Literary treats - recommend great reads

Ground rules:

1. treats and gems only itt
(yes you may like Crime & Punishment but it's canonized to the point where it's ridiculous to recommend it, also this thread is about treats, not "books you feel like you/others should read")

2. quality > quantity
(no long lists of cool books needed, just recommend one good book and change the/my world)

3. not a thread for difficult reads
(disqualifies If on a winter's night a traveler and other "fun" experimental books, they can go into their seperate experimental treats thread)

4. max 300 pages
(because a brick is not a treat, or if they are they may go in a brick treats thread)

5. only books available in english translation
(because this is a functional recommendation thread, a separate untranslated gems thread might be interesting for the multilingual)

I'll start out by recommending the total treat Whereabouts (2018) by Jhumpa Lahiri
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/4/41/Dove_mi_trovo_%28Jhumpa_Lahiri%29.png

Sexing the Cherry

Flaubert's Parrot

The Real Life of Sebastian Knight

Out Stealing Horses (2003) by Per Petterson

I love Angela Saini's work thought its non fiction so not sure if you're specifying fiction. Both Superior on why Race Science is so inherently flawed and Inferior which is similar but about Gender Imbalance.

Also Kehinde Andrews various books, Ibram X Kendi same.
JUst discovering Octavia Butler and Toni Morrison.

Reading a stack of books at the same time so this could continue . BUt trying to keep it short.
I bougt East West Street by Philippe Sands after hearing the podcast series tied in with it. But haven't started reading it yet

Of the discoveries I've made in all the Favourite Novels polls (not many but it's an ongoing thing) the most fun is The Black Spider by Jeremias Gotthelf, if you fancy some early weird fiction and the following extract piques your interest then strap in for a wild ride:

The crowd flew apart, all eyes drawn to the foot to which the hand of the screaming man was pointing. On this foot sat the spider, black and huge, glowering balefully, maliciously all around. The blood froze in their veins, the breath in their breasts, and the sight in their eyes, while the spider calmly, maliciously peered about, and then the man’s foot turned black, and in his body it felt as if fire were hissingly, furiously doing battle with water; fear burst the bonds of horror, and the crowds scattered.

Crowd flew apart, then scattered, even!

zazen by vanessa veselka: crisply-written children of men-esque alternate-present/slight future, but set among the culture of white new age vegans and conveys that world only in the most sardonic tones. protagonist is an activist who is trapped in this realm and is having a huge nervous breakdown about it. idk maybe i’m not selling it but it’s one of my favorite books i’ve ever read

Anything by Eve Babitz, but let's go with Sex and Rage: Advice for Young Ladies Eager for a Good Time. Just the most delightful book, a blithe breeze through early 70s LA, like Joan Didion's much more fun younger sister.

I second Zazen.

A couple others: Unclay, by T.F. Powys, a hard-to-classify novel about Death visiting a small village in human form and learning all the weird, perverse little secrets of the townsfolk. Deeply odd, funny, a bit unsettling.

Journey by Moonlight, by Antal Szerb, about a Hungarian man on his honeymoon who has a chance encounter with an old friend, becomes obsessed with what has become of his weird goth friends from his teenage years, and abandons his wife to go track them down. His wife then sets off to have her own adventures. I found it totally delightful. (320 pages but they go by quickly.)

Never heard of Vanessa Velka before, but now I am intrigued. Her mother is Linda Ellerbee! And she won the PEN/Robert W. Bingham Prize!

I thought The Card of the Gambler by Benedict Kiely was a great retelling of the Death on the tree myth. Think its a story that is repeated across a few nation's mythology. Death put out of commission by being stuck somewhere so nobody dying for a while. I remember i being delicious prose but I read it like 29 years ago when i was first in Dublin. Must get around to reading more of him at some point.

I'm going to stick to the rools and go with one: A Month in the Country by JL Carr (practically ILX canon, tbh). Swells beyond its 135 pages into timelessness.

One non-fiction too: The Strange Last Voyage of Donald Crowhurst by Nicholas Tomalin and Ron Hall. Colonial-gentleman-cum-Devonian-Quixote sets out to complete the solo round the world yacht race and rather than admit defeat, spirals into deception, isolation and madness.

Ugh, didn't mean to misspell the name. Vanessa Veselka, sorry.

I think this essay of hers is very much worth reading as well: https://magazine.atavist.com/the-fort-of-young-saplings/

There’s another essay about her narrow escape from the Truck Stop Killer as a teenage runaway but it basically ruined my day when I read it.

The Boys of My Youth by Jo Ann Beard. Really good personal essays.

Seconding A Month in the Country and also Eve Babitz, but the Babitz I like best is Slow Days, Fast Company.

War With the Newts by Karel Capek. 1936 Czech satire in which people discover and enslave a species of giant intelligent newt and the global economy becomes entirely dependent on them, leading eventually to global Newt revolution and a disastrous rise in sea levels.

oh shit, yeah, the boys of my youth is the best. really influential for me. i also love beard's novel in zanesville though it could be construed as ya

Dog of the South - Charles Portis

Very much appreciating all these recommendations! I had fiction in mind but not opposed to non-fiction at all as long as we're talking real treats, such as well written, perhaps even gripping journalism or narrative essays. Poetry also welcome. Most important is that it be a kind of rewarding read that is not too demanding, an archetype of the treat I'm thinking of could be The Old Man and the Sea or Babette's Feast (although I'm more interested in novels than novellas).

The True Deceiver, Tove Jansson - The best of her adult novels I've read, female children's author who writes stories about harmless little bunnies rubs up against independent, hard edged woman in small village. Ideal Winter read, a good one to gift people as they usually don't have it.

You may already be familiar with The Hearing Trumpet by Leonora Carrington but that seems well-suited here.

Also second the Charles Portis recommendation -- any of his novels, really, especially Masters of Atlantis.

_The True Deceiver_, Tove Jansson - The best of her adult novels I've read, female children's author who writes stories about harmless little bunnies rubs up against independent, hard edged woman in small village. Ideal Winter read, a good one to gift people as they usually don't have it.

War With the Newts by Karel Capek. 1936 Czech satire in which people discover and enslave a species of giant intelligent newt and the global economy becomes entirely dependent on them, leading eventually to global Newt revolution and a disastrous rise in sea levels.
― Lily Dale

Ah cool, so is Capek worth reading in general, then? Obv famed for popularising 'robot', but I've never been sure if he's worth digging into in his own right.

