Inspired by
’s recent post The Librarian of Celaeno’s Top 20 Book Recommendations, I decided to pull out my journals and make my own list. This episode opens up with a discussion about Low Brow, High Brow, and Middle Brow literature. The six novels I chose to recommend are High Middle Brow and one of them even overlaps with Librarian’s choices. This is not a list of the greatest novels. It’s not even ranked. The books I chose are the novels I find stylistically, thematically, and compositionally aesthetically pleasing. These six novels inform my own personal style and outlook on life. Reading through this will illuminate and explain where my literary and aesthetic was formed. They all have significant themes, modes, and styles in common, much more so than I realized until I put them next to each other. I hope you listeners take the time and add these books to your reading lists if you haven’t read them. Six Novels with Timestamps:
00:30 The Savage Detectives by Robert Bolano
00:37 The Magus by John Fowles
00:48 The Secret History by Donna Tartt
01:12 Focault’s Pendulum by Umberto Eco
01:22 Inherent Vice by Thomas Pynchon
01:37 Solenoid by Mircea Cartarescu
On this episode I mention that my notes were filled with hundreds of books I’ve read and that I had to leave out so much stuff. Because you all love books and lists about books I’m going to post more recommendations here so you can have even more stuff to read. This is not a comprehensive list, it’s mostly from memory and I’m going leave out some obvious stuff. These are books that captured my imagination and have my highest recommendation1.
Science Fiction
Hyperion
Pandoras Star
Great North
House of Suns
High Rise
Super Cannes
Fantasy
Tigana
The Curse of Chalion
Suldrun’s Garden
Liveship Traders
A Song for Arbonne
Book of the New Sun
Historical Fiction
Shogun
Tai-Pan
Noble House
Scaramouche
Capitan Alatriste
Drood
Horror
Summer of Night
The Elementals
Blackwater Saga
Fiction
The Great Gatsby
The Brothers Karamazov
A Tale of Two Cities
Moby Dick
Demons
Laurus
American Psycho
Journey to the End of the Night
No Country for Old Men
Suttree
2666
Blood Meridian
Child of God
After Dark
A Wild Sheep Chase
Spring Snow
If you enjoy The Deceneus Review please take the time to like, follow, and comment on here and also across multiple platforms. You can listen to The Deceneus Review on every major platform and also use the RSS feed to listen on any and all podcast streaming apps. In order to keep this up and continue to provide some of the best content on this side of Substack we need to get the word out far and wide, so please like, share, subscribe not only here but on YouTube, Spotify, Apple Music. If you enjoy these conversations and are excited about all the excellent stuff I have planned for the future take the time and share a link with your friends as far and wide as possible.
This list is missing a lot of obvious novels because I’m writing this off the top of my head and I’m so tired that my eyes are closing as I write this.
Share this post