[boojiboy7]

[Mikey]

I would suggest The Lies of Locke Lamora

It's Ocean's 11 in a fantasy setting, more or less. It's the beginning of a series but stands on its own perfectly and is a pretty fun read with enough one-liners and improbable goings-on to keep you entertained for its duration.

[diplo]

posting in thread to say that mulisch's the discovery of heaven was one of the biggest wastes of time ever so please avoid

[adol]

Like pretty much everyone else in this thread, I'd recommend anything from the golden age of sci-fi, especially Hyperion and the Foundation novels. I haven't read anything by Philip K Dick, but since everyone seems to praise his work, I guess it might be worth checking out.

I'd also recommend the Donna Tartt novels, A Secret History and The Little Friend. The Little Friend is Tartt's second novel, written like 10 years or so after A Secret History, and it's pretty dramatic to see the change in her writing over that time. They're also pretty compelling narratives, and are pretty expertly written, so I'd say go for it.

[wpham]

I wouldn't call some of the stuff recommended in this thread "lower" or "light" fiction, especially Pynchon. I'm not really familiar with him but I'm slowly reading through Gravity's Rainbow and the experience is what I imagine it'd be like to be inside of a large tent with a bear in the dark, alone. It's, I don't know, very refreshing, but also very far away from what "lower" fiction might entail.

The Wheel of Time is actually enjoyable up until maybe the fifth or sixth book, but because the entire series is a huge time sink, it's not worth picking up.

I'm rereading a classic from my childhood, Madeleine L'Engle's A Wrinkle in Time series, and it's just as enjoyable now as it was then. Also: The Little Prince, if you've never read it, is an extremely fast read and probably one of the best works of anything of all time.

All of the cyberpunk books by Gibson and Stephenson are fast and enjoyable reads. The Diamond Age by Stephenson is a particular stand-out.

P.K. Dick knows how to write a damn good short story, and A Scanner Darkly is an extension of that into extraordinarily resonant territory.

Some of Heinlein's stuff is labyrinthine, but A Moon is a Harsh Mistress isn't, and it's fun, especially when you think about the historical context in which it was written.
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[boojiboy7]

[internisus]

I wonder if Gravity's Rainbow has ever actually killed somebody.

[Broco]

Scott Smith's A Simple Plan is a pretty stomach-knotting thriller.

[boojiboy7]

[wpham]

[Felix]

oh, c'mon, postmodernism isn't low enough for you??

=/

for real, though, if you'd rather read some "good" rather than "important" fiction, why go with sci-fi over cheever or perotta? or yoshimoto?

i tried reading gravity's rainbow at the end of last semester, and after spending a month on getting through half of it i decided i was wasting my time. i love delillo; pynchon can get fucked.

[boojiboy7]

really, ethoscapade? why did it take you so long to get through half of GR? and you missed the last where the comedic musical gets really weird.

[elvis.shrugged]

I read more of The Moon is a Harsh Mistress earlier. I'm only like, 60 pages in, and I'm already impressed! Some great libertarian ideals here, in digestible chunks.

And yeah, Dick's stuff can be heavy; that's why I haven't finished VALIS. A Scanner Darkly is pretty light but has some really heavy moments. The ending (of both the book and the film) depressed the hell out of me as much as it thrilled me. It's worth it, though.
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[boojiboy7]

[elvis.shrugged]

Oh, I know. He was a fascinating person; I could read about him and his experiences for days.
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[slipstream]

that's what valis is :roll:
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[bort]

i just read "the three stigmata of palmer eldritch" and it has some horribly cheesy scifi shit so maybe that counts. it still is pretty good though!

[Felix]

[boojiboy7]

well, to each his own. The only delillo I have read is White Noise, which was good, but not up to GR. I have a copy of Underworld I keep meaning to get to.

Were you at least laughing during GR? That book cracks me up.

[Gironika]

I would have suggested Myra Cakan - "When the Music's over", although it's not available in english as I found out now...
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[Felix]

occasionally, although it was mainly of the "oh look at the anti-intellectual thinks he's being cute" sort of laughter.

[boojiboy7]

wow you read pynchon as being anti-intellectual? interesting.

so what delillo should i read?

[falsedan]

Serious reading suggestion: His Dark Materials trilogy by Philip Pullman. The names of the books are different depending on which publisher/region you get them from. It's young adult fiction involving travel between an alternate world history & kidnapping & quantum physics & polar bears who make armour.

