’s Hefty Matters — Regular doses of short stories, humour and fun, human connections and more. (The above painting was chosen in his honour, but I’ll let him tell you the story.)
Norwegian Wood for me, without a doubt! It may be the most heartbreaking thing I’ve ever come across, and it spurred a years-long passion for and fascination with Murakami’s work. I’ve since replaced it as my favourite of his novels with Wind-Up Bird’s Chronicle, but it remains one of the most magical, harrowing fictional experiences of my life. I read it breathlessly over three days, three nights in fact, nights when I was supposed to entertain a cousin who was visiting and I just settled for placing him in front of my PC, booting up Overwatch, and letting him entertain himself while, in the same room, I gave my heart to Murakami to be ripped open.
I agree! I don't think this book gets enough love for how amazing it is. People often talk about how it's not like a 'real' Murakami but for me it's the best one, a singular and beloved reading experience
Yeah, it doesn’t really feel like Murakami, but it’s still a great read, and for me at least it was a great introduction to one of my favourite authors.
Wonderful book. I re-read it last year after ten years and got me immersed even more than the first read. Not a Murakami fan in general but Norwegian Wood is something else.
The Stand by Stephen King. For pure entertainment value.
I'd have to insist on erasing from my memory the two miniseries.
In picking something that is not "literary," my theory is that the literary fiction I've read and loved is usually more enjoyable as a re-read, so a first time read would not be so valuable to me.
I think the best place to read the hugies like The Stand, Atlas Shrugged, and War and Peace is when one is serving time in solitary confinement. It’s almost worth committing a minor crime, say grand theft auto, and once inside, mouthing off to a guard to get locked up in solitary.
I’d probably check first about library privileges, now that I think about it.
Maybe Piranesi by Susannah Clarke--it’s a story of innocence and wonder being gradually complicated, and there’s nothing quite like that blank slate experience of the surreal world she created.
Definitely the right time of year. Best with a howling wind. Titus Groan is the first one, then Gormenghast. Peake envisaged a long series but only completed the first three and was very will by the time he wrote Titus Alone. The first two make a powerful duology.
It’s Tinker, Tailor, Solider, Spy for me! It’s not my favorite book of all time, but I did really love it, and wish I could read it again for the first time for two reasons: 1) it is such a great thriller and I had a blast trying to work out who Karla’s mole was, and 2) I read it before I knew how creepy John Le Carré became toward his female characters in his later years and would like to be able to read his stuff again without that coloring my view of his stories, lol
My Brilliant Friend by Elena Ferrante. I had a visceral reaction to her writing and wanted to read everything she wrote. This was the first novel I read of hers and I was stunned by beauty and rawness of her writing.
A really good Norse saga that pulls the reader in immediately. I could not put it down. It has been a long time since I read it and the other two from the trilogy. Perhaps I will read Kristin again soon.
Christmas Carol. Received as a Christmas present from my parents in 1964 and I instantly fell in love with the story. I treasured that book with its handwritten inscription from them. I regifted it to my son on his 21st birthday. It felt right to hand on something I held so personally dear to me.
The Picture of Dorian Grey by Oscar Wilde. I still remember the first time I discovered it when I was 15 years old. Totally changed my perspective of what a novel could be.
Spoiler alert: The last line in my (soon-to-be-submitted) contribution to The Books That Made Us is, "I envy those who get to read it for the first time."
The book? Mikhail Bulgakov's 'The Master and Margarita'.
As I think about it, the really good books that I read at certain times in my life became part of me, so if I were reading them for the first time now, I would not have had them with me all these years.
That quibble aside, there are a lot of candidates. War and Peace and The Lord of the Rings are probably the top ones. To discover new universes on that scale is a rare privilege.
Oooo this is a good one. The one that comes immediately to mind is Cold Mountain by Charles Frazier. I haven’t read anything since that made me cry quite like that.
