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Forum -> Hobbies, Crafts, and Collections -> Reading Room

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fmt4

Tue, Mar 16 2010, 7:54 pm

Raisin wrote:

Quote:

The rest of Dickens is just so dated and hard to read. I tried a couple of others after reading BH and GE and I was so disappointed in comparison. I was thinking maybe these two hadn't been serials but they were. I think some of the problems with him are ones I have with Jewish novels; they're so absorbed in their message they forget they have to write good fiction. These books manage to convey the messages without being overly preachy.

I really enjoyed almost all of Dickens books. Oliver twist is great, so is David Copperfeild, the pickwick papers is hilarious. Hard times is a bit depressing and so is Great expectations for some reason. btw I read almost all of them for the first time as a teenager and loved them, so they are definately not hard to read.

What about a Tale of Two Cities. I liked that a lot.

To Kill A Mockingbird is CLASSIC.

DefyGravity

Tue, Mar 16 2010, 8:29 pm

The newest Jodi Picoult book just came in for me at the library!!!!

PinkFridge

Tue, Mar 16 2010, 10:43 pm

Mention of hit man as a parnasa possibility reminded me of another series, the first being Miss Melville Regrets, by Evelyn Smith.
Again, far from my favorite author but for someone looking for a read along the lines of "if you like x you'll like y."

#1cook

Fri, Mar 19 2010, 1:44 pm

some of you mentioned very good authors but nobody mentioned my favorite James Patterson

also like:
Marry Higgins Clark
Jane Higgins Clark
Michal Connelly
John Grisham

saw50st8

Fri, Mar 19 2010, 2:09 pm

I'm a Stephen King fan.

I really liked the Prince of Tides.

I love JK Rowling.

I'm in middle of an Anita Shreve kick because I got a ton of books for really cheap (like $3/each). I liked the Pilots Wife and am enjoying her other ones.

I like Jodi Piccoult too.

I really, really like the Russians. I loved Crime and Punishment and Anna Karenina. There is something about those books that are just amazing and thought provoking.

I really like Ayn Rand as well.

DefyGravity

Fri, Mar 19 2010, 2:20 pm

I just read Under the Dome by Stephen King. . . I really miss the way he used to write Sad

Maya

Fri, Mar 19 2010, 2:22 pm

I tried getting into authors like James Patterson and John Grisham, but I did not enjoy them.

I loved all of Maeve Binchy's books.

Right now, I'm going through Paul Auster's books. I read Leviathan, loved it, and am now reading Moon Palace. I've never read anything so imaginative.

I also love Herman Wouk, Chaim Potok, Joe Keenan and Noah Gordon.

Last edited by Maya on Fri, Mar 19 2010, 2:30 pm; edited 1 time in total

DefyGravity

Fri, Mar 19 2010, 2:29 pm

I remembered some other authors that I love, but unfortunately, they haven't written a lot.

Jhumpa Lahiri (The Namesake)
Amulya Malladi
Khaled Hosseini (The Kite Runner)

HindaRochel

Sat, Mar 20 2010, 1:15 pm

Anyone read Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni? I found her stories beautiful

Tamiri

Sat, Mar 20 2010, 1:38 pm

We have two of her books in our book club. I am cataloging the books read since 1998 or so shock

and find some repetition.
I personally like Harlen Coban but will read just about anything worth reading. We have some good books in the club now.

desertrose

Sat, Mar 20 2010, 4:05 pm

ValleyMom wrote:

I just finished Little Bee and it was incredible!
I mean absolutely amazing.
Buy it.
Read it.
Love it!

Who is the author of little bee?

I loved Marian Keyes! But havent read her books in ages, she must have many new ones.
Birghtest star in the sky must be recent?

