Does it concern you that you might enjoy something that isn’t by your standards worthy of being enjoyed?
Top 5
What are your top 5 favorite books (Fiction)? And because this answer is almost always different: Which books do you recommend to people?
Yes. I enjoy reading the sci-fi realism of Arkady Strugatsky and Boris Strugatsky, they’re both simple, but entertaing writers, however best-sellers almost always disappoint me.
I don’t think you answered my question.
I’ll call it litereary masterbation: I do keep standards as a matter of discipline because, regardless of what I might enjoy, I’d rather have structure.
Oh, my friend, you are sadly mistaken! that which is not real often teaches the best lessons. You can’t imagine what martin Luther King Jr. looked like, sounded like…But what about Hester? Or Piggy? Or Lennie? And while on these topics, you left out the following:
“A throng of bearded men, in sad-colored garments, and gray, steeple-crowned hats, intermixed with women, some wearing hoods, and others bareheaded, was assembled in front of a wooden edifice, the door of which was heavily timpered with oak, and studded with iron spikes.” The Scarlet Letter Nathaniel Hawthorne
“A few miles south of Soledad, the Salinas River drops in close to the hillside bank and runs deep and green.” Of Mice and Men John Steinback
“The boy with fair hair lowered himself down the last few feet of rock and began to pick his way toward the lagoon.” Lord of the Flies William Golding
I don’t really like fiction much either, unless it’s fiction based on real events, like On The Road which I’m reading right now. Also, I loved Life of Pi, which is the truest fiction I’ve ever read.
Hey,
Given your reasons for disliking fiction, you would either really enjoy or really hate number 14 on your list, If on a Winter’s night a Traveller by Calvino. He’s quite open about the whole process of literary hackery.
My own opinion is that you can learn different things from fiction and from non-fiction, and I’d actually place a higher value on fiction. History and biography are all very well, but it’s all pretty arbitrary. Whereas the best fictional books are an insight into what some of the most intelligent and creative people to have lived think about what it is to be alive and human, and the different ways there are to live life.
Originally, yes. I suspect he’s more or less in a world of his own now.