What was your big literary "find" of 2008?

Mirabell

Mirabell

Former Member
Bjorn said:
I agree. Having read most, though not quite all, of Auster's novels, I have to say Brooklyn Follies was the least impressive. Not the worst, but the least impressive. (At least Travels In The Scriptorium failed in an interesting way.)

I guess the most intriguing writers I read for the first time in 2008 were Ryszard Kapuscinski, JMG Le Cl?zio, Ivan Vladislavic and Hwang Sok-yong, all of whom I definitely plan on reading more. But the big thing was that I not only kept my goal of at least half the books I read being written by non-UK/US/Swedish authors, but also had a ton of fun doing it. Now I've got more openings into above all African and Eastern European fiction, and I plan on continuing that.
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we have a hwang sok-yong thread, you know.
http://www.worldliteratureforum.com/forum/asian-oceanic-literature/2248-hwang-sok-yong-guest.html
 
O

obooki

Reader
Two writers I'd never heard of before the beginning of the year: Emmanuel Bove and Mircea Eliade. I won't say anything: discover them for yourself (if you already haven't). - 2009 is already marked by my discovery of Juan Carlos Onetti, as recommend by the fellow on the Juan Carlos Onetti thread. (Well, it made me get the book off my shelf where it had been lying for ages).
 
C

cuchulain

Reader
Probably the find of the year for me was Phillip Pullman's His Dark Materials trilogy. Had heard about the series for many years, but never got around to reading it. Loved it. Thought provoking and well wrought.

Carmen Laforet's Nada was a great find. A brilliant existentialist novel from a young woman (just 24 when it was published) with wisdom beyond her years. The characters evolve, grow on the reader, surprise us, anger us, etc.

The Post-Office Girl by Stefan Zweig. Very impressive novel, even with it being unfinished.

A few non-fiction books were excellent finds as well:

William Everdell's The First Moderns is a true classic. Had heard about this one, also, for years, and finally got around to buying it. Will return to it again and again.

Sea of Faith by Stephen O'Shea. Well done history of the clash of Christianity and Islam around the Mediterranean Sea. Covering centuries and several empires. The author ties it to the present through his own travels along similar routes discussed in the book, but never to distraction.

Ross King's Judgement of Paris was also a wonderful find. Very interesting history of Art, Revolution and the lead up to the generation of Impressionist painters in France.

The Discovery of France was a pleasant discovery for me (and thousands of others). Graham Robb paints a picture of diversity through the years that will surprise many.

. . . .

First great discovery of 2009? Horacio Castellanos Moya.
 
miercuri

miercuri

Reader
I came across a number of very exciting authors but last year's discovery was for me, by far, Vladimir Nobokov. I read Lolita only a few weeks ago, in Decemeber, and I was really blown away. I had postponed reading it for so long. I really wanted to get my hands on an English copy and I finally bought myself one as an early Christmas present. What an amazing, intense read it was, probably the most mesmerizing prose I've read in English so far. I've also read Pnin and The Eye since, and plan to get my hands on Pale Fire tomorrow.
Apart from that I'm glad I've managed to finally get round to Jack Kerouac, I loved On the Road to shreds and I will definitely check out his other works in the near future.
Another nice find was Cormac McCarthy. I read The Road in October and I was quite impressed. Bough myself No Country for Old Men a few weeks ago (also as Christmas present).
I was also impressed with Jonathan Franzen's The Corrections, read it sometime in spring.
Funniest book: Pornoy's Complaint by Philip Roth (along with a rather chick-litty but very witty novel Colors Insulting to Nature by Cintra Wilson).
Most disturbing book: The Story of the Eye by George Bataille
Most delightful book: The Bell by Iris Murdoch

Other authors I have discovered in 2008 and will definitely return to: Margaret Atwood, Cees Nooteboom, Silvia Plath, John Kennedy Toole, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, William Trevor, Raymond Radiguet, Amelie Nothomb, Michel Houellebecq, David Mitchell

I am probably forgetting some..
 
Daniel del Real

Daniel del Real

Moderator
A lot of great writers came into me the past year. But I have to mention three of them that were above all my expectations and became material for a long time. Italo Calvino, I read The Nonexistent Knight and The Cloven Viscount and it is really impressive how Calvino analyses such a complex philosophical content in a sort-a-fable story. Continueing in Italy, one of Borges recommendations, Dino Buzzati with The Desert of the Tartars another philosophical work about the course of life and what we really do with it. Last but not least, Roberto Bola?o y los Detectives Salvajes. Finally I had the chance to read this so-talked author and it didn't dissapoint. A very interesting tour in the hispanoameric poetique movements of the 70's, portraying the cultural life of Mexico and their intellectuals in the second half of the 20th century.
 