You may already be familiar with The Hearing Trumpet by Leonora Carrington but that seems well-suited here.
― Chris L

Seconded!

The 'no experimentalism' thing is throwing me a bit, bah. Especially as I feel like IOAWNAT isn't even close to a difficult read! Also I'm guessing that the treat element means nothing too cynical or depressing, right?

I'm going to stick to the rools and go with one: A Month in the Country by JL Carr (practically ILX canon, tbh). Swells beyond its 135 pages into timelessness.

― Vanishing Point (Chinaski), Tuesday, 16 November 2021 21:06 (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink

need to read this; his FA Cup book is absolutely amazing and does similar

xp I like experimentalism as much as the next person but it just doesn't really fit my idea of a treat

then again rules are meant to be broken and if you know an experimental short novel that's the equivalent of a bounty bar, well... I'd be interested!

some depressing/cynical stuff leaves the reader elated (like Thomas Bernhard) and in that case it's fine by my

*me

also The Hearing Trumpet is one of the best books ever as far as I'm concerned btw, 100% concur, get on it, etc

I think it's less that I want to recommend pure experimental lit and more that sometimes I don't know what people would consider overly experimental - to me something like The Third Policeman is a real treat, but would its quirks rule it out? But if experimental stuff is not completely banned, just not preferred, then that feels easier.

I recently got around to The Invention of Morel by Adolfo Bioy Casares and that felt quite treat-like. The central character is overly obsessive about a woman he never speaks to, which may be off-putting, but I didn't feel pushed into empathising with that emotion but rather found myself chuckling at its extent. Mileage might vary, I guess.

books like The Third Policeman manage to be both treats and the best books ever written tbf, this thread absolutely needs its ilk

A Happy man by Hansjorg Schertenleib is a book that's prob a treat, just a guy walking around with a happy (or well-adjusted) life and every sentence it seems like he's going to die, a very strange tension that I haven't really seen very much

Edmund White's Forgetting Elena is... [pause to consider] quite acceptable here. Don't you think?

various things by John Einarson though I noticed a few years ago that his name keeps getting mispelt on different books or possibly listiongs. He has done some really good music bios including ghost writing/compiling Arthur Lee's memoir. His Mr Tambourine Man on Gene Clark was really good too.

I really enjoyed Behind The Scenes on the Pegasus Carousel by Love drummer Michael Stewart Ware. It was one of the first insider memoirs from the band· I haven't reread it in a while and it has had 2 different updates which I also haven't caught up with.
just looking around my room and seeing love posters on teh wall so being reminded by that.

Simon Reynolds various books on post-punk including Rip It Up And Start Again.

Mark Mordue's book on the young Nick Cave Boy On Fire
Clinton Walker's Stranded on Australian punk and its aftermath

Natasha Ginzburg - Sagittarius
Joy Williams - The Quick and the Dead
Elizabeth Taylor - A Wreath of Roses

based on these selections, one would do well to read any given new york review classic

I've run into a few duds in NYRB Classics, but overall it has an excellent hit rate. If I see one shelved in a used bookshop I always investigate it and usually buy it, read it and enjoy it.

Black Wings Has My Angel by Elliot Chaze is another really good NYRB book - a forgotten classic of noir that I can't begin to describe but that made me put the book down and stare at a wall several times while I was reading it.

That may not sound like much of a treat but I meant it in a good way.

Loved reading Eva Baltasar's Permafrost earlier this year. Maybe too caustic for a treat? But the prose is really packed, maybe reads a bit like what it is -- European fiction in translation -- but it was as vital to read as anything I've read in a long time.

They hired me on a Monday, three months after my first article. For the first time, I felt colorless — a dreadful muddle of various hues, an unthinkably grim and grayish green. My skin was like a mollusk shell, my body parched, my muscles fibrous like esparto grass — and inside I smelled of a parking lot.

I enjoyed the two above-mentioned Babitz books too.

loved 'black wings has my angel'

That one’s on my list/pvmic

- The Beginning of Spring (Fitzgerald), my favourite book by my favourite author, the perfect midpoint between her early and late styles
- At Freddie’s (Fitzgerald), the funniest one
- The Beiderbecke Affair (Plater), the best ever novelisation of a TV show (not counting Steven Moffat’s The Day or the Doctor, which is probably too niche for this list)
- Harriet the Spy, one of the few books everyone should read

I really love The Long Secret, the sequel to Harriet the Spy.

I’m just about to start reading that!

Black Wings Has My Angel by Elliot Chaze is another really good NYRB book - a forgotten classic of noir that I can't begin to describe but that made me put the book down and stare at a wall several times while I was reading it.

Hard Rain Falling by Don Carpenter has a similar effect as this, and goes in a couple of directions you wouldn't necessarily expect from this genre.

May as well start rounding out the list of NYRB Treats. The classic Western Warlock by Oakley Hall was one of my most captivating reads of the last few years. You can see the seeds of Deadwood being planted as you're reading it.

Warlock rules, can confirm

gah i started it last year and had trouble getting into it. i will try again.

lol i basically tried every nyrb classic that the library had five years ago but couldn't get into any of them. the hearing trumpet and the tove jansson book look promising though.

I borrowed my brother's copy of Warlock, didn't read it, and accidentally dropped it through the library return slot because I mistook it for another NYRB book. This is a good reminder that I should get around to ordering him another copy.

The Tove Jansson one is super good.

