Dangers of supping on honeydew

[callmemadam]

I have just finished Selina Hastings’ biography of Evelyn Waugh. I hate the end of a biography: I don’t want my hero or heroine to die. Now, everything else I am reading seems mediocre and the pile of modern novels waiting to be read, utterly untempting. I feel as bored and depressed by the prospect of nothing really good to read as Waugh himself could have done.

I started compiling a list of modern novels which have really had wow! factor for me. Books which delighted by their originality or humour; which have already been re-read happily and gone onto the favourites’ list. Considering the hundreds of books I must have read, the list is sadly short. Anything by a dead author is out. Here’s what I’ve come up with so far.

The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole Aged 13¾, Sue Townsend
Hawksmoor, Peter Ackroyd
Lake Wobegon Days, Garrison Keillor
Microserfs, Douglas Coupland
The Secret History, Donna Tartt
The No.1 Ladies’ Detective Agency, Alexander McCall Smith
Toast, Nigel Slater
A Landing on the Sun, Michael Frayn. Also Spies. Also his first novel The Tin Men, one of the funniest books ever written.

Help me out here with books I might have forgotten. I could have made a much longer list of non fiction books.

Comments

[huskyteer.livejournal.com]

Good idea! It's harder than I thought, too. Microserfs would be on my list, and Empire of the Sun (Ballard is just about alive).

[callmemadam.livejournal.com]

Good thought. Yes, Empire of the Sun has the wow factor. I still haven't recovered from Hotel du Lac winning the Booker in the same year that EOTS was up for it. Idiot judges!

[huskyteer.livejournal.com]

I keep thinking of authors then realising they're dead. Most depressing. But Ray Bradbury is still with us!

Also realised that the books I need to add are the ones that are never on my shelf because I keep pressing them on other people.

Hitch Hiker's? Or doesn't that count?

[huskyteer.livejournal.com]

Oh nuts, he's dead too!

[huskyteer.livejournal.com]

Oh, The House of Sleep!

I'm totally spamming you. Sorry.

[callmemadam.livejournal.com]

Alas, yes. Also J G Farrell, whom I liked a lot.

[callmemadam.livejournal.com]

Yup, I'll give you House of Sleep but I couldn't really count it as I haven't reread it n times. It was a one-sitting book, though, which is the kind of thing I'm looking for. Delight and amazement is what I'm after.

Lists of books are not spammy. What is this; everyone on my friends' list keeps apologising for being spammy when they are totally not being. I am behind the times again, obviously.

[debodacious.livejournal.com]

I was wowed by Fingersmith, and a HIK by Birdsong.

[callmemadam.livejournal.com]

Haven't read Fingersmith but now I've read The Night Watch I might give it a go. Sorry to say I hated Birdsong. I found the beginning so dull I thought I'd never get through the book. Once the war started it was more interesting but for me it simply reeked of research. Faulks is a bit of a swot, I fear. I had read another of his books, The Girl at the Lion d'Or before Birdsong and found that mind-numbing so I've read nothing of his since. Hard to please, moi?

[debodacious.livejournal.com]

Aktcherley a HIK had trouble getting into Birdsong - it took him a fair while to get hooked but once he was he literally couldn't put it down which is unusual for him. I haven't read any Faulkes because I have a feeling he will be too gruesome and give me nightmares.