Hi All!
Looking for my next few reads. I tend to enjoy “classic” reads, the books that everyone says you NEED to read at some point in life!
I noticed I like more recent work (think 1940s and later…so not like Jane Eyre lol). I just finished up A Little Life and enjoyed the emotion, the stunning writing, it had quite a bit of an intellectual element and the significant themes of the book. My favorite book of all time is The Alchemist—a book that really changed the way I look at life.
Please no YA, not really my genre!!!
In advance, thank you!
by briannab99
3 Comments
East of Eden
On the Road
A Prayer for Owen Meany
Blood Meridian
Things Fall Apart
One Hundred Years of Solitude
I had this conversation with a friend and we came up with a list of books published in the 21st century we think will be deemed classics:
• A Gentleman in Moscow
• The Book Thief
• The Kite Runner
• The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time
• No Country For Old Men
• All The Light We Cannot See
• Never Let Me Go
• Girl, Woman, Other
• Middlesex
• House of Leaves
• Gilead
I didn’t love all of them and I avoid blanket recommendations in general (I prefer Rules of Civility over Gentleman in Moscow, for example but agreed the latter would likely have more prolific literally merit) and I don’t think there are any “underdogs” on our list – so you’ve probably heard of them all – but I think these will all qualify for what you’re asking for
*Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow* by Gabrielle Zevin: it has the close friendships and heart-rending pain of *A Little Life*, and is about childhood friends who develop a video game company together. It’s mostly about relationships, and the videogame portion is used to show how the characters view the world.
*The Secret History* by Donna Tartt: it was written about 30 years ago and it still pops up on bestseller lists. It’s about a really insular group of college students who go down a rabbit hole they can’t pull themselves out of. The first sentence tells you they killed a specific person, then jumps back and you spend the rest of the book trying to figure out how things got to that point. Tartt spends about a decade writing each novel, and you can tell; her writing is phenomenal.