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Thursday, April 16, 2020

Ready to read a long novel?



LitHub has published a piece called "The 50 Best Contemporary Novels Over 500 Pages" by Emily Temple, and in my opinion the article is above average for pieces of the type.

Among the recommended novels, I have read nine: The Overstory by Richard Powers, The Fifth Season by N.K. Jemisin, The Name of the Rose by Umberto Eco, Possession by A.S. Byatt, The Secret History by Donna Tartt, American Gods by Neil Gaiman, Dhalgren by Samuel Delany, Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell by Susanna Clarke and Lonesome Dove by Larry McMurtry. I didn't care for Dhalgren (I'm a Babel-17 fan) and I don't remember much about the Eco, but I really liked the other seven. (Temple limits her list to novels published since 1970 in English, if you wonder why Ulysses or Lord of the Rings is missing.) I had already been planning to read some of the other novels Temple likes.

I posted a comment to the article recommending the Illuminatus! trilogy and Cryptonomicon by Neal Stephenson. Ada by Vladimir Nabokov was published in 1969 and just barely misses qualifying but I like it, too.

1 comment:

Eric Wagner said...

I loved "The Name of the Rose" when I read it in 1985.