books?

[astrovisionary]

someone help me choose some novels to read on a relaxing holiday. i can't decide between the following:

extremely loud and incredibly close by jonathan safran foer
kiss and tell by alain de botton
invisible monsters by chuck palanhiuk
middlesex by jeffrey eugenedes
on the road by jack kerouac
kingdom of fear by hunter s thompson
mother tongue by bill

Comments

[lunaminor]

four and six.

[katura]

1 and 4 are good.

[invader_kitty]

Am I the only person who didn't like Middlesex?

[astrovisionary]

apparently! everyone else i know raves about that book. i bought it a long time ago - still haven't read it. oops.

did you like The Virgin Suicides?

[invader_kitty]

It was good, but not great. I liked the second half of middlesex a lot more than the first, but I found the writing to be not really my style. I feel that Eugenides will make lists of things rather than use a description. For example, instead of describing a garden, he will say the garden had a, b, c, and x,y,z and that really irks me when used too often. You don't get a sense of what the garden was actually like, how it was spaced, you just know what it contained. It becomes as if you were reading a To Do list or a shopping list.

But towards the end of middlesex he had stopped doing that and his writing became much less forced, much less listy and more free flowing. I'll have to re-read it and see if I feel the same as I read it quite a few years ago.

[nadz0r]

1 is one of my favourites ever - you'll either think it's a pretentious annoying piece of shit or you'll love it. the ending kills me every time.

[astrovisionary]

i got it as a bday present a couple of years back and started it but never finished it. i think i might give it another shot this week..