Ish Reed's early Yellowback Radio Brokedown, The Freelance Pallbearers, and Mumbo Jumbo are short, not sweet, and imaginative, in a fun way (can see where Blazing Saddles might have come from, for inst).
ZZ Packer's Drinking Coffee Elsewhere is a stone cold classic collection of modern short stories, funny and scary and touching.
AJ LIebling's The Earl of Louisiana set standards for The New Journalism, also the old journalism; in 1959, he checks out a particularly wild turn in the epic career of Louisiana Gov. Earl Long, little brother and lifelong rival of the sainted Huey. Sprung from an asylum after brief, pesky experience, he revs up to run for re-election yet again, though now even his juggling of various shades of black-creole-cajun-WASP-country-urban-etc. interests, also the rich, who tend to hate him but make some deals, even his skillz are tested by backlash vs. civil rights movement, as both sides begin to accelerate
---Liebling is well-quaiified to hobnob with sources in NOLA and elsewhere, but mainly he's partaking of the insider gossip, while observing with the eye of a quick study and very seasoned pro (was war correspondant as weill as appreciator of racetracks and victuals, also one of the best New Yorker rovers of his era). Edutaining as all hell, serious too, and not very long (I checked pape count for all of these) _
This may well have been an inspiration for the Coen Brothers movie in which Paul Newman played Earl (good job, though visually a stretch).
Ditto for Billy Lee Bramner's The Gay Place, three novellas from the orbit of a Texas governor w some of the same feats and challenges as Earl (and some other historical pols of those crispy times)---but TGP is too long for this list sry

yes, i have and have read the tove jansson. it's also short!

oh i meant to say and is very good lol

Oh yeah, and Thomas Farber's Tales for the Son of My Unborn Child Berkeley, 1966 - 1969: thoughtful portraits of men and women he knew, also turns the camera around when he gets embarrassingly involved with a sub-Gurdjieff cult leader, a swaggering asshole, shitting on your illusions (worse than Mr. Natural, because realer, although we're left to judge, if we care to, how much of this collection is fiction).

Ah cool, so is Capek worth reading in general, then? Obv famed for popularising 'robot', but I've never been sure if he's worth digging into in his own right.

Yes! I adore Capek, and I went back and forth between recommending War With the Newts, his short story collection Tales from Two Pockets, and a work called Three Novels that might be my favorite but that I ruled out because it could be classified as experimental. He's remembered more for the sci-fi stuff because it's so prescient - he specializes in scenarios where people invent something dangerous, become economically dependent on it, and then keep using it when it's clear that it's actively destroying the world - but he's also good at the small-scale stuff; he's human and humane and funny and dark and intensely empathetic. He's a realist, a magical realist, a satirist, a visionary, and the most grounded and approachable of philosophers. I love him in the same way I love John Prine.

Damn, that's me sold!

Ish Reed's early Yellowback Radio Brokedown, The Freelance Pallbearers, and Mumbo Jumbo are short, not sweet, and imaginative, in a fun way (can see where Blazing Saddles might have come from, for inst).

Was thinking about suggesting Mumbo Jumbo myself, actually (I haven't read the others). There are elements that I would describe as experimental but it really carries you along, definitely was a fun treat for me when I read it.

Seconding Out Stealing Horses.

Adding

Love and War in the Appenines - Eric Newby’s beautifully written memoir of being a POW, escaping and then hiding out in Italy during WW II.

Edisto - Padgett Powell. Novel about a boy growing up on the South Carolina coast with an eccentric mother.

I think I read the Newby book under the title of When the Snow Comes, They Will Take You Away. It was really good.

If the question is 'what's a book that's just enjoyable to read?' -- then my most immediate answer is probably: Raymond Chandler, eg: FAREWELL, MY LOVELY.

I've only read Long Goodbye (loved) and Big Sleep (good on a sentence level, story kinda generic). Are any of the others as good as Long Goodbye, or like The Big Sleep, but better?

Two of my favorite pure treat books, just 100% delightful to read, are Brat Farrar and The Singing Sands by Josephine Tey. Both classic mystery novels but with much more emphasis on the novel part than the mystery part.

Oh cool, need to check her. After inspecting the Parker jacket in Lucy Sante's Maybe The People Would Be The Times(2020--great collection, but prob too long and experimental for this thread, so don't repeat DON'T READ IT), I did finally get to Dirty Money, l Richard Stark's last, only one local library has---doesn't matter, prob could have been at any point in the series, at least after the first, blanking on the title, but filmed as Point Blank, one of the best crime pix of 60s, next to Get Carter. In the debut, there's a revenge factor, but once he gets his groove on, Parker's just stealing to steal, doesn't even seem thrilled by it, or anything, just wants to get a plan and a crew together and go do it, as true catalyst, unaffected by the changes he causes, the havoc in other lives, leagues, other crims, and some unwitting accomplices, later w shrewdie self-images shattered ("How could I have missed that??")
What an asshole, and I was rooting for him to get caught, though I think Sante mentioned that he'd done fine in prison, duh. Not perfect, but kept me reading for sure.

"leagues other crims" I meant "colleagues, and other crims" (others being targets, also side-switchers when nec., though he still screws with them)

I really love The Long Secret, the sequel to Harriet the Spy.

― Lily Dale, Wednesday, November 17, 2021 8:15 PM (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink

I’m just about to start reading that!

― Chuck_Tatum, Wednesday, November 17, 2021 8:39 PM (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink

Often my favorite novel

I'm more involved with Inspector Maigret, whether he 's emotionally drawn into his latest case or not: sometimes he's just breaking it down w expertise, w something seedy and poignant through the cracks: good enough explanation for him, as he's thinking about a little paperwork, stopping in for a drink, home again so the wife can "feed him like a toddler," as one female Simenon historian observed.

Most recent fave: A Maigret Trio---Three Novels Never Before Published In The United States (early 70s, which is when he'd lived in the US long enough to get into English well enough to become dissatisfied w earlier translations, launching a big redo of complete works, which concluded fairly recently, if at all, really)
All from the Inspector and his creator's last professional decade, and figures from M.'s past figure, professionally-emotionally, in different ways (usually sucks for him, great for us).

i like those too. they are definitely treats.

Lily Dale, thanks to your campaign, I did keep digging into the Collyer Brothers family values 'til I reached Wives and Daughters!

Srsly Louise Fitzhugh rules. She taught me a lot.

I found a like-new Penguin copy of Wives and Daughters in one of those "Take a book, leave a book" boxes (a system that I've been slightly abusing). Thinking of starting that or The Man Who Loved Children.

My WaD is Wordsworth Classics; I don't recall anything else published by them, but this edition seems okay (?) At least, it is Complete And Unabridged, With an Introduction and Notes by Dinny Thorold, University of Westminster, this edition published 1999, Introduction and Notes ©2003 Dinny Thorold.
For my husband Anthony John Ranson with love from your wife, the publisher, eternally grateful for your unconditional love.

publisher, listed as Wordsworth Classics Director: Elene Gavriel Ranson.

