Best "Best-Seller and Low Literature" Books

[Benny Profane]

Hey guys! I don't know if this discussion occured here and I apologize whether it happened here.

I've been thinking about "best-seller" books and low literature (airport, potboiled and hardboiled literature and another denominations) when I started to read Father's Affair by Karel Glastra van Loon.
I believe that the denomination of "best-seller" use to vary around the world and it isn't a parameter to denominate whether certain books are good or not.
For example, in my country, Jorge Amado, Clarice Lispector and Machado de Assis are considered best-seller authors and their works are obligatory for ENEM and another regional exams for high school called as vestibulares (the equivalent in my country of SAT exams).

I know there are a lot of low quality books with the same depht of a saucer but there are some books which are great too.

What are your favorite books of bestselling and low literature literature?

Fight Club by Chuck Palahniuk is mine! And yours?

 

[Liam]

I must confess that I am a total chick-lit addict when it comes to reading at airports, at the beach, on the train, etc--I usually can't concentrate enough in such places to read "serious" literature, ?

However, I usually don't stick to just standard romance, I like an elaborate thriller/mystery mixed in as well.

My last two potboilers were by the same duo of authors: The Wife Between Us and An Anonymous Girl by Greer Hendricks and Sarah Pekkanen.

Behind Her Eyes by Sarah Pinborough was also quite good (if you suspend disbelief and accept one of the story's main requisites--the existence of astral projection--as real): the ending, for me, was one of those genuine WTF moments (the miniseries based on the book is also excellent, btw!).

Another author I like that I think would qualify for this thread is the Australian Liane Moriarty: Big Little Lies, Nine Perfect Strangers, etc. She's been quite lucky with film and television adaptations as well.

Great thread!

 

[Corswandt]

I don't know if this discussion occured here and I apologize whether it happened here.

We've had a thread about guilty pleasures before, but that isn't quite what you're aiming for here, I think.

Popular/middlebrow fiction that I've enjoyed:

Most egregious example would be Colleen McCullough's Masters of Rome bricks. Well researched, easy to read and totally worthless as literature. TBH I only really liked the first couple of bricks; the rest became more and more a "novelised chronicle of events" and weren't as fun.

Engleby by Sebastian Faulks - I really loved this one; IMHO doesn't deserve to be dismissed as middlebrow, if that was indeed the case.

Girl with a Pearl Earring by Tracy Chevalier - YA fiction for all intents and purposes, but I liked it when I read it almost 20 years ago.

The Perfume by Patrick Süskind - everything that popular fiction should be.

 

[Benny Profane]

Thank you for your feedbacks, guys!
When I think about "popular or bestselling literature" in nowadays, I just remember Joël Dicker and Sally Rooney.
I haven't read nothing of theirs yet to opine, but the reception here is mix. There are a lot of critics who enjoyed a lot their books and others who hate a lot in the same way! LOL!

 

[JCamilo]

The thing is that even Faulkner was in the top 10 list of best-selling books (among others, after all a Nobel can pump up sales) and we have some guys like Dumas, Dickens or Stevenson who are top selling authors and are good enough (Stevenson beyond good enough). Dom Quixote is a best seller too after all.

I would go with Neil Gaiman. While his best stuff still Sandman, he can have a decent storytelling voice, quite imaginative and keeps up a tradition of english fantasy that has little to do with Tolkien. His partner, another best-selling author, Terry Pratchett can be awesome, Monty Pythonesque in his Discworld series.

I recall some sort of best-seller here at brazil, J.J.Benitez Caballo de Troya. The first book Trojan Horse: Jerusalem, a time-travel story about Jesus with the typical new age vision (Philip K.Dick without drugs) has a descent ending, since it "reads" Jesus last hours using modern medical term and tech (such as measuring his blood pressure, body temp, etc), which was a novelty. One third of the book however is a boring Indiana Jones like Nasa Conspiracy garbage...

 

[Benny Profane]

I would go with Neil Gaiman. While his best stuff still Sandman, he can have a decent storytelling voice, quite imaginative and keeps up a tradition of english fantasy that has little to do with Tolkien. His partner, another best-selling author, Terry Pratchett can be awesome, Monty Pythonesque in his Discworld series.

I appreciate Neil Gaiman too! Sandman is a masterpiece.
I also might put Alan Moore in the same bag!

 

[Leseratte]

Well, Torto Arado, has been for more than a year, and maybe still is, on the top of the Brazilian best seller list. For a national work of fiction that is an achievement.
But I don´t think, Benny means that kind of bestselling. So I go with Neil Gaiman.

 

[alik-vit]

Maybe, it's a little bit out of the topic, but it's Russian experience and I like to hear your opinion on this writer. Here in the late 1990s Milorad Pavic was really big big bestseller writer. It was before Haruki Murakami and after Paolo Coelho I think. On the other hand, it seems he never was such popular figure in other parts of the world.

 

[Leseratte]

There you are: Paulo Coelho is a typical bestselling author.
I never heard about Milorad Pavic, but his Wikipedia page has a small version in Portuguese and two of his books were translated and published by known editors: Dictionary of the Khazars: A Lexicon Novel and Landscape Painted with Tea (must be a buddy of Gerald Murnane).

Milorad Pavić – Wikipédia, a enciclopédia livre

pt.wikipedia.org

There are Wikipages in 41 languages so he seems to be quite known

 

[alik-vit]

I never heard about Milorad Pavic, but his Wikipedia page has a small version in Portuguese and two of his books were translated and published by known editors: Dictionary of the Khazars: A Lexicon Novel and Landscape Painted with Tea (must be a buddy of Gerald Murnane).