The Pillars of the Earth. It was the first Follett novel that I read and instantly catapulted him to the top of the list of my favorite authors. Another would be Steven Pressfield's Gates of Fire.
I've been thinking of adding that to my Audible queue, but evidently there's a prequel in that series now, The Evening and the Morning; would you recommend I start with the prequel or go in publication order?
I think it's safe to say that Follett intended them to be read in publication order, not chronological order. I read them in publication order by default since there were only 2 books at the time I started.
The Midnight Library, by Matt Haig. I remember while reading it just wanting to sit in the universe and continue discovering it for the first time. And when it was done I wanted the same thing.
One of the few books that consistently made me laugh. This part still gets me:
"And after that strange blasphemy she said no more. She let them gag her, and stood imperiously as the torches were put to the dry wood.
The crowd grew nearer, one or two of its members a little uncertain as to whether they’d done the right thing, now they came to think about it.
Thirty seconds later an explosion took out the village green, scythed the valley clean of every living thing, and was seen as far away as Halifax.
There was much subsequent debate as to whether this had been sent by God or by Satan, but a note later found in Agnes Nutter’s cottage indicated that any divine or devilish intervention had been materially helped by the contents of Agnes’s petticoats, wherein she had with some foresight concealed eighty pounds of gunpowder and forty pounds of roofing nails."
It's an amazing book, full of incredibly sad but also somehow wildly funny situations. I reread for the first time a few years back and despite more than 20 years between reads, it was a hard read knowing how things end up. Characters end up in relentlessly hard situations and it's much easier to face not knowing that.
‘The Ringed Castle’ by Dorothy Dunnett. It’s the fifth book in a series of 6. I first read it shortly after its publication in 1971, when I was 19. At 16, I’d discovered the preceding book ‘Pawn in Frankincense’ in the central library. While I was on the bus, a much older woman spotted the book & asked if I’d read the other books. She confirmed it was very much worth the read but should first read the previous 3 books in the series. Which I did. So I had to wait nearly 3 years for the fifth book in the series. It was very much worth the wait. And then we had to wait a further 4 years for the last in the series.
Meanwhile the 2 different worlds and the development of 2 of the characters from the series in those worlds became an eye-opening adventure. I had the privilege of leading an expanded read-through with fellow Dunnett readers of this book, which continues to be my favourite of all from the six in the series. Dunnett’s inimitable (though it seems many have tried) painterly (she was also a portrait painter) writing qualities not only capture our minds and hearts but also recount fantastic adventures in navigation and history.
I should so love to be able to read this for the first time once again.
Here here! Glad someone said Dunnet. For me, it would be Niccolo Rising, first of hers I read (yes I was very late to the party.) Reading the first 100 pages with my mouth wide open, not believing that someone dared write like this!
So many! The feeling that comes from a really good book, of an ever-opening horizon and a gradually-dawning truth or idea, is heavily dependent, in my mind, on that first reading. Subsequent readings are always colored by the realization of what will be established by the end; they are like a comfortable sunday drive around what was once a horizon of limitless possibility.
"The Brothers Karamazov"
"Franny and Zooey"
"The inverted World" by Christopher Priest
"Middlemarch"
All of Fitzgerald's novels are like this for me: "This Side of Paradise", "The Beautiful and Damned", and of course "The Great Gatsby." That last one is almost like a novelistic treatment of this thread's theme; what Gatsby wants above all else is to meet Daisy for the first time again—the green light of promise is only exciting for him as promise and not fulfillment.
Nonfiction: "The Sleepwalkers" by Arthur Koestler. His conclusion is devastating, and throws the entire rest of the book into a different light.
I didn’t think about The Road, but I think you are correct. Also, No Country for Old Men. I would relish the chance to read both again for the first time.
Cheating with more than one book: Cryptonomicon by Neal Stephenson, was a captivating historical technothriller, rooted in real events, people, and technical currents, on a multi-decade timeline. Dune by Frank Herbert was a formative introduction to the potential of world building in stories.
