Fiction I Love

I thought I would create a new page, to be updated frequently, with a list of fictional books that I love. My passion is literary fiction, especially if it is equipped with suspence and romantic dramas. Tragedies play better for me than comedies, but mainly I need to be MOVED by the book. I’ve been really fortunate with my readings in the last year or so, and here I begin:

The Time Traveller’s Wife by Audrey Niffenegger
Oh, how I love a good time travel story, and oh is this a good one, unlike anything I’ve ever encountered before. So beautiful too, and complex yet Niffenegger keeps it all clear and unfolding. The ending is beautiful and I heard her read part of it at one of Barbara DeMarco’s podcast, and I can DEFINITELY recommend the audio book too.

Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell
Like nothing I ever read before, 6 stories wrapped in layers around each other, each a part of the puzzle, each a cliffhanger, so wonderful and imaginative. Amazing.

Birth of Venus by Sarah Dunant
Compelling, poignant, rich and kind of heart breaking. A story about a witty, headstrong, intelligent girl who doesn’t fit in in a time when it just won’t do not to. Did I love it? Yes!

The Sparrow, A Thread of Grace by Mary Doria Russell
Sparrow is sci-fi, but it’s really an anthropology study couched in a scifi book about what happens when humans go to another planet and both groups misunderstand each other with some complex consequences. Thread is about Italy during World War II, about the beautiful people marred by their war experiences, and how the Italian countryside defied the Germans and helped Jewish refugees. Painful but beautiful.

Captain Corelli’s Mandolin by Louis de Bernieres
OK, I love books about what happened to Italian villagers in World War II! This was a wonderful book and the most compelling scences I’ve ever read about being in the trenches.

Solitaire by Kelley Eskridge
Scifi again. Set in the future, a woman who is supposed to be special by birth is convicted of a terrorist incident and sentenced to a new form of imprisonment, whereby you feel as though you are serving a 40 year sentence inside your head, in reality only a few months have gone by.

American Gods, Neverwhere by Neil Gaiman
Ever since “Sandman”, I’ve loved Neil Gaiman. These novels are fantasy, aabout the world behind the worlds. Think early Clive Barker without the gore and with more emotion and humanity.

Contact by Carl Sagan
Forget the movie, go right to the book. Sagan was a confirmed atheist, but I got a real sense of spirituality out of the book.

The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath
I love Sylvia Plath, although packing a lunch for her kids before offing herself is somehow offensive to me as a mom. But she was a great writer.

The Memory Keeper’s Daughter by Kim Edwards
Another poignant, beautiful book. Life’s long term consequences when a doctor in the 60s disposes of his Down Syndrome baby, and another woman takes her in. Just pick it up and read it.

Pride & Prejudice, Sense & Sensibility by Jane Austen
Need I say more? Did it even surprise you that these are here? Oh, just put all her books on this list…
Poisonwood Bible, Prodigal Summer, anything by Barbara Kingsolver
Poisonwood is intense, full of tough emotions, fierce, Prodigal is SOOOO sensual, it’s hot. Bean Trees trilogy is here too, I’ve read all her stuff, she just keeps getting better.

The Eight by Katherine Neville
Not literary but a very strong character and a story that spans centuries and a lot of the Middle East. And you’ll learn a lot about chess.

If on a Winter’s Night a Traveller by Italo Calvino
One story folds into the next and on and on. On the very short list of short stories books I like.

The entire Harry Potter series, each book better than the last
Quality story, even if it is for kids