Rambling, ambivalent recommendation request

[polymorphikos]

Right, I don't like posting requests for recommendations but this solves problems insoluble.


I am jaded with the sf/f genres. I want to get back into them after a long sojourn in the realms of non-genre literature. This has been confirmed by my reading 'Quest for Eternity' by Van Vogt in one sitting the night before last.

So can anyone recommend a book which is:

-Deep

-Wildly-imaginative

-Well-written

-Preferably with a dream-like, non-linear quality.

-Ideally a book capturing the quality of watching an the African Queen for the first time at eleven at night, when you yourself are eleven.

I feel like everything I'm reading is too-strong coffee with cream when what I really want is a glass of water, if that makes sense.

Sorry. Help appreciated.

 

[dwndrgn]

Try Vurt by Jeff Noon. It's a sort of cyberpunk sf/f mix that is a bit mind twisting. Definitely a dream-like quality to it. It is sort of a car crash type of book. Parts of it are just horrid (not horribly written) but you keep reading just like you keep looking at the site of a car crash - you just can't turn away. I would definitely class this one as deep, imaginitive and well-written. Not my favorite book and one I probably won't read again but it was an interesting journey nonetheless.

 

[Leto]

Son of the Man by Robert Silverberg. For the dreamy quality you can't miss it.

In terms of authors, either Silverberg, Jack Vance or Cordwainer Smith could satisfy your request.

 

[rune]

The books in New Crobuzon series by China Mieville I've not read anything as vivid and unusual as this authors works

 

[polymorphikos]

Thank you very much. I'll certainly look-out for this Vurt book.

 

[Mark Robson]

I was recently recommended 'Shadow of the Wind' by the senior buying manager of Waterstones. He scan reads nearly a thousand books a year and said this was by far the best book he had read in a very long time. The plot revolves around a father who takes his son to a bookshop called The Cemetary of Forgotten Books. The boy is given a book called Shadow of the Wind and then his life turns around with a series of strange events. I wouldn't normally suggest something that I haven't read myself, but you can be sure that I will read and review this at some time this year. From everything I've heard about this book, I get the feeling it is something special.

 

[Jayaprakash Satyamurthy]

Gabriel Garcia Marquez would seem like an ideal suggestion at this point. One Hundred Years of Solitude, perhaps?

How about some Martin Amis? I'd recommend London Fields, a most bizarre love triangle in which one Nicola Six plots her own murder, or Time's Arrow, the story of one man's life told in reverse and a thoughtful meditation on the Holocaust.

Vladimir Nabokov's Lolita has most of the qualities you've mentioned, too. Anything by Italo Calvino should suit your parameters as well - I'd suggest Invisible Cities, first.

Other good books: Devil's Valley by Andre Brink, The Paradise Motel by Eric McCormack, Kleinzeit by Russel Hoban, The History of Luminous Motion by Scott Bradfield.

All these books are set on strange intersections between reality and its opposite, and the quality of prose is uniformly excellent.

 

[angrybuddhist]

Illuminatus! by Robert Anton Wilson and Robert Shea, if you really want "wildly imaginative", "deep", and "non-linear". Robert Anton Wilson's favorite author and book are Finnegan's Wake by James Joyce. Check out www.rawilson.com/about.shtml.

 

[ravenus]

Try Haruki Murakami's books - Wind-up Bird Chronicles, Hard-boiled Wonderland, they may be called as fantasy but they're contemporary imaginative fiction not the sword-and-sorcery stuff that the word fantasy has been narrowed down to define. And they're brilliant.

Hearts in Atlantis by Stephen King is again brilliant and emotionally moving growing-up tale mixed with some fantasy and surreal elements.

Try some of George Orwell's lesser known books like Coming up for Air and Keep the Apsidistra Flying...CUFA is my fav Orwell book and one of my most beautiful and tragic reading experiences.

Marquez's Chronicle of a Death Foretold is a short and brilliant non-linear experience which starts off with the climax, and then builds up the entire set of events that leads to the climax drawing increasingly tight concentric circles towards the core.

 

[polymorphikos]

We actually had to read COADF for year 12 Lit. Excellent little book. Thanks once again for the recommendations. I'll see how many of these I can actually find, although It's unlikely I'll be able to buy them due to the looming school-book-buying horror period.

 

[Jayaprakash Satyamurthy]

Try some of George Orwell's lesser known books like Coming up for Air and Keep the Apsidistra Flying...CUFA is my fav Orwell book and one of my most beautiful and tragic reading experiences.

I'd second that. There's certainly more to Orwell's fiction than 1984 and Animal Farm - in fact it was ravenus who reminded me of this fact some time back.

Chronicle Of A Death Foretold was the first Marquez book I ever read - I think it would make a good entry-piece for anyone tackling his work for the first time.

I should also second dwndrgn's mention of Jeff Noon. William Burroughs meets cyberpunk. Kinda.

 

[Hypes]

Iain M. Banks' Wasp Factory is a morbid, but intensely interesting read.

 

[Leto]

Iain M. Banks' Wasp Factory is a morbid, but intensely interesting read.

Err, I found it quite boring and the end is very anticlimatic. But morbid, yes.