I have a book that I wish that I could read again for the *second* time: Austen’s _Emma_. The second time you read it, after you have found out the secret parallel plot that is running alongside the main plot, you take great delight in discovering all of Austen’s Easter eggs. There’s nothing like a second reading of _Emma_.
Barbara Pym’s The Sweet Dove Died. I love Pym and regularly reread but this one is especially delicious.
Josephine Tey’s The Franchise Affair. Undeservedly unfashionable at the moment. All her books are great but Franchise is incredibly modern and stands up well.
Agatha Christie’s And Then There We’re None. Brilliantly conceived. But no good more than once!
Madeline Miller’s The Song of Achilles. Because it’s wonderful.
I was going to say The Song of Achilles, too. One of the few books I have read and then immediately re-read again, just because I didn't want to leave its world.
How about You Can't Go Home Again by Thomas Wolfe. I loved that novel and most of Wolfe when an undergraduate. But trying to re-read it, all I could think was "Mr. Perkins, you should have cut so much more from this word weighted work."
I think the answer to this would change depending on how long I have to think about it. Right now I would say ‘Scoop’ by Evelyn Waugh. It’s just so bitingly satirical, hilarious and disturbingly (as it charts the misbehaviour of the press) still true, 100 years later.
Steinbeck’s “The Red Pony” because my fifth grade teacher had me read it, and I hated the way it ended, thus avoiding Steinbeck books for years. She tried to explain that not all books end with everything wrapped up in a ribbon (a good description of most books for fifth graders at the time) but I wanted that happy ending!
Norwegian Wood for me, without a doubt! It may be the most heartbreaking thing I’ve ever come across, and it spurred a years-long passion for and fascination with Murakami’s work. I’ve since replaced it as my favourite of his novels with Wind-Up Bird’s Chronicle, but it remains one of the most magical, harrowing fictional experiences of my life. I read it breathlessly over three days, three nights in fact, nights when I was supposed to entertain a cousin who was visiting and I just settled for placing him in front of my PC, booting up Overwatch, and letting him entertain himself while, in the same room, I gave my heart to Murakami to be ripped open.
Love that book. “If you read what everyone else is reading, you’ll only think what everyone else is thinking.”
I agree! I don't think this book gets enough love for how amazing it is. People often talk about how it's not like a 'real' Murakami but for me it's the best one, a singular and beloved reading experience
Yeah, it doesn’t really feel like Murakami, but it’s still a great read, and for me at least it was a great introduction to one of my favourite authors.
Wonderful book. I re-read it last year after ten years and got me immersed even more than the first read. Not a Murakami fan in general but Norwegian Wood is something else.
The Stand by Stephen King. For pure entertainment value.
I'd have to insist on erasing from my memory the two miniseries.
In picking something that is not "literary," my theory is that the literary fiction I've read and loved is usually more enjoyable as a re-read, so a first time read would not be so valuable to me.
And thanks for the shout out!
I think the best place to read the hugies like The Stand, Atlas Shrugged, and War and Peace is when one is serving time in solitary confinement. It’s almost worth committing a minor crime, say grand theft auto, and once inside, mouthing off to a guard to get locked up in solitary.
I’d probably check first about library privileges, now that I think about it.
I read Atlas Shrugged when I was 17. Have always wondered what 37 year old me would think of it.
It seems like a right of passage book. A lot of kids read it, but it doesn’t seem to stick.
I meant rite of passage, but got auto-cucumbered.
Maybe Piranesi by Susannah Clarke--it’s a story of innocence and wonder being gradually complicated, and there’s nothing quite like that blank slate experience of the surreal world she created.
Yes! I came here to say this. A mysteriously labyrinthine book about a mysterious labyrinth. What a great reading experience.
Nice! agreed.
Great choice Anne. I was thinking of Gormenghast by Mervyn Peake, which has a similiar feel.
Oh Thank You! I’m always looking for an atmospheric October book. Something beautifully written that I can get lost in.
