Breathtaking books

[de Renal]

Have you recently read a book that literally left you breahtless?
I have read tons of books in the past few years, and just can't pick one to say: this one was really great! You know, to be so overwhelmed by the book that you could think about it for some time after the reading.
The same goes for writers.
Have I become picky over the years? Does anyone else have the same problem?

[TheFifthElement]

I have the opposite problem, there are loads of books I've read which I could think about for a long time afterwards. These are ones I've read recently:

Grendel - John Gardner
Lost Paradise - Cees Nooteboom
The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet - David Mitchell (okay, you could replace that with any book by David Mitchell except Black Swan Green).
Pan - Knut Hamsun
The Spectator Bird - Wallace Stegner
Siddhartha - Hermann Hesse.

[stlukesguild]

In many ways I think that depends more on the individual than the book or author. I am an incurable lover of J.L. Borges and Kafka... but these works grew slowly on me. While I was not immediately enthralled something kept calling me back to them again and again. Among those books that did immediately capture me and leave me wanting to return again and again I would include:

Dostoevski- Brothers Karamazov
Hugo- Les Miserables
Goethe- Sorrows of Young Werther
Baudelaire- Flowers of Evil
Shakespeare- Hamlet, King Lear, MacBeth
Spenser- Amoretti and Epithalimion
Herrick- Hesperides
Hesse- The Glass Bead Game and Steppenwolf
Eugenio Montale- Cuttlefish Bones
Italo Calvino-Invisible Cities
T.S. Eliot- Wasteland
Flaubert- Mme. Bovary
Firdowsi- The Shanameh

[LuggageFan]

Recently? Neil Gaiman's Neverwhere, I guess because, from beginning to the very end, it struck me as precisely the type of escapist fun I would have written were I as talented as Mr. Gaiman; I actually cried tears of joy, even though some seem to consider it as little more than a comic book without pictures.

Girl with the Dragon Tattoo would be another, I suppose.

From earlier years, A Spell for Chameleon, The Hobbit, Palace Walk and maybe even, for nonfiction, The Food of Italy. I think of all these books frequently, have them on my bookshelf, and if I were stranded on a desert island, I would want a copy of each of them.

[mal4mac]

What have you been reading? Listen to stlukesguild. My list below is of books I have read in the past few years that left me thinking positively about them & their authors for some time. (Not always leaving me breathless - that's not the state you expect after your encounter with "Emma", but it was still a great read!) I have certainly become picky over the years - there's a mountain of dross out there, you have to be picky.

Emma - Jane Austen
Nicholas Nickleby - Charles Dickens
The Cossacks - Tolstoy
The Gay Science - Nietzsche
What is Ancient Philosophy? - Hadot
Technologies of the Self - Foucault
Seneca - Letters etc
Montaigne - Essays
Aeschylus - Oresteia (trans. Ted Hughes)
Shakespeare - Complete
Metamorphosis - Kafka
Return of the Native - Hardy

[blazeofglory]

Dostoevsky is one such writer whose books are breathtaking. Read for instance the Brothers Karamazov. He unbeatable and unsurpassed.

He is magnanimous. I think this book can transform us if we read deeply.
Another book I find all time inspiring and that never ceased to interest me is the Prophet by Khalil Gibran. This is a small book but this can impart much if we read id deeply

[Themistocles18]

Middlemarch and Absalom, Absalom!. I was absolutely floored by both.

[_Shannon_]

Probably the last book I would describeas sort of breath taking was Roxanna Slade by Reynolds Price.

The two books with have most "stuck" with me though are both non-fiction--Mountains Beyond Mountains by Tracy Kidder (who is such a phenomenal writer...Home Town is one of the greatest books I've ever read). And Generation Kill by Evan Wright.

[sixsmith]

If we're talking immediate impact then the following spring to mind:

Giovanni's Room - James Baldwin
The Leopard - Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa
Tree of Smoke - Denis Johnson
Mrs Dalloway - Virginia Woolf
Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
Sabbath's Theatre - Philip Roth
Les Fleurs du Mal - Charles Baudelaire
The Myth of Sisyphus - Albert Camus
King Lear - William Shakespeare
A House for Mr Biswas - VS Naipaul
Suttree - Cormac McCarthy
Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov
Invisible Cities - Italo Calvino

[mal4mac]

Dostoevsky is one such writer whose books are breathtaking. Read for instance the Brothers Karamazov. He unbeatable and unsurpassed.

I agree he is more breathtaking than some of authors I listed, but sometimes having your breath taken isn't such a positive a thing. Still, I agree he is good, but for me, and many others, certainly not "unbeatable and unsurpassed". Some works ("Devils", "Gambler") left me feeling not so great and distinctly underwhelmed. I liked "Crime" and "Notes" - breathtaking indeed (like a punch to the solar plexus...)

