<p>Didn’t I mention Dai Sijie’s book upthread? When that first came out in English, I was giving it to everyone I knew. (Dai is Chinese by birth, but he lives in France and writes in French, by the way. Balzac was a huge best-seller in France, deservedly so.)</p>
<p>Magical Realism: It’s Not Just For The Third World. One of my faves of the genre is Nancy Willard’s Things Invisible To See, a very magical-realism book about growing up in Ann Arbor and playing baseball. (Baseball seems to lend itself to magical realism. See, Field of Dreams and even Dom DeLillo’s Underground.) FWIW, I see magical realism as in part a way of finding something that’s unique to written narrative, but that corresponds to special effects in cinema. (Also in part a reaction to oppressive rationalism, of course, too, and a variant of the Romantic idea of correspondence between emotions and environment.) Magical realism has somewhat run its course as a literary technique, but it remains alive and well in the design of movies, including many that have nothing to do with the third world.</p>
<p>Frazen is a little too mean for my liking. He writes about his actual family the same way too.</p>
<p>Ah, the list. So little time… I am gald to see Marilynne Robinson made the list although I would have picked Gilead rather than Housekeeping; perhaps being a male have something to do with my preference.</p>
<p>2forcollege, my favorite alltime sci-fi writer is Lois McMasters Bujold. Great characters, minimal sci-fi. I liked Psion and Catspaw by Joan Vinge - the first cyberpunkish novels I remember reading. I will try to read Neuromancer sooner - though Dick Francis is up next. :)</p>
<p>Wow, I’m trying but I cannot see how magical realism could be applied to baseball. I haven’t read Willard’s book. Where are the elements of the fantastic in baseball?</p>
<p>You’re right about film. Is there a 30 year lag between film and literature?</p>
<p>“Wow, I’m trying but I cannot see how magical realism could be applied to baseball. I haven’t read Willard’s book. Where are the elements of the fantastic in baseball?”</p>
<p>Michael’s Chabon’s book *Summerland *a few years back was I thought sort of magical realism baseball book. I didn’t think it was as great as the critics did.</p>
<p>O.K. I just have to ask – don’t any of you read junk novels? I thought this thread was supposed to be about what everyone is currently reading. Maybe I’m different, but I like to sprinkle my more serious reading with paperback novels – and not necessarily the Penquin versions. For example, I’m just starting “Wider than the Sky” which is a non-fiction work about conciousness. But I just finished “Memorial Day” by Vince Flynn. DH is reading “The Solzhenitsyn Reader” but I also see a paperback on his nighstand. For Christmas, I gave him “The Rising Tide” by Shaara and a Travis McGee novel.</p>
<p>sjmom, I do! I think on the previous book thread we had going before this one, I mentioned that some of my favorite reading of 2006 happened with John Dunning novels. I read four or five of his and loved them all. My fingers are crossed in the hopes that he’s currently writing another! :)</p>
<p>sjmom–I LOVE junk novels. I’m almost embarrassed to say I just finished Stephen King’s book “Cell.” Not nearly as good as his earlier work, but still hard to put down. … Not junk, but I re-read “Pride and Prejudice” every year. My wonderful, sweet husband knows that he has to share my hear with Mr. Darcy!</p>
<p>Hindoo, I’m also a Jane Austen fan – I reread her novels regularly, and watch every DVD based on her work. Even my kids tease me about it. But I also enjoy “guy” novels – suspense, adventure etc. I read a lot of non-fiction – it used to be about the college admissions process (I think I’ve read every book ever mentioned on CC re the topic), but now I read more political or health-oriented non-fiction. I think it really just means that I have no taste – I’ll read anything, including graffiti on bathroom walls!</p>
<p>I read a TON of non-fiction. Not much of a junk fiction reader, tho I am a news junkie…which sort of counts.</p>
<p>Right now I am reading “Winter Wheat” by Mildred Walker. I am simultaneously reading Jimmy Carter’s new book and “The Four Day Win”, which is sort of half diet and half psychobabble (but I like that stuff).</p>
<p>Hindoo, that’s how it is in our family, too. When the kids were little (being potty trained) I always told them to bring a book! We bring books with us wherever we go. As a SAHM, I have spent a lot of time waiting for kids – lessons, practices, EC’s whatever. I actually remember taking older son to a college interview (confusing area to find, so I didn’t want him to drive himself) and I had to stop at a grocery store to buy a book!</p>
<p>The central character of Willard’s Things Invisible To See is a teenage girl who is partially paralysed when she is beaned by a baseball, and then falls in love with the boy who hit the ball. She occasionally finds herself conversing with figures such as Hermann Goebbals and Death (the book takes place in the early '40s), and the climax of the book is a baseball game in a park in Ann Arbor between a team she’s managing, consisting of her boyfriend and his buddies (all of whom are surprised to find themselves back home playing ball rather than in their foxholes in Normandy, etc.) and a team of Dead All-Stars managed by Death. (This book predated Field of Dreams by 8-9 years, by the way.)</p>
<p>Thank heaven that someone finally confessed to junk reading. I do occasionally read a serious book, and I have gotten some great ideas from this thread, ideas that will last me for the next 3 years.
I’ve tried, honestly, I have, but by and large, the last serious book I truly enjoyed was written in 1885 - I’m exaggerating, there were several books on the Time list that I have read, and would classify as great literature. Often if a critic likes a novel, though, I hate it, I guess I’m just in an intellectual wasteland, or maybe a meltdown?
Right now I’m reading Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell, and The Great Influenza is next, but what I’m really enjoying is a series of books by Preston and Child - serial killer thriller stuff, a bit of an X-Files knock-off without the aliens, but rather well written.
Oh, and I’m your girl for fantasy and some SF, Snow Crash did deserve to be on that list, but I wondered where Dune was or The Left Hand of Darkness? Maybe I need to read Neuromancer, I confess I haven’t.</p>
<p>Like many posters, I just love to read, and will read whatever is at hand…That means that I’ve read many kid books, including my 14 year-old daughter’s “junk” (Sisterhood of the Travelling Pants, etc.), and whatever friends pass along at carpool (such as the Tender Bar and Water for Elephants, both easy reading).</p>
I’ve been trying to get my hands on Master and Margarita by Bulgakov, but it’s never in the library.</p>