Atmosphere you can cut with a knife. The castle has such an all-consuming personality. Enjoy!
Is that a separate book from Titus Groan? I was going to ask, btw, if that's a good seasonal read for October, vibes wise? Just guessing.
Definitely the right time of year. Best with a howling wind. Titus Groan is the first one, then Gormenghast. Peake envisaged a long series but only completed the first three and was very will by the time he wrote Titus Alone. The first two make a powerful duology.
I shall read it by year's end, then!
It might be too warm and sunny right now lol
Hurrah! Yes the weather needs to turn.
Persuasion by Jane Austen
Great book, my favorite Austen
Yes!
It’s Tinker, Tailor, Solider, Spy for me! It’s not my favorite book of all time, but I did really love it, and wish I could read it again for the first time for two reasons: 1) it is such a great thriller and I had a blast trying to work out who Karla’s mole was, and 2) I read it before I knew how creepy John Le Carré became toward his female characters in his later years and would like to be able to read his stuff again without that coloring my view of his stories, lol
My Brilliant Friend by Elena Ferrante. I had a visceral reaction to her writing and wanted to read everything she wrote. This was the first novel I read of hers and I was stunned by beauty and rawness of her writing.
And, thanks so much for the recommend Mikey!
I had the same reaction. The trilogy was my early pandemic read, which I read like a woman possessed.
I know, right? When I ran out of her books to read I was so sad.
This question is going to keep me busy this week...
Me too! I can't possible choose!
The Hobbit, Narnia, or The Lord of the Rings.
Kristin Lavransdatter by Sigrid Undset
Oooh I want to read this! I’ve heard really good things.
A really good Norse saga that pulls the reader in immediately. I could not put it down. It has been a long time since I read it and the other two from the trilogy. Perhaps I will read Kristin again soon.
I just bought it! :-)
On my to read pile!
Christmas Carol. Received as a Christmas present from my parents in 1964 and I instantly fell in love with the story. I treasured that book with its handwritten inscription from them. I regifted it to my son on his 21st birthday. It felt right to hand on something I held so personally dear to me.
The Picture of Dorian Grey by Oscar Wilde. I still remember the first time I discovered it when I was 15 years old. Totally changed my perspective of what a novel could be.
So good!
Swallows and Amazons 🌱
Oh that's such a great book.
Love this question.
Spoiler alert: The last line in my (soon-to-be-submitted) contribution to The Books That Made Us is, "I envy those who get to read it for the first time."
The book? Mikhail Bulgakov's 'The Master and Margarita'.
What a trip that book is — it's definitely something I would want to read again, only blind to all the madness incoming.
Lord of the Rings
Let's say LOTR. It was just a fantastic experience. I might write more about it someday...
👀👀👀
Pillars of the Earth by Ken Follett and Frankenstein by Mary Shelley are ones that I wish I could read again for the first time.
As I think about it, the really good books that I read at certain times in my life became part of me, so if I were reading them for the first time now, I would not have had them with me all these years.
That quibble aside, there are a lot of candidates. War and Peace and The Lord of the Rings are probably the top ones. To discover new universes on that scale is a rare privilege.
Have you ever read Titus Groan?
Picked at it. I have a copy. I also have Gormenghast. Ballantine Adult Fantasy paperbacks I have been schlepping around for decades.
The House In The Cerulean Sea by TJ Klune for fiction & non-fiction wise, The Public Confessions of a Middle-Aged Woman (Aged 55¾) by Sue Townsend.
The Heart is a Lonely Hunter by Carson McCullers. Devastating and beautiful. I read it every five years or so, and it always slays me.
Oh yes getting ready to read that one again.
I'm thinking "Gone Girl," because the reveal is so surprising. Not great literature, but ~
Also, "Sharks In the Time of Saviors" is harrowing w/ a shocking twist in the middle and just so good.
