@elisalouisa: I’m also Abbruzzese, nice to see others from our region here   My dad’s from the area around Fucino (about 15 kilometers from where Silone was born), and my mom’s from Teramo. 

As for books that touch me, someone mentioned Roberto Bolano’s “2666.”  It is mesmerizing.  So is “The Savage Detectives.”

I’ve also been reading books by David Mitchell, especially “Cloud Atlas.”  It is a book with 6 different storylines all nestled within each other like Russian dolls, each with its own tone and content.  It is truly and experience, and you can’t help but wish it was a little bit longer when it’s over.  I’ve just begun to read “number9dream” by the same author.

I read “the Gulag Archipelago” by Solzhenitsyn over the summer.  It’s simply harrowing and a must read for anyone interested in Russian and Soviet history and the resilience of a human being able to whitstand years of utterly dehumanizing circumstances.

I agree about The Road. Amazing, powerful book. I can see why one might think it
overwrought, but the words have to carry the weight of the feelings it is trying to
convey. Nothing like it. In my view, the book is about love, but without the words,
the movie is just about survival.

Two very different, very powerful books by Camilo Jose Cela:

The Family of Pascual Duarte

Mrs. Caldwell Speaks to her Son

I’m reading mostly non-fiction now.  Five that I would recommend are:

      FREEFALL, by Joseph Stiglitz
      The Big Short, by Michael Lewis
      The Conservative Assault on the Constitution
        by Erwin Chemerinsky
      The Bridge, The Life and Rise of Barack Obama
        by David Remnick
      Republican Gomorrah, by Max Blumenthal

I love it when reviewers/writers say things like: “I won’t deprive you of the pleasure of the unfolding plot…” and then proceed to do just that.

Novels that knocked me out? Well, there are a few: Moby-Dick by Herman Melville, Gravity’s Rainbow by Thomas Pynchon, Blood Meridian by Cormac McCarthy, Molloy by Samuel Beckett, 2666 by Roberto Bolaño, The Third Policeman by Flann O’Brien, Notes from Underground by Fyodor Dostoevsky.

I didn’t like McCarthy’s ‘The Road” which I plugged through reading it with no enjoyment because it wash a tedious duty for my book club.

Read anything by Cormac McCarthy.

It will be well worth your time. Few authors alive today can insert the reader into a time and place as well as Mr. McCarthy.

His characters and story lines grab and hold you to the end which often times leaves you with the knowledge that people are indeed strange and few things turn out the way you think they will. Just like real life.

Dear Cherilyn Parsons,

Since you are recommending some reading, I am recommending a fun read too, a cultish yet classically arranged novel with plenty of analogy and methaphor, “BREATHERS” ‘A zombie’s lament’ by SG Browne.

Main character Andy fights for zombie civil rights, falls for cute zombie Rita, eats parents. Dad was mean, mom was weird, both were delicious. No gratuitous violence because the victims mostly deserved what they got. Ask yourself, “Why do zombies eat people?” If you don’t know the answer, you should read Breathers. It’s a great read and in the end, you will cry for the zombies. Really.

Art in Oregon

Oh and how can I forget Dino Buzzati’s prescient masterpiece - The Tartar Steppe
out Kafka’s Kafka.

And Cesare Pavese’s ’ The Moon & The Bonfires’

If you need comedy value - then just read anything written by Faux News pundits,
its an over the top hilarious work of fiction much like Ayn Rand’s entire career.

Brilliantly written review that captures the essence of what makes fiction so timeless and powerful. Your review makes me want to run out and buy ROOM right now.

A novel that knocked me out is My Year of Meats by Ruth Ozeki. Not for its language or its style, but for its sharply constructed plot, its wonderfully wry but sensitive protagonist, and for its message, which the author conveys without ever being heavy-handed, without “showing the seams.”

Both Lizard Cage & Room will be placed on order.  As for The Road, I’ve read that over a half a dozen times and its lean stylistic prose is pure poetry to my ears.

