find new authors to read

I have finished several novels by authors I hadn’t read before, and a new friend I’ve made in the neighbourhood, who is a voracious reader of excellent fiction, has oodles of books I can borrow. So, I can consider this goal accomplished. I enjoyed Bel Canto by Ann Patchett very much, as well as The Time Traveller’s Wife by Audrey Niffenegger (I’d started it a long time ago and gave up, thinking it wasn’t that good, but I’m certainly glad I picked it up again!). The Birth House by Ami McKay was also very good.

I’m reading One Good Turn, and it’s wonderful! It’s a mystery, and written extremely well. She won the Whitbread award for one of her other novels, Behind the Scenes at the Museum.

Just finished Blindness by José Saramago a couple of days ago. This is a well written but somewhat disturbing story set in a city in which all of the inhabitants are suddenly going blind. The characters in the story highlight both the worst and the best attributes of humanity.

I read Mister Pip by Lloyd Jones, which was very good. Now I’m reading Bee Season by Myla Goldberg and it’s wonderful. It was her first novel, published in 2001, so I’ll have to look her up to see if she has anything else out. She writes in an intelligent, yet humorous way.

Finished The Righteous Men last week. It is a thriller which follows a journalist as he attempts to find his kidnapped wife. Incorporated into the plot is an interesting Jewish legend that turns out to be the basis for the title of the novel.

when my favourite authors publish new books that I simply have to read. I’m reading another Haruki Murakami book. I’ve asked for several books for Christmas, some by favourite authors, a few by ‘new’ writers. I can’t wait to read Janet Turner Hospital’s new book Orpheus Lost, or Diviserado by Michael Ondaatje.

I just read A Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole. Brilliantly funny. Post Office by Charles Bukowski, vulgar interesting and real. Ishmael by Daniel Quinn, a fantastic book about saving the world . . . So, that’s my advice. Oh, Chuck Palahniuk’s Choke.

my girlfriend gave me “On Beauty” by Zadie Smith. Anyone read it? It looks good. I’m almost finished A Map of Glass by Jane Urquhart, which is good, but very very slow.

Late last month I finished a very good piece of historical fiction, Pompeii by Robert Harris. The novel is set in AD 79, around the ancient Roman city of Pompeii, following an engineer as he investigates problems with the regional aqueducts and eventually dicovers that Vesuvius is about to erupt.

Finished Shalimar The Clown last week… interesting and tragic drama that follows the lives of four interconnected people… it is set mostly in the USA during the 1980’s but has flashbacks to Europe during the second World War and Jammu-Kashmir during the Indo-Pakistan War.