Who is your favorite fiction author and what is your favorite book of theirs?

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Finridge
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Re: Who is your favorite fiction author and what is your favorite book of theirs?

Post by Finridge »

lightheir wrote: Sat Mar 27, 2021 9:01 am
straws46 wrote: Mon Dec 07, 2020 9:32 am For American literature I'm partial to Huckleberry Finn, The American Trilogy by John Dos Passos, Invisible Man, and To Kill a Mockingbird.
I recently re-read Huckleberry Finn and To Kill a Mockingbird.

Hate to say it, but Huck finn was dated and completely terrible. I do understand that at the time it was truly novel in its extensive use of slang (which set quite a few unfortunate stereotypes in media, but that's not why I didn't like it), but the whole novel seemed pointless and devolved in plot. The best moments (and quite a few literature critics apparently agree with me, after I looked up why this book was mentioned) are its portrayal of American in the parts BETWEEN the adventures, which are unfortunately far and few in between. Terrible, avoid at all costs. Just read the wikipedia summary and a few pages of the book for a taste, but otherwise avoid.

To kill a mockingbird was a lot better, and I could recommend it, but wasn't anywhere as good as it was compared to my modern-day standards as when I first read it 30+ years ago. It's borderline hard for me to recommend this book, as there are many other better books regarding race conflicts in small towns nowadays, both fiction and nonfiction.
It is interesting how, when we return to a book we've read before, we see how our reaction to it different, because we are not the same person with the same life experience when we re-read it. I also recently re-read both these books. And I have to say that while I liked Huck Finn the first time 30 years ago, I didn't really appreciate it's true greatness (in my opinion) until I re-read it. The section at the end is subpar, but what comes before that makes up for this glitch.

And I found Mockingbird to still be a real gem, especially if you deepen the experience by reading it together with To Set a Watchman and Atticus Finch: A Biography.
Last edited by Finridge on Thu Apr 15, 2021 1:01 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Who is your favorite fiction author and what is your favorite book of theirs?

Post by Finridge »

Nicolas wrote: Sat Nov 21, 2020 9:35 pm
mak1277 wrote: Wed Nov 18, 2020 7:45 am Can anyone really *like* Farewell to Arms, though?
I tried to read it and could not finish it, likewise for The Sun Also Rises. But I’m willing to give them another try, because, after all, it’s Hemingway. :D
Once you make it out of Paris, The Sun Also Rises gets a lot more interesting, in my opinion. So if it seems slow at first, try to just slog through it until you get to the trip to Spain. That's where things really pick up.

Oh, and in response to the question above, I really enjoyed A Farewell to Arms. Great book and one that I was also was able to like. But my favorite Hemingway book is For Whom the Bell Tolls. In my opinion, that is Hemingway's masterpiece, and the book of his that I have enjoyed the most.
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Re: Who is your favorite fiction author and what is your favorite book of theirs?

Post by Nicolas »

Finridge wrote: Thu Apr 15, 2021 12:58 am
Nicolas wrote: Sat Nov 21, 2020 9:35 pm
mak1277 wrote: Wed Nov 18, 2020 7:45 am Can anyone really *like* Farewell to Arms, though?
I tried to read it and could not finish it, likewise for The Sun Also Rises. But I’m willing to give them another try, because, after all, it’s Hemingway. :D
Once you make it out of Paris, The Sun Also Rises gets a lot more interesting, in my opinion. So if it seems slow at first, try to just slog through it until you get to the trip to Spain. That's where things really pick up.

Oh, and in response to the question above, I really enjoyed A Farewell to Arms. Great book and one that I was also was able to like. But my favorite Hemingway book is For Whom the Bell Tolls. In my opinion, that is Hemingway's masterpiece, and the book of his that I have enjoyed the most.
I’ll give it another go then, thanks. I never left Paris in the book before I gave up on it. And I’ll pick up For Whom the Bell Tolls also based on your recommendation. I never read it.
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Re: Who is your favorite fiction author and what is your favorite book of theirs?

