Looking to reignite my passion for reading

a reply to: Peeple

Not anymore. My Portuguese was at about 50% and I lost that too..

Oh! Oh! Oh!

I cannot believe that nobody (myself included) has mentioned Samuel Clemens yet! You can get all of his works as ePub files from multiple places, including Project Gutenberg.

If you really want to read some good American English literature, we can't forget Samuel Clemens, known also as Mark Twain. And I beg you to read Roughing It.

Roughing It is an amazing novel. I'm my unqualified opinion, it's perhaps his best work. It's part travel log, part autobiography, and all the best kind of balderdash. I promise you a belly laugh at least every second page, probably more.

The amazing thing is that he paints in words what is probably a pretty damned accurate picture of the American west in the mid-1800s; you just have to look through the sharp, satirical and sometimes sardonic wit to see the real picture.

Please read it if you haven't already.
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a reply to: incoserv

Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn, that's about it.

Whenever I hear Johnny B. Goode I always think about Huck.

a reply to: 19Bones79

The Lord of the Rings Trilogy remains one of the best ever I have read.

Though it spawned thousands of imitations, you really won't find anything else like it. Not even by Tolkein himself.

What makes The Lord of the Rings so satisfying is that it seems to be set in a real world, though that world isn't the familiar one we know. The realism of Middle-Earth is conferred upon it by a complex history, fully worked out by Tolkein before he started writing the novels. The reader only picks up hints about this backstory while reading. The full story, or most of it, can be gleaned from Tolkein's other non-scholarly writings, most notably The Silmarillion, but reading those works won't give you the same pleasure as TLotR. I have read a few of them; they're for Tolkein obsessives only.

* * *

One writer of fiction whose works do share a common backstory is David Mitchell. Nearly all his books feature quasi-supernatural elements, not necessarily central to the plot or the action but connected with this backstory. The stories don't form a series. They're about different subjects, have different settings, feature (mostly) different characters and are written in different literary styles and genres. However, characters from one story may appear or be referred to in another -- but they are often heavily transformed, so you have to put in work to recognise them.

These elements and characters are the only manifestations of the backstory. In his first five books they came and went, more like dropped hints than explanations, and those five books are great. In his sixth book, however, he began revealing the backstory. Disappointingly, this changed the book, and by implication all his earlier work, from literary fiction into horror/mystery genre novels.

His seventh novel was a strange hybrid: part horror story (Stephen King and Clive Barker eat your hearts out) and part a literary novel about a successful writer whose pride is just about to encounter a nasty fall. Being neither flesh nor fowl, it doesn't work; but it helps you understand (if you're interested in that kind of thing) what kind of a writer David Mitchell is really trying to be.

He has published eight works of fiction. Here they are, arranged according to how much I enjoyed and was impressed by them, beginning with the least delightful and ending with the most (I should add that even my least favourite is still a great read).

The Bone Clocks (2014)

Number9Dream (2001)

Slade House (2015)

Utopia Avenue (2020)

Black Swan Green (2006)

Ghostwritten (1999)

Cloud Atlas (2004)

The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet (2010)

a reply to: Astyanax

You're right. I tried The Silmarillion and I just couldn't.


Thanks for adding more books to the list I'm going to make an effort with all the suggestions no matter how long it takes.

a reply to: 19Bones79

I'm going to make an effort with all the suggestions

Good luck.

The links in my previous post will help you decide whether any of David Mitchell's books are for you.

originally posted by: incoserv
Oh! Oh! Oh!

I cannot believe that nobody (myself included) has mentioned Samuel Clemens yet! You can get all of his works as ePub files from multiple places, including Project Gutenberg.

If you really want to read some good American English literature, we can't forget Samuel Clemens, known also as Mark Twain. And I beg you to read Roughing It.

Roughing It is an amazing novel. I'm my unqualified opinion, it's perhaps his best work. It's part travel log, part autobiography, and all the best kind of balderdash. I promise you a belly laugh at least every second page, probably more.

The amazing thing is that he paints in words what is probably a pretty damned accurate picture of the American west in the mid-1800s; you just have to look through the sharp, satirical and sometimes sardonic wit to see the real picture.

I heartily second that suggestion! He had a wicked sense of humor and many laughs can be found among his works. If you want to quickly check out is style, I would recommend reading the short story "A Day At Niagara" first.

I'm kind of partial to "Mark Twain" because my Mom named me after him. In a way. My middle name is "Dwain," so she took "Twain" and changed the T to a D. But he was the inspiration for my name, of which I've always been proud.

