A week ago I posted a blog on the books I don’t like. Since there are more books that I like than those I don’t like, I think it would only be fair to also tell you about books I’ve read and which I loved. I will not list my favorite book, as I wrote about that before. Let me tell you about some of the books which are also high on my list.
Long room Old Library, Trinity College, Dublin (via weheartit.com)
1) John Niven – Kill Your Friends
Narrated by a jaded, spoiled and arrogant record company scout in the 90s who literally leaves behind dead bodies as he lives his life looking for the next big act so he can save his butt from getting sacked. Hilarious, thrilling and dark novel about living life to the max without being punished for it.
2) Martin Amis – Money
Very similar to Kill Your Friends in that the main character, John Self, is living the high life and doing tons of crazy stuff. Main difference: the outcome of the novel, which I won’t give away, but let’s just say that you shouldn’t just trust everyone as not everyone is who they seems to be.
3.) J. D. Salinger – Catcher in the Rye
Story of Holden Caulfied. Enfant terrible and a manic lazy bum who tries to get away with everything. A novel about coming of age, going against the grain and life lessons. I love this one as it’s hilarious. Not many books have me laughing out loud. This one did.
4.) Willa Cather – Song of the Lark
This book really impressed me when I read it. About Thea Kronborg from a small, fictional town called Moonstone, Colorado who becomes a famous opera singer in New York at the end of the novel. You are taken along for Thea’s journey in life. The story starts when she is a child and follows her from the moment she first takes music lessons, to becoming a teacher herself, to her leaving Moonstone and settling and finding her way in the Big Apple. I love it when books really follow one particular character from beginning to end.
5.) Carlos Ruiz Zafón – The Shadow of the Wind
This book took me some time getting into, but it’s a very very worthy read. It’s about a boy Daniel, who is allowed to pick a book from the Cemetary of Forgotten Books by his dad. He picks The Shadow of the Wind by Julian Carax. The boy is fascinated by the book. So much so that he tries to track more books by the same author. However, he is unsuccessful. Add his quest to find out more, a mysterious character who named himself after a character in the book, an old house on a hill in Barcelona and you get a novel with enough suspense and intrigue that you will not want to put it down.
Q: What are some of your favorite books that you would recommend to anyone who asks?
3 responses to “Books I do like”
Definitely want to read number 5.
Nr 1)Never read it
Nr 2)Read it once and it’ll end there. Much too similar to Brett Easton Ellis’ ‘American Pshyco’
Nr 3)A Classic, read it at least three times (so not only for the compulsary readinglist in school)
Nr 4)Never read it
Nr 5)Modern classic, a pity it’s sequel ‘Angel’s game’ isn’t quite as good.
Now my favourites, more or less in random order. It’s rather what I like to read, not a literary review of judgement of quality
Nr 1)’The Liar’ by Stephen Fry, because it’s hilarious, witty and sometimes downright filthy.
Nr 2)’The discovery of heaven’ by Harry Mulisch, read it at least five times before I understood all the details and storylines. Apart from intricate a great read. Over 900 pages and I never got the feeling the book had 100 or so too many.
Nr 3)’Se questo è un uomo’ (Is this a human) by Primo Levi, because it’s a horrible but gripping story about an Italian Jewish partisan who survives the last winter of WW II in Auschwitz
Nr 4)’The Karamazov brothers’ by Fjodor Dostojevski, because it shows in a great way a society which Europe never had, but was incredibly close (because the old tsarist empire also included FInland, the Baltic States and large parts of modern Poland).
Nr 5)’The Girondin’s night’ by Jacques Presser, which tells the history of a teacher at the Jewish Lyceum in the Amsterdam ghetto and who ends up in the disciplinebarracks in the concentrationcamp Westerbork, where he was first part of the Jewish ‘ordedienst’.
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