In the course of a long life, you’re going to get asked to recommend a good book to read. What should you say? Of course a sensible answer depends on who is asking, but we don’t know that, so let’s limit ourselves to books that tickle our own fancies. And we can assume, given the high-powered sophistication of this here blog you’re reading, that The Da Vinci Code won’t be first on your list. In fact, let’s also assume that you wouldn’t suggest Pride and Prejudice or Ulysses, as the idea is to make suggestions that your interlocutor may not actually have heard of.
So here’s my list — five novels that haven’t ascended into the literary canon (and are unlikely to do so), yet had me gasping with delight or shuddering with (a pleasant kind of) horror. My own personal cutoff for being obscure enough to count as an interesting recommendation was “less well known than Flaubert’s Parrot,” which otherwise might have made the list.
- The Debt to Pleasure, John Lanchester. This one is a favorite of various CV bloggers, as I recall. A wonderfully dark novel, structured loosely around a series of recipes. You won’t learn any new culinary tricks, but you’ll be drawn into the wicked plotting of Tarquin Winot as he spins his schemes with considerable savoir faire. The first book I recommend to people I think highly of.
- Thus Was Adonis Murdered, Sarah Caudwell. The opposite of dark, although there is a murder, and a good deal of British tax law. Caudwell has written a mystery novel populated by barristers of supernatural wit and cleverness, resulting in one of the most consistently amusing books I’ve ever read.
- The Wasp Factory, Iain Banks. Back to darkness. Banks is a prolific author, alternating between “straight” fiction and science fiction novels. This was his first, and it’s a masterpiece of twisted imagination. There’s a surprise ending, but the convoluted path by which you get there has a terrifying internal logic.
- Love in a Dead Language, Lee Siegel. No, not that Lee Siegel. This one is a professor of religion at the University of Hawaii, who has written the best postmodern-pastiche novel I’ve come across. Structured loosely as a translation of the Kama Sutra, complete with puzzles and self-reference and fourth-wall breaking. Likely to be most appreciated by academics.
- The Book of Revelation, Rupert Thomson. Picked up on a whim in an airport bookstore, this is a disturbing short novel about a ballet dancer who is kidnapped by a group of women and used for their sexual pleasure. The quick response is “that doesn’t sound so bad,” but the truth is that is very much is. This book is a thoughtful examination of deep issues of identity, freedom, and obsession.
I could confidently recommend any of them, with the understanding that my tastes are not exactly universal. Your mileage may vary.
I’ll second The Dispossessed — reread it recently and enjoyed it as much as ever. It’s a very thoughtful exploration of how science interacts with politics, as well as an excellent science fiction story with many echoes in history and current events. Plus, LeGuin is a terrific writer. Another one I love of hers is Always Coming Home, which bends the boundaries of science fiction to include literature, art, music, anthropology, and folklore.
Legacy of Heorot by Niven, Pournelle, Barnes.
Sci/Fi which may violate the list criteria, but every person to whom I recommened this book could “not put it down”. A friend stayed up all night despite admonishments from his wife and came dragging into work the next day. I had a hard-bound version which got passed around the company. There was a waiting list as its reputation grew. It came back to me quite worn.
It’s a “don’t mess with mother nature” book set on a newly colonized and apparently idyllic planet. There is a sequel, but not nearly as good.
Enjoy, Bob
If I wanted to read a really good “physicsy type” science fiction novel, which one should I read?
Some excellent hard science fiction:
Robert Forward: Dragon’s Egg
Charles Sheffield: Tomorrow and Tomorrow
Larry Niven: Ringworld
James Hogen: The Two Faces of Tomorrow
Fred Hoyle: The Black Cloud
re: SCIENCE fiction – David Brin usually gets the science right.
Oops, I spelled Hogan’s name wrong. I forgot about Brin; I haven’t read his fiction yet, but I read his comet dust papers. The others are ‘known’ for their hard science (very funny to critique Hoyle for his science fiction, you know). In the list we should add Greg Egan, Gregory Benford, Geoffrey A. Landis. I would add Damien Broderick to this list too, even though he is not a physicist/engineer/astronomer like the others, I do know he works extremely hard to show accurate physics.
Yes Greg Egan is another writer that clearly has done his homework on the science/math.
Of course Asimov is in my view the greatest non-fiction expositor of science to the masses. In addtion to his fictional contributions.
Another one that I would not consider HARD science but was a good read was “The Sparrow” by “Mary Doria Russell??”
Re: Larry Niven’s Ringworld…
In the first novel in the series he did NOT get the physics correct. A solid ring orbiting a star is unstable as can be shown by simple mechanics and an integral (which is a bit messy – I worked this out yeras ago). The story I remember is that some students at MIT also came to this conclusion and advised Niven who added thrusters to the outside of his Ringworld in the sequel novels.
Interesting list. I loved the first three (though I’m not sure that they’d make my list if I was making one) and have never heard of either of the other two. Well, I’m not sure I should say I loved “The Wasp Factory” — it’s a difficult book to love, as the choice of book-jacket blurbs on the edition I own, some from horrified pans of the books by various critics, seems to acknowledge.
I’m gratified to see “I Capture the Castle” mentioned by one of your commenters, since it was my first thought when I asked myself “hmmm, what would I include on this list?” It’s been in and out of print, actually — it’s treasured by a surprising number of people, mostly women.
