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This is crazy. For the record, I know of just a few people who read more than I do. I'm working on a PhD in English literature, which simply means I spend a lot of time at the library investigating stuff (writers, books, biographies, anything). Unfortunately I feel I haven't read anything for fun in some time.

As it happens I'm having some doubts on whether or not I should continue my chosen study. Suffice to say it hasn't captivated me for some time. So, recommend me something -anything- that will provide a fun, challenging read. It has to be something recent, but any genre will do. If the book is a translation from a non-English writer, then that's fine by me too.

Thanks.

Try Bible.

Edit: it is not recent, but fun.

The Cairo Trilogy, of Naigub Mahfouz. Tons of characters, loads of humanity, lots of conflict, and 0% self-righteousness.

I know that problem. When I was working on my French literature degree I was required to take an armload of critical theory courses, many of which focused in post structuralism. For a long time afterwards I found it very difficult to actually just enjoy a book.

I don't know how challenging you'd find him, but if you are looking for a fun romp that alleviates an excess of 'lit crit' I'd highly recommend anything by Terry Pratchett.

I loved 'The Catcher in the Rye'. Some of the themes have become a bit commonplace in more recent literature, though, so it might feel a bit "worn".

If you like 18th-century English, you might like 'The History of the Life of the Late Mr Jonathan Wild the Great' by Henry Fielding. While it is a satire of the politician Robert Walpole, it is also an excellent comment on the idea of "great people".

Well I know of Fielding, yes. I appreciate everything that has been mentioned so far, and I have already written down a few titles for the holidays, but with recent I really do mean post 2005 or so.

Take games or music for instance. I really know what's going on in the here and now, what to anticipate. Books? Absolutely no idea. Yes, one more Harry Potter, but that's about all I know. I'm completely oblivious to the uhm.. bookscene.

Shogun was good. It is very well written and has a great story.

Eddison's "Worm Ouroboros." Your basis kind of fantasy plot, written about 60 years ago, and with more beauty and music in the English language than most novelists of the last century.

dragon wench wrote:I don't know how challenging you'd find him, but if you are looking for a fun romp that alleviates an excess of 'lit crit' I'd highly recommend anything by Terry Pratchett.

QFT, Terry Pratchett is really funny. If you want something more profound, you could try Kader Abdolah. He is an Irani who fled to the Netherlands and here started writing. I only read one book of him, but I thought it was really good. He is a great narrator and through the main plot he tells a lot of stories which give you great insight into the culture he describes (in this case Iran in the time of the revolution).

I can also recommend 'Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrel', a very amusing book. It is about the "return of magic to Great Britain" (and here magic should NOT be seen as a narcisisitic way of self-expression). The author Susanna Clarke masters the art of writing in a good pseudo-19th-century English and telling lies without twitching.

I think I've seen that one at the bookshop. I'll pick it up this afternoon, if I have time to spare.

Lady Dragonfly wrote:Try Bible.

To be honest, this was the only book I have ever read that produced the urge to lose everything in my stomach upon reading it. I wouldn't suggest it to anyone who isn't sitting in a church willingly.

Most of the books I read are very light reading. Something I can breeze through in order to fall asleep at night. Given you are an English major, I doubt you'd be interested in those. I did find the book "The Briar King" by Greg Keyes to be a good one though. I got it as a gift, and wasn't sure I would like it, but I really did. Some traditional fantasy elements were taken in a direction I had never seen before to make an interesting plot.

Another one is a series that I thought was interesting. Kristine Kathryn Rusch did a series called "The Fey", another fantasy type thing which took traditional fantasy elements and took them in a different direction than I was used to. Turning the normal concept of Fey creatures from harmless and cute into bloodthirsty conquerers definately was an intriguing read.

If you want fantasy that isn't your average yarn, I recommend "The Chronicles of The Black Company" by Glen Cook. Those books completely changed my perception of what fantasy could be. For some adult faerie-tale reading, try "Neverwhere" by Neil Gaiman. And if you REALLY want a heavy mindbender, try starting on "The Malazan Books of The Fallen" by Canadian archeologist/anthropologist turned fanatsy writer Steven Erikson. You'll need a laptop and a rather large-ish harddrive to take notes while you read.

Apart from that, "A Short History of Nearly Everyhing" by Bill Bryson is a great read, which you can keep coming back to and read other stuff inbetween.

Try "The Historian" by Elizabeth Kostova...although at 650 pages or so its not a quick read.

Been holding back to see what everybody suggests.....:laugh:
I work in a library:mischief: and when somebody says, " what's good" we usually follow up with questions like, "what have you read in the past and liked and what genre do you like to read?" This gives us a clue to the patrons likes and dislikes.
The Pratchett's are a very good fantasy series with a slighty different slant.

the hitchikers guide to the galaxy

eragon and eldest (series)

the halo novels

sabriel, lirael, and abhorson (series)

magyk and flyte (series)

the icewind dale trilogy

the thousand orcs, the lone drow, and the two swords (trilogy)



any one of those are amazing reads. all my favorites.

How recent do these recommendations have to be?

I, too, know the sting of being an English major (although I'm only pursuing a Bachelor's right now). A lot of the stuff I had to read over the last two years was boring as hell, but occasionally I'd come across a few good reads. I wanted to recommend those to you last night, but I was blitzed beyond imagining, and most of the things I would have recommended are not at all recent. The only good things I could recommend that are recent would be stuff like Timothy Zahn sci-fi stuff (but he's my favorite author, so of course I would). Everything else is at least 30 years old (may be recent by some people's standards but not to others).

The Bible. Yeah, I can't think of a book that is less recent than that.

On a more sober note..
This is not a book for everyone, and many find it a "slow read," but I really enjoyed [url="http://truedemocracy.net/td-12/79.html"]The Polished Hoe[/url] recently.


Another suggestion:
It was written in 1985, but one of the best books I have ever read is [url="http://www.cormacmccarthy.com/works/bloodmeridian.htm"]Blood Meridian[/url] by Cormac McCarthy. It is a masterful work, and the writing (in my opinion) is stunning. You can find another review [url="http://www.nytimes.com/1985/04/28/books/mccarthy-meridian.html"]here.[/url]

id have to say The Wind on Fire series, its a really easy to read book...i read the first book in grade 8, but the first book is The Wind Singer by William Nicholson, the The Mastery, and the last is Firesong...fantasy books, really interesting to me though...

another series would be The Wheel of Time...theres ALOT of these books, i havent read any, but theyre quite popular, theyre long books, ive only seen really good readers read them so im guessing they are a difficult read, also fantasy

Wow... Blood Meridian looks... interesting. I'll have to get it after I get things like Stop Dressing Your Six-Year-Old Like a Skank by Celia Rivenbark (frankly, the title alone makes that one worth reading, although I wish I remember where I heard of it), Cancer Ward by Alexander Solzhenitsyn, and Cement by Fyodor Vasilievich Gladkov. I also wanted to get various WW2 books, but those can always wait.

Doris Lessing's Fifth Child was an interesting read, as was Jeanette Winterson's Passion (but neither of which are all that recent), and are quick reads. Susan Glaspell's Trifles was a short play but a good read. Nella Larsen's Quicksand was about 100 pages, but it was good, IMO (even though I never finished reading it). Four things I've read for classes in the last year which I found amusing.