Chuck Tatum: FWIW I'd be inclined to say that FAREWELL, MY LOVELY is like THE BIG SLEEP but better. (Also better than THE HIGH WINDOW, but THE LADY IN THE LAKE, now I think of it, is remarkable.)

If anyone is looking to follow up on any of the NYRB Classics recommendations above, they're having a flash sale weekend.

ty! good tip

Wordsworth Classics are the staple of those remaindered bookshops that no longer exist in Hammersmith and Notting Hill, extensive range of classics, like a bookcase full, decent enough quality and only £1.99 each.

My NYRB recommendations would be Warlock, On the Yard by Malcolm Braly and The along Ships by Frans G. Bengtsson

hard rain falling by don carpenter and butcher's crossing by john williams (these are both also treats)

it's not a nyrb classic but my answer is 'darryl' by jackie ess. my ILB review here Are You There, God? What Are You Reading In The Summer Of 2021?

High Wind in Jamaica is another v.enjoyable NYRB classic

Not exactly a hidden treasure, because it was such a hit in its day, but a quick, engaging book and a treat if you've not read it yet: Kitchen Confidential, Anthony Bourdain.

Much more obscure, because much older, but a fun book of the sort that often gets called "a romp": The Grand Babylon Hotel, Arnold Bennett.

Maybe not everyone's cup of tea, but I found Under the Glacier, Haldor Laxness, very enjoyable.

Any of yall read Grand Hotel? (Yet another NYRB Classic, I now see.) Always enjoy it on TCM. A best seller, at least in Europe, then on stage (will prob be a Broadway musical, then a movie of that)(wait,
reference to the recently WAYR?-cited Adventures In The Screen Trade here:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grand_Hotel_(1932_film) Scroll down to Aborted late 1970s musical remake)

i read a different Arnold Bennett, The Card, recently and it was similarly a romp. was expecting North and South but set in the potteries, got something Norman Wisdom would be in the film of.

(ha, actually, Alec Guinness, petula clark)

hard rain falling by don carpenter and butcher's crossing by john williams (these are both also treats)

I prefer Butcher's Crossing to Williams's more acclaimed Stoner

i was looking at that but i haven't read it. i ordered augustus in the nyrb sale.

butcher’s crossing is amazing, not sure i’d call it a treat

I saw that Williams did a novel on the emperor Augustus that I may have seen locally and not payed attention to. Not sure if it was that or a different book by the title. Saw it on the NYRB page and thought oh is that that? Different edition anyway.

I want to kind of echo poster Emil.y in that by denying experimental ficiton was a bit of a block but yes, people having fun on the page (my definition of treates lol) is something I do read quite a lot of and I'd recommend Krudy's work, especially The Adventures of Sindbad:

https://www.nyrb.com/collections/gyula-krudy/products/the-adventures-of-sindbad?variant=1094931553

If we are turning to the NYRB sale everyone should read this volume of novellas by Alvaro Mutis:

https://www.nyrb.com/products/the-adventures-and-misadventures-of-maqroll?variant=1094931537

I saw that Williams did a novel on the emperor Augustus that I may have seen locally and not payed attention to. Not sure if it was that or a different book by the title. Saw it on the NYRB page and thought oh is that that? Different edition anyway.

― Stevolende, Saturday, November 20, 2021 6:43 AM (one hour ago) bookmarkflaglink

i love augustus. i think i agree that both it and butcher’s crossing are better than stoner, tho i love and defend stoner

The Gone World by Tom Sweterlitsch

Sci-fi horror mystery, not my usual genre but I saw someone rave about it on Twitter so I picked it up. Some beautifully described but absolutely disturbing imagery. Time travel/apocalypse themes. Main character is a female astronaut/investigator. Lots of mind-fuckery. A total page-turner. I don’t read enough sci-fi to say this with any real conviction but I thought it was a really unique plot.

Oh I guess it’s 400pp but it reads pretty fast

butcher’s crossing is amazing, not sure i’d call it a treat

― STOCK FIST-PUMPER BRAD (BradNelson), Saturday, November 20, 2021 8:37 AM (two hours ago)

fine BRAD it was a GEM geez

the second half of butcher’s crossing just feels too brutal to feel like a treat, i admit this is v subjective

yeah but that was the best part, to me

Some lively discussions of Williams novels on past WAYR?! More than one, prob---seems like one of those subjects we come back to over the years, like when somebody discovers Jean Stafford.t Stoner,in particular, gets folks het up. (I still mean to read it, and maybe everything by him, at least I do when I think of those discussions.)

yeah but that was the best part, to me

― certified juice therapist (harbl), Saturday, November 20, 2021 10:16 AM (two hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

agreed!!!

since the hearing trumpet has already been repped for multiple times, another novel by an english surrealist i also really love: ithell colquhoun's goose of hermogenes

I found Augustus better realized than Stoner.`

I admire what he brought off: a ruler with magnificent self-control writing crisp prose that aspires to be boilerplate but ends up self-revealing.

1 good short literary type book I read this year -- John Berger's The Red Tenda of Bologna. kind of a travelogue but mostly reminiscences and opinions on art and culture. short chapters and many are self-contained. available as a penguin mini, around 60 pages, 2007.

Omg Harriet trying to come up with a rhyme for her poem in The Long Secret is the best thing

A saft ansuer tooneth away rat

Harriet watching TV, as seen through Beth Ellen's eyes, is my favorite thing.

"Look at these things. Look at all these dumb people. Look at these rotten things. I never saw such dumb things. There isn't anything I'd like to see. There's never anything I'd like to see. What a bunch of ridiculous...HEY!" she suddenly yelled. "There's a GREAT Nazi movie on!"

She turned to Beth Ellen, who was flipping channels like a zombie.

"Quick," she screamed, "turn it to that!" She leapt across the room.

Beth Ellen looked over her shoulder at the program, then turned to the right channel. Some Nazis were beating up an old woman on the street.

"Look at those rotten things! Oh, boy!" said Harriet and sat down, stuffing a great gob of popcorn in her mouth.

Hup.

I may have misunderstood the assignment here but I can definitely second Yellowback Radio Brokedown.

A lot of the time for comfort and quick serotonin hits I revert to fun creative nonfiction (Joan Didion, John McPhee or whatever) or Annie Dillard way before I open a novel.

1 good short literary type book I read this year -- John Berger's The Red Tenda of Bologna. kind of a travelogue but mostly reminiscences and opinions on art and culture. short chapters and many are self-contained. available as a penguin mini, around 60 pages, 2007.

