Break Cheryl’s book drought, part seven
From Lexington lawyer Scott White:
I read your column and really empathized. I got in one of those funks last year, and jolted myself out by re-reading an old favorite (some would say a “guilty pleasure”, but I love well written stuff in the fantasy genre), Ursula LeGuin’s Earthsea Trilogy. But, I would also recommend Richard Price’s Lush Life that is just a stunning example of the well written and paced crime novel (in my view, it is legitimate literature . . . who says serious writing can’t be entertaining!). Another I’d toss at you is Zadie Smith’s On Beauty.
BUT, if you really want to jump start yourself with a pure FUN read that will get you howling let me suggest either John Toole’s Confederacy of Dunces (the funniest novel ever written), Trollope’s Barchester Towers, or any of John Irving’s early and oft overlooked novels (Setting Free the Bears [my fav], 158 Pound Marriage, & The Water Method Man).
From Cheryl:
You know, I had never heard of the Earthsea Trilogy, but Irving may be my all-time favorite author: I even read A Son of the Circus. Also: A specific Anthony Trollope selection, so now I have a place to start. And really, if enough people remind me of A Confederacy of Dunces, I may just have to go back and tip into that one again: I started re-reading it a few years back, became irritated that it wasn’t the genius I remembered, and quit. But I may have been simply cranky, and as I first remember Ignatius, he took a while to warm up to.
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I was amused by your lament. I was reminded of something Stephen King wrote in reviewing the Harry Potter series, comparing kid fiction and adult fiction:
“(R)eading was never dead with the kids. Au contraire, right now it’s probably healthier than the adult version, which has to cope with what seems like at least 400 boring and pretentious ‘literary novels’ each year.”
So much “literary” fiction positively strains for nuance and portent, yet it comes across as stale and recycled. If you’ve read one such work, you’ve read them all. Try non-fiction for a while. It’s a breath of fresh air.