i need book recommendations!

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i have $40 in book gift certificates - how should i spend them? im looking for fiction, preferably something perfect for reading in the beautiful weather. southern gothic stuff? breezy contemporary? im easy. im just getting back into reading, so genre/author recommendations are welcome, too.

maybe something a little less dense than pynchon/joyce, although i loved the pynchon i read last year.

― peter smith (plsmith), Wednesday, 6 April 2005 17:22 (twenty years ago)

http://ilx.wh3rd.net/newanswers.php?board=54

― 57 7th (calstars), Wednesday, 6 April 2005 17:31 (twenty years ago)

now is the time to read saul bellow, if you haven't already!

― s1ocki (slutsky), Wednesday, 6 April 2005 18:13 (twenty years ago)

I just finished Ignacio Brandao's novel "Zero", which was fucking unbelievably great. And a total surprise, given that I picked it off the shelf at the store pretty much at random, not knowing anything about him/the book's history, etc.

Also: Naguib Mahfouz's most recent collection "The Dreams"

― Shakey Mo Collier, Wednesday, 6 April 2005 18:17 (twenty years ago)

read sam lipsyte's "home land". it's smart and funny and you'll plow right through it. i can't imagine a discerning reader not loving it.

― dan (dan), Wednesday, 6 April 2005 21:04 (twenty years ago)

"The Mezzanine" by Nicholson Baker.

― you better believe it (you better believe it), Wednesday, 6 April 2005 21:13 (twenty years ago)

Just get Da DaVinci Code and then go on about it to everybody within earshot for three months afterwards.

― A / F#m / Bm / D (Lynskey), Wednesday, 6 April 2005 21:21 (twenty years ago)

"The Mezzanine" by Nicholson Baker.

Funny book.

― M. White (Miguelito), Wednesday, 6 April 2005 21:31 (twenty years ago)

If you haven't read it already, I greatly enjoyed reading A Confederacy of Dunces last summer. Not southern gothic, although it does take place in the south!

― polyphonic (polyphonic), Wednesday, 6 April 2005 21:37 (twenty years ago)

Yeah, I need to re-read that.

Not fiction, but you can't go wrong with "Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil" for high Southern weirdness.

― Rickey Wright (Rrrickey), Wednesday, 6 April 2005 23:29 (twenty years ago)

Try Cormac McCarthy. I really like Child of God, it reminded me of my family. Blood Merriden too.

― Jeff-PTTL (Jeff), Wednesday, 6 April 2005 23:31 (twenty years ago)

For density, there's always James Kelman.

― Rickey Wright (Rrrickey), Wednesday, 6 April 2005 23:32 (twenty years ago)

The Cosmic Follies by Simon Louvish

― Girolamo Savonarola, Wednesday, 6 April 2005 23:38 (twenty years ago)

Haruki Murakami. Espesh The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle. Same psychic weight as Pynchon and Joyce, but looser/extra plotting. Esp. if you read it down a well. Nicholson Baker's lovely but slight.

― Ferlin Husky (noodle vague), Wednesday, 6 April 2005 23:38 (twenty years ago)

hi pete

try "Play it as it lays" by Joan Didion. its about an actress, kinda. its pretty cool.

if you want something southern, try "Look Homeward, Angel" by Thomas Wolfe. its really fucking long, but not philisophically dense like joyce. some beautiful prose in that.

ill post more if i think of it.

― JD from CDepot, Thursday, 7 April 2005 01:43 (twenty years ago)

Tom Jones by Henry Fielding. Very long, funny. Readable. Smart.

― Ian John50n (orion), Thursday, 7 April 2005 02:51 (twenty years ago)

oh oh, and Jay McInerny (or something like that, ive spelled his name wrong). He wrote a somewhat popular book called "Bright Lights, Big City"

im not telling you to read that, but you can if you want. its good. i prefer "Brightness Falls". The last book that really ripped my heart out.

― JD from CDepot, Thursday, 7 April 2005 05:16 (twenty years ago)

Juicy, cheap and old: Daniel Defoe's "Moll Flanders." A real page-turner. Seriously.

― Douglas (Douglas), Thursday, 7 April 2005 05:42 (twenty years ago)

Kazuo Ishiguro's 'The Remains of the Day'. Don't bother with the film. Or his new one 'Never Let Me Go'.

Short story compilations are good if you're getting back into reading. Pick one that you'd be interested in the subject matter. Currently I'm going through 'Smashed: Australian Drinking Stories'.

― Sasha (sgh), Thursday, 7 April 2005 07:36 (twenty years ago)

Love In The Time of Cholera, Gabriel Garcia Marquez.

― Holly (an appletross), Thursday, 7 April 2005 17:00 (twenty years ago)

Emile Zola's 'Nana' for lasciviousness.

― Remy (x Jeremy), Thursday, 7 April 2005 17:01 (twenty years ago)

nineteen years pass...

does anyone know of a good introduction to Hindu mythology, something equivalent to the books on Greek myths that a lot of us grow up with? not like an academic study, just an accessible retelling of some of the stories, pantheon, stuff like that? not necc for children tho if that's the target audience but it's well written it's not disqualifying...

― Daniel_Rf, Wednesday, 13 November 2024 13:12 (one year ago)

I'm not an expert, but Wendy Doniger's "Hindu Myths" is a good start.

― ArchCarrier, Wednesday, 13 November 2024 15:10 (one year ago)

Thanks!

― Daniel_Rf, Monday, 18 November 2024 11:03 (one year ago)

six months pass...

Can anyone recommend a good book on Yeats - essays, biography, chapters, memoir etc? I keep circling around him and figured I should get on with it.

― I would prefer not to. (Chinaski), Saturday, 31 May 2025 07:44 (nine months ago)

I remember Pinefox making some typically interesting posts about Yeats, and Yeats related books, in various old ILB threads. In his absence, I’d guess that ppl with expertise wld suggest the Richard Ellman bio as the place to start.

― Ward Fowler, Saturday, 31 May 2025 08:18 (nine months ago)

Thanks Ward. It's a frustrating aspect of the book threads - all that amazing knowledge that's so hard to search. I'll have a dig around.

― I would prefer not to. (Chinaski), Saturday, 31 May 2025 09:17 (nine months ago)

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