Jon Fosse - Morning and Evening

115 pages. Gets you emotionally very quickly.

really appreciate all the recommendations!

do not personally care for John Williams, but I agree that if you like his style a book like Stoner must be a treat

Two of my favorite pure treat books, just 100% delightful to read, are Brat Farrar and The Singing Sands by Josephine Tey. Both classic mystery novels but with much more emphasis on the novel part than the mystery part.

intrigued by this (and the Maigret recommendation) as mystery/crime is a genre I like but where I have a hard time finding enjoyable books

I would highly recommend the Maigret novels; the vibe is quite a change of pace from the typical crime novel. I love the ones where he's just sort of hanging out at the fringes of a scene where shit went down/is about to go down, but not actually acting in any sort of official capacity.

Yeah, "Hey chief, big shoot-out here 10 minutes ago, Suspect B is all over the place." And he, like his creator, knows that he can't do his job like he's committed to if he isn't tuned into that human stuff, w/o gettin' snowflake--it's just that M. and S. have seen sooo much of this over the many years: the series is built for that, w/o getting to soap opera heroine w 7 spouses, 10 comas, x number gettin' into trouble for breakin' all the rules, like so many crime series.

I mean usually there's more compartmentalization and repetition of big bravura SFX, none of that here.

But I came here to say that mention of the xpost bite-size Berger reminds me of recently noticing a stand-alone of Michael Herr's "Illumination Rounds," an advance excerpt from Dispatches: got me going in New American Review, the mostly (?) 60s-published mass market paperback lit mag.

seconding early ishmael reed & hard rain falling, will nom joseph mitchell joe gould's secret or even better the collection up in the old hotel - this is a whopper which is against the rules which are made to be broken, but it's a collection of smaller pieces tbf
(and skip the fiction probably)

another whopper the sot-weed factor is pure pleasure

muriel spark

i picked up 'at swim two birds' because of this thread

i lucked out and got this dalkey edition with this quote by dylan thomas on the cover

This is just the book to give your sister if she's a loud, dirty, boozy girl!

https://entertainment.time.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/3/2011/07/t100_novels_atswimtwobirds.jpg?w=258

Forgot about that quote.

Wanna get back into my middle school fave Saki, but library only has Complete Works in one smallish (Modern Library-style) volume: tiny type!! I may read it anyway, 'til eyeballs rebel.

xpost Muriel Spark: o hell yes The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie is great gateway, and just the right length for this thread.

up in the old hotel - this is a whopper which is against the rules which are made to be broken, but it's a collection of smaller pieces tbf
(and skip the fiction probably) Did Mitchell write fiction? Would like to check it if so.

There has been some controversy in certain quarters over how much fiction may have crept into Mitchell's nonfiction. IIRC a few of the pieces in "Up in the Old Hotel" are labeled as fiction. Some others may have been "embellished". They are definitely treats though. Of books I've read recently the one that might best meet the criteria laid out for this thread is "Price of Salt" by Patricia Highsmith, i.e. an effortless, engrossing read.

There are all sorts of shades of 'non-fiction', depending on the subject matter and how the author decides to present the material.

Embellishment is intrinsic to any kind of storytelling that pretends to convey a sense of life and action, no matter how strongly it is based in actuality. I guess the phone book (which soon will be completely obsolete as a thing known and familiar) would be a good example of minimally-embellished non-fiction, but even a phone book could be said to impose tiny amounts of imagination and coloration upon the bare facts.

Yeah, but I read (and skip the fiction probably) as distinguishing between two sets of publications, as if the author or someone since had straight-up designated, say, features over here, short storied over there.

justin3 recommended “The Gone World” upthread & i read it last week

holy shit. a horror/scifi that really pushes the boat out. the horror is legit scary af, the scifi is v ambitious, really well written.

it was described as true detective meets inception but inception is wrong. maybe edge of tomorrow?

anyway, get into it, genre-nerds

xp yeah I was referring to the handful of short stories collected in up in the old hotel which were explicitly published as fiction

Thanks! Didn't remember that distinction, will have to re-read with it in mind, though was pretty sure he at least massaged some of his material. (In Joe Gould's Teeth, Jill LePore says that some documents have come to light which Mitchell couldn't have known about, but also 0 indication among his copious papers that he ever responded to several people who offered to be interviewed etc re Gould.)
The Wikipedia article on Mitchell incl. several pieces that have appeared in The New Yorker this century (think it was the most recent one that I read and liked):
Wiki page has links for each, though they're behind account wall; dunno if you can just sign up and view w/o having to pay)
2000–2015
Takes Takes (May 28, 2000)
Street Life Personal History (February 3, 2013)
Days in the Branch Personal History (November 24, 2014)
A Place of Pasts Personal History (February 9, 2015)

xxp i also read 'the gone world' on justin3's recommendation and it was v. good

however

as someone who grew up in southwestern pennsylvania at the same time as the protagonist (I was born a year later), i feel compelled to point out that teenage girls there in 1985 who dressed like madonna or had michael jackson jackets absolutely did *not* listen to AC/DC (especially not powerage, which didn't even have a hit?!)

otoh the author might have simply been heightening the contradictions? get out of my head

I really wish someone would read Keith Maillard, perhaps only to disabuse me of the notion that he’s utterly fabulous. I and about a dozen other people think he’s a treasure - and his books are a treat. Anything, really, but I was knocked out by his latest novel, Twin Studies.

An English Murder, Cyril Hare - Cozy mystery, set at x-mas no less, but with real life 50's politics intruding - aristocratic family includes a cousin who is Chancellor of the Exchequer in the labour govt as well as a son leading a neo-fascist group; the Poirotesque outsider, a Hungarian Jewish academic, is a holocaust survivor. Breezed through it, great stuff.

Sigrid Nunez has been doing it for me lately, The Friend and What Are You Going Through? total gems

I got assigned a Sigrid Nunez book for my branch library’s reading group. I liked the beginning of it so much that I read a few other books first, saving the assigned one to read right before we met so it would be fresh in my mind. She is a new favorite, seems to do every single thing right.

Also the audiobook reader of almost all of her books, Hillary Huber, is just about perfect.

