I haven’t had a book that has engrossed me in months. I just spent a month reading 220 pages. Awful. I feel lost without a book that I can dream about at night and read well past my bedtime to the point that I am tired at work and can only wait to get off and read again. I need this. Suggest me that book…
by Delicious_Lobster600
13 Comments
You’re looking for Lonesome Dove
I’ve always loved Fitzgerald because of his prose.
It’s still more literature than poetry but his writing is so beautiful that I can recommend it.
My favorite line of his ever is;
“They slipped briskly into an intimacy from which they never recovered.”
– This Side of Paradise
I don’t know exactly what you mean by feels like a poem, but if you mean a book that feels like a poem in the sense of having stunning, lyrical/poetic prose, I have a few suggestions:
Almost any novel by Cormac McCarthy (assuming you can handle violence), but most specifically: Blood Meridian, Suttree, and The Crossing are all unbelievably poetic, albeit quite macabrely.
Similarly, almost every novel by Vladimir Nabokov is laced with impeccable wordplay: Pnin is a great starting point for him, but I think Pale Fire and Lolita are his most impressive. But I have not read all of Nabokov.
If you are up for a challenge, Ulysses by James Joyce invokes feelings of poetry throughout and there are episodes (if you are unfamiliar, every ‘episode’ of 18 is written in an altered writing style) that focus heavy on lyricism and flow. All of his novels are strikingly poetic and impressive, but Ulysses would be most akin to a poem.
Of course there are epic poems, but that may not be what you are referring/looking for. My personal favorite is Paradise Lost by John Milton.
*The Death of Virgil* by Austrian author Hermann Broch
One Hundred Years of Solitude – dense and sprawling but very visual and poetic
Orbital by Samantha Harvey
The God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy
Invisible Cities
Martyr! By Kaveh Akbar
“On earth we’re briefly gorgeous” by Ocean Vuoung. This is a novel written by a poet. It’s incredibly beautiful
Anything by Patricia A. McKillip
Omeros by Derek Walcott
A Suitable Boy by Vikram Seth. Well worth the time and will be well rewarded!