BookTalk.org

Fiction Book Suggestions Wanted: March & April 2009

Please make some quality suggestions for our March & April 2009 fiction book discussion in this thread. Post a link to where your fiction suggestion can be researched on Amazon.com. And most importantly please read about the book suggestions other members make and leave comments about these suggestions.

I really like reading the classics. One that has intrigued me is The Potrait of Dorian Gray

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Picture_of_Dorian_Gray

It has the elements of controversary of Lolita, the magic of Orlando. I think that this we could get some really good discussions started on this.

I always wanted to read Dorian Gray. Good suggestion!

I wanted to suggest The Satanic Verses by Salman Rushdie.
This is the book that put the fatwa on Rushdie and he went into protected hiding for about a decade I believe.
Amazon.com Review
No book in modern times has matched the uproar sparked by Salman Rushdie's The Satanic Verses, which earned its author a death sentence. Furor aside, it is a marvelously erudite study of good and evil, a feast of language served up by a writer at the height of his powers, and a rollicking comic fable. The book begins with two Indians, Gibreel Farishta ("for fifteen years the biggest star in the history of the Indian movies") and Saladin Chamcha, a Bombay expatriate returning from his first visit to his homeland in 15 years, plummeting from the sky after the explosion of their jetliner, and proceeds through a series of metamorphoses, dreams and revelations. Rushdie's powers of invention are astonishing in this Whitbread Prize winner. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

From Publishers Weekly
Banned in India before publication, this immense novel by Booker Prize-winner Rushdie ( Midnight's Children ) pits Good against Evil in a whimsical and fantastic tale. Two actors from India, "prancing" Gibreel Farishta and "buttony, pursed" Saladin Chamcha, are flying across the English Channel when the first of many implausible events occurs: the jet explodes. As the two men plummet to the earth, "like titbits of tobacco from a broken old cigar," they argue, sing and are transformed. When they are found on an English beach, the only survivors of the blast, Gibreel has sprouted a halo while Saladin has developed hooves, hairy legs and the beginnings of what seem like horns. What follows is a series of allegorical tales that challenges assumptions about both human and divine nature. Rushdie's fanciful language is as concentrated and overwhelming as a paisley pattern. Angels are demonic and demons are angelic as we are propelled through one illuminating episode after another. The narrative is somewhat burdened by self-consciousness that borders on preciosity, but for Rushdie fans this is a splendid feast.

I'll second that suggestion, I've been meaning to reading The Satanic Versus for some time now, this is a great excuse to all end present and future procrastinations (about this particular book anyway).

I have a copy of this book waiting to be opened, The Potrait of Dorian Gray , so I'll second that suggestion. Except it really should be Grey, not Gray.

I've read some of Oscar Wilde's plays and they were what I would describe as rather uninteresting. He was a very extravagant socialite within the upper class of society which he intentionally reflected in his writing in a manner which I found displeasureable. Almost a flippant, very fanciful tone when giving out his ideas which are if anything prosaic puns colored in high class robes.

I have never read anything of Rushdie so I would be interested to hear some comments on his other works. I am to understand that he is a prolific novelist?

Folks

I would recommend any of the following five. All award winning novels:

Waiting for the Barbarians, J.M. Coetzee
Master and Margarita, Mikhail Bulgakov
Ali and Nino: A Love Story, Kurban Said
Ishmael, Daniel Quinn
The Magus, John Fowles


Each unique in its own right; and these are my suggestions.

Look forward to hearing back

sandy krolick (zietz)

I would really opt for Cotzee, Waiting for the Barbarians.

Here is the link:

http://www.amazon.com/Waiting-Barbarian ... 078&sr=1-1