel novels.

The Crumley and Woodrell are really good noir/detective novels in rural, working class settings. The Barry Hannah is a short, brilliant read. Both of Marilynne Robinson's novels are gorgeously written.

Panteli Tritchew dijo...

"The Godfather" is beautifully written, masterful pulp.

Thomas dijo...

Kazuo Ishiguro: The Unconsoled and Never Let me Go
Mordecai Richler: Joshua, Then and Now (very much a novel novel) and Solomon Gursky Was Here

I'm reading Lowrey's Under the Volcano right now.

I think an interesting comparative study of Bellow's Herzog, Mailer's An American Dream, and Cohen's Beautiful Losers is possible.

Jonathan dijo...

Good suggestions. The Unconsoled is one of my favorites already. I'm not going to read Nightwood or Herzog or Under the Volcano again or Jim Harrison. (He is a POET and I want novel novels, not poet novels.) Mordechai Richter: that's a good idea.

My idea is to read good "literary" fiction. I already read genre fiction enough, so I'm not going to read any of that for this particular project. No Elmore Leonard even though I like him better than Murdoch or almost anyone else.

Anónimo dijo...

Belén Gopegui rules.

Tom King dijo...

Anything by Georges Perec.

-Tom King

Andrew Shields dijo...

I recently read Jonathan Lethem's "The Fortress of Solitude," which is well worth reading.

Are you including novels in translation in your 100 books? If so, and if you have not read it yet, W. G. Sebald's "Austerlitz."

Tom Beckett dijo...

Tree of Smoke by Denis Johnson

Diary of a Bad Year by J.M. Coetzee

A Man of No Moon by Jenny McPhee

Jordan dijo...

Penelope Fitzgerald, The Bookshop
Flora Nwapa, Idu
Allegra Goodman, Intuition
Lawrence Joseph, Lawyerland (not exactly a novel, and he's a poet... but all the same)
Dashiell Hammett, Maltese Falcon
Michael Chabon, Mysteries of Pittsburgh
Halldor Laxness, Under the Glacier

I found those all pretty memorable. Would the travels of Marco Polo count?

I left off the Russians, but all of Turgenev, most of Tolstoy, some of Dostoevsky (Karamazov) are worth (re)visiting...

Mark Scroggins dijo...

I had great fun working thru Sir Walter Scott some years back; the late ones are unfortunately pretty bad, but Old Mortality & Heart of Midlothian are violently good reading.

And Wilkie Collins -- Armandale, Woman in White, Moonstone –– pretty much any of his books are pretty compulsive reads.

Colin dijo...

Sunset song by lewis grassic gibbon
Something Leather by Alasdair Gray
not that they're exactly novel novels but b.s.johnson is very good

Nick dijo...

a novel I often recommend and never see recommended: Christopher Isherwood's _A Single Man_...

nick l

Unknown dijo...

The Glastonbury Romance by John Cowper Powys.

Call it Sleep by Henry Roth

Days Between Station or Rubicon Beach or Tales of the Black Clock by Steve Erickson

The World as I Found it
by Bruce Duffy

Kirby Olson dijo...

Temping, by Kirby Olson.

You'd massacre me, but I wouldn't mind.

speterme dijo...

David Treuer "Hiawatha" (I've read) and "The Translation of Dr. Appelles" (I'm about to start);
Louise Erdrich "The Antelope Wife" (I've read) and "The Last Report on the Miracles at Little No Horse" (I just started listening to this morning as a book on tape);
Julio Cortazar "Hopscotch" (I haven't read, but hope to start after I finish reading "Autonauts of the Cosmoroute").

pac, lov, and undrstanding (nvr giv up!)

Stv Ptrmir
no man's land
minnapolis, mn
usa

Kirby Olson dijo...

Thank You, Jeeves, by P.G. Wodehouse.