What book have you recently read that really impressed you?

I was given The Land Remembers. Excellent book.

I’m pretty sure there are those here sick of me saying it but Steppenwolf.

I’m about ¾ finished with Tim O’Brien’s The Things They Carried, a collection of short stories? and memoirs? and fictionalized memoirs? from the Viet Nam War. A real eye-opener from the usual “war stories” book.

The Paris Wife – about Hemingway’s First Marriage

I’ve started reading a lot of Chomsky lately. That man is just so damn intelligent it’s almost supernatural lol.

Three Cups of Tea

I recently finished We Band of Angels by Elizabeth Norman. It’s the story of the nurses who served in Bataan and Corregidor during World War II.

I was impressed by J.D. Salinger’s “Franny and Zooey”, not because of the story itself but because of the way he made a pretty dull plot overall seem very interesting. Many others, in an attempt to write the same story, would churn out horrid renditions.

His use of the flowing, parenthetical sentence put a lot more emotion into what others would state simply.

I read Demian and Tess Of the d’Urbervilles over the summer and was surprised how intrigued I was, by either book. I’d read Siddartha, so I knew I liked Hermann Hesse, but Demian is significantly and pleasantly different.
@CWOTUS That is a phenomenal book. Relish the quarter you have left to read.
@digitalimpression I noticed that, too. I also liked how ethereal it seemed as a result of it.

The Great Reflection

Year of Wonders by Geraldine Brooks. Unusual setting – the plague year in a small English village – uneducated narrator and unsavory topic and the author makes it both convincing and compelling. I also liked her novel March about the Little Women’s Father and his experiences in the Civil War.

Thank you, @digitalimpression, for saying what impressed you. I’m guessing you even read the details. I’m looking for a whole lot more than “What book did you like? what do you recommend?” I’d like reasons and not just a title.

The book I just finished was The Egypotologist, by Arthur Phillips. The story is told through the letters and journals of two characters, and what makes them unusual is that they are both unreliable narrators. As the latter part of the story unfolds, all the main action and even the solution to the puzzle are never told at all, and yet the reader can infer the truth and piece it together from what is actually said. The author pulled off an amazing feat by allowing us to see the narrators’ words and yet know not to believe them, understand how they are deceiving themselves and others, and still figure out the true story from what they wrote.

Thanks too, @janbb, for elaborating on your original answer.

I recently read Crime and Punishment and I’m am kicking myself for not reading it sooner. Another book that still haunts me three years later is Lullabies For Little Criminals.

@ddude1116 try Steppenwolf, a good portion of critics considered it Herman Hesse’s best work and according to Hesse, his most misunderstood as well.

What the Dog Saw by Malcolm Gladwell. I feel like it’s one of those books I should read every year becuase there are so many lessons that I can apply at work, but too many to absorb at one time. I wouldn’t recommend it for anyone not interested in business though.

I agree with @ddude1116 on Tess of the d’Urbervilles. I read that a long time ago, and it has stayed with me.

I was bowled over by Nox by Anne Carson. I’ve included the link to a site with a picture of this physically beautiful book that unfolds from a box.

Anne Carson writes about ancient classics and is a top-tier translator of the same. This book harks back to Sappho’s fragments. We are given only pieces of letters that Ms. Carson’s belated brother had written to their mother. They are facsimiles of the original, so we become searchers for the truth along with Ms. Carson. It is all interspersed with a word-by-word translation with which we are also encouraged to participate of Catullus’ poem 101 about the death of a brother. The overall feeling of this unique book is of loss and looking for truth in the debris of a life.

@Jeruba, it is much like your work of fiction in which you are not to trust the narrators. Here, one must search through the rubble and discover the truth alone.

Well, to describe what I like about the book I mentioned is the way that the most mundane details of wartime experiences become an engaging part of each story. From the details of “what they carried” physically, in the first story: the .60-cal machine gun, the field radio, to books, talismans, letters & photographs… a girlfriend’s nylons worn as a good-luck scarf, even after she dumps the guy in a Dear John letter (“the magic is still there”) ... and of course the things they carried inside themselves… then to a flashback story to where the author considered running away from his draft notice (he’s a native Minnesotan, so Canada wasn’t such a strange place), and even did it, and was taken to within yards of the Canadian border on a nominal “fishing trip” – by a relative stranger who would never have done what he intended, but would help him do it – when he “chickened out” as he puts it. He considered himself to have been a coward because he didn’t evade the draft. And in the way he presents that, and the reasons he gives, I guess I see his point.

The details of the violence of war, too, are presented with so much vividness – and routine, mundane horror: a squad-mate being blown by a mine into a tree, and the look of surprise on his face as the thing detonated underneath him, another man killed with a rifle shot “and dropped like a bag of cement” after relieving himself in the bushes.