Post by Finridge »

Nicolas wrote: Thu Apr 15, 2021 7:59 am
Finridge wrote: Thu Apr 15, 2021 12:58 am
Nicolas wrote: Sat Nov 21, 2020 9:35 pm
mak1277 wrote: Wed Nov 18, 2020 7:45 am Can anyone really *like* Farewell to Arms, though?
I tried to read it and could not finish it, likewise for The Sun Also Rises. But I’m willing to give them another try, because, after all, it’s Hemingway. :D
Once you make it out of Paris, The Sun Also Rises gets a lot more interesting, in my opinion. So if it seems slow at first, try to just slog through it until you get to the trip to Spain. That's where things really pick up.

Oh, and in response to the question above, I really enjoyed A Farewell to Arms. Great book and one that I was also was able to like. But my favorite Hemingway book is For Whom the Bell Tolls. In my opinion, that is Hemingway's masterpiece, and the book of his that I have enjoyed the most.
I’ll give it another go then, thanks. I never left Paris in the book before I gave up on it. And I’ll pick up For Whom the Bell Tolls also based on your recommendation. I never read it.
Hemingway is one of those authors where most of what is going on is under the surface. Intentionally so. Hemingway wrote following his "iceberg theory" of writing. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iceberg_theory . And so while he often uses short sentences, short simple words and fewer adjectives than some writers, you need to read carefully and deeply and impute a lot of the underlying feeling and emotion. This can mean slowing down a bit--but once you do this it is quite rewarding. It's like slowly sipping fine wine instead of gulping it down like beer--you can drink wine either way but you get more out of wine if you savor it. I do not find it at all true that Hemingway's writing is emotionless--quite the opposite. He just doesn't hit you over the head with it.

Hemingway's works were very carefully crafted. He spent way more time editing and deleting than he spent writing. In one of his letters to his friend, F. Scott Fitzgerald, he wrote, "“I write one page of masterpiece to ninety-one pages of sh**. I try to put the s** in the wastebasket.” He tried to approach perfection by removing anything that was not essential. And I would say he achieved this. This is why his works look do deceptively simple that it's easy to skip over the surface and miss the underling depth. You have to slow down and "feel" them as much as read them.

That said, not every person will like every style out there, and that is OK. If after giving "savoring" Hemingway an honest try, if it still leaves you cold, just move along to something else. Don't get me wrong--I think Hemingway was one of the best American writers of the 20th Century, and I just love his work. But there is so much good writing out there that we could spend our whole lives reading good books without rereading any book twice--life's too short to spend much time trying to enjoy writing that you don't enjoy just because other people (including people like me) are impressed by it...

I wish I'd learned that earlier--if after a valiant attempt, it seems a book is not a good match for me, it's best to just move on to something else I really enjoy rather than try to force-feed it to myself.
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Re: Who is your favorite fiction author and what is your favorite book of theirs?

Post by crinkles2 »

Toss up between John Irving (world according to garp) and Stephen king (hearts in Atlantis).
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Re: Who is your favorite fiction author and what is your favorite book of theirs?

Post by Artful Dodger »

Finridge wrote: Fri Apr 16, 2021 1:32 am
Nicolas wrote: Thu Apr 15, 2021 7:59 am
Finridge wrote: Thu Apr 15, 2021 12:58 am
Nicolas wrote: Sat Nov 21, 2020 9:35 pm
mak1277 wrote: Wed Nov 18, 2020 7:45 am Can anyone really *like* Farewell to Arms, though?
I tried to read it and could not finish it, likewise for The Sun Also Rises. But I’m willing to give them another try, because, after all, it’s Hemingway. :D
Once you make it out of Paris, The Sun Also Rises gets a lot more interesting, in my opinion. So if it seems slow at first, try to just slog through it until you get to the trip to Spain. That's where things really pick up.

Oh, and in response to the question above, I really enjoyed A Farewell to Arms. Great book and one that I was also was able to like. But my favorite Hemingway book is For Whom the Bell Tolls. In my opinion, that is Hemingway's masterpiece, and the book of his that I have enjoyed the most.
I’ll give it another go then, thanks. I never left Paris in the book before I gave up on it. And I’ll pick up For Whom the Bell Tolls also based on your recommendation. I never read it.
Hemingway is one of those authors where most of what is going on is under the surface. Intentionally so. Hemingway wrote following his "iceberg theory" of writing. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iceberg_theory . And so while he often uses short sentences, short simple words and fewer adjectives than some writers, you need to read carefully and deeply and impute a lot of the underlying feeling and emotion. This can mean slowing down a bit--but once you do this it is quite rewarding. It's like slowly sipping fine wine instead of gulping it down like beer--you can drink wine either way but you get more out of wine if you savor it. I do not find it at all true that Hemingway's writing is emotionless--quite the opposite. He just doesn't hit you over the head with it.