She also has read many of Elena Ferrante's books

i finished this just last week and i thought it was great! i loved the writing. so many evocative settings and sentences. i love when an author has so many avenues they can explore and they have the discipline to keep everything tight and controlled and never get lost in their own obviously fecund imagination. great characters both secondary and central. the writer did a lot of television and brit teleplays and you can't help but think about how great it would be on the screen. half the fun of the book though, for me, was picturing everything that was so lovingly described. i will look for more by him. published in 1986 but reprinted by McNally Editions recently.

https://d28hgpri8am2if.cloudfront.net/book_images/onix/cvr9781946022707/the-girls-9781946022707_hr.jpg

https://www.londonreviewbookshop.co.uk/storage/1200_filter/images/9/9/8/9/4099899-1-eng-GB/9781946022707.jpg

ha, oops, sorry. that first one didn't show up for me so i just had to add a blurry second picture.

Nunez is my favorite living writer by a mile

I think The Last of Her Kind (2006) might be her masterpiece, but A Feather on the Breath of God (1995) and The Friend (2018) are also extremely accomplished

I highly recommend her non-fiction account of Virginia Woolf's monkey Mitz (1998) and her Susan Sontag memoir Sempre Susan (2011)

But really everything she's written is great and it's all about style, she is a perfect writer to me. Only real outlier is Salvation City (2010) which is more of a post-apocalyptic YA novel of ideas, but even that has some real strong passages.

So far I've read SEMPRE SUSAN and THE FRIEND properly, buzzed through THE VULNERABLES, which I may reread,, and am on my secornd round of WHAT ARE YOU GOING THROUGH? in preparation for the book group meeting tomorrow, and have got my eye on MITZ and THE LAST OF HER KIND. Feel like she is a perfect writer, for me anyway.

Oh yeah, you said perfect too.

I glanced at some of the reviews on her web page. She wrote a fair review of STATION ELEVEN. Also hadn't realized that she had given Jonathan Franzen a copy of DESPERATE CHARACTERS at Yaddo, thereby setting in motion the Paula Fox revival.

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/07/13/t-magazine/sigrid-nunez-paula-fox-desperate-characters.html

I’ve only read The Friend, thought it was pretty enjoyable for the most part. I will probably seek out some others at some point.

Recently: Strong Poison, my first Dorothy L. Sayers, in which Lord Peter Wimsey's sterling powers of detection, also nerves, are challenged by the sensational murder trial of young Harriet Vane, a mystery writer who lived in sin with the young dead man, also an author. Zingers fly, especially from the excitable Lord and his pals, but so rare to find them doing so through perfectly timed shades of dark realness (and real enough): a lot of crime shows so try to do this, but Sayers just does it. Prisoner Vane is necessarily the least mobile, least confident character, but credibly convinces Wimsey that she's innocent (well probably). All the women here are credible, in a variety of roles, and one of LP's employees at what seems like a secretarial agency, and is, to a certain extent, but mainly is about detecting white collar crime, one of these ladies gets sent up north to do crucial legwork.
Relationship of W. and V. nuanced, and intro assures us that they did not go running around as Mr. and Mrs. Detective for several more volumes.

i have heard such good things about the harriet vane books, i need to get on the Sayers train!

bowen looks fun

sorry for snap judgment and yucking someone's yum but re nunez, ""The Last of Her Kind introduces two women who meet as freshmen on the Columbia campus in 1968. Georgette George does not know what to make of her brilliant, idealistic roommate, Ann Drayton, and her obsessive disdain for the ruling class into which she was born. ..." would rather die than ever read a novel set at a college again

iirc 'the friend' and 'what are you going through' are closer to sebald than to your average college novel.

what can I say the prose is gorgeous

it's a great novel, highly recommended if you liked the Neapolitan novels by Ferrante, they have a lot in common

Sebald definitely an influence, but Coetzee even more

WHAT ARE YOU GOING THROUGH was insanely good and pretty much made my brane explode or perhaps implode.

i will read her. i never have.

Got my eye on THE LAST OF HER KIND next but maybe need to properly finish THE VULNERABLES first.

there's a lightness to her writing that's somewhat reminiscent of Kundera but less bullshit

The Last of Her Kind is more dense though, but very rewarding

I also really enjoyed the Bowen when I read it last week. Would also recommend his v creepy Play For Today Robin Redbreast.

i've been meaning to check and see if Robin Redbreast was on Britbox.

The Girls is unusual because they sell it as a thriller on the back of the new reprint but it was all the mundane details of their home/shop/craft fairs/etc that delighted me. i love people who have an eye for those details.

Bowen? Elizabeth Bowen?

My wife is a huge Nunez fan, glad to see the love.

Our next couples read is Jackie Collins’ Chances, the first Lucky Santangelo book.

Thanks so much for all the comments on Nunez books---local library has two, yay. The only SN thing I've read is a mention of her and Sontag's son going on a double date with Sontag and a guy whose name I'm blanking on.
Speaking of The Girls and the library, yall might go by yours and take a look at Emma Cline's novel of the same title, a middle-aged woman's memoir of the early teen time she got involved with a Manson type, who seems a bit generic*, but it really is about The Girls, and Cline, then in her 20s, draws on and distills flashback-is-now earlyteengirlverse, with no show-off Creative Writing Special EFX. Also credible modulation of narrator's voice to present day, seeing herself as geezer seen that way as well by some kids on a bad path: pressure of that emitting these memories in an unwelcome, compulsively vivid clarity, which just keeps rolling along, for not too long, via alternating timelines.
Cline also gets that crispy cuspy Kali sunshine grid of The Crying Of Lot 49, Dog Soldiers, Wolf In White Van (esp, when narrator goes outside, even down the street), and the best parts of Devil House.
*But also brings the Dennis Wilson-Terry Melcher hybrid: I could practically smell the cologne and other aids.

Also the narrator's remembered takes on her struggling parents and others, filtered now by her own age and experience---but teen girlhood refuses to be upstaged.

Thanks, been interested in Emma Cline and even have a copy of THE GIRLS but haven’t gotten around to reading it yet.

"Bowen? Elizabeth Bowen?"

no, the book i posted above. also titled The Girls.

Today I noticed that not one but two branches of the NYPL selected THE VULNERABLES for reading groups early next month

There's not one but two Sigrid Nunez adaptations at this year's NYFF, wow. Also I finally started making a dent in THE LAST OF HER KIND, thanks for the recommendation.

