Wriging

Can't go wrong with anything by Hermann Hesse. My favorites from him are

• Siddhartha
• Narcissus and Goldmund

Never even heard of the two you speak of so I might have to give them a try.

Scrivs, thanks for the heads up.

I'm a Hesse afficionado too. Siddhartha and Journey to the East are my favourites...fantastic writer.

I should correct my note by saying the Bolivian Diary is not a novel, actually a historical document since it's the transcription of Che's personal diaries from 1966-67 during his time as Guerilla leader in Bolivia.

J.M. Coetzee is a South African writer, Nobel prize winner and was/is (needs verification) a lecturer in the dept of English at the Uni of Cape Town. I recommend Disgrace, Youth and Boyhood.

Damn, I no longer feel special. Thought I was the only Hesse nut around here. Can't offer much else help besides running through the Western Canon (which finishing is one of my life goals) since I'm really a Fantasy buff.

Jonathan Coe's biography of BS Johnson, <cite>Like A Fiery Elephant</cite>, is well worth a read and offers a lot of insight into the man and his writing. I'd go as far as to say that the questions Johnson wrestled with (while we may not agree with his answers) form a viewpoint on writing in need of further consideration.

Thanks for that Ben, had never heard of BS Johnson, I'll look into it.

I just read American Gods by Neil Gaiman and it was excellent. Right now I'm reading 1491 but I can't speak for it much as I've just started.

Thanks Justin. 1491 looks really interesting. Let me know how it develops.

keep the suggestions coming folks. I'm taking notes.

Actually maybe we could start a recommended reading note or even a featured monthly/bi-monthly article for the writing community? Collecting short book reviews from members and readers. Just an idea.

Following on from this discussion on suggested reading, I came across this book on Amazon called 1001 Books to Read Before you Die by Peter Boxall and while I'm not a believer in absolutes or definitive lists, I think this covers an interesting range of work, mostly from the western canon and from ancient Greece to the New Millennium.

I didn't buy the book and you can't get a look at the 1001 list on Amazon, but fortunately a kind soul at Listology.com has undertaken the mammouth task of listing them all from a copy he got in his local library. You can view the list here.

If you don't know Knut Hamsun's work, it's certainly worth a look. His first four novels seem to be the best, Hunger, Pan, Victoria, and Mysteries. Originally written in Norwegian but readily available in translation.

Also well worth a look are the novels of Richard Yates, particularly Revolutionary Road. His main writing period was the fifties and sixties and other titles worth seeking out are The Easter Parade and Cold Spring Harbour.
Yates' subject is suburban life and dreams and he writes with great subtlety, a nuanced prose which traces the underlining despair of the suburban western soul.
Vonnegut calls Revolutionary Road, "The Great Gatsby of our time. . ." It is a novel about being trapped in the land of the free.

Just want to throw out that Gatsby is my favorite novel of all time.

Gatsby is pretty high up in my list as well. But Gabriel Garcia Marquez' One Hundred Years of Solitude and Mark Twain's <Huckleberry Finn both pass the winning post before Fitzgerald.

I'm going to geek out for a moment and say Cryptonomicon by Neal Stephenson is a book I keep coming back to and enjoy and take something new from every time I read it.

My two top books of all time however are Michael Chabon's The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay and Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice (yes I am a sucker for a happy ending, but the book is also funny and quite a biting satire).

Man I am all over the green.

... haha, and all in the wrong note.

How compelling is compelling? If you don't mind, the heavy duty stuff is what I like to read. John Milton's Paradise Lost Paradise Found and Frederich Nietzche's Beyond Good and Evil are my personal picks.

I read 1941 a month or so ago. I loved it. Pretty easy read and a filled with stuff they don't touch in school.

My recommendation would be Rule of the Bone, one of my favorite books, partly because a good chunk of the story takes place in the Adirondacks, about half an hour from where I once lived. But it's a great book my connection aside, unique. Same author whose novels were made into the movies Sweet Hereafter and Affliction. Rule of the Bone is a 180 from those in style and tone.

My bad, looks a little silly doesn't it. I somehow got my mediums mixed up. Spielberg on the brain. I meant 1491.