I have found that my favourite books tend to lean to the much longer side, I really enjoy how stories can develop with a huge cast of characters and a complicated mix of narratives and story lines.
I would say my top 3 favourite books in no particular order are the Sot-Weed Factor, Gravity's Rainbow, and Lonesome Dove; All of which will pop into mind quite often even years after reading them. Obviously I enjoy some post-modernism but I'm open to anything. I did also enjoy the first two Stormlight Archives books but I found it started to get a bit to YA for my taste with the 3rd book. That is really my only experience with fantasy so while I'm not against it, it definitely has to be more on the serious side of things if there is a good option.
Please give me your suggestions for something I can really sink my teeth into that will really stay with me.
by JackTheFatErgoRipper
13 Comments
Count of Monte Cristo
Neil Stephenson’s Anathem. Or his Baroque Cycle, starting with Quicksilver.
Shogun, Pillars of the Earth, and Sarum are some of my favorites
Roots of Chaos, Broken Earth, Anna Karenina
A Place of Greater Safety by Hilary Mantel
The Eighth Day by Thornton Wilder.
If you enjoyed the Sot-Weed Factor and haven’t read it yet, Giles Goat-Boy by John Barth seems like an easy choice.
Alternatively, The Terror by Dan Simmons is deeply absorbing.
The likeness by tana french
A Plague Of Giants by Kevin Hearne
I just finished The Fetishists, by Ibrahim al-Koni, and if you want a huge cast of characters and a complicated mix of narratives and storylines this is the book for you. It’s about Tuareg and other African peoples (Hausa, Bambara, etc) in the Sahara Desert, with various plotlines around the construction of a city around a well and the growing influence of money in this Tuareg community and disputes between Islam and polytheistic religions. There are also various overlapping personal storylines – jealousy, rivalries, etc – among the many characters. The language is extremely poetic.
The Books of Jacob, by Olga Tokarczuk. Historical fiction, (well, semi-fictional) set in the Polish Lithuanian Commonwealth in the 18th century, primarily about a real-life Jewish/Christian cult and its leader Jacob.
That might sound a little obscure and unexciting, maybe, but there’s a ton of interesting characters and storylines as it tells the story over decades and in various locales from Poland to Istanbul.
It’s the book that basically won her the Nobel Prize. The one criticism that I saw others make was that at just about 1,000 pages it was too long. But I loved it and would’ve read another thousand if it had kept going.
The Covenant of Water
The Outlander series would keep you busy for awhile, and there’s a lot of history and botany packed in there too. The author is Diana Gabaldon.