I read Sara Mesa's "Un Amor" last week and it satisfies all five of the thread's Treat Criteria.

Anita Loos is great.

So is George S. Schuyler. Or at least Black No More

Diana Wynne Jones thought its aimed at children, transcends a bit though.

Thanks to this thread I just finished Last Of Her Kind. My mom went to Radcliffe in 1968, and was fully in with all kinds of radical organisations, and went through many of the schisms and changes described, so it was pretty cool to feel like I was back in that time, with her, in a way

The end felt.. patched together a bit? Strange because for the first, say, 2/3 I was just utterly under Nunez's spell

This probably shows how little modern fiction I read but it's pretty wild to realise about halfway through a book that every single male character who shows up is either irritating or actively harmful, and in either case sort of represents a speed bump, or grudging necessity, or at the very best a refuge from reality. Yet despite their kind of marginality, they have an outsize influence - maddening to see this obviously incredibly perceptive, sensitive narrator just kind of railroaded into all kinds of poor situations mainly by men

(and of course not just her.. many/most of the women she knows as well)

Hi, if you're still interested my fave I've read this year:
black tickets by jayne anne phillips and the moviegoer by walker percy
Both poetic type fiction set in the USA south

THE MOVIEGOER is awesome, as is THE LAST GENTLEMAN. Maybe don't read any of his other novels, but some essays instead.

i need more jayne anne phillips in my life. idiotpills, this is an excellent collection of southern stuff that i recently finished. came out in 2009. great stories.

https://i0.wp.com/www.nationalbook.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/12/Peelle-cover-e1553095402417.jpg?fit=427%2C650&ssl=1

I read Sara Mesa's "Un Amor" last week and it satisfies all five of the thread's Treat Criteria.

intriguing, will be reading that

About halfway through THE LAST OF HER KIND. Dense and a different voice from her most recent three but incredible so far

As you already reported upthread iirc

Joseph, The Hole In The Zero (science fiction)

*phew* finished. Guess I will either read the autobiographical A FEATHER ON THE BREATH OF GOD (which title apparently comes from Hildegard of Bingen) or else the shorter MITZ.

People seems to think the last three are autofiction presumably because the narrator's voice is apparently really close to her actuall speaking voice but only her very first novel could be reaonsably classified as such.

Joseph, _The Hole In The Zero_ (science fiction)

Read the first section, the one about her dad, of A FEATHER ON THE BREATH OF GOD. So far so good.

I see that The Hole in the Zero is on 4nn4's 4rch1v3 a.k.a. book soulseek

People seems to think the last three are autofiction presumably because the narrator's voice is apparently really close to her actuall speaking voice but only her very first novel could be reaonsably classified as such.

yeah, I think the clever construction of The Friend actually goes a long way to show that it's not autofiction

debut surely draws on her experiences but at the same time I'm pretty confident a big part of it's very fictional (let me know what you think of the final part/chapter which iirc is about an affair)

Okay, will do. This seems to be another short one.

Anything you wanna say about it?

Not much. I can't be objective, and the book can't be summarized.

Trivia: possibly the first usage of the word "quark" in a novel.

Think you'll find Joyce used it first in Finnegans Wake.

Okay, will do. This seems to be another short one.

So you think the affair in the last chapter is pure fiction?

Well, probably inspired by something real. But yeah, seems pretty made up to me. I don't know though!

Makes for a great read

Based on interviews I’ve read I assume most of it is basically true. One interview she went as far as to say something to the effect that you’d be surprised at which parts are true and which parts are invented. She gave as an example of something she had to invent her mother’s trip home when the war ended.

On to the next one I guess until I run out of steam, either MITZ or maybe FOR ROUENNA.

i'd recommend "deadwood" by pete dexter, especially if you've watched the show - it has a lot of the same characters/historical figures but they are characterized and emphasized very differently. it is over 300 pages but not by much (about 350 iirc) and funny and grimy and sad.

i can't believe i read Paris Trout by Pete Dexter in 1988! it doesn't seem that long ago. that's a great book. God's Pocket is really good too. I read Paris Trout after reading about Pete and Tex Cobb almost getting beaten to death in South Philly. it's a scary story! i was living in Philly at the time. one of the scariest moments in my Philly life was walking around a corner and almost running right into Tex Cobb. he scared the shit out of me. his face was so frightening.

Dexter began writing fiction after a life-changing 1981 incident in the Devil's Pocket, neighborhood in South Philadelphia, in which a mob of locals armed with baseball bats beat him severely. The perpetrators were upset by Dexter's recent column about a murder involving a drug deal-gone-wrong, published on December 9, 1981, in the Philadelphia Daily News.

"A couple of weeks ago, a kid named Buddy Lego was found dead in Cobbs Creek," wrote Dexter. "It was a Sunday afternoon. He was from the neighborhood, a good athlete, a nice kid. Stoned all the time. The kind of kid you think you could have saved."

The kid's mother called Dexter, nearly hysterical. How, she cried, could he write that her dead son was a drug user? Lego's brother, Tommy, the night bartender at Dougherty's, was also on the phone, screaming at the then-38-year-old columnist, demanding a retraction.

Dexter went to Dougherty's bar to talk to Tommy Lego, having told Lego he would not be publishing a retraction. In the bar, Dexter was blindsided by two blows to the jaw, splintering and breaking teeth. Later, Dexter returned with a friend, heavyweight prizefighter Randall "Tex" Cobb. In the ensuing fight outside the bar in the street, Cobb's arm was broken and Dexter was hospitalized with several injuries, including a broken back, pelvis, brain damage and dental devastation. Cobb's injuries cost him a shot at WBA heavyweight champion Mike Weaver.

Tex Cobb! that's crazy you saw him just walkin around.

holy hell how have I not read Annie Proulx till now

“the Half Skinned Steer” fwiw

are her novels this intense??

will check out "deadwood" and pete dexter, thanks!

xp james: do MITZ!

‘So Long, See You Tomorrow’ by William Maxwell

Heard about it on Backlisted & finally read it this week. Just finished (its quite short) and am uncharacteristically considering an immediate re-read

I don’t know if I’ve every read anything that is this, idk, almost-perfect? He’s so succinct but the emotional weight of everything he writes about in this story is so immense.