Milorad Pavić – Wikipédia, a enciclopédia livre

pt.wikipedia.org

There are Wikipages in 41 languages so he seems to be quite known

It's funny, because I remember info from the back of one of his book's dust jacket: "He was nominated to Nobel prize by Brazilian association of writers")))) and no, he is not kin of Murnane. Landscape is the novel in the form of crossword and it's much more ... visceral one)

 

[Benny Profane]

There you are: Paulo Coelho is a typical bestselling author.
I never heard about Milorad Pavic, but his Wikipedia page has a small version in Portuguese and two of his books were translated and published by known editors: Dictionary of the Khazars: A Lexicon Novel and Landscape Painted with Tea (must be a buddy of Gerald Murnane).

Milorad Pavić – Wikipédia, a enciclopédia livre

pt.wikipedia.org

There are Wikipages in 41 languages so he seems to be quite known

There are 3 books by him translated into Portuguese, @Leseratte!
His name was spelled as Milorad Pávitch here. I have Paisagem Pintada Com Chá (Landscape Painted With Tea).

 

[Bartleby]

I was reminded of question of best-sellers and low (or perhaps middlebrow) literature recently because I've been meaning to read Donna Tartt's The Goldfinch, which when it was released was very well received by most common readers, but some critics, most notably James Wood, were quite hard on the book. Has anyone read it? Does it make for a good read at least?

 

[Corswandt]

Maybe, it's a little bit out of the topic, but it's Russian experience and I like to hear your opinion on this writer. Here in the late 1990s Milorad Pavic was really big big bestseller writer. It was before Haruki Murakami and after Paolo Coelho I think. On the other hand, it seems he never was such popular figure in other parts of the world.

Milorad Pavic was briefly a kinda sorta big deal in Portugal when a much hyped PT translation of Dictionary of the Khazars was published in 1990. None of his other books were released here and he's now totally forgotten.

I've already said that this whole "Big in Japan/Germans Love David Hasselhoff" thing of writers being very successful in random foreign countries but not elsewhere could make for an interesting discussion in itself. One of the obvious example is Paul Auster being much bigger in Europe than in his native US, and I remember mentioning how Sándor Marái became a bestselling author in Portugal in the mid to late noughties - the PT translation of Embers has been reprinted literally dozens of times.

I was reminded of question of best-sellers and low (or perhaps middlebrow) literature recently because I've been meaning to read Donna Tartt's The Goldfinch, which when it was released was very well received by most common readers, but some critics, most notably James Wood, were quite hard on the book. Has anyone read it? Does it make for a good read at least?

I've read it. It's not a bad book, and I found it more fun to read and with less pointless padding than The Secret History, which is about twice as long as it needs to be. But it's very much optional.

 

[Leseratte]

It's funny, because I remember info from the back of one of his book's dust jacket: "He was nominated to Nobel prize by Brazilian association of writers")))) and no, he is not kin of Murnane. Landscape is the novel in the form of crossword and it's much more ... visceral one)

That about Murnane was only a joke, @alik-vit.

 

[Leseratte]

There are 3 books of him translated into Portuguese, @Leseratte!
His name was spelled as Milorad Pávitch here. I have Paisagem Pintada Com Chá (Landscape Painted With Tea).

Do you know the name of the third book, Benny?

 

[Verkhovensky]

I haven't (yet) read Pavić, but I suppose he doesn't belong in this thread - he was serious postmodernist writer who had one book that surprisingly became bestseller, not lowbrow/middlebrow writer. He was a longshot candidate for Nobel, if this forum existed back in the 90s his name would probably be thrown around during that time, I expect that in 20-30 years we will probably see his name among nominations.

On topic: I like classic noir crime novels, Raymond Chandler, Ross MacDonald et cetera.

 

[alik-vit]

@Verkhovensky, thanks for response! That is why I wrote "a little bit out of the topic"))) On the other hand, as a person who have read almost all of his books, I suppose there were moments and texts when he was very very close to this border. Especially, after this Pavicemania in Russia (nothing personal, but it's big market and, I hope, big money for writer).
@Corswandt , thanks for this info. It's always very interesting, why in some cases there is development of one-novel-big-event and in some cases there is not.
@Leseratte , we know from folklore, always there are three brothers. In this case the third brother is Juan Goytisolo)))

 

[Stevie B]

I was reminded of question of best-sellers and low (or perhaps middlebrow) literature recently because I've been meaning to read Donna Tartt's The Goldfinch, which when it was released was very well received by most common readers, but some critics, most notably James Wood, were quite hard on the book. Has anyone read it? Does it make for a good read at least?

I've only read Tartt's The Secret History, a book I found enjoyable to read, but not the classic many claimed it to be. Regarding The Goldfinch, I know little about the novel, but the film was a commercial flop that was badly panned by critics (surprising because it helmed by John Crowley, the Irish director who did a tremendous job of bringing Colm Toibin's Brooklyn to the big screen).

 

[Liam]

the film was a commercial flop that was badly panned by critics

To be fair, most movies that came out just as the COVID hysteria was starting all around the world were commercial flops. Critics were right though, the movie is nothing special, not even Nicole Kidman with all her icy languidness could have saved that mess.

 

[Benny Profane]

Do you know the name of the third book, Benny?

A poetic anthology called Poesia Iugoslava Contemporânea (Contemporary Yugoslavian Poetry) including Vasko Popa and Milorad Pávitch (Pavić).
It's so 80's...

I have some names, guys: Sidney Sheldon (there was any book in any corner by him in 90's in Brazil), Tom Clancy (and his ghost-writers), Irving Wallace, Robert Ludlum, Ian Fleming, Mario Puzzo etc.