I love reading books that other people recommend to me. Please post your recommendations here along with some reason why you are recommending it. Maybe just because you loved it or because you think I would love it or something like that. Bring it on . . .
7 comments:
usually i turn to you for recommendations, but i will try...
'sweetness in the belly' by camilla gibb was one that our book club read and was enjoyed my most everyone. i particularly liked 'sweetness' because there is much talk about coffee. it takes place in ethiopia and london...
another might be a 'stanley park' by timothy taylor...i haven't read it, however it is on my list to as friends have recommended it...it is also on the Canada reads shortlist...whatever that means!
good luck and i hope this helps...though i know neither of these is on your shelf at home.
How about a little non-fiction?
In January, I enjoyed and was challenged by Walter Michaels's extended polemic: The Trouble with Diversity. He is the head of the English department at UIC. It's not a difficult read.
Thanks for the recommendations! I am planning on reading the books that are recommended to me here and commenting on the blog, so keep the recommendations coming and don't be discouraged if I'm not responding in this section.
THANKS!
I just finished Pound for Pound by F.X. Toole (the author of the short story that became Clint Eastwood's Million Dollar Baby). I had given ot to the Beebster, and he commended it to me. Two reasons for you (and/or the Melissa in /with you) to consider it: a stray dog plays a significant role; boxing is, after all, a sport. It's a good, well-told story with surprises and predictable outcomes set largely in Texas (though calling Marfa "Marta" costs it some verisimilitude) dealing with Tex-Mexicans (though explaining the meaning of "guacamole" and similar terms costs it some verisimilitude - hmmm, is it a children's book recast in light of the movie? It was published posthumously. Hmmmmm) and life its own self. It's not an earthmover by literary or visionary standards, but it reads easily, sounds real enough, and rings true. I recognize its Texas.
I read a Walter Michaels work given me by Steve called The Shape of the Signifier recently, and, while I do not recommend it for general reading, it was quite well-written and thus readable for a work of esoteric ivory tower intellectual literary theory.
AND now for my words about The Yiddish Policemen's Union by Michael Chabon which I heartily recommend. Like its predecessor as recommended reading here, it was passed on to my by Brian. Its chief and enduring quality is its unfailingly entertaining metaphors and generally Yiddish (I suppose) manner of speech. I love the language of this book. (Not that it is not a frequent exercise in wishing I knew what that word meant! But even when I don't know what the words mean, they sound so rich.) The characters, too, are idiosyncratic and well-developed and, because they are mostly Jews themselves, their anti-Semitic notions seems harmlessly self-critical. But the most unusual aspect of this novel is its setting - a Jewish ghetto in Sitka, Alaska. At first I was wondering if this was some historical secret I knew nothing of, but, while planning to check out Sitka on Wikipedia, I began to find other weird historical tidbits. Some - e.g. atomic bomb on Berlin in 1946 - I could take to be oddly metaphorical references to historical events I was unfamiliar with, and others just begged to be ignored and accepted(like the Yiddish words I did not understand). Having finished the book and eventually getting convinced of its - well, looseness at least - with history, I was relieved to read in Wiki that its setting is in an alternate history. It's a murder mystery featuring a crusty cynical cop and his ex-wife and his partner, but none of the usual suspects are here. It's fun. Go for it.
Pound for Pound and the Yiddish Policeman have been added to The List. I now own sweetness, stanley park and have borrowed the yiddish policeman. Still looking for a copy of the the trouble with diversity and waiting to be loaned pound for pound.
e-dad said...
A while back, I composed and then misplaced the following:
In light of your new professional direction, I commend to you the finest intellectual tour de force I have ever read Ernest Becker's The Denial of Death. It is an amazing work! AND on the page opposite "tour de force" in the Webster's New World College Dictionary at my desk, there is a photo of Arturo Toscanini who is one ugly mug. And, by the way, tour de force is what I meant, but it doesn't quite manage the depth and breadth of Becker's book.
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