Serious suggestion for low fiction: Doctor Who paperbacks, E. E. 'Doc' Smith's Lensmen series.
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[Felix]

consider anything sub-400 pages after white noise to be a solid recommendation.

(nothing against libra and underworld; i just can't really say "go read this unnecessarily long book!" (no matter how good it may be) after shitting all over GR like that)

[Levi]

PKD's Flow My Tears, The Policeman Said... I mean, it predicts the advent of Hentai! And might be a cover of the book of Acts!

Gibson's Idoru is pretty good, since his rampant misogyny and Japanophallic Giger-fetishes are digestible in small doses.

Umm... Lovecraft?

[shrugtheironteacup]

His Dark Materials is pretty good until the over-long gnostic cockpunch that is that third book.

"ORGANIZED RELIGION IS TEH SUXXORS"

"Yeah, I've gotten that, now can't we--"

"ORGANIZED RELIGION KILLS CHILDREN SEE THEY ARE KILLING CHILDREN!!!!"

"Umm.. right, now how about---"

"YOU DO NOT UNDERSTAND YET YOU LOUSY MOTHERFUCKER!!!!!"

"Actually I got what you were saying six-hundred pages ago so why not--"

"SHUT THE HELL UP I AM TALKING HURRRRRR"

etc.

It gets a little distracting. I still cared about the Primary Characters after all of that, though, so it's worth reading.

Heinlein kind of turned crap once he entered into his free-loving hippy phase.
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[Martial Loh]

I bought the collected version of Hyperion randomly about a year ago and have about half a centimetre of pages left to read.
You've surprised me by saying that the ending is decent. I certainly wasn't expecting one!

Just so that I'm adding something to the thread, I'm going to throw in Stephen King's Dark Tower series. Easy reading, some great ideas - which so far (i've just finished the 5th book) aren't really leading anywhere in specific. The characters are fairly charming though.

[shrugtheironteacup]

The self-consciousness of the Dark Tower series came to make me want to stab myself in the face.

It's one thing to have your characters end up in contrived situations.

It's another to have them recognize that they're contrived, and then discuss Dickens as some kind of internal justification of their contrivance.

Of course it gets much, much worse than that from Wolves of the Calla on, but that particular bit will always have a special place in my heart.

By the end of the series the only character I liked at all was Roland.
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[Martial Loh]

heh, I've been told exactly the same thing by my mate who I've been borrowing the books from. Wolves is supposed to be the last book with any good-ish content in it.

Parts of it made me laugh though...particularly about the Wolves & their choice of costume & weapons.

I still think the first book was genuinely good. The text was concise - no wastage or over-indulgent Tolkien-esque descriptions, not too many characters or mini-quests.. I think I could maybe compare the series to the Rocky series.. Maybe.

[shrugtheironteacup]

I started out reading them on a friend's recommendation. Initially the first book annoyed me a little, because the prose style sometimes seemed too self-consciously experimental. But after slogging through the entire series it proved to be my favorite.
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[falsedan]

[Martial Loh]

once im done with the Dark Tower series, I'll start up a discussion/hate thread for it..

ah, i just remembered an author I recently (in the past two years) liked..
Walter Moers (the o has an umlaut I think). He wrote The 13 1/2 lives of Captain Bluebear and Rumo. The stories are fairly imaginative & the illustrations are a great supplement (yay! pictures!). I should add that the stories are fairly childish, so don't expect much.

[boojiboy7]

[internisus]

[haircute]

Either Shadow and Claw or The Wizard Knight by Gene Wolfe. Actually, change that "or" to "and".
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[CubaLibre]

[boojiboy7]

[shrugtheironteacup]

[shrugtheironteacup]

Actually I'm just not sure about this phrase at all.
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[shrugtheironteacup]

And in context it's just overwhelming internisus.

I'm as big an Eliot dork as the next guy but do I really need to have a character quoting "The Wasteland" when something reminds her of it, followed up by a sentient train quoting "The Lovesong of J. Alfred Prufrock" a hundred pages later or so for no reason other than the author thought it would be cute?

Basically the whole series is Stephen King thinking he's horribly clever entirely to piss me off.

Me.

Personally.

That son of a bitch.
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[boojiboy7]