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Afterglow

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The Assault, by Harry Mulisch, is a book everybody should read. Short, but moving and profound, sometimes lyrical. Also I'd recommend White Noise by Don DeLillo, one of the funniest book's I've ever read. And if you want to stretch your horizons a bit, magic realism, i.e. Like Water for Chocolate or the more accessible books of Marquez, might be interesting. Also being a Hungarian I think Embers and other books by Marai Sandor are really worth taking a look at. A lot is lost in translation, but there's a lot of beauty in the writing as well. His writing is built around, indeed, emanates from, characters - brilliant, vivid, viscerally alive (did I use that word correctly?)

I think the classics are really worth reading, indeed, almost essential, and sometimes particular books touch particular people unexpectedly. I also have this theory in life (which I find myself contradicting over and over through my actions): if you really love a subject, never take it as a high school course. If good teachers can motivate and excite their students, then mediocre or bad teachers are a hundred times worse and in the opposite direction. So I know a lot of people shy away from the classics because of the fact that they are often forced upon them in school, which is a shame, because they have earned their label and withstood the test of time.

But yeah overall if you're seriously in the market for a book, as it were, go for the Assault. I can almost guarantee you will not be disappointed.

Some other books I read recently and liked:

- Saturday (McEwan)

- English Patient (Ondaatje)

- Disgrace (Coetzee) (Nobel Prize)

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  • 2 weeks later...
Guest tahaqarni

i just finished hte kite runner, couldnt put it down, stayed up almost all night reading it

one of the best books i've read would have to be to kill a mockinbird, by harper lee

the issues that she discusses in the book are still applicable today, and even though it starts off slowly, it had me hooked

oh and catcher in the rye was a good, if not depressing, book

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Whoa!

We finished To Kill A Mockingbird a couple of weeks ago as homereading for our English lessons. I loved it. It was quite hard to get it at first but I absolutely loved it in the end.

Another quite awesome book is 'Crosses and Noughts'. It's about racism...Just the other way round. Black people are the majority and white people are the minority. IT was quite hurtful to read that but in the end, I somehow understood how the black feel now and then. :D

Then, of course, I would suggest Gone With The Wind as well.

Also, 'Labyrinth' by Kate Moss (not the model, duh!) is very enjoyable. I loved it - historical, mystical, magic and overall I got pulled into it.

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  • 3 weeks later...

I'm a great fan of Camus -as you probably can understand from my signature-. Not only his books are worth reading but his essays as well (: They are written in a rather literary form and he's characterized by a unique ability to comment upon very hard concepts, in a very precise and 'clear' manner. I strongly recommend all of his work :)

I read Charlotte Bronte's Jane Eyre and i did not expect to find the novel that attractive. In general, this style of books is not my favorite, but Bronte's language is exceptional and enchanting.

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Does anyone hear like COrmac Mccarthy? He is my favorite modern author and I read somewhere that his book Blood Meridian or the Evening Redness in the West is considered one of the best pieces of literature of the past 20 years...

It is one of my favorite books!

All of his books are good though.

Aso, I consider myself a bibliophile

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  • 8 months later...
  • 4 months later...

There was a time, not long ago, when could sit for eight hours straight reading a book. Now I cannot sit for 10 minutes to read a book I think I might be remotely interested in. It is not that I do not have time to read but rather that I have lost all nearly interest in reading books altogether :( . Anyone know of any great books I should "try" to read?

EDIT "I really do enjoy reading a well written book, or at least I used to :) ."

Edited by IBcanadian
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