10/10 somehow feels too cliched lol

anyway recommend without hesitation to all & sundry

Tremendous book. Agree with everything you said.

Can also recommend *Time Will Darken It*, which has the same sense of economy and control. What a writer. Blows my mind that he only wrote one other novel in the 32 years between *Time Will Darken It* and *So Long, See You Tomorrow*.

Also, more people need the middle name 'Keepers'.

i am def going to try seek out more from him, for sure - my library has his short story collection, i will try to find Time Will Darken It also

I read Sara Mesa's "Un Amor" last week and it satisfies all five of the thread's Treat Criteria.

this was enjoyable if quite dark and somewhat frustrating

will check out ‘So Long, See You Tomorrow’ by William Maxwell

Great thread idea!

I have to say that my reading life has been immensely enriched by the existence of I Love Books and all its contributors. Finding good books used to be much more hit-and-miss, but now my 'hit' rate is over 90% and I have a long list of titles and authors to explore. Thanks, y'all.

the Backlisted podcast has vastly enriched my reading — i see references to it here & there a bit on ilx search - wondering if a dedicated thread might be good?

I'd contribute. I have a mixed relationship with Backlisted but I've got so many amazing books from it.

Andy Miller's book is a lot of fun, an atypically good example of the "I did a weird thing for six months and here's what happened" genre. Sometimes I wish he'd stop interrupting his guests (or his co-host) quite so much. But I've heard worse, and he's generally quite funny, so he gets a pass. I enjoy his tormented, self-aware relationship with his own inescapable blokiness, although I think I may have developed a somewhat parasocial relationship with them during the lockdowns.

I don’t know if I’ve every read anything that is this, idk, almost-perfect?

"A Month in the Country" by JL Carr is another perfect, very short novel with a Backlisted podcast (as are, off the top of my head, "Excellent Women" and "Human Voices").

Lie With Me (2017) by Philippe Besson

In Praise of Shadows - Junichirō Tanizaki

I loved A Month in the Country mentioned above. I will read it again someday.

I definitely recommend that Daniel Woodrell book of stories I just read. The Outlaw Album. Not for the squeamish. But the violence is delivered artfully a la Faulkner. I just started another one by him.

It's a bit longer than 300 pages, but Tove Ditlesen's Copenhagen Trilogy is a great, compelling read. Early autofiction, and for me, unputdownable.

Palestinian walks : forays into a vanishing landscape Raja Shehadeh,
A Palestinian revisits some places he knew years earlier and reminisces and ruminates on related subjects. I found the book pretty touching.
I've been reading quite a lot of Palestine related material recently and thought this particularly good.

I started "In Praise of Shadows" -- good so far!

Patrick Hamilton - "Hangover Square"

An absolute waking nightmare of a book, kind of a cross between The Secret Agent and Saturday Night And Sunday Morning.. but told in such a direct, sympathetic way, you feel he's speaking directly to you in a language that's been made just for you. Can't remember the last time I just gulped a book down in such great big draughts

xp glad to hear you like it! It's a short thing but beautifully written and conceived

I enjoyed "Slaves of Solitude", sounds like I need to dig deeper into Hamilton. xp

Has everyone here read Desperate Characters? I feel like I bring it up a lot. I just brought it up on ILE. It's over the top but very memorable! It has definitely stuck with me. The movie version has too.

Poor George Harvey Bone.

Indeed

I kept picturing it as a black comedy like Nightie Night, or Peep Show, with George played by David Mitchell and Peter with his reprehensible moustache as Ray Purchase from Toast

https://hi-ya.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/10/Ray-Purchase.png

Hangover Square is one of my favourite novels, a masterpiece. Part of the small sub-genre of Brighton Noir too!

Hahaha. Black comedy is the only real way to cope with the tragedy of it. Slays two. Found gassed. Thinks of cat. has to be comedy, right?

I used to go to awful marketing conferences at Earl's Court. I'd drift out into the evening and walk among those beautiful Second Empire buildings and think of Bone. What a book.

Talking of literary treats and (vaguely) Brighton Noir: *Fullalove* by Gordon Burn is magnificent.

Hangover Square is superb. Only recently realised the title is a pun! #onethread

Desperate Characters
Keep thinking I've read that, but I'm always just mixing it up with _Two Serious Ladies_ by Jane Bowles.
I'm slightly put off by Franzen's enthusiasm for _Desperate Characters_, which is just nonsense on my part.

_Two Serious Ladies_ may well be an appropriate novel for this thread.

I think DFW was a desperate characters booster as well

2 serious ladies is great as is that one play she wrote

Just heard recently that the reason Franzen got into it was because Sigrid Nunez lent him her copy while they were at a writer's conference.

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/07/13/t-magazine/sigrid-nunez-paula-fox-desperate-characters.html
Guess she just recommended, didn't actually lend a copy.

I'm another Desperate Characters lover. I've also recommended it to many people. one of the interesting things is the picture of early Brooklyn gentrification. another possible hook, the author is Courtney Love's grandmother. I haven't read any of her other books though I started Western Coast and somehow lost the thread

Yeah my attempts to read other Paula Fox books fell flat. Kinda like me and Christina Stead books that aren't The Man Who Loved Children (also a Franzen pick or was that Moody? Anyway, i love that book.) And also any Penelope Fitzgerald book that isn't The Bookshop.

also, if anyone hasn't read it yet, please do read The Bookshop. so great.

it is but I also liked offshore, maybe not quite as much, and the blue flower probably more. the golden child was not good though. I'll get round to the rest sooner or later.

Penelope Fitzgerald uniformly good except for maybe the first one which is think is The Golden Child. I had a similar Paula Fox problem but now I remember that I did like Poor George.

best bk i read recently = "sonny liston was a friend of mine" by thom jones

Re-reading The Lantern Bearers by Rosemary Sutcliff, as I often do at times like this.

Reading another Sigrid Nunez book, one that’s a little harder to get a hold of. Need to finish it soon and return it to the library for the next patron to borrow.

Finished it last night. Naked Sleeper. Another keeper.

Sigrid Nunez has been doing it for me lately, The Friend and What Are You Going Through? total gems

Cool, might go for The Friend then! Had to turn off The Room Next Door, felt v heavy-handed

Yeah.

In addition to everything else, The Friend also had quite a bit of lived-in NYC detail, while The Room Next Door was more touristy.