This year all I want for Christmas is books. I am really really into contemporary American literature, and would like to look in that direction. Can you suggest any really amazing books? At the moment my list only consists of The Lost Language of Cranes by David Leavitt and Revolutionary Road by Richard Yates, but I want loads more.
To give you an idea of what I may like, here goes a list of some authors that I absolutely love:

PAUL AUSTER
David Leavitt
Raymond Carver
Don DeLillo
Michael Cunningham


Alternatively, something not American but still bloody good and with the same themes.

Thanks in advance

i used to like auster, but any old pleb reads him now. delillo is very hit or miss, white noise is good and mao ii, ratner's star is unreadable rubbish

what's that got to do with anything?

are you one of those people that doesnt buy things from the 3 for 2 table in waterstones incase it's too popular?

i like old auster, recent stuff has been pap though.

will have a think about what i've read recently that's been american and psot some stuff obscurearse

if you're the pleb in question, which i highly doubt, you may take acception. but you're not.

auster is for the shredder

well, CD wright was a poet, but is now going into this weird post-modern avant garde literature thing, writing books of loose prose i guess is what they are?

anyway, this one is fucking AMAZING.



it's not literature, per say, but it is probably the one thing i've read recently that made me really excited about where writing will go in my lifetime?

in this one, she spent a bunch of time at Louisiana state prisons, talking to inmates and walking around. apparently Louisiana has a rather odd prison system, pretty relaxed, and definitely still tied to the ways of the old south. there's a politeness about the prisoners, and there is no one story, just shards of experiences, all put together with a couple consistent themes.

anyway. it's called One Big Self (which i think is a shitty title for something so good. it makes it sound like a self-help book, to me) and its' by CD Wright

Thanks orchestral, that sounds really interesting. I've added it to my list.

Kesh, apart from Man in the Dark (which, I agree, is not great), what Auster do you find mediocre and why?

he just isn't as good as peter carey. don't you people know anything at all?

lol at the thought of kesh rummaging in waterstones

my elitism forbids me responding to this.

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they arrived dramatically at the space gun in an art deco-style autogyro

i find peter carey very hit and miss too, but then i'm one of those people who doesnt listen to a band's entire back catalogue incase anything past the second album disappoints me

as a salve to kesh's overarching elitism i will now try to think of american books i got in waterstones that i liked

middlesex by jeffrey eugenides is v goods, better than the virgin suicides which he also wrote, any old margaret atwood, handmaid's tale is the obv choice, but most stuff is good - just not the really womany stuff cause that's quite boring, same goes for joyce carol oates who is v prolific but hit and miss - we were teh mulvaneys is quite good though

oh! american gods by neil gaiman is a good romp, he's english but the book is american and really funny and slightly clever and most importantly there will be multiple copies available in yr friendly local waterstones

geek love by katherine dunn is pretty amazing as is a confederacy of dunces by john kennedy toole - i demand you get this first actually, it's one of my favourite books and is absolutely brilliant, ignatius is one of the greatest characters in modern fiction i reckon!

if youre feeling brave you could dip into some david foster wallace, i've always wanted to like him but he's a bit out there with the 'look, i'm writing postmodern fiction!!!!1', infinate jest is great but exhausting, maybe try girl with the curious hair? i tihnk that's what it's called

i really like a writer called kelly link - she has some stories in some mcsweeneys books and a collection of her own called magic for beginners which is great

oh you can read some of her stuff for free! Short stories by Kelly Link

am waffling now, hope that was useful!

wow this is my new favorite thread. sunday greeeeeeeen. so good.

im illiterate. ive only read non-fiction lately. the one books i constantly think about and whose stories have stayed with me are by Jhumpa Lahiri. particularly The Interpreter of Maladies, which is a book of short stories.

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"We believe that the best of America is in these small towns that we get to visit, and in these wonderful little pockets of what I call the real America, being here with all of you hard-working, very patriotic, very pro-America areas of this great nation," she told the crowd.

hi pabs <3

recommend me some smart learning non fic books, i am trying to get clever

i just read the name of the rose by umberto eco which makes me want to read lots of history books - and i'm reading a book called Q now by luther blisset (well it's a nom de plume) which is also excellent, lots of religious and political upheaval and peasant revolts and the like

sometimes i think about just buying school txtbooks cause i tihnk that's the only way i can learn about real stuff? that and wikipedia but wikilearning realy doesnt count

Peter Carey is Australian...

Not very well read in the contemporary, i just read a Philip Roth novel that i enjoyed
Kurt Vonnegut is very good, and only just dead
Also, Thomas Pynchon is brilliant.