Comments on: Readers Recommend Books!

By: rosarita

rosarita — Fri, 15 Feb 2008 23:38:52 +0000

Oh, dear Francesca, I love your book recs. My recs to you, since I admire your appreciation of older, classic fiction, is to discover Edna Ferber. She wrote Giant, (later a movie w/ Liz Taylor, James Dean and Rock Hudson); Show Boat (and the play of the same name); won a Pulitzer for So Big; and has written several excellent collections of short stories (one to look for is One Basket). Just to name a few. I also revisited Steinbeck several years ago, and The Grapes of Wrath is riveting.

And, of course, I adore David Sedaris. :)

By: Bridey

Bridey — Fri, 15 Feb 2008 16:44:53 +0000

Patrick O’Brian’s Aubrey-Maturin series. Twenty novels, and possibly the best historical fiction series ever written.

Don’t be put off by the fact that they’re genre novels, or war novels, or sea novels. They’re just simply wonderful novels.

And please don’t be put off by that stupid Russell Crowe movie. (“Let’s see…. This beloved and highly regarded novel is about a huge young English naval officer on his first command during the early days of Napoleon’s ascendancy, and the officer’s complex and dangerous physician/spy best friend. So let’s jam in random elements from two books much later in the series, change the Americans they fight to French so as not to annoy the colonials, cast a short 40-year-old Australian in the lead, and turn the friend into a bumbling clod! That’ll work!”)

By: cheeky

cheeky — Thu, 14 Feb 2008 20:18:16 +0000

I love David Sedaris so much that I can’t help but read all of his stuff as soon as possible. It’s a guilt-free binge. I just finish wishing there were more.