Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Anyone read her first book, The Secret History?

Many times.

I have read it twice. Adored it. Hated her second. Loved The Goldfinch.

You should read Kate Atkinson's Life After Life.

Anonymous wrote:Anyone read her first book, The Secret History?

Many times.

Anyone read her first book, The Secret History?

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I've never been a fan of anything else she's written, but for some reason A.S. Byatt's The Children's Book comes to mind. Lots of characters, long, sprawling over a period of time, involving a poor kid who gets involved with a rich family, etc. Anyway, it was very different but also engrossing.

http://www.amazon.com/The-Childrens-Book-A-S-Byatt/dp/0307473066

If you haven't ready anything by David Mitchell, maybe something of his. A little more experimental and Cloud Atlas especially takes some work (or it did for me, at least), but his stuff is good.

I appreciate your different tastes, and I don't want to criticize you. And I like the other A.S. Byatt books I've read. But I hated, absolutely hated, the The Children's Book. It's one of the few books in my life that I never managed to finish. All the characters were pretentious and smug. I feel that as a proud resident of Takoma Park I'm qualified to say this: bohemian is good, but self-absorbed, smug bohemian is just tedious. Yes, I obviously feel a little too strongly about that book. Sorry!

12:46 again. I didn't like The Children's Book either. I wanted to, because I liked Possession and other Byatt novels, but there was a streak of malice in The Children's Book that upset me, in addition to the boho self-absorption the PP mentioned. Besides, I'm a bigger Margaret Drabble fan than Byatt fan. (Did you know they're sisters and really don't get along with each other?)

OP, I kept fretting about poor Theo the whole time I was reading The Goldfinch. I had to tell myself, "Theo Decker isn't real. Theo Decker isn't real." So I welcome these suggestions too and I'd love to hear more.

Anonymous wrote:I've never been a fan of anything else she's written, but for some reason A.S. Byatt's The Children's Book comes to mind. Lots of characters, long, sprawling over a period of time, involving a poor kid who gets involved with a rich family, etc. Anyway, it was very different but also engrossing.

http://www.amazon.com/The-Childrens-Book-A-S-Byatt/dp/0307473066

If you haven't ready anything by David Mitchell, maybe something of his. A little more experimental and Cloud Atlas especially takes some work (or it did for me, at least), but his stuff is good.

I appreciate your different tastes, and I don't want to criticize you. And I like the other A.S. Byatt books I've read. But I hated, absolutely hated, the The Children's Book. It's one of the few books in my life that I never managed to finish. All the characters were pretentious and smug. I feel that as a proud resident of Takoma Park I'm qualified to say this: bohemian is good, but self-absorbed, smug bohemian is just tedious. Yes, I obviously feel a little too strongly about that book. Sorry!

12:46 again. I think Jeffrey Eugenides has some of the same faculty with language and, like Tartt, he writes with great intelligence and intimacy. And like Tartt he is a novelist of ideas who can also tell an engrossing, compelling story. Have you read Middlesex?

Not nearly as well written but Ken Follet's hundred years trilogy. I've read two of the three, and just finished the Goldfinch yesterday. But like PP, I really think she's in a class all by herself.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I thought the Goldfinch was very unique and, in a way, you would get closest to that experience by reading Dickens.

ITA I am about 1/2 way through. Everytime I pick it up, about 10 minutes in I think that it reminds me of Dickens. Maybe its the orphan thing or the youngster mixing with both high society and grifters, but it really does feel like a Dickens novel set in modern times. Read David Copperfield or Great Expectations or Oliver Twist. I can think of no other author that currently matches the depth and breadth of this novel.

Dickens for sure. Possibly A.S. Byatt's The Children's Book, as a PP mentioned, but I don't think it rise to the heights of The Goldfinch. Really I have trouble thinking of someone contemporary who rivals Donna Tartt's accomplishments in this novel. I hated to see it end.

I am in the middle of it now, about 1/3 of the way in. It's huge (750 pages+) and due at the library. I just got it for my Kindle for only $7.50.

Possibly Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close by Jonathan Safran Foer? I will admit I didn't read the book, but my daughter saw the movie at school, and we just rented it on demand last week since she wanted to see it again. There's the parallel of NY terrorism, young boy and losing a parent. Not far enough into The Goldfinch yet to know if they key in this book parallels the painting in some way.

Anonymous wrote:I thought the Goldfinch was very unique and, in a way, you would get closest to that experience by reading Dickens.

ITA I am about 1/2 way through. Everytime I pick it up, about 10 minutes in I think that it reminds me of Dickens. Maybe its the orphan thing or the youngster mixing with both high society and grifters, but it really does feel like a Dickens novel set in modern times. Read David Copperfield or Great Expectations or Oliver Twist. I can think of no other author that currently matches the depth and breadth of this novel.

I thought the Goldfinch was very unique and, in a way, you would get closest to that experience by reading Dickens.

But I agree that David Mitchell is a good choice -- try the Thousand Automns of Jacob de Zoet.

This may sound crazy but reading it reminded me of my experience reading A Man in Full by Tom Wolfe a few years ago. Remember being enveloped by the book and immersed in it, and missing it so much when I was done.

I've never been a fan of anything else she's written, but for some reason A.S. Byatt's The Children's Book comes to mind. Lots of characters, long, sprawling over a period of time, involving a poor kid who gets involved with a rich family, etc. Anyway, it was very different but also engrossing.

http://www.amazon.com/The-Childrens-Book-A-S-Byatt/dp/0307473066

If you haven't ready anything by David Mitchell, maybe something of his. A little more experimental and Cloud Atlas especially takes some work (or it did for me, at least), but his stuff is good.

What else have to read that you loved that reminds you of it? Not looking necessarily for anything on the same topic. But I just really enjoyed the language and how sprawling it is and how all of the strands end up coming together. Fwiw, I've read her earlier books and loved those too though not as much. She's definitely getting better at her craft.

Anyway, any books you care to recommend?