liehtzu

liehtzu

Reader
I read a ton of great books last year. I certainly found a few authors I was previously unaware of (Rex Warner, J. G. Farrell, Gustaw Herling, Claudio Magris), and was floored twice by Nabokov - Lolita certainly, but Speak, Memory - one of the most beautiful lives ever written - even more. But I'd have to say the big find, the big surprise, for me this year was Typee by Herman Melville. It could be that I'm just a sucker for anything written about the South Pacific, but it's not just that. It was more - not only did it manage to capture the glories of that place (the Marquesas Islands) in that time, but Melville also had much to say about what he felt was wrong with Western societies in comparison. And that was the most illuminating and stirring element of the book for me. Moby Dick is a truly magnificent novel, but in Typee most of the author's themes, and his personality, are there in a far more readable way (which does not mean that it is "simple"). The book is far from the nice adventure tale it's often relegated to even by Melville scholars, who should know better. It's the incredible and fantastically weird story of a man who for a short time found something like Paradise.
 
M

Max Cairnduff

Reader
I think for me it would be The Lonely Londoners, by Sam Selvon. It's the story of the first wave of Afro-Caribbean immigrants into London in the 1950s. Funny, at times tragic and at all times exceptionally well written.

It's been quite influential apparently, but isn't at all well known as best I can tell.
 
S

Sevigne

Reader
You don't say if you've read Melville's White-Jacket. It is definitely my second favorite Melville after Moby-Dick.

I've read Melville's more eccentric works like Mardi, The Confidence Man and Pierre but haven't read Typee although I've owned a copy for years.

I do love Melville as a man as well as an author. If you think that reading
Typee will move me closer to the real Melville, I'll read it soon.

But how could Melville admire Hawthorne? I detest Hawthorne and his two-penny crayon scribbles.

liehtzu said:
I read a ton of great books last year. I certainly found a few authors I was previously unaware of (Rex Warner, J. G. Farrell, Gustaw Herling, Claudio Magris), and was floored twice by Nabokov - Lolita certainly, but Speak, Memory - one of the most beautiful lives ever written - even more. But I'd have to say the big find, the big surprise, for me this year was Typee by Herman Melville. It could be that I'm just a sucker for anything written about the South Pacific, but it's not just that. It was more - not only did it manage to capture the glories of that place (the Marquesas Islands) in that time, but Melville also had much to say about what he felt was wrong with Western societies in comparison. And that was the most illuminating and stirring element of the book for me. Moby Dick is a truly magnificent novel, but in Typee most of the author's themes, and his personality, are there in a far more readable way (which does not mean that it is "simple"). The book is far from the nice adventure tale it's often relegated to even by Melville scholars, who should know better. It's the incredible and fantastically weird story of a man who for a short time found something like Paradise.
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nnyhav

nnyhav

Reader
Sevigne said:
You don't say if you've read Melville's White-Jacket. It is definitely my second favorite Melville after Moby-Dick.

I've read Melville's more eccentric works like Mardi, The Confidence Man and Pierre but haven't read Typee although I've owned a copy for years.

I do love Melville as a man as well as an author. If you think that reading
Typee will move me closer to the real Melville, I'll read it soon.

But how could Melville admire Hawthorne? I detest Hawthorne and his two-penny crayon scribbles.
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Me I haven't read White-Jacket, and The Confidence-Man is my second-favorite (hyphenated!), but without Typee (and to a lesser extent Omoo) Herman's self-portrait is woefully incomplete. It'd be like Gauguin without Tahiti or R.L. Stevenson without Samoa, except in reverse order.

I think Melville admired Hawthorne for something he thought he himself lacked. A much-needed gap ... (no fan of ol' Nat myself, I won't deny he has his moments).
 
I

Igu Soni

Reader
Reading. This May is when I started serious reading. But in terms of authors(I've only read a bit by some of them but I love ll these):

  • Ayn Rand(Unlike Stewart, I like her and her philosophy: expect a thread soon)
  • J M Coetzee
  • Ian McEwan
  • Dostoevsky
  • Vikram Seth(only read a bit)
  • Vikram Chandra(reading)
  • Salman Rushdie
  • Gore Vidal
  • Mohsin Hamid(might have been end of 2007)
  • Gunter Grass(only read a bit)
  • Laurence Sterne(only read a bit)
  • T S Eliot
  • W B Yeats
  • Seamus Heaney
  • Philip Larkin
  • Ernest Hemingway
  • Richard Dawkins
  • Charles Darwin(I think he's an exquisite prose artist, especially in the last lines of The Origin of Species)
  • Cormac McCarthy(only read a bit)
  • George Bernard Shaw
  • Max Frisch
  • Franz Kafka
  • Jean-Paul Sartre
  • Jorge Luis Borges
  • John Kennedy Toole(only read a bit)

I think there were more, but I can't remember the others
 
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S

Sevigne

Reader
You'll remember, NNY, that on my second reading I moved closer to your high opinion of The Confidence-Man.

So I guess I'll read Typee when I have gotten British social satire out of my system. But considering that the genre includes Trollope and Austen this may take awhile.
 
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