Episode 24: Six Novels

Inspired by

Librarian of Celaeno

’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

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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

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1. 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.