Oooo this is a good one. The one that comes immediately to mind is Cold Mountain by Charles Frazier. I haven’t read anything since that made me cry quite like that.
Pride and Prejudice
Hamlet
All the Light We Cannot See
Anthony Doerr? I’ve met him in real life. He lives in a nearby town and he’s a mentor to one of my mentors, Alan Heathcock. I love their books.
Yes!! Wow--that's incredible!
Good thing about Hamlet is, it seems to be a different book every time.
The Pillars of the Earth. It was the first Follett novel that I read and instantly catapulted him to the top of the list of my favorite authors. Another would be Steven Pressfield's Gates of Fire.
Follett's novels are a favorite of mine.
I've been thinking of adding that to my Audible queue, but evidently there's a prequel in that series now, The Evening and the Morning; would you recommend I start with the prequel or go in publication order?
I think it's safe to say that Follett intended them to be read in publication order, not chronological order. I read them in publication order by default since there were only 2 books at the time I started.
Makes sense; thanks!
The Midnight Library, by Matt Haig. I remember while reading it just wanting to sit in the universe and continue discovering it for the first time. And when it was done I wanted the same thing.
Titus Groan by Mervyn Peake! I love the atmosphere he created and all the characters.
Great book, and one I'd consider myself.
This is the book I immediately thought of. Nothing like entering Gormenghast for the first time.
I know right! The castle is one of my favorite parts.
Good Omens by Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett
One of the few books that consistently made me laugh. This part still gets me:
"And after that strange blasphemy she said no more. She let them gag her, and stood imperiously as the torches were put to the dry wood.
The crowd grew nearer, one or two of its members a little uncertain as to whether they’d done the right thing, now they came to think about it.
Thirty seconds later an explosion took out the village green, scythed the valley clean of every living thing, and was seen as far away as Halifax.
There was much subsequent debate as to whether this had been sent by God or by Satan, but a note later found in Agnes Nutter’s cottage indicated that any divine or devilish intervention had been materially helped by the contents of Agnes’s petticoats, wherein she had with some foresight concealed eighty pounds of gunpowder and forty pounds of roofing nails."
A Fine Balance, by Rohinton Mistry
It's an amazing book, full of incredibly sad but also somehow wildly funny situations. I reread for the first time a few years back and despite more than 20 years between reads, it was a hard read knowing how things end up. Characters end up in relentlessly hard situations and it's much easier to face not knowing that.
The man who planted trees
‘The Ringed Castle’ by Dorothy Dunnett. It’s the fifth book in a series of 6. I first read it shortly after its publication in 1971, when I was 19. At 16, I’d discovered the preceding book ‘Pawn in Frankincense’ in the central library. While I was on the bus, a much older woman spotted the book & asked if I’d read the other books. She confirmed it was very much worth the read but should first read the previous 3 books in the series. Which I did. So I had to wait nearly 3 years for the fifth book in the series. It was very much worth the wait. And then we had to wait a further 4 years for the last in the series.
Meanwhile the 2 different worlds and the development of 2 of the characters from the series in those worlds became an eye-opening adventure. I had the privilege of leading an expanded read-through with fellow Dunnett readers of this book, which continues to be my favourite of all from the six in the series. Dunnett’s inimitable (though it seems many have tried) painterly (she was also a portrait painter) writing qualities not only capture our minds and hearts but also recount fantastic adventures in navigation and history.
I should so love to be able to read this for the first time once again.
Here here! Glad someone said Dunnet. For me, it would be Niccolo Rising, first of hers I read (yes I was very late to the party.) Reading the first 100 pages with my mouth wide open, not believing that someone dared write like this!
All of them. 😜 OK, seriously...
"The Blind Asassin"
"Pillars of the Earth"
"The Dragonbone Chair"
"The Hobbit"
Boy's Life by Robert McCammon. Foucault's Pendulum by Umberto Eco.
Poor Things by Alasdair Gray.
Sarah Canary by Karen Joy Fowler.