Another book I should recommend is "On The Beach," by Australian writer Nevil Shute. It's about the end of the world and it is my all-time favorite book. I first read it in the mid-1970s, and then lost that copy. But, I found another one and now I have three copies of it! It's really poignant.

a reply to: TrulyColorBlind

A small correction. Shute wasn't Australian. He emigrated to Australia aged 51. He died ten years later.

originally posted by: 19Bones79
a reply to: incoserv

Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn, that's about it.

Whenever I hear Johnny B. Goode I always think about Huck.

Those are good, but Clemens is so very much more than those two novels.

He wrote many incredible short stories and essays. Many of his speeches are recorded for posterity.

The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County is one his most popular short stories.

His essay On the Decay of the Art of Lying is another.

But seriously, you're doing yourself an injustice if you don't grab hold of a copy of Roughing It.

If you use eBooks, Kindel or ePub, pretty much everything that Twain wrote is available in digital format at Project Gutenberg either here, or here.

I hope you enjoy.
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If you're interested in "indie" authors... I have self-published four books (two novels, two short story collections) on Amazon. I have some free reading material on my Booksie website and have received three honorable mentions from a few different national/international writing contests (two of them from the L. Ron Hubbard, Writers of the Future contest). My website (provides links to book sales on Amazon), and the Booksie website, are here:

JDWilsonBooks.com

www.booksie.com...

Thanks!!

a reply to: Astyanax
It is a bit like both books, in some ways more like "The Davinci Code", and in other ways, "The Name of the Rose"...

But it's also not really very much like either of those books, as "The Historian" has a more 'wide-ranging' plot, as well as multiple storylines.
And also as well, most of the historical aspects are drawn from real history (right down to the more fantastical 'seeming' parts regarding Vlad The Impaler).

Love to hear what you think, if you read it!

a reply to: lostgirl

Love to hear what you think, if you read it!

That's very generous indeed, thank you. I'm afraid I shall have to disappoint you, though. I read some of the reviews on Goodreads and decided it really wasn't for me.

I'm currently reading Cranford. Aloud, in bed, to the wife. February's fiction crop was The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida (see my earlier post for a description), The Moon of Gomrath by Alan Garner (a Tolkeinesque children's fantasy from the 1960s, very atmospheric and quite frightening; we didn't coddle kids back then), Jessica Mitford's personal and family memoir Hons & Rebels, and last but not least, Tom Jones -- for, I blush to confess, the very first time.

I began it in mid-January. Enormous as it is (it puts The Historian in the shade), it's a real page-turner. Novels in English scarcely existed at the time it was written; Clarissa was, I think, TJ's only notable predecessor. So the form as such didn't exist yet and Fielding was free to experiment as he pleased. Large sections of the book are addressed directly to the reader; the author comments on his characters' actions and personalities as if you and he are gossiping about them over a bottle (or two) of wine. As a fellow writer, I was amused and made envious by his frankly and frequently expressed conviction that his book was for the ages. He was right, and how: Tom Jones will have been in print for 275 years and counting next year.

So there's a current sample of my taste. Perhaps it explains why I am not attracted to The Historian.

originally posted by: Astyanax
A small correction. Shute wasn't Australian. He emigrated to Australia aged 51. He died ten years later.

Ah, thanks for that. I wasn't aware of it.

a reply to: 19Bones79

100 years of solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez is pretty good.

originally posted by: 19Bones79

I mostly prefer horror, fantasy, sci-fi but it doesn't really matter which genre, any good fiction will do.

Sorry just read that - have posted it before but thought 'Under The Skin' by Michel Faber was excellent - Ian M. Bank's Culture series is also always a good bet.



a reply to: Astyanax

David Mitchell rocks!

I just ordered The Historian and A River Runs through It. Thanks for the suggestions!

I also ordered Seabiscuit for a friend's birthday. A great fun read.

Tried any Clive Barker? Weaveworld, 1987 and Imajica 1991 - both, intricate works of dark fantasy.

Then there is Margaret Attwood's MaddAddam trilogy, for which she stated, "Although MaddAddam is a work of fiction, it does not include any technologies or bio-beings that do not already exist, are not under construction or are not possible in theory."

If you're interested in Norse Mythology, Neil Gaiman's telling is very engaging.

originally posted by: karl 12
a reply to: 19Bones79

100 years of solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez is pretty good.

Hey... wasn't that booked banned?

(Of course, I have a copy somewhere.) But I think it was on a 'list' at some point.