Books that aren't awful MEGATHREAD (No genre fic)

The Something Awful Forums > The Finer Arts > The Book Barn > Books that aren't awful MEGATHREAD (No genre fic)

Chamberk: Jan 11, 2004; when there is nothing left to burn you have to set yourself on fire

Earwicker posted:

Also more recently I read The Son by Philip Meyer which is definitely the best new American novel I have read in a long time. It's arguably genre (western) but I think it's one of those books that really transcends genre. It follows three characters within one Texas family, starting in 1848 when a family of settlers is murdered by the Comanche and their teen son taken captive - he lives as a Comanche for three years until they die mostly of disease, at which point he goes back to white society and joins the Texas Rangers, and eventually becomes a rancher. It also follows his son who is the sort of liberal "black sheep" of the family, and his great-granddaughter who took over the beef and oil empire he built, and rotates between these three viewpoints throughout the book.

This book is fantastically good. It's definitely not for the faint-hearted, though - that bit with the Comanches could be brutal. That said, I think my favorite story was Jeannie's, not Eli's.

Also, I just found The Leopard in an old used book store and picked it up never having heard of it, so now I'm excited to read that.

To bring up another book, I just finished The Good Lord Bird by James McBride, which tells the story of a young black boy who takes up with the abolitionist John Brown - though, for reasons of safety, the young man pretends to be a girl for several years. It's funny as hell and weaves in quite a few other historical figures - thankfully they never seem forced. Of course, those of us who studied U.S. History know his tale doesn't have a happy ending, but overall it's a hell of a good book. I think it won the National Book Award (or maybe the Booker?) this past year.

# ¿ Feb 15, 2014 07:22

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# ¿ Apr 29, 2024 10:44

Chamberk: Jan 11, 2004; when there is nothing left to burn you have to set yourself on fire

I made it through Pale King... somehow. There were a few amazing passages scattered throughout but the majority of the book is like that.

Another book I'm struggling through right now is Ben Marcus's The Flame Alphabet. It has some interesting ideas re: language but the plot is a dreary drag. The premise is that language is becoming toxic and parents can't withstand their children's voices. There's also some thing about Jewish people listening to sermons through a fleshy hole in the ground. It just isn't grabbing me.

# ¿ Feb 21, 2014 07:18

Chamberk: Jan 11, 2004; when there is nothing left to burn you have to set yourself on fire

I'm about halfway through one of my favorite books, Ken Kesey's Sometimes a Great Notion.

It's a massive monster of a book, but it's worth the time you put in. It follows a logging clan in Oregon, the Stampers, as they buck the union and cut trees on their own. Tension and resentment towards the Stampers build up in the neighboring town until things get about as bad as they can get. The Stampers themselves - gnarled old patriarch Henry, his strapping son Hank, Hank's wife Viv, and Hank's resentful younger brother Leland - are amazing characters. The book has a decent amount of stream-of-consciousness writing, with the narrative shifting from Hank to Leland to Viv to a hunting dog to a union organizer deadset against the Stampers (sometimes within a single paragraph) in a way that reminds me a lot of Virginia Woolf, only with a lot more farting and tree-cutting. Alternately, it's as if Faulkner in the wet wilds of untamed Oregon.

If your exposure to Kesey is just "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest" and you like Woolf or Faulkner, you owe it to yourself to check this one out. It's probably in my top 5 favorite books of all time.

# ¿ Mar 14, 2014 18:45

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