I’m not a runner (I cycle and walk 5 huge dogs every day) but his What I Talk About When I Talk About Running is not at all just for runners.
I’m not a novelist either, but I’m really looking forward to the paperback edition of Novelist as Vocation
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Just this morning I finished Semiosis, Sue Burke’s first novel, about colonists from Earth trying to survive on another planet whose plant life is sentient. While the story’s socio-political aspects didn’t work so well for me, looking at the world from a plant’s perspective was fascinating. Watching how the plants manipulated other creatures (and us!) to do their bidding, making us their “service animals”–I’ll never look at an apple in quite the same way.
I recently reread Scott Smith’s A Simple Plan (also his debut novel).
I’d originally read the book when it was first published in the 90’s. I recall being a bit disappointed; I considered it too over the top, that he’d pushed his theme past the point of ridiculousness. I saw the movie when it was released a few years after that and thought it excellent. Smith wrote the screenplay, adapting his own novel into a leaner film story with some major plot modifications, and Sam Raimi was the perfect director to bring such a dark story to life on the screen.
I’m not sure why I decided to pick the book up again after 30 years. My tastes must have changed significantly, because this time around I found it to be as perfectly realized a novel as it could be. Wkipedia calls it a thriller, perhaps due to the crime aspect of the story. But to me it’s a horror story through and through. Smith lays on the feeling of dread from the opening sentence and he never lets up. It is unrelenting psychological horror, about the monster hiding inside us that is capable of anything.
At some point I saw the movie Annihilation and felt it was awful. What a mess. (And what a disappointment, as I thought writer/director Alex Garland’s movie Ex Machina was brilliant.)
Then I found out the film was based on a novel by Jeff VanderMeer, who was editor of (and authored a couple stories in) an anthology I love called The Weird. So I decided to give his novel a try. I’m glad I did–it was great! As it happens, it’s the first of three books in the Southern Reach Series series, so I read the next two, Authority and Acceptance. They were great too!
The story concerns a region of the southern U.S., now called Area X, which has been cut off from the rest of the world. The people living there have vanished, with nature quickly taking back their abandoned towns. Most expeditions sent inside Area X do not return; the few team members who do find their way back out are changed, different. Annihilation begins as we follow members of the 12th expedition into Area X. What is going on: Mass psychosis? Environmental disaster? Alien invasion?
Having been exposed to the mind-fuckery of the stories in The Weird, I was prepared to go with the flow and accept that there would be (many!) things in these books I wouldn’t understand, which is fitting, because that’s exactly the position the characters are in, dealing with something beyond human comprehension. VanderMeer’s images haunted me for weeks after I was done reading the books.
Best,
Jim
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Glad you enjoyed it. I really love Ishiguro.
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For anyone interested in the cultural and historical evolution of Ireland from the 1950s onward, this is a compelling read by a great writer who has thoughtful insights into many of the plot points in Ireland’s recent history.
Another incredible non-fiction book about sensory perception across species and the concept of umwelt. (I think it’s a must read for fiction writers as it has transferrable knowledge about individual species perspective that I think helps to inform character development):
NYT named both one of the 10 best books of 2022 (5 fiction; 5 non-fiction):
Entirely. It’s good–and I don’t want to go back. It’s the haunting quality of it. This is a ringing endorsement of writing that hit me hard.
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What a wonderful thread and suggestions.
You know that feeling when you’re devastated when a book ends? I hadn’t had that in ages, and Anthony Doerr’s All the Light We Cannot See recently did that for me. How he weaves different threads and worlds–astonishing and magical.
I read his Cloud Cuckoo Land first, and was enraptured.
I can’t do the books justice, but Doerr has an intriguing way of centering his multiple threads around a crux–in Cloud Cuckoo Land, around a text and reading (this is bald simplification). As reviewers have said, it’s a paean to reading. Actually, I’d start with this one and then read All the Light, if you’re inclined to read him.
Happy reading, everyone.
As an aside, the frightening part is that such an outcome was not outside the realm of possibility.
Hence the need to understand what happened …
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Thousands of electoral register records that have fundamental errors in them.
I just finished reading Isabel Wilkerson’s The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America’s Great Migration, which was both inspiring and heartbreaking. I liked her decision to focus on interviews with three different people who migrated to different places as a way to personalize an event that stretched over decades.
Now, I’m working on The Speaking Bones, which is Book 4 of Ken Liu’s Dandelion Dynasty series. The first book in the series was incredible, and the other two did not disappoint. I’ve just started this book, but I’m already hooked.
Just read the French version of The road.
Interesting, but we’re left guessing what brought the world to its end. With fires rampaging and traveling around, a whole in the ozone layer ?
I was perplex at first at the “no punctuation” style.
Overall it is a good book. But just too many questions left unanswered to my taste.
Thanks for the suggestion. 
I am going through your list again, as I really liked Klara and the Sun.
Something tells me we have quite the same taste. Or close enough.
Unlikely. But a coronal mass ejection could cause this, especially during a geomagnetic reversal (when the magnetosphere is weak).
Well… In the book it has been going on for years.
The cause or trigger of certain events may not last long, but the consequences do (think: huge asteroid hitting earth – “just” once). Something roasting our electric and communication infrastructure would certainly push civilization in an interesting direction.
I’m beginning my annual Lenten reading of “A Canticle For Liebowitz” a few weeks early.
(The novel maintains the pre-1962 Catholic liturgical calendar, so it’s appropriate given we are in the pre-Lenten season of Septuagesima.)
Hey, some people read “The Hobbit” or “The Lord of the Rings” every year. Me…
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My wife gave me “Burmese Sahib” by Paul Theroux - as I was a George Orwell fan. Loved it. Theroux is a great writer ( a bit like Stephen King with his word ability). It was a book based on Orwells days in Burma as an English Police officer. Theroux really brought it alive. Highly recommended.
As a consequence I re-read the original “Burmese Days” by Orwell. Theroux did a great job.
A friend lent me a Theroux book that was her favourite. I had to promise to return it. It was called " My Secret History". I started but hated the character in the book. It is written in the first person. I was nearly going to give up on it, but it is well written and I thought I owed it to the person who lent me the book to finish it. I also am of the opinion - you really cant comment on a book unless you have actually finished it.
Although Theroux claims it has no connection to his real life - the simalarities are over whelming. I finished the book and still didnt like the character. He seem to how no deep connection with women. They were all sex objects with no brains. I do get bored with writers who seem to labour the aspect of sex. If it is necessary for the story - yes. But if every encounter is sexual, I find it boring. And unnecessary.
If this was any indication of Theroux personality - it didnt paint him in a favourable light (at least in my view). So bottom line. Highly recommend “Burma Sahib” but “My Secret History”, although well written ,not recommended.
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Bump.
I am looking for a good read. Any new / fresh recommendations?
(I personally have nothing to add to this list at the moment, unfortunately.)
Fiction or non-fiction?
Fiction.
Thanks. I like eerie stuff the most.
. . . . . . . . . . .
Well written eerie stuff 
Have you read Jeff VanderMeer’s Southern Reach books? (Four at this point, starting with Annihilation.)
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Annihilation, is that what the movie of the same title was based upon? (The movie I found to be amazingly great.)
No, I haven’t read anything from this author. Will check it out right away.