my fav book of all time is The Sheltering Sky by Paul Bowles. I love David Foster Wallace; I like his "this is water" speech, Oblivion and Brief Interviews with Hideous Men. – to be specific I really like this one short story "forever overhead." I also liked "Love in the time of cholera" a good bit. as a kid my favorite book was miracle in the andes
I want something really authentic and vivid. The throughline of what I like about two of these stories (Sheltering sky & Forever overhead) is this heightened importance of environment & senses; a sense of self in ebb and flow. Experiencing things in a foreign way, the feeling of being totally caught in flow, or feeling of being an inch behind your own eyes. so the "adventure" and "foreign" appeal doesn't have to be super literal, it can be more stylistic.
BUT– there is a thin line with any adventure type book, i want the author themselves to be humble (even if the main character is not). I don't want some dude who is all jerking off about how capable he is, what his gear looks like, how strange and alien the world he is in looks like- someone who will spend too much time rattling on about province, town, local names. eugh. i want to read a book from someone who seems to have appreciation for life.
the sheltering sky felt a little like experiencing being a human from first principles, lol, if that makes any sense at all. like maybe trying to triangulate who you are, in different environments, and finding nothing in the center.
please weave these vague loves into something fun, thank you book redditors 🙏
by Deputy-DD