So many! The feeling that comes from a really good book, of an ever-opening horizon and a gradually-dawning truth or idea, is heavily dependent, in my mind, on that first reading. Subsequent readings are always colored by the realization of what will be established by the end; they are like a comfortable sunday drive around what was once a horizon of limitless possibility.
"The Brothers Karamazov"
"Franny and Zooey"
"The inverted World" by Christopher Priest
"Middlemarch"
All of Fitzgerald's novels are like this for me: "This Side of Paradise", "The Beautiful and Damned", and of course "The Great Gatsby." That last one is almost like a novelistic treatment of this thread's theme; what Gatsby wants above all else is to meet Daisy for the first time again—the green light of promise is only exciting for him as promise and not fulfillment.
Nonfiction: "The Sleepwalkers" by Arthur Koestler. His conclusion is devastating, and throws the entire rest of the book into a different light.
Second Brothers Karamazov. Though the first read took me about 6 months! Must have read it 5 or 6 times since and get something new every time
Nabokov's Pale Fire for sure. Picking apart this puzzle is so fun. And each time is amost like the first time.
Tough one, but I like to stick by the rules so:
The Road by Cormac McCarthy.
I didn’t think about The Road, but I think you are correct. Also, No Country for Old Men. I would relish the chance to read both again for the first time.
Siddhartha by Hermann Hesse & Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë
Cheating with more than one book: Cryptonomicon by Neal Stephenson, was a captivating historical technothriller, rooted in real events, people, and technical currents, on a multi-decade timeline. Dune by Frank Herbert was a formative introduction to the potential of world building in stories.
I have a book that I wish that I could read again for the *second* time: Austen’s _Emma_. The second time you read it, after you have found out the secret parallel plot that is running alongside the main plot, you take great delight in discovering all of Austen’s Easter eggs. There’s nothing like a second reading of _Emma_.
Hunger by Knut Hamsun.
Barbara Pym’s The Sweet Dove Died. I love Pym and regularly reread but this one is especially delicious.
Josephine Tey’s The Franchise Affair. Undeservedly unfashionable at the moment. All her books are great but Franchise is incredibly modern and stands up well.
Agatha Christie’s And Then There We’re None. Brilliantly conceived. But no good more than once!
Madeline Miller’s The Song of Achilles. Because it’s wonderful.
I was going to say The Song of Achilles, too. One of the few books I have read and then immediately re-read again, just because I didn't want to leave its world.
Last of the Breed - Louis L'amour. Not easy picking just one. : )
Beach Music by Pat Conroy
Robert Cormier's book I Am the Cheese. It was one of the first "adult" books I read as a teenager and I found it fascinating.
The Compromise, by Sergei Dovlatov. A great book, very funny in a tragic sort ofway
How about You Can't Go Home Again by Thomas Wolfe. I loved that novel and most of Wolfe when an undergraduate. But trying to re-read it, all I could think was "Mr. Perkins, you should have cut so much more from this word weighted work."
Dostoyevsky, Crime and Punishment" and Dr. Zhivago by Pasternak. Love those Russian novelists.
A Fine Balance by Rohinton Mistry and I cannot leave without mentioning Beautiful Ruins by Jess Walter.. both unforgettable
I was going to say “Jude the Obscure” but on second thought ...
William Gibson’s Neuromancer is one for sure, as is philosopher John Gray’s Straw Dogs.
I think the answer to this would change depending on how long I have to think about it. Right now I would say ‘Scoop’ by Evelyn Waugh. It’s just so bitingly satirical, hilarious and disturbingly (as it charts the misbehaviour of the press) still true, 100 years later.
The Signature of All Things
Steinbeck’s “The Red Pony” because my fifth grade teacher had me read it, and I hated the way it ended, thus avoiding Steinbeck books for years. She tried to explain that not all books end with everything wrapped up in a ribbon (a good description of most books for fifth graders at the time) but I wanted that happy ending!