Books

Asimov, Isaac. I'm placing only one book on this list, because I generally do not enjoy Asimov's work, but Foundation stands out.  The initial trilogy (read none of the pre-or sequels!) speculates on the possibilities of statistically predicting the psychological behavior (and thus future history) of societies.  Written in the 1950s, it becomes more and more interesting as the field advances.

Auster, Paul.  Thanks to alumnus Sarah Johnson (Schmidlin) for finding this writer!  Auster's New York Trilogy is a bizarre and more bizarre postmodern experiment in intrigue.  Prepare to have the rules of the world cut loose and search for stability in characters with no center.  Don't follow?  Read it!  Brooklyn Follies is a very different book, saved by its foolish-wise narrator as broken characters act irresponsibly in efforts to find meaning in their lives.  AP

Calvino, Italo.  Fun postmodern writer of semiotics, Calvino just makes readers think, but we're never sure about just what we're supposed to find--which is why I keep going back.  Are blades of grass really that fascinating?  Yup. Try his Mr. Palomar and Cosmicomics.  AP

Card, Orson Scott. This Mormon writer has written horror, science fiction, fantasy, and speculative fiction with better and worse success.  My favorite is the yet unfinished series of alternative fantasy history of the Tales of Alvin Maker, beginning with Seventh Son.  It's colonial America where all the superstitions held at the time actually function, but the historical figures are intriguingly accurate!

Clarke, Arthur C.  Classic science fiction writer, but a few of his works are extraordinary works on their own.  If you haven't read 2001: A Space Odyssey (mystical human evolution), Imperial Earth (AP) (murder mystery set against a totalitarian all-planet regime), and The Fountains of Paradise (the building of a space elevator), don't miss them.

Coetzee, J.M.  Thanks to alumnus Kelly Porter for finding this writer for me!  His Life and Times of Michael K is about a man utterly disconnected from the society around him, even during war, but he is ambiguously connected to something far richer; Waiting for the Barbarians is his only pseudo-fantasy about an aging governor who must resist an empire willing to extinguish local tribes which he does not understand himself.  Disgrace is a disturbing description of an aging man.  Coetzee's characters are often pained and contradictory, which makes them intriguing. Poetic and enticing, this guy won the Nobel Prize for good reason! AP

Diaz, Junot.  Thanks to Kate Kelley for recommending this, Diaz's characters are too too real, tragically so. The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao shifts narrators and makes references to geeky pop culture hobbies of the 1970s (Gamma World, anyone?) in an effort to distance themselves from a corrupt Dominican Republic culture and replace it with a misbegotten US one.  His collection of short stories, Drown, is said to be equally compelling.

Eco, Umberto.  Italian writer and semiotician (ask an AP student), Eco's essays are terrific at deconstructing American society (I especially like his collections How to Travel With a Salmon and Travels in Hyperreality), but his novels are more famous.  Specializing in stories within stories within stories and blending history and fiction, his Name of the Rose is a medieval murder mystery--but a real challenge to read for all of the Latin (there's even a sourcebook to help understand it!).  My favorite (and maybe my favorite novel of all time) is Foucault's Pendulum.  This is the DaVinci Code the way it should have been written, but it's thick with history (occult and traditional) and thicker in strands and twists; nevertheless, the labyrinth is well worth the exploration: "Jacques deMolay, thou art avenged!"

Ellison, Harlan.  Provocateur and often-censored writer, Ellison seems to write (horror, science fiction, or satire) as if his first goal is to goad and offend. I've found no one quite like him for scraping our social wounds raw.  He has written few actual novels, but look for his short stories "The Deathbird," "'Repent, Harlequin!' Said the Ticktockman," and "I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream."

Erdrich, Louise. One of my favorites, Erdrich crafts some of the most beautiful characters in literature and winds stories around them so subtly we forget we're reading.  Her novel Love Medicine is magnificent (get the more recent expanded edition, if you can). The Painted Drum is a fine work, but it takes about 1/3 of the book to see what she's up to.  Likewise, Four Souls requires some patience, though one of its narrators, Nanapush, is a terrific character.  Tracks, connected to Four Souls, was the most difficult for me to get through, though the religious scale of it is more ambitious. AP

Eugenides, Jeffrey. I was impressed with his second novel, Middlesex, mostly because of the unique narrative voice (alternating between third person omniscient and first person yet the same narrator), his Detroit settings from my own childhood, his compelling details of character lives, and that both realistic lack of justice around their fates yet somehow satisfying narrative closure which leaves readers satisfied. And somehow the compulsion-repulsion draw to a narrator who is a hermaphrodite is neutralized by the humanity of everyone in the story. 

