Hello,
Looking for some books that I can get into that are similar to the authors in the title. I like these authors because of the themes of the novel, and there are a lot of quotes to pick out. They feel profound, and a really good book stays with me where I’ll go through it again and highlight the lines I like most.
To give some examples:
John Steinbeck, East of Eden:
\- “And this I believe: that the free, exploring mind of the individual human is the most valuable thing in the world. And this I would fight for: the freedom of the mind to take any direction it wishes, undirected. And this I must fight against: any idea, religion, or government which limits or destroys the individual. This is what I am and what I am about.”
\- “I believe that there is one story in the world, and only one. . . . Humans are caught—in their lives, in their thoughts, in their hungers and ambitions, in their avarice and cruelty, and in their kindness and generosity too—in a net of good and evil. . . . There is no other story. A man, after he has brushed off the dust and chips of his life, will have left only the hard, clean questions: Was it good or was it evil? Have I done well—or ill?”
Milan Kundera, The Unbearable Lightness of Being
\- “The heaviest of burdens crushes us, we sink beneath it, it pins us to the ground. But in love poetry of every age, the woman longs to be weighed down by the man’s body.The heaviest of burdens is therefore simultaneously an image of life’s most intense fulfillment. The heavier the burden, the closer our lives come to the earth, the more real and truthful they become. Conversely, the absolute absence of burden causes man to be lighter than air, to soar into heights, take leave of the earth and his earthly being, and become only half real, his movements as free as they are insignificant. What then shall we choose? Weight or lightness?”
Thank you!
by neutral_hotel
6 Comments
I don’t know if this is similar enough, but I’d recommend anything by Dostoevsky.
Tom Robbins
The Man Without Qualities is very much in line with Unbearable Lightness.
A Heart So White by Javier Marias is another good one.
Sanora Babb, specifically Whose Names are Unknown. If you enjoyed Grapes of Wrath by Steinbeck I think you’ll like this book.
Anna Karenina by Tolstoy
{{100 years of solitude}} Super famous novel by Colombian author Gabriel Garcia Marquez. Worth reading but if you don’t shut up about it at the bar someone might call you a pseud.
{{fugitive pieces}} author is a poet and I guess that shows in the prose.
{{other voices, other rooms}} by the author of In Cold Blood.
I can probably find more if you like.