Miles's blog

Meg and I were walking around Barnes and Noble the other day and she said she had just finished the book she was reading and needed a new book.  I told her I had really enjoyed a novel called Replay written in the 1980s by a guy named Ken Grimwood.  I convinced her to read it.  That same night she sent me a text saying she had started it and really liked it.  I was somewhat surprised.  Meg and I don’t always agree on literature (and even less so on fine art).

A short time later Susan told me she, too, had finished her last book and needed a new book.  Again, I suggested Replay, and sure enough, Susan liked it too.  In all honesty I should disclose that Susan has read some of my books and expressed satisfaction with those, so she may not be a very discriminating reader.  Nevertheless, that all three of us like the same book must say something about the quality of the writing.

All of this got me thinking about books I have liked over the years.  I have blogged before about all my books, but I am not sure I have written a blog recommending books I have really liked.  Here are some of my favorite works of fiction (I actually read much more non-fiction, but since I recommended a novel to Meg I thought I would blog about fiction):

Let’s start with Replay.  Although this was written in 1987 I don’t recall hearing about it when it came out.  (That was the year Meg was born so I did not do a lot of reading with all the crying going on.)  It is about a man who dies, then wakes up as his 18-year old self with all his memories intact.  He goes on to live a very different life, then dies at exactly the same moment in time, again waking up as his 18-year old self. He makes different choices, but sure enough, dies again, this time waking up at a slightly later time in his original life.  This keeps happening.  Along the way he meets a woman to whom the same thing is happening.  Not only is the story engaging, but it makes you think about what you would do if this happened to you.

Shogun.   I could not put this one down.  I had the unfortunate luck of picking this up as I was studying for the bar exam.  So when I would get home late after bar review class I would stay up past midnight caught up in the adventure.  A British sailor aboard a Dutch ship in 1600 is shipwrecked in Japan.  He is taken prison by a local warlord and through a series of machinations and adventures ends up in the court of the big warlord or Shogun.  Author James Clavell tells a compelling story full of adventure in exotic ancient Japan.  On every page you think the hero will be killed (which he won’t since the book is 1000 pages long).

The Winds of War and War and Remembrance.  I read these back to back.  Herman Wouk’s epic saga (is that a cliché or what?) about the fate of several families, Jews and non-Jews in the time leading up to and during World War II.  The characters are well-drawn and their experiences turn a history on the war into personal experiences.  You already know the ending, the Germans lose the war, but what happens to each character along the way will drag you from page to page regardless of how much sleep you are missing.

Gone With the Wind.  I love the movie and hesitated to read the book.  The book is better.  Way better.  Much more detail, atmosphere, color, and what strikes me as a more realistic picture of the antebellum South.  Scarlett O’Hara is much more devious and unlikable in the book, I think, while her story plays out in a rich narrative.  The other characters are given much more development than in the movie and Rhett Butler becomes more of a man of flesh and blood than the screen idol played by Clark Gable.  Like most of the rest of these recommendations, the book is long, but you will still be sad it is ending when Rhett tells her he doesn’t give a damn.

Stranger in a Strange Land.   I used to love science fiction when I was a teenager, and Robert Heinlein was my favorite.  This is his best, I think.  It mixes elements of science, religion, politics and history into a difficult to categorize, but fascinating to read, story.  Heinlein wrote lots of fun space wars kinds of stories like Starship Troopers, but his later works were the best.  I also loved books written by Arthur C. Clarke (although not 2001: A Space Odyssey all that much) and Isaac Asimov, whose Foundation trilogy is must reading for anyone who likes science fiction.

Nero Wolfe books.  Rex Stout wrote a series of mysteries about private investigator Nero Wolfe.  Wolfe was a superfat (pushing 500 pounds) genius who rarely left his house, never carried a gun, and would rather spend time cultivating orchids than solving crimes.  His assistant Archie Goodwin is the narrator who acts as Wolfe’s eyes, ears, and knuckles in the outside world.  I never thought the mysteries were all that interesting, but I love the way Stout creates the atmosphere of New York City beginning in the 1930s through the late 1950s.  Agatha Christie’s mysteries were far more intriguing, but I never warmed up to her characters or their particularly English context.

The Great American Novel.  There are lots of good books about baseball.  The Natural is wonderful, for example.  But this little-known gem from Phillip Roth, better known for Portnoy’s Complaint, mixes love of baseball with a sense of humor.  Roth imagines a third major league in the 1940s.  Their New Jersey franchise leases out their ballpark to the Navy requiring the team to play all of its 1943 season on the road.  The collection of misfits proceeds to lose every game (save one).  If you read this and don’t find yourself laughing out loud something is wrong with you.

There are many, many others.  Perhaps I will blog about some of my nonfiction favorites soon.