Hemingway's works were very carefully crafted. He spent way more time editing and deleting than he spent writing. In one of his letters to his friend, F. Scott Fitzgerald, he wrote, "“I write one page of masterpiece to ninety-one pages of sh**. I try to put the s** in the wastebasket.” He tried to approach perfection by removing anything that was not essential. And I would say he achieved this. This is why his works look do deceptively simple that it's easy to skip over the surface and miss the underling depth. You have to slow down and "feel" them as much as read them.

That said, not every person will like every style out there, and that is OK. If after giving "savoring" Hemingway an honest try, if it still leaves you cold, just move along to something else. Don't get me wrong--I think Hemingway was one of the best American writers of the 20th Century, and I just love his work. But there is so much good writing out there that we could spend our whole lives reading good books without rereading any book twice--life's too short to spend much time trying to enjoy writing that you don't enjoy just because other people (including people like me) are impressed by it...

I wish I'd learned that earlier--if after a valiant attempt, it seems a book is not a good match for me, it's best to just move on to something else I really enjoy rather than try to force-feed it to myself.
I’m a big Audible fan, but I’ve always read Hemingway. I like to take my time.
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Re: Who is your favorite fiction author and what is your favorite book of theirs?

Post by Nicolas »

Finridge wrote: Fri Apr 16, 2021 1:32 am Hemingway is one of those authors where most of what is going on is under the surface. Intentionally so. Hemingway wrote following his "iceberg theory" of writing.
Thanks for the reply. I know that Hemingway favored short declarative sentences using forceful words. It makes sense that he spent so much time editing, I didn’t know that. He must’ve been a perfectionist. Too bad he ended the way he did. I’ve read that you should only read the best books as you’ll not have time for the others. I think his works qualify.
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Re: Who is your favorite fiction author and what is your favorite book of theirs?

Post by jjunk »

I read too much to have just one but I also dont read a lot of fiction. If I had to pick, I'd say I think the greatest thing ever written is Paradise Lost by Milton. It's a poem though, not a book.

Tolkien - LOTR, Hobbit
Palahniuk - Choke, Survivor
Crichton - Congo, Travels (technically non-fiction)
King - Needful Things, Dark Tower series, The Stand
Huxley - Brave New World
VE Schaub - Shades of Magic series
Weis and Hickman - Dragonlance series
Poe - Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket
Twain - Huck Finn
London - White Fang, Call of the Wild
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Re: Who is your favorite fiction author and what is your favorite book of theirs?

Post by tenkuky »

I just finished Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson (on recommendations of this board) after having read his Seveneves.
Visionary and entertaining. :beer
Now, I want to read the other cyberpunk masterpiece, Neuromancer.
Any others in the genre I should sink into?
Thanks!
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Re: Who is your favorite fiction author and what is your favorite book of theirs?

Post by HootingSloth »

tenkuky wrote: Mon Jun 28, 2021 8:41 am I just finished Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson (on recommendations of this board) after having read his Seveneves.
Visionary and entertaining. :beer
Now, I want to read the other cyberpunk masterpiece, Neuromancer.
Any others in the genre I should sink into?
Thanks!
When I saw this thread title pop up, I immediately thought to myself "Neal Stephenson of course!" I don't think my favorite book of his, Cryptonomicon, has has been mentioned (it's only mildly cyberpunk-themed though). Diamond Age is also very, very good.
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Re: Who is your favorite fiction author and what is your favorite book of theirs?

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I've not seen anyone mention Christopher Moore. For laugh-out-loud comedy he's great. I guess technically he's in the same genre as Terry Pratchett: Comedy-fantasy. I like Pratchett a lot too, but they're quite different from each other.

A favorite book is tough. If you like Shakespeare, try his "Fool" series. If you would like to see a fine lampoon of vampires etc, try "Blood Sucking Fiends: A Love Story". My wife was put off by swearing in his books, but even she liked "Sacre Bleu" anyway.