I haven’t read a book about war like this since All Quiet on the Western Front, and I suppose Quiet had its own elements of realism and verité, but a book about Viet Nam, which also describes the drugs and the demons the grunts carried, seems more real to me. It’s a thoughtful book about war. Of course, no one likes war; you don’t read this book for that reason. But you have to like the men (and now women) who fight the wars – even the guy on the other side. The story about the man he killed is one of the most poignant in the book so far.

@Jeruba The reason I was impressed by Chomsky’s writing (Deterring Democracy in particular) was due to his methodical, point-by-point style. You can totally see the thesis statement, supporting arguments, and conclusion.

Also, his criticism of U.S. foreign policy seems so accurate (due to his facts) that it brings you into such a somber reality it makes you want to not believe it.

Remainder by Tom McCarthy. It impressed me because it is the most painstakingly detailed book I have ever read, I think – he really lays bare a particular, and peculiar, type of experience. It also impressed me because I wasn’t at all sure that I liked it while reading and upon finishing it – but it really hooked into my brain. I keep thinking about it without even meaning to. I think I’m a little obsessed with it.

@King_Pariah I bought it when I bought Demian. It’s on my list, no worries. It was actually the one I was looking for, Demian was an impulse-buy.

And, well, to update. I liked Tess of the d’Urbervilles because I felt so strongly about the characters, Tess and Angel. The writing of it fit well with the book, I liked how it was eloquent, but some lines would be awkward, too. It gave me an increased sense of Tess, as a result, how she was so pretty, but still a simple girl, like Thomas Hardy’s writing reflected her. But the relationships between Alec and Tess and Tess and Angel were the things that truly held me. Alec was a terrible person, but he wasn’t evil, or even as bad as he admitted. Angel wasn’t all that good, even though he strived to be. Both were vain in their own ways, and both sought to overcome it, no matter how emotionally battered Tess became as a result. As much as you hate Alec, you can’t totally hate him unless you’re entirely biased towards Tess, and as much as you love Angel, you can’t totally love him unless you’re entirely biased towards Tess. The three characters were complex, you felt them and felt for them. Whenever anything advanced, it wasn’t just a fitting end, you felt glee or anger.

As for Demian, I related to Emil Sinclair, as Hesse intended. It tackled the sort of philosophical questions that I seek and enjoy. It was written poetically, but not so heavily that it distracted from the story. It was done so subtly in a way that I very much appreciated because it was done so skillfully you aren’t entirely aware of it until you think about it. I liked the sense of building it had, how everything was going towards one end, and how it was achieved. I liked how Sinclair wasn’t perfect, how he wasn’t as smooth as Demian, and how he developed into such a character.

Bossypants by Tina Fey.

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo trilogy. Mainly because the author made me like and care about a supremely un-likable set of characters. I was so sad to reach the end, and realize there will be no more books in the series.

I loved “I am Ozzy” by Ozzy Osbourne. Too funny. Ozzy Rules!

Knockout Mouse by James Calder. Disclaimer: I’m a sci-fi lover.

For the longest time, I was interested in picking up Tove Jansson’s Moomin series. Since I had an abundance of free time this summer after graduating, I took it upon myself to order the entire series from Amazon. I am thrilled that I finally made the decision to do it. Not only is it an enchanting series with a diverse cast of characters (of a variety of species and personalities), but it is not your run-of-the-mill children’s series. There is something quietly poetic about Jansson’s style of writing. She teeters from darker stories to very light-hearted adventures and incorporates a variety of themes such as loneliness, friendship, and family.

Each time I finish one of the books, I feel like I have gone on an adventure with the characters and I am saddened, briefly, that the story is over until I pick up the next book.

@muppetish I have a friend who loved that series. Thanks for reminding me – I will have to pick it up some time. You might like The Dark is Rising sequence by Susan Cooper if you haven’t read it. It’s based on Celtic and Arthurian legend and also very human and moving.

THE SECRET, By Rhonda Byrne
A compilation of positive thinking quotes by varying artists, authors, world leaders, etc…,
organized into a technique designed to enhance individual contentment.

AN EXCEPTIONAL READ:

OLDEST LIVING CONFEDERATE WIDOW TELLS ALL, By Alan Gurganus
This novel did make it to the BEST SELLER’S LIST more than a decade ago,
despite its length of 736 pages.
The author relates life history of a 99 yr old woman,
who survived all her many children as well as her husband,
who did fight as a Confederate Captain during the Civil War.

This novel was definitely engaging, surprising, artfully conceived
with an unusual unexpected surprise ending.

Although the Civil War was the era,
the lesson was more about timeless male/female relations.

One complaint, somewhere in the middle, encountered a chapter
that truly bored me. Glad to have pressed on, as I would have missed
a great deal had I stopped at that point.