Ruchel

Sat, Mar 20 2010, 4:51 pm

Dostoevsky
Austen
Stephen King
Tolkien
Jean Giono
Sartre (except Nausea, yuck lol)
Lovecraft (yeah nasty racist and sexist even though he married a yid, go figure but at least his work is tznius! barely a woman LOL)
JK Rowling (sad that she felt the need to make it "racier")
Agatha Christie
Simenon
Anne Rice (when she isn't nutty)
Gustave Flaubert
Maupassant
Thomas Mann
Stefan Zweig
Pauline Gedge
Catherine Clément
Patricia Highsmith
Zola
José Mauro de Vasconcelos (but awfully sad, I can't touch his stuff anymore)

"I've only read one or two but they seem great"
Mo Hayder
Mo Yan
Matthew Stokoe
Clive Barker
Ryu Murakami
Richard Laymon
Michel Faber
Joyce Carol Oates
DL Snell
Caitlin Kiernan
Gabriel Garcia Marquez

Non fiction:
Sarah Chana Radcliffe
Esther Jungreis
Oliver Sacks

I must be forgetting a ton.

I love Shopaholic, Miserables and 100 years of solitude!

Some of my suggestions are not suitable for charedi people unless you are willing to skip stuff and disregard "foreign" hashkafos. I don't take responsibility etc. Wink

chaylizi

Fri, Apr 02 2010, 11:40 am

I have to add Moloka'I by Alan Brennert to this list. It was a really fascinating read.

(Please excuse the capital I at the end. It fixed itself automatically & I can't change it.)

sequoia

Fri, Apr 02 2010, 12:08 pm

George Eliot - Daniel Deronda, Middlemarch
Susanna Clarke - Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell, The Ladies of Grace Adieu
Alan Paton - Cry the Beloved Country
Evelyn Waugh - Brideshead Revisited
Alice Walker - Possessing the Secret of Joy
Nabokov - The Gift, Pnin
Pushkin - Eugene Onegin
Malamud - stories
Muriel Spark - The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie
Iris Murdoch - The Sandcastle, A Fairly Honorable Defeat
Francine Prose - Blue Angel
Kundera - The Art of the Novel, The Curtain
Venedikt Erofeev - Moscow to the End of the Line
Dostoevsky - Brothers Karamazov
Tsvetaeva - poetry
Brodsky - poetry
Robert Burton - The Anatomy of Melancholy
Coleridge - poetry
Kant - Critique of Pure Reason
Kierkegaard - Fear and Trembling
Mann - Buddenbrooks, Doctor Faustus
Chaucer - The Canterbury Tales
Sholom Aleichem - Tevye the Dairyman, The Boy Mottel
C. S. Lewis - Till We Have Faces, Surprised by Joy, A Grief Observed
Astrid Lindgren - Karlsson on the Roof
Banana Yoshimoto - Kitchen
Michel Faber - The Crimson Petal and the White (warning: NOT suitable for frum people)
Dina Rubina - Here Comes Moshiach
Neil Gaiman - Stardust
Rebbetzin Esther Jungreis - The Committed Life, Life is a Test, Jewish Soul on Fire
Rebbetzin Holly Pavlov - Water from the Well

Ruchel

Fri, Apr 02 2010, 12:17 pm

Faber's book is just genius (so true about not suitable, though).
I loved the Karamazov brothers. Stardust rocks, and the movie (basically 100% clean) is tzniuser than the book, for once!
I'm waiting for Jewish soul on fire to be translated to French!!

I hear Moloka'I is fascinating.

chaylizi

Fri, Apr 02 2010, 12:25 pm

I read it with my book club. I was really iffy about the subject, but I was really surprised. His other book- Hawaii, is also good. Moloka'I is better though.

PinkFridge

Fri, Apr 02 2010, 4:18 pm

Oh do I feel like community college level intelligence for chiming in here after the erudite posts immediately prior to this but I'm in the middle of Lisa Lutz's newest Spellman book. NOT a book for a time capsule or the ages, but just the thing to unwind with now.

HindaRochel

Sat, Apr 03 2010, 1:09 pm

Oh I love Neil Gaiman. Did you read Neverwhere?

Flaubert is wonderful.
Tolstoy Anna Karenina...never could finish War and Peace

Ruchel

Sat, Apr 03 2010, 3:13 pm

Loved loved loved Neverwhere! even my mom loved it.
Flaubert yay, but NOT Emma Bovary! lol
Never finished War and peace either...

HindaRochel

Sat, Apr 03 2010, 3:20 pm

Ruchel wrote:

Loved loved loved Neverwhere! even my mom loved it.
Flaubert yay, but NOT Emma Bovary! lol
Never finished War and peace either...

I liked Madam Bovary but preferred Sentimental Education...

I forget; did you read/like Anna Karenina?

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