March 13, 2015

Ten Books for Readers Who Like Literary Fiction

I totally wrote this on Monday with every intention of posting it Tuesday. Then my week blew up. So here it is. Late. Sorry.

The Broken and the Bookish Top Ten Tuesday for this week is Ten Books for Readers Who Like ________. I am not feeling very creative and thinky this week, so I chose literary fiction. Or domestic fiction. Or whatever the kids are calling it this month.

Anyway, here's my list.

  1. Last Night at the Lobster by Stewart O'Nan. This is a short book about the last night of business at a Red Lobster restaurant in a town that is caught in a snowstorm. It is very "slice of life". I liked it a bunch.

  2. Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress by Dai Sijie. During the Cultural Revolution in China, two young men are moved to a rural area for reeducation. They find a trunk full of Western classis translated into Chinese.

  3. Plainsong by Kent Haruf. Two bachelor farmer brothers take in a pregnant teen girl who has been kicked out of her mother's house. So slow and measured and sweet.

  4. Bel Canto by Ann Patchett. A group of people in an embassy in a South American country is held hostage by a very unorganized group of terrorists. The dynamics of the relationships of the people involved are fascinating.

  5. Water for Elephants by Sara Gruen. Parts of this book are really hard to read because some of the people are really despicable, but the ending is fantabulous!

  6. Special Topics in Calamity Physics by Marisha Pessl. I'm a sucker for boarding school fiction, and this one includes a murder and a mystery.

  7. The Thirteenth Tale by Diane Setterfield. I like to read this in the fall or winter. It's pretty creepy with a vibe like Rebecca by Daphne DuMaurier.

  8. Death With Interruptions by Jose Saramago. In this slim novel, each country is assigned to a different Death figure. In this country similar to Portugal, Death has clocked out. People are not dying. Hospitals are overrun. Funeral homes are going out of business. Society is breaking down. Families are transporting their loved ones over the border into other countries to let them die.

  9. Homer and Langley by E.L. Doctorow. This is based on a true story about two hermitic brothers who lived in a huge house in Brooklyn and had really bizarre things in the house.

  10. A Good Hard Look by Ann Napolitano. A fictionalized look at the life of Flannery O'Connor.

  11. The History of Love by Nicole Krauss. An old man reminisces about a book he wrote and lost decades before and a young girl thinks her name is a product of that lost manuscript.