Gaarder, Jostein.  Swedish writer of philosophical fiction.  His best known is Sophie's World which truly gives a fine overview of the great philosophers while telling a fun story--as the main character learns about different ways of seeing the world, the world she lives in begins to live according to the philosophers' imagination! The ending is a perfect postmodern touché.  His newer novel, The Solitaire Mystery, is less successful but plays some great philosophy games with a deck of cards as allegory. 

Herbert, Frank.  Ecologist and science fiction writer, two novels stand out as extraordinary.  His classic Dune far surpasses either of the film versions in mythic power and attention to detail; and The White Plague anticipates biological terrorism and the resulting social changes in a prophetic way.

King, Stephen.  Of course I had to put him in, and I admit to having read everything he's published.  However, setting aside the campy horror which dominates most of his work (and do I love camp!), two works are stronger.  The first is his non-fiction/autobiographical work On Writing which explains the craft in simple and thoughtful prose. For fiction, try his fantasy/horror/Western/mythological Dark Tower series beginning with The Gunslinger. As King writes, with this he "felt like he was unearthing something big." Oh, yes. 

LeGuin, Ursula K.  Unusual writer of fantasy and speculative fiction, her science fiction/psychological novel Lathe of Heaven is a disturbing morality story of perspective and false realities.

Lewis, C. S.  Christian writer with a deep and sensible understanding of how humans reason the spirit.  Three works stand out for me:  the children's series of Narnia, beginning with The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe (which--trust me--reads far differently now than it did when I was 10), his discussion of love in Four Loves, and his classic work on faith, Mere Christianity.

Martel, Yann.  I finally read Life of Pi and while I can't say it was the best-written book I've come across, I admired Martel's way of diagramming experience; and the final twist is fun and worth a debate or four, even though I knew what it was before I encountered it.  What twists could there be in the story of a boy trapped on a lifeboat in the Pacific with a live tiger?

McCarthy, Cormac.  McCarthy makes the darkest of human behavior and the bleakest of futures somehow grotesquely beautiful. Readers are immersed in his thick sometimes mud-like prose to wallow in his plots. True, this may not sound like high praise, but it's rare to find a reading experience so moving.  Blood Meridian and The Road are excellent examples.

Miller, Walter.  A Canticle for Leibowitz is an unusual post-apocalyptic novel about (in the first part, anyway) a monk who is trying to decipher the ancient and mysterious text found in the ruins: "Pound of salami, milk, bring home."  Surely, great answers will be uncovered!

Morrison, Toni.  African-American writer of psychological works and stream of consciousness. She places readers intimately into the consciousness of her narrators, often far more deeply than they would like.  My favorites of hers include Bluest Eye (a young black girl wants blue eyes), Sula, and Beloved (Is the young girl discovered on the roadway a woman's dead daughter?). AP

Niven, Larry, & Jerry Pournelle. These writers do better together than they ever do separately.  Many fun science fiction novels, but two are unusual enough to stand out for a list like this: Legacy of Heorot (a science fiction story modeled on Beowulf), and Inferno (an updated version of Dante).

Pellegrino, Charles.  Hard science writer, his apocalyptic novel, Dust, poses the scenario of a mass extinction of tiny organisms such as mites.  What would happen to our ecosystem? Convincing and scary! (Get ready for the chapter on bats!)

Quinn, Daniel. Writer of Ishmael, his other works are no less interesting. My Ishmael acts as a parallel novel to the first, with a young girl asking, "But what do we do with it?" and it attacks public education; Story of B is the thickest in theory and also goes after religion.  Most recently I read his novel After Dachau which was disappointing compared to other works, but the twists were fun and worth the two hour read!

Rand, Ayn.  While her novels revolve around the philosophy of objectivism (the belief in the individual as the ultimate object of value), they are nonetheless compelling and create lots of late night debates!  Try them in this order of difficulty:  Anthem (an individual in a world without the word "I/me"), The Fountainhead (an architect designs beauty for himself), and Atlas Shrugged (her crowning and most difficult work about the end of society). AP

Rutherford, Edmund. Unusual British writer whose lengthy novels are not about characters first, but places.  He traces the events of humans as they impact towns or regions, linking the characters through distant family relations.  Seeing the ruins of a powerful scene appear briefly in a later chapter is humbling. Of his works my favorites are Sarum, Russka, and Forest.

Vonnegut, Kurt.  Hmm.  Where do you start?  Vonnegut's writing is linked by a fragmented style of unpredictable images, but little else.  My favorites include Cat's Cradle and Slaughterhouse Five.  His newer works I find less palatable. AP