Novels I’ve read in the past year and a half that I’d recommend
Submitted by buddy on Mon, 06/27/2005 - 10:58
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- Tom Robbins’ Jitterbug Perfume - I’m cheating, as I read this a few years ago. I’ve read loads of Tom Robbins’ work now, but none can top my first experience with him. I deeply sensual book about immortality, bathing, perfume and beets. Robbins’ quirkiness is present but in check in this novel, and provides a beautiful way to tell a beautiful story. In some of his other work, I just find him weird.
- Jose Saramago’s Blindness - This is proper literature-type stuff. For a novel with no chapter breaks and no quotation marks delineating dialogue, it’s surprisingly readable. Detached and almost clinical in its depictions of appalling conditions, it certainly provides food for thought.
- Yann Martel’s Life of Pi - I’m not entirely sure what to make of the ending. It’s an interesting story and I would love to come across more discussion about this novel. Also, Spoiler: Highlight to viewwhat’s with the floating island?
- Phillip Pullman’s His Dark Materials Trilogy - The groundbreaking idea that innocence lost is a GOOD thing, and that we should be teaching our children this.
- The Robin Hobb fanatasy series (The Assassin Trilogy, The Liveship Traders Trilogy, and The Golden Fool Trilogy) - Hardly earth-shattering literature, but astoundingly well-written and sophisticated story-telling. A male friend tells me what shocks him most is that a woman wrote the most accurate and detailed portrayal of a boy’s growing up (in the Assassin series).
You're the one who majored in literature. You tell us what was with the island?
Personally, I took it literally, as nothing more than nature acting like it does... the bottom of boats are always mini-ecosystems of stuff.
If that is true then is it the only section of the novel to be taken literally? Given what you discover at the end (and if you believe even that revelation), does that not make you think that the episode with the island has some symbolic signifance as well?
If there is, I can't think what it might be. I think better during a discussion of ideas, and pondering this one by myself hasn't led me very far.