I don’t read for enjoyment, thats what computer games are for, I read to discombobulate and knock me out of my slumber. (Thank you Gudjieff, Ouspensky & Shah)

To paraphrase Oliver Twist, ‘please Ma’am, can I have some more?’

Nabokov’s Lolita, for exquisite language that permeates your being through every sensory modality and ignites a wide range of blended emotions in the reader.  The Jeremy Irons reading (Audible.com) is masterful.

_Sacred Hunger_ by Barry Unsworth knocked me out.  It’s a historical novel set in the British slave trade of the mid-eighteenth century, and includes all-sided perspectives: the slave merchants, the ship’s crew, and most certainly the slaves.  This is a work of art that goes very deep and remains highly relevant today.

Fine review. Penetrating insights. Powerful,
beautifully turned phrases. If this is anything like
your other works, a Facebook page as anthology would be
a gift for readers.

Siddhartha Banerjee
Oxford, Pennsylvania

I primarily have my nose stuck in non-fiction, but when I’m able to find a novel
that can enable me to snap out of analytic funk and just enjoy a good tale, it’s
priceless.  My latest addition is The List of Seven by Mark Frost.  This book is
classic adventure within which the characters are making mad dashes across late-
nineteen century England to chase and/or avoid a dangerous brotherhood. 

I know the plot sounds worn out, but trust me, its never been done like this. It’s
out of print, but the good thing is you can find it for $1.99 plus shipping from a
lot of book sellers.

I tried to read McCarthy’s book, “The Road,” but couldn’t make it past a hundred
pages. I found it so heavy with stylistic affectation, constantly calling attention to
itself, that it became impossible to read further.

Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. — The Sirens of Titan

I have to admit that the main reason I was aware of Vonnegut’s second novel, written in 1959 right after the launch of the space age, was the trivia night nugget that Jerry Garcia of the Grateful Dead owned the movie rights for years and had actually worked up a script with SNL alum Tom Davis. After discovering what an amazing feat of imagination this book is, I can see why self-styled hippie intellectuals like Garcia and Davis were drawn to it. It was quite unlike any other novel, even other Vonnegut books, I have read. At no time while devouring The Sirens of Titan could I ever say to myself, “Oh, I know where this is going.”

Vonnegut sends up the whims of capitalism with the main character Malachi Constant, the richest man in the world. Constant is a playboy/bon vivant who, for reasons to be revealed, was born with the luck to maintain his lifestyle with very little effort on his part. At the beginning of the novel, he is summoned to the mansion of Winston Niles Rumfoord, the first man to fly a private rocket to Mars. Rumfoord is also, or so it’s understood, one of the last—having unwittingly flown into a chrono-synclastic infundibulum, which effectively spread his (and his dog’s) existence throughout sort of a wormhole between the Sun and Betelgeuse. (Now you can start to imagine the types of conversations Garcia and Davis must have had.)

When Earth happens to transect the glitch, once every 59 days, Rumfoord and his dog materialize at the mansion for a short period of time where he alienates his wife, predicts the future (since he happens to actually be everywhere and when), and generally makes everyone uncomfortable. Vonnegut’s description of the first meeting of the two men is a good example of his wonderful use of language in this novel: “Winston Niles Rumfoord’s smile and handshake dismantled Constant’s high opinion of himself as efficiently as carnival roustabouts might dismantle a Ferris wheel.”

Granted, this all takes place within the first 20 pages or so. Rumfoord (and I couldn’t stop substituting Rumsfeld, especially when we begin to find out how his motives, while being altruistic from his viewpoint, are seriously screwed up) goes on to tell Constant that he will end up traveling to Mars, Mercury, Titan, and end up having a son with Mrs. Rumfoord. Awkward.

Vonnegut’s savaging of organized religion at the back end of this novel counterbalances his having peeled back the curtain hiding the machinations of the free market in the front. Along the way, Mars attacks, a shipwrecked alien manipulates all of human history in an attempt to get a part, and … just read it. I know I’ll be revisiting this one again and again.