Nothing life changing here, but highly entertaining.
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Re: Who is your favorite fiction author and what is your favorite book of theirs?

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Finridge wrote: Thu Apr 15, 2021 12:48 am Leo Tolstoy. War and Peace (Briggs translation)

Seriously. This book has a "reputation" but give it a try and I expect most will find it more readable and more engaging than they might expect.
Indeed. The book is a commitment to read. But it’s truly a great book.

If I’m picking Tolstoy, though, I’m picking Anna Karenina as my book. War and Peace is epic, but Anna Karenina has everything in a single book. Love, lust, duty, betrayal, class struggle, suicide…and trains!
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Re: Who is your favorite fiction author and what is your favorite book of theirs?

Post by OpenMinded1 »

I'll just name a few that I like a lot.

Kurt Vonnegut either Breakfast of Champions, Cat's Cradle, or Sirens of Titan

John Irving, The World According to Garp

Cormac McCarthy, All the Pretty Horses
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Re: Who is your favorite fiction author and what is your favorite book of theirs?

Post by OpenMinded1 »

ensign wrote: Tue Oct 06, 2020 7:38 am John Updike, “Rabbit, Run”.
That is an outstanding book and author. The whole "Rabbit" series is excellent.
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Re: Who is your favorite fiction author and what is your favorite book of theirs?

Post by smectym »

Malcom Lowry, “Under the Volcano”
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Re: Who is your favorite fiction author and what is your favorite book of theirs?

Post by OpenMinded1 »

pezblanco wrote: Sat Jul 11, 2020 11:02 am Some writers that I try to read everything that they write or have ever wrote ... Listed maybe in order of literary merit:

Vargas Llosa: La Fiesta del Chivo (The Feast of the Goat in English) ... a novelization of the astonishing tale of the Trujillo dictatorship in the Dominican Republic. A tremendous writer (Nobel laureate).

Tom Wolfe: The Bonfire of the Vanities .... many many others are just as good.

Elmore Leonard: There are so many to choose from (Swag or maybe Get Shorty)

Carl Hiassen: They are all great funny books (Skin Tight, Tourist Season) ... his books are why I never wanted to live in Florida. :D
Regarding Tom Wolfe, I really enjoyed most of his books, especially The Bonfire of the Vanities, but thought a Man in Full was pretty bad.
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Re: Who is your favorite fiction author and what is your favorite book of theirs?

Post by Finridge »

quantAndHold wrote: Mon Jun 28, 2021 7:45 pm
Finridge wrote: Thu Apr 15, 2021 12:48 am Leo Tolstoy. War and Peace (Briggs translation)

Seriously. This book has a "reputation" but give it a try and I expect most will find it more readable and more engaging than they might expect.
Indeed. The book is a commitment to read. But it’s truly a great book.

If I’m picking Tolstoy, though, I’m picking Anna Karenina as my book. War and Peace is epic, but Anna Karenina has everything in a single book. Love, lust, duty, betrayal, class struggle, suicide…and trains!
Many professors and critics rate Anna Karenina as the greater book, so you are in good company. I personally liked War and Peace better, but Anna Karenina is on par in quality. My favorite translation of A.K. is Rosamund Bartlett's. She is also the author of one of the best biographies of Leo Tolstoy.

I've learned that when reading a translated work, the translation has a HUGE impact on my enjoyment of the work. I'm not a scholar or speaker of Russian, and so lack any qualifications to defend my choices by "objective" standards, but I know what I like. While I can't say which translation best reflects and retains the original work, I am able to decide which translation reads well for me. And so I will aggressively compare translations before going with one. This can take a lot of time and effort, but I found it worth it. And for me personally, I've found the best way to do this is to get multiple translations and then compare parallel passages. Sometimes you can find sites that do this with some passages, but they rarely provide the breadth I'd like to see.

The dominant translations of both War and Peace and Anna Karenina are currently those by the husband and wife couple, Pevear and Volokhonsky. I own their translations--I bought them before I knew better--but personally I can't stand them. Their translations just don't "flow" well for me.

