More of my favorite books that didn’t make the top 5, but were pretty damn close:
A HEARTBREAKING WORK OF STAGGERING GENIUS
Dave Eggers’ autobiographical account of how he lost both parents within a matter of weeks, then had to raise his kid brother while barely out of childhood himself. It’s funny, brutally honest, and written in a hip, smart way that makes you want to read it slowly so you can absorb every word. It’s like being at a party where someone is telling hilarious stories and you don’t want to leave.
Unfortunately, this first book by Dave Eggers turned out to be his peak: He hasn’t written anything since then that has come close to being this good.
DEVIL IN THE WHITE CITY
By Erik Larson. Not only is this book a riveting account of the 1893 Chicago World’s Fair and all the trials and tribulations the city officials and Fair’s designers had to endure in order to get the Fair open on time (and all the many, many interesting details about the Fair that the average person doesn’t know), but this book also details the story of H.H. Holmes, a serial killer posing as a physician (the original Dr. Kevorkian) who is believed to have murdered approximately 200 people. Holmes used the World’s Fair as a way of luring victims to his “World’s Fair Hotel,” a deathtrap that housed a gas chamber and a crematorium. The book moves back and forth between the two stories, both intertwined but also separate, and keeps the reader thrillingly engaged on both fronts.
LORD OF LIGHT
Author Roger Zelazny is best known for his Amber series, and is also the author of Damnation Alley, a really cool sci-fi action novella I love (it was later expanded into a novel, but I prefer the slimmed-down original novella). This book is about a group of far-future astronauts who land on a planet that parallels Earth, but is still in its primitive human stages. The astronauts use their technology to set themselves up as gods, using the Hindu gods as a basis for their identities, and work to subjugate and suppress the human-like people from evolving so as to ensure their power base remains unchallenged and unchanged. But one of their own turns against them and becomes a rebel; he lives among the people and works to undermine the gods’ tyranny. They call him “Buddha.”
It’s been decades since I read this book, yet I still remember scenes from it as fresh as if I had read it yesterday.
DOWN THERE
Also published under the title Shoot the Piano Player, this novel by David Goodis is bleak, depressing, and atmospheric as hell. It’s about a man who, after a personal tragedy, insulates himself from the world around him by playing the piano in a seedy bar. He’s forced to come out of his self-constructed cocoon when his criminal brothers are targeted by mobsters. Of course, tragedy ensues. Goodis rarely wrote happy endings to his stories, and this one is not an exception, but the ending is appropriate.
THE STARS MY DESTINATION
A great sci-fi novel by Alfred Bester that essentially takes the plot of The Count of Monte Cristo, places it in the future, and adds in mankind’s newfound ability to teleport (called “jaunting” in the novel). There’s a lot more to the book than that, but you have to read it in order to understand how good it is.
BLAKE TWENTY-THREE
What’s that? You say I can’t list one of my own novels as a favorite? Well, it’s my blog and I can do whatever I want.
This is a favorite because I loved writing it, and I occasionally love re-reading it. Parts of it still make me smile and even laugh, and parts of it are cathartic. So my choice is personal, but I stand by it.
AUTHORS I LOVE:
Theodore Dreiser; Alexandre Dumas; Henry James (although his later stuff became a bit longwinded); Raymond Chandler; James M. Cain; Elmore Leonard (not crazy about a couple of his later books, though); Harlan Ellison; David Goodis; Jim Thompson; Ed McBain; Alfred Bester; Neil Gaiman; Nelson Demille; Dennis Lehane; John McNally; Charles Frazier; Susanna Clarke; Michael Chabon; Graham Greene; J.D. Salinger; David Foster Wallace (but just his nonfiction stuff); Richard Matheson, Robert E. Howard, Stendhal, Alan Moore…
I’ll probably add more names to this list as I think of them.
NEAR-PERFECT NOVEL I LOVED, BUT DIDN’T LIKE ANYTHING ELSE BY THIS AUTHOR:
The Maltese Falcon by Dashiell Hammett
CLASSIC NOVEL THAT IS NOW CONSIDERED OVERRATED, BUT EVERYONE IS WRONG BECAUSE THE BOOK IS REALLY, REALLY THAT GOOD, WHICH MAKES IT VASTLY UNDERRATED:
The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger
CLASSIC NOVEL THAT IS, IN FACT, OVERRATED BECAUSE IT’S NOT REALLY THAT GOOD, BUT FOR SOME REASON IS CONSIDERED THE QUINTESSENTIAL GREAT AMERICAN NOVEL:
Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. (I think it’s actually one of Twain’s weakest works, filled with plot holes and weak characterization.)
NOVEL THAT ALMOST MADE IT INTO MY TOP 10, MAYBE EVEN TOP 5, BUT THEN I GOT TO THE SECOND TO THE LAST PAGE AND FELT LIKE I GOT SUCKERPUNCHED IN THE GUT:
Atonement by Ian McEwan.
I won’t give away what happens in the very end, but needless to say that I nearly ripped the book to shreds and sent it C.O.D. back to the author.
NOVEL THAT I STARTED OFF ENJOYING, BUT THEN SOME STUFF HAPPENS IN THE MIDDLE AND IN THE END THAT MADE ME HATE THE BOOK SO MUCH THAT I REFUSE TO READ ANYTHING BY THIS AUTHOR EVER AGAIN:
No Country for Old Men by Cormac McCarthy
I won’t give it away in case there’s somebody out there that hasn’t read the book or seen the movie, but if you want to know why I hated this book so much, email me and I’ll give you my reasons.
5 AUTHORS THAT I SUSPECT MADE A DEAL WITH THE DEVIL BECAUSE I SIMPLY CAN’T FIGURE OUT WHY THEY’RE SO POPULAR AND WHY THEIR POORLY WRITTEN BOOKS SELL SO MANY COPIES:
1) John Grisham (Don’t sue me, John. This is just my opinion.)
2) Dan Brown
3) Sydney Sheldon
4) Danielle Steel
5) Tom Clancy (He has good story ideas, but I’ve never been able to make it all the way through one of his books. His writing is drier than the Sahara. Does anyone read his books? Or do they just buy them and put them on their bookshelves so their friends will think they’re intelligent?)
WRITER I USED TO THINK WAS OVERRATED, BUT AFTER READING MORE AND MORE OF HIS STUFF, I BEGAN TO UNDERSTAND WHY HE’S HIGHLY REGARDED:
Ernest Hemingway
MOST OVERRATED AUTHOR:
William Faulkner
Yeah…I don’t get it. I’ve read some of his books, and I don’t see it. I think the critics and literature professors are wrong about him.
MORE WRITERS/BOOKS/TRENDS THAT I CAN’T UNDERSTAND THE APPEAL OF:
1) Stephen King (Great short story writer, but his novels are tedious and in serious need of being pared down. Compare Salem’s Lot or The Dead Zone with anything he’s written in the last twenty-five years… And sometimes his story ideas just plain suck.)
2) James Ellroy (Once talented, but now a caricature of himself.)
3) The Twilight series
4) Anything written by Anne Rice
5) Harry Potter
6) Lord of the Rings (I liked The Hobbit, but the other books? Zzzzzz…)
7) James Patterson
8) Janet Evanovich
9) Tom Wolfe
10) Anything by John Irving excluding The World According to Garp