My next thought was “The Queen’s Gambit,” by Walter Tevis. I know nothing about chess and don’t know whether it’s any good on that score, but nearly everybody I know who has read it has been literally unable to put it down. I myself sat up half the night finishing it (it’s not a long book, but I’m a relatively slow reader for a bookworm).
My next thought after that was “Swordspoint,” by Ellen Kushner, a fantasy novel described by one reviewer as being what might happen if Noel Coward wrote a vehicle for Errol Flynn.
Next: “A Mixture of Frailties,” by Robertson Davies, about a young Canadian woman who goes to England to study to be a singer. It’s the third book of The Salterton Trilogy, but it stands on its own — Davies’ trilogies are sets of three related books, NOT series of three. Either that or “Fifth Business,” which is the first book of The Deptford Trilogy.
“The Mind-Body Problem,” by Rebecca Goldstein. Mathematicians and philosophers and physicists, oh my!
That’s five, but since someone beat me to “I Capture the Castle,” I will add “The Nine Tailors,” by Dorothy Sayers. Her novels are argubly canon, at least within the mystery genre, but “The Nine Tailors” is often ignored because Harriet Vane isn’t in it.
Ask me again tomorrow, I’ll come up with another list.
Bob E: Dyson spheres are unstable too. I would say if physics students are taking the time to work out the physics, then IMO that novel has ‘enough’ accurate science to be scientifically intriguing for people who want hard science fiction.
Amara re: Ringworld
I agree absolutely.
Niven is one of my favorite S/F authors and I have read most of his novels with great enjoyment. One cannot expect novelists (or even physicists!) to get all the physics correct all the time. It did not dawn on me that Ringworld would be unstable until I read about the MIT student “discovery” and then proved it for myself. I think there was a Star Trek episode based the Dyson sphere concept, but now I’m getting way off-topic.
Bob.
I think Janet and I have very similar tastes in literature. 🙂 I loved “The Queen’s Gambit” — you really CAN’T put the damn thing down! — and also consider “The Nine Tailors” to be among Sayers’ finest work (second only to “Gaudy Night”). Both rise far above”genre fiction.”
For the love of YA…
My Heartbeat, Garret Freymann-Weyr: Wee girl who adores her older brother and his best friend (for whom she has a delicious crush) starts to understand that maybe her older brother and her crush are smooching. Heartachingly messy and gorgeous.
My Sister’s Keeper, Jodi Picoult: A thirteen-year-old girl, born out of a test-tube cocktail for maximum matchage to her older sister, seeks medical emancipation from her parents. She’s been, to her mind, not much more than a container for spare bodyparts for her cancer-riddled sister. They’re tied together like conjoined twins in a lot of ways, forcing the healthy sister to live her life in hospitals.
Each chapter alternates the first-person perspective of the affected parties; mom, dad, test-tube sis, lawyer, child advocate…eerily absent the voice of the sick sister throughout.
Way Past Cool, Jess Mowry: Life inside an Oakland gang as told by the kids, most in preteen and early teen years. Intense, lovely, raw-knuckle storytelling.
My favorite novel is “Remains of the
Day” by Ishigura. It started as a poem and did a great job of maintaining the tone to the end. And it was somebody writing in a second language. Also like “All the Pretty Horces.”
I add another vote for Dorothy L. Sayers’ best novels, Nine Tailors and especially Gaudy Night. Some people complain that Gaudy Night isn’t really a mystery, but even if you agree, it’s a fine book about deciding what to do with your life, as well as a literate romance.
Sarah Caudwell’s Thus Was Adonis Murdered is splendid, and so are the sequels The Shortest Way to Hades and The Sirens Sang of Murder– I marked the wittiest bits in the margins so I could find them quickly. Sadly, I recommend you avoid the fourth book, The Sybil in Her Grave, written after a long hiatus and much inferior.
Patricia McKillip is a beautifully poetic author of books of fantasy, some considered YA but I still enjoy them. My old favorite is the Riddlemaster trilogy: Riddlemaster of Hed, Heir of Sea and Fire, and Harpist in the Wind.
People may well know about these, but when I’m ill, tired, or depressed, I reach for P.G. Wodehouse, or Terry Pratchett’s fantasy. If you like Pratchett’s description of an indignant duchess– “Her bosom rose and fell like an empire”– you have a lot of fun ahead of you. Start with any book about the City Watch, the witches, or Death.
Michael Bacon:
I absolutely love Ishiguro. “Remains of the Day” is the best. “Never Let Me Go”, which I finished reading recently, was fascinating too. The only reason I didn’t mention these was I thought they might not be obscure enough.
But I wonder if it is correct to say English is his second language. He moved to UK when he was six, so technically English is probably the second language he learned. But he grew up and has lived in UK since then and he admits that he doesn’t speak Japanese well.
You have it all wrong. Obviously the piece of literature that fits Sean’s criteria of an obscure, yet entertaining summer read, which he would recommend only to people he thinks highly of, is Sean’s very own “Spacetime and Geometry: An Introduction to General Relativity “. There is a surprising ending, but the convoluted path by which you get there has a terrifying internal logic. You won’t learn any culinary tricks, but you will be drawn into the wicked plotting as the author spins his schemes with considerable savoir-faire. The novel is populated by barristers of natural wit and cleverness. Sean is a prolific author alternating between “straight” fiction and science fiction. In short: best picked up on a whim at an airport; structured loosly as a translation of Kama Sutra; likely to be most appreciated by academics.
Go to California, Sean!
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