Continuing the Book Meme
Sep. 28th, 2003 01:12 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
melwilSeems that many of you gacked the fiction/book meme and I haven't had the time to reply in all your comments with my book recommendations. So, instead, I'm going to recommend nine works of fiction and one non-fiction here. They aren't all great works, but I've enjoyed reading them all.
1. Last Drinks by Andrew McGahan: According to Amazon, this book doesn't exist. (Wierd, because I'm holding it . . .) It's a crime novel set in the late 1990's in Brisbane and the southern Queensland Hinterland, with flashbacks to Brisbane of the 1970's and 80's when Government sponsored corruption was the norm.
2. Pastures of the Blue Crane by H. F. Brinsmead: One of my childhood favourites after my aunt gave it to me as a birthday present. It's a coming of age story, I suppose. I've always found it a gentle read, even when it deals with topics that aren't gentle. I fell in love with Ryl's old house, never realising how much the house my father was building was going to be like it.
3. The Ladies Auxiliary by Tova Mirvis: I bought this earlier this year and pretty much devoured it. It deals with an outsider coming into a well established community. The community and the outsider in this book are Orthodox Jewish, but the situation could apply to a million and one other communities.
4. The Hours by Michael Cunningham: You probably all saw the movie, even if you haven't read it, but the layering in this book is amazing. It's not a light read though.
5. The Corrections by Jonathan Franzen: I read this one on the way to and from work, and actually found myself looking forward to work so I could read more. The language is the real star in this book - beyond the well thought out characters and back stores. He writes beautiful vivid phrases.
6. The Tall Pine Polka by Lorna Landvik: It's not a great work of literature and most of it is implausible, but I found it a great read anyway. I really fell in love with some of the characters.
7. A Town Like Alice by Nevil Shute: My parents gave me a book containing three Nevil Shute novels when I was nine. This one was the first one I read and I fell in love with it totally. My favourite part is looking at outback Australia of the 1950's through the eyes of an Englishwoman.
8. The Chosen by Chaim Potok: It's not my favourite Chaim Potok book, but it was the point I started from. I adore the characters, love the passage of learning they take, and I learnt a lot myself about a time and a religion I wasn't familiar with when I picked it up as a twelve year old.
9. On the Beack by Nevil Shute: The best end of the world book ever. Set in Melbourne in the 1950's, but recently made into a tele-movie set in the present day. The sheer stupidity of humans is clear in this book, but also the beauty of them.
And non-fiction
10. April Fool's Day by Bryce Courtenay: This tells the story of Bryce Courtenay's son, a haemophiliac who was given a blood transfusion containing the HIV virus. It's an angry and sad book, at times really dificult to read, but it's really worth it.
There we go - ten books.
1. Last Drinks by Andrew McGahan: According to Amazon, this book doesn't exist. (Wierd, because I'm holding it . . .) It's a crime novel set in the late 1990's in Brisbane and the southern Queensland Hinterland, with flashbacks to Brisbane of the 1970's and 80's when Government sponsored corruption was the norm.
2. Pastures of the Blue Crane by H. F. Brinsmead: One of my childhood favourites after my aunt gave it to me as a birthday present. It's a coming of age story, I suppose. I've always found it a gentle read, even when it deals with topics that aren't gentle. I fell in love with Ryl's old house, never realising how much the house my father was building was going to be like it.
3. The Ladies Auxiliary by Tova Mirvis: I bought this earlier this year and pretty much devoured it. It deals with an outsider coming into a well established community. The community and the outsider in this book are Orthodox Jewish, but the situation could apply to a million and one other communities.
4. The Hours by Michael Cunningham: You probably all saw the movie, even if you haven't read it, but the layering in this book is amazing. It's not a light read though.
5. The Corrections by Jonathan Franzen: I read this one on the way to and from work, and actually found myself looking forward to work so I could read more. The language is the real star in this book - beyond the well thought out characters and back stores. He writes beautiful vivid phrases.
6. The Tall Pine Polka by Lorna Landvik: It's not a great work of literature and most of it is implausible, but I found it a great read anyway. I really fell in love with some of the characters.
7. A Town Like Alice by Nevil Shute: My parents gave me a book containing three Nevil Shute novels when I was nine. This one was the first one I read and I fell in love with it totally. My favourite part is looking at outback Australia of the 1950's through the eyes of an Englishwoman.
8. The Chosen by Chaim Potok: It's not my favourite Chaim Potok book, but it was the point I started from. I adore the characters, love the passage of learning they take, and I learnt a lot myself about a time and a religion I wasn't familiar with when I picked it up as a twelve year old.
9. On the Beack by Nevil Shute: The best end of the world book ever. Set in Melbourne in the 1950's, but recently made into a tele-movie set in the present day. The sheer stupidity of humans is clear in this book, but also the beauty of them.
And non-fiction
10. April Fool's Day by Bryce Courtenay: This tells the story of Bryce Courtenay's son, a haemophiliac who was given a blood transfusion containing the HIV virus. It's an angry and sad book, at times really dificult to read, but it's really worth it.
There we go - ten books.
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no subject
on 2003-09-27 09:00 pm (UTC)Have you read any of her others? I liked Patty Jane's House of Curl. Like you said, it's not great literature by any means but she makes the characters so compelling that I can totally overlook the other stuff.
no subject
on 2003-09-27 10:16 pm (UTC)no subject
on 2003-09-28 12:29 am (UTC)no subject
on 2003-09-28 12:38 am (UTC)no subject
on 2003-09-30 03:54 pm (UTC)no subject
on 2003-09-28 05:28 am (UTC)A very powerful story. I saw the movie with Gregory Peck and Ava Gardner from the early 60's and had to read the book. It's one of those stories that stays with you and haunts you.
no subject
on 2003-11-02 04:04 pm (UTC)I've seen you on some friends lists, and you're doing the nanowrimo thing too, so I thought I'd post and say howdy. Erm. . . howdy. Mind if I friend you? I'm relatively new to LJ and am still desperately trying to appear more popular than I really am.
Trivia: On The Beach rocks. And you know how Ava Gardner is famous for this quote, made when she was filming the story in Melbourne:
"Melbourne is the perfect place to set a story about the end of the world."
Well, turns out it's a hoax. A journalist made it up. So next time someone trots that one out to seem all urbane and glitzy, stab them right in their black turtleneck.