And also a major deal-breaker for me was the way Pevear and Volokhonsky chose to deal with the French passages in War and Peace. War and Peace was a bilingual novel: most of it is (as you might expect) written in Russian, but their is a significant amount of French. And at the time that the Leo Tolstoy wrote War and Peace, most of his readers were fluent in both Russian and French. However, a typical reader of the English translation will not be fluent in either Russian or French. Nonetheless, Pevear and Volokhonsky inexplicably chose to NOT translate the French passages in the body of the book, and instead deal with them by providing the translations in footnotes. This completely disrupts the reading experience. Like I said, this was a complete deal-breaker for me. But even their English translations just don't "flow" well for me.

For those who are interested, some links:

https://sites.google.com/site/tolstoytr ... -and-peace

https://www.firstthings.com/blogs/first ... lowed-down

https://www.tolstoytherapy.com/on-war-p ... th-pevear/

https://www.tolstoytherapy.com/best-tra ... and-peace/

https://www.tolstoytherapy.com/on-war-p ... pevear_17/





https://www.tolstoytherapy.com/on-war-p ... th-pevear/
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Re: Who is your favorite fiction author and what is your favorite book of theirs?

Post by Elena »

Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra, El ingenioso hidalgo don Quijote de la Mancha (aka, Quijote), 1605-1615, esp. the second book.
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Re: Who is your favorite fiction author and what is your favorite book of theirs?

Post by bstevlin »

Simon Sebag Montefiore. One Winter Night. The characters involved are some of Stalin's elite living in Moscow at the end of World War II. For the elite life is good all things considered until a teenage prank turns deadly. An advisor to Stalin convinces him that the death of two teenagers is a conspiracy. The lives of the small circle of friends and colleagues soon goes very bad.The author is Russian Historian, but this my favorite book by him.
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Re: Who is your favorite fiction author and what is your favorite book of theirs?

Post by AnnetteLouisan »

So many favorites but lately I’m a fan of Elena Ferrante. My Brilliant Friend and the other 3 books in the series.
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Re: Who is your favorite fiction author and what is your favorite book of theirs?

Post by Starfish »

I really like south American literature, especially Vargas Llosa and Gabriel Garcia Marques. My favorite book ever is a One Hundred Years of Solitude.
From eastern Europe, Mila Kundera well known and translated. I personally like more his novels from the early "communist" period (The Laugh), although later ones made him famous (The unbearable lightness of being).
Another very interesting and different book is 1Q84.
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Re: Who is your favorite fiction author and what is your favorite book of theirs?

Post by OpenMinded1 »

Favorite is difficult. I've read so many. I'll just name a few that really stand to for me.

John Updike - Rabbit, Run. This is the first in a series of Rabbit novels by Updike. I recommend reading the whole series in the following order - Rabbit Run, Rabbit Redux, Rabbit is Rich, Rabbit at Rest. This author's brilliance is mind boggling.

Kurt Vonnegut - Cat's Cradle.

Cormac McCarthy - All the Pretty Horses
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Re: Who is your favorite fiction author and what is your favorite book of theirs?

Post by OpenMinded1 »

OpenMinded1 wrote: Fri Jun 10, 2022 7:13 am Favorite is difficult. I've read so many. I'll just name a few that really stand to for me.

John Updike - Rabbit, Run. This is the first in a series of Rabbit novels by Updike. I recommend reading the whole series in the following order - Rabbit Run, Rabbit Redux, Rabbit is Rich, Rabbit at Rest. This author's brilliance is mind boggling.

Kurt Vonnegut - Cat's Cradle.

Cormac McCarthy - All the Pretty Horses
Just realized that I posted in this thread about a year ago. My answer was similar. :D
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Re: Who is your favorite fiction author and what is your favorite book of theirs?

Post by nisiprius »

I'm re-reading Hammond Innes' The Land God Gave to Cain, a few weeks after re-reading Air Bridge. I won't say he is my favorite writer, and indeed he isn't actually good in the way I think Nevil Shute is actually good, but my gosh he sure does read well.
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Re: Who is your favorite fiction author and what is your favorite book of theirs?

Post by wabbott »

John D. MacDonald - Pale Gray for Guilt
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle - Hound of the Baskervilles
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Re: Who is your favorite fiction author and what is your favorite book of theirs?

Post by HomerJ »

crinkles2 wrote: Fri Apr 16, 2021 5:20 am Toss up between John Irving (world according to garp) and Stephen king (hearts in Atlantis).
Cider House Rules or maybe even A Prayer for Owen Meany for John Irving for me (but I do like World according to Garp a lot too)
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Re: Who is your favorite fiction author and what is your favorite book of theirs?

