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This is the thread where you can post your favorite book by an author. Or in the case of the one I'm inaugurating this with, the only book you like by an author. Feel free to provide reasons, etc.

Suttree--Cormac McCarthy

― otto, Thursday, 19 February 2004 19:49 (twenty-two years ago)

Have you read Blood Meridian? I'm not the world's biggest McCarthy fan, but there's something really breathless about BM (haha!) that ... ehh, can't take myself seriously after that.

― Atila the Honeybun (Atila the Honeybun), Thursday, 19 February 2004 21:59 (twenty-two years ago)

Okay, as means for redemption: Emile Zola's La Bete Humaine flat-out rules.

― Atila the Honeybun (Atila the Honeybun), Thursday, 19 February 2004 22:00 (twenty-two years ago)

Ah, MB jokes--how could you resist? I did make it through, after putting it down for a few months. I found the style intriguing in doses, but overall the story lost me. There's only so many 150 word sentences about them riding over baked clay with lightning flashing in the background that I care to read. Plus he just blows the kid off for 75 pages at a time. Without any kind of protagonist to focus on, I tend to get bored.

Suttree on the other hand lets the language serve the story, and I care Sut such that McCormac's verbosity doesn't wear thin, but enhances what's going on.

I should probably have included all this in my original post. Anyways. (And by the way, Atila, but isn't La Bete Humaine like 50 novels and sundry short stories? Or am I getting Zola confused with Balzac?)

― otto, Thursday, 19 February 2004 22:52 (twenty-two years ago)

No and yes. La Bete Humain is just one book of Zola's Rougon-Macquart cycle, which has like 20 volumes. But it's not necessary to read any more than one. As long as you know that the family's supposedly got an alcoholic gene and a psychotic gene, neither of which can be wholly supressed.

And I like Blood Meridian a lot in retrospect, but reading your comments reminds me of how frustrating a read it was. Especially after I "got" the conceit about the fat white man being a devil figure.

― Atila the Honeybun aka The Second Drummer Drowned (Atila the Honeybun), Friday, 20 February 2004 04:21 (twenty-two years ago)

am I getting Zola confused with Balzac?

Balzac's series of books was called the 'Comedie Humaine'. Something like 90 novels or so, a staggering amount, all churned out in one huge 30-year coffee binge. I've only read Pere Goriot, which I enjoyed a lot; hope to read a couple more sometime...

― NickB (NickB), Friday, 20 February 2004 09:52 (twenty-two years ago)

Not to turn this into a Cormac thread, but I'm actually about halfway through Blood Meridian right now and basically loving it. I kind of think it's a comedy...but I'll be able to make that argument more coherently when I'm done. I did love Suttree. And I like 'em both better than All the Pretty Horses, which I liked but seemed more self-conscious; I love the humor in Suttree (the bat-killing scene, e.g.). I actually think he's a really funny writer. But more on that later...

Back on thread topic:
Song of Solomon -- Toni Morrison

― spittle (spittle), Tuesday, 24 February 2004 03:16 (twenty-two years ago)

S/Z--Roland Barthes
A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court--Sam Clemens

― otto, Friday, 27 February 2004 01:11 (twenty-two years ago)

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