nisiprius wrote: ↑Sat Dec 05, 2020 8:19 pm
I find it impossible to choose any single favorite author or book, of course, but here goes.
I find the novels of Nevil Shute to be extraordinarily engaging, and it I had to pick just one, it would be
The Trustee from the Toolroom. Or maybe
An Old Captivity, or
A Town Like Alice (aka
The Legacy), or
No Highway. I have to warn people that I personally dislike
On the Beach, even though it's possibly his most famous.
Right now I'm reading a novel by the late Dick Francis, and I have to say he is really one-of-a-kind. In a way, his novels are sort of junky, but he has something extraordinary for a writer of mysteries or thrillers: a sort of superhero character who experiences
convincing fear of physical injury. The polar opposite of Robert Parker's wisecracking Spenser, or Lee Child's similar Jack Reacher. Unfortunately Dick Francis has IMHO hard-to-remember titles--that is, the titles are easy to remember but I can never remember which is which, and they are not all equally good. However,
Whip Hand is one of the best.
Two of my all-time favorite novels are by Arnold Bennett:
The Card, aka
Denry the Audacious, and
Riceyman Steps.
Everybody knows George Orwell's
Nineteen Eighty-Four and
Animal Farm and I don't want to come off as one of those annoying reverse snobs who always knows something better than the most famous work, but I love
A Clergyman's Daughter and highly recommend it. The part where the heroine gets a job as a schoolteacher in a bad private school is beyond praise.
I like the science fiction of the "Futurians" and John W. Campbell era, and despite a lot of reservations, yeah, I love Robert Heinlein. IMHO his best work, by a good margin, is
Double Star. And, of course, his short story,
Universe.
I wish I had responded more promptly to this. I share many of those thoughts.
Thanks for the tip on Nevil Shute. I read “The Trustee from the Tool Room” and “A Town Like Alice.” Not my usual reading fare, but I enjoyed them both. “Alice” was especially good on courage, perseverance, and individual determination to survive, make her town a better place, etc.
I like all of Dick Francis’ novels, which revolve around horse racing. Even though I don’t know anything about horses, never rode one, and don’t bet on races, he gave me a good appreciation for the sport. I would add that, while many of his protagonists are jockeys, trainers or owners, others like his banker or his architect “heroes” are also good, in my opinion.
I also like that his characters are courageous but not fearless super-heroes like Spenser or Jack Reacher, though I enjoy those characters very much, too. I assume you admire John D. MacDonald’s Travis McGee for similar reasons. I remember his fright after barely surviving a guard-dog attack in “A Deadly Shade of Gold”:
“I bounded up, feeling as cold as if I’d handled snakes. From the instant he bounded at me until he fell to the ground at the base of the wall was perhaps less than two full seconds…. It is possible to age a year in two seconds. Animals that come at you in the night is one of the horror dreams of childhood. You never really get over them.… Suddenly I wondered if they had pair of dogs, and the thought nearly sent me hustling toward my escape line. I couldn’t expect that much luck twice. Few men have given me as much instant fright as that dog gave me.”
https://books.google.com/books?id=lxQuN ... gs&f=false
I like all of Robert Heinlein’s stories, with perhaps fewer reservations, from the youthful “The Door Into Summer” to the more controversial “Farnham’s Freehold” and “Time Enough for Love.” Most of them I like better than his most famous: “Stranger in a Strange Land.”
ETA: one sentence to the quote from "A Deadly Shade of Gold."
"Well, she was just seventeen, You Know What I Mean, and the way she looked... was way beyond compare."