Post by HomerJ »

Orson Scott Card

Ender's Game is a great great book... And then there are like 10 more after that (none as good, but all decent).

And he has other series

Pastwatch: The Redemption of Christopher Columbus is a great science-fiction time-travel book... The idea is what if you could go back and change one thing in history (the title tells you what moment in time they pick). You can only pick one moment to change, because, after you change it, everything else (even your own existence in the future) changes as well.

Plus his crazy crazy crazy, but very well done, Pathfinder series... Another time-travel story (trilogy this time), but on a different world from Earth (first colony ship kind of thing), but so good.
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Re: Who is your favorite fiction author and what is your favorite book of theirs?

Post by Pacific »

Gary Jennings

Tie between Aztec and The Journeyer
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Re: Who is your favorite fiction author and what is your favorite book of theirs?

Post by Bayliss »

Richard Russo--Nobody's Fool.
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Re: Who is your favorite fiction author and what is your favorite book of theirs?

Post by bertilak »

Bayliss wrote: Sat Jun 11, 2022 2:41 pm Richard Russo--Nobody's Fool.
I'll second that!

The Paul Newman movie is pretty good, too. (Is there a Paul Newman movie that is NOT pretty good?)

There are other Richard Russo novels that are also good. Many of them focus on small, fictionalized, upstate New York towns and, since I come from that area, they have a special nostalgia for me. He knows his stuff in that area. His book Empire Falls is the one that won a Pulitzer, but I think I prefer Nobody's Fool.
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Re: Who is your favorite fiction author and what is your favorite book of theirs?

Post by MoonOrb »

Kate Atkinson; Life After Life.
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Re: Who is your favorite fiction author and what is your favorite book of theirs?

Post by tonysk »

Elena wrote: Tue Jun 29, 2021 1:17 am Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra, El ingenioso hidalgo don Quijote de la Mancha (aka, Quijote), 1605-1615, esp. the second book.
Yes! I read Don Quijote during the pandemic lockdown and it was an epic experience for me. What many call truly the first and greatest novel. Amazing that Cervantes used basically every literary device known to man in this first of all novels. My experience was enriched by taking the online Yale course on Don Quijote by Roberto González Echevarría. Highly recommended.

https://oyc.yale.edu/spanish-and-portuguese/span-300

The best contemporary novel I’ve read is The Overstory by Richard Powers. He is a magician with words and. . . oh, I do love trees.
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Re: Who is your favorite fiction author and what is your favorite book of theirs?

Post by Bayliss »

bertilak wrote: Sat Jun 11, 2022 4:59 pm
Bayliss wrote: Sat Jun 11, 2022 2:41 pm Richard Russo--Nobody's Fool.
I'll second that!

The Paul Newman movie is pretty good, too. (Is there a Paul Newman movie that is NOT pretty good?)

There are other Richard Russo novels that are also good. Many of them focus on small, fictionalized, upstate New York towns and, since I come from that area, they have a special nostalgia for me. He knows his stuff in that area. His book Empire Falls is the one that won a Pulitzer, but I think I prefer Nobody's Fool.
And the sequel Everybody's Fool was good too. And I agree with you Empire Falls was more critically acclaimed but I like Nobody's Fool better.

I wish there were other writers that had his writing style.
Nicolas
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Re: Who is your favorite fiction author and what is your favorite book of theirs?

Post by Nicolas »

bertilak wrote: Sat Jun 11, 2022 4:59 pm (Is there a Paul Newman movie that is NOT pretty good?)
I didn’t like Hud (1963). This is a tedious film all about what a jerk Newman’s character is. But I like his other films.
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crinkles2
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Re: Who is your favorite fiction author and what is your favorite book of theirs?

Post by crinkles2 »

HomerJ wrote: Fri Jun 10, 2022 11:57 pm
crinkles2 wrote: Fri Apr 16, 2021 5:20 am Toss up between John Irving (world according to garp) and Stephen king (hearts in Atlantis).
Cider House Rules or maybe even A Prayer for Owen Meany for John Irving for me (but I do like World according to Garp a lot too)
A prayer for Owen Meany was a terrific book, brought tears to my eyes!
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