What are you reading in 2025?

[Retros_x]

great American author of the 20th century. This was despite the fact that I was reading Pynchon at the time and had read Infinite Jest previously. And there's Vonnegut, Chandler, Faulkner, Hemingway, DeLillo, etc. I think King is a great author

I miss Steinbeck in that list! One of my favorite contemporary American authors! But honestly King is not that far from this list of names. I feel he catches American culture really great (at least to me and my European perspective), has great characters and uses horror as effective narrative instrument to tell great stories about the human condition. (I realize I seem to grow into a King fan after only 3 books haha).

Plus, he seems like a nice dude in interviews and I love how he repeatedly dunked Elon Musk on Twitter.

 

[ART!]

Sorry to ask, but did you mean All Star Superman? I think Absolute Superman is current.

Yes! Thanks! I've corrected my post.

 

[Old Fezziwig]

I miss Steinbeck in that list! One of my favorite contemporary American authors!

To my shame, I've only read Travels with Charley, which was absolutely delightful.

 

[Nellisir]

I think I might have told this story before, but I was drunk at a party when I was younger and claimed with a straight face that King was the great American author of the 20th century. This was despite the fact that I was reading Pynchon at the time and had read Infinite Jest previously. And there's Vonnegut, Chandler, Faulkner, Hemingway, DeLillo, etc. I think King is a great author, but I was way out over my skis there. The lesson is, of course, don't ski drunk.

I have King and Kipling in the same pocket in my mind. Both extremely popular authors; both snubbed by the literati for being essentially too "popular"; both very easy to read. (Edit: Both have strong/significant New England connections, although those obviously aren't prominent in most of Kipling's work.)

I love - absolutely love - Raymond Chandler. He can barely carry a plot in a bucket, but his phrasing and vignettes are just a masterclass in evocative writing.

 

[Nellisir]

Currently reading The Chinese Lake Murders, by Robert Van Gulik, and courtesy of @Eyes of Nine. I've read a bunch of other books too, but everything is (literally) a jumble right now so I can't tell you what they were (visual-keyed memory). I've migrated back to my summer dwelling (my "real" apartment) but I'm still working on it, so there are piles everywhere.

 

[prabe]

I have King and Kipling in the same pocket in my mind. Both extremely popular authors; both snubbed by the literati for being essentially too "popular"; both very easy to read.

I love - absolutely love - Raymond Chandler. He can barely carry a plot in a bucket, but his phrasing and vignettes are just a masterclass in evocative writing.

You might (or might not) be interested in Kim Newman's novel, Something More Than Night. It's a mystery with some supernatural elements, with Raymond Chandler as the main POV character. Very much a riff on Chandler's novels, especially The Big Sleep. If you're also into pre-WW2 Hollywood, the recommendation becomes stronger--there are all sorts of references and Easter eggs, and Chandler's detective sidekick is Boris Karloff.

 

[overgeeked]

I have King and Kipling in the same pocket in my mind. Both extremely popular authors; both snubbed by the literati for being essentially too "popular"; both very easy to read.

I love - absolutely love - Raymond Chandler. He can barely carry a plot in a bucket, but his phrasing and vignettes are just a masterclass in evocative writing.

Yeah. I'd rather have a ripping yarn that's well written with evocative prose over anything that makes the stuffed shirts drool. Getting a couple of degrees in literature absolutely killed my snobbery for "real literature." Save the navel gazing for the philosophers and get on with the story. If you don't have characters actually doing something I'm not interested.

 

[Nellisir]

You might (or might not) be interested in Kim Newman's novel, Something More Than Night. It's a mystery with some supernatural elements, with Raymond Chandler as the main POV character. Very much a riff on Chandler's novels, especially The Big Sleep. If you're also into pre-WW2 Hollywood, the recommendation becomes stronger--there are all sorts of references and Easter eggs, and Chandler's detective sidekick is Boris Karloff.

I'll definitely look for it; I tend to really enjoy his work. I haven't made a thorough list of his stuff to track down, but I really should. I've got a bunch of it.

 

[prabe]

I'll definitely look for it; I tend to really enjoy his work. I haven't made a thorough list of his stuff to track down, but I really should. I've got a bunch of it.

In case you need a visual reference ... (Seems more likely to be helpful if you're checking your inventory.)

EDIT: I haven't read much of his Anno Dracula and related stuff, because I got really tired of vampires (and haven't gotten over that) and I have a strong preference against series fiction. Those are about me, not him, but it does mean I don't know his overall work well enough to comment on this, either as good/bad or about fitting in (there are some connections, he unpacks some in an afterword).

 

[Old Fezziwig]

Yeah. I'd rather have a ripping yarn that's well written with evocative prose over anything that makes the stuffed shirts drool. Getting a couple of degrees in literature absolutely killed my snobbery for "real literature." Save the navel gazing for the philosophers and get on with the story. If you don't have characters actually doing something I'm not interested.

I don't know. I'm not too worried about classification as far as the literary fiction vs popular fiction split. It seems useless at the end of the day and gets more than tiresome, and I don't worry about it much in my reading selections aside from sometimes going back to read authors that I've "missed" somewhere along the line in my education. But I do want novels that think about things and talk about ideas -- one of the big advantages of the long form is to have the space to wander and digress.

My biggest concern with novelists is authenticity. If I feel like a writer's not putting me on, that they're not trying to wear profundity or whatever as a skinsuit, that they're not too invested in themselves as a public construct, I'm all the way in and will read them with joy regardless of the mode they're operating in. I think this is why I tend to prefer Pynchon to a lot of his literary contemporaries -- I think his authenticity as a writer is unassailable, largely because he's opted out of the public end of the fiction-industrial complex. (This is not meant to crap on other writers, as much as praise Pynchon. And I'll note that his solution is not possible for many other writers, and some writers, like King, can handle being a public figure and still maintain a large degree of authenticity.)

Edit: paragraphs are our friends.