[Brad Coelho]

I agree he is more breathtaking than some of authors I listed, but sometimes having your breath taken isn't such a positive a thing. Still, I agree he is good, but for me, and many others, certainly not "unbeatable and unsurpassed". Some works ("Devils", "Gambler") left me feeling not so great and distinctly underwhelmed. I liked "Crime" and "Notes" - breathtaking indeed (like a punch to the solar plexus...)

I'll echo your literal take. I immediately thought of Crime & Punishment in its unrelenting asphyxiation when 'take your breath away' entered my subconscious. C&P has a tangible power that I've not encountered in any other novel. That said, it is an overwhelming and slightly unpleasant affect- so if the thrust of the original post was to determine if recent novels had resonated in a positive light, then this experience would be of no usefulness.

[David Lurie]

Breathless? still thinking about it months after reading it? recently?
considering only recent books and recent readings and weighing recent at 2-3 years I'd say:
Des hommes by Laurent Mauvignier
Les Bienveillantes by Jonathan Littell
Atmospheric disturbances by Rivka Galchen
Gilead by Marilynne Robinson

[LitNetIsGreat]

Again instant breathlessness;

Maupassant, Bel-Ami
Wilde, Dorian Gray
Shakespeare, almost any
Baudelaire, Flowers of Evil
Milton, Paradise Lost
Chekov, The Seagull
Individual poems such as Shelley’s “Ozymandias” and Keats’s poems “la Belle Dan San Merci” “To Autumn”
To a lesser degree possibly Daphne Du Maurier’s Rebecca

Looking at that lot, and thinking about what they gave and still give me, it makes me want to dash everything else and read them right now - but Mac and Sch would shout at me...:incazzato:

Hmm, my Chekov collection might have to be the fourth book coming on holiday with me still.

[spookymulder93]

Fahrenheit 451 and Thus Spoke Zarathustra.

I thought the Brothers Karamazov would be breathtaking, but other than the Grand Inquisitor and Ivans Nightmare and the Devil it was just a good book. Not great. IMO.

[de Renal]

Thank you, people, for great recommendations! I have read most of these books when I was a teenager - at that time I thought of them as best! Recently, I've been reading some contemporary authors - there are so many great books, I don't deny! What happens to me is that I start reading, and all of the sudden the tone changes in a way that I feel bored, or just want to skip further. Generally, the book is good, but I can't seem to say: this, or this, or this is the reason I loved it so much!
Maybe I should return to classics, as recommended :)

[Lulim]

How about "Against the Day", by Thomas Pynchon?

I also agree on Middlemarch

[Max Brod]

Lolita, Lolita, and umm Lolita

[Isla]

These are some of the books that captivated me the past few months:

Katherine by Anya Seton
Little Dorrit by Charles Dickens
North and South by Elizabeth Gaskell
The Game of Kings by Dorothy Dunnett

[Patrick_Bateman]

Have you recently read a book that literally left you breahtless?
I have read tons of books in the past few years, and just can't pick one to say: this one was really great! You know, to be so overwhelmed by the book that you could think about it for some time after the reading.
The same goes for writers.
Have I become picky over the years? Does anyone else have the same problem?

Fahrenheit 451 (Bradbury), American psycho (Easton Ellis), The Stranger (Camus), The Black Monk (Chekhov)

[de Renal]

I have recently discovered Alessandro Baricco! And I'm overwhelmed! His specific way of writing makes me read a few pages, and then contemplate for hours! So emotional, funny, sad, serious and crazy! I love him! :crazy:

[Alexander III]

I have to second The Picture Of Dorian Gray, also I would add De Sade's Juliette ( that one really leaves you breathless when you finish it)

[darkthrone]

The recently released Ghost of Achilles - True Ogre by Chris Sorrell left me breathless after reading it. Pure, luscious fantasy of the highest order. Just finished my copy I got off amazon.co.uk and can't wait to find out when then the follow up comes out.

[nandakishore]

Any post here is necessarily subjective, so I am talking of the books which took my breath away.

One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck

[marcolfo]

basically anything by dostoyevsky
100 years of solitud by garcia marquez
thus spoke zarathustra by nietzsche
the grapes of wrath and of mice and men by steinbeck
brave new world by huxley
invisible cities by calvino
les miserables by hugo
the unbearable lightness of beeing by kundera

[IceM]

Portrait of an Artist as a Young Man by James Joyce
Siddhartha by Hermann Hesse
Walden by Henry David Thoreau
Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoyevsky

[Infinitefox]

Crime and Punishment - Dostoevsky
Brothers Karamazov - Dostoevsky
Swan Song - McCammon

[Deb Kim]

If we're talking immediate impact then the following spring to mind:

Giovanni's Room - James Baldwin
The Leopard - Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa
Tree of Smoke - Denis Johnson
Mrs Dalloway - Virginia Woolf
Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
Sabbath's Theatre - Philip Roth
Les Fleurs du Mal - Charles Baudelaire
The Myth of Sisyphus - Albert Camus
King Lear - William Shakespeare
A House for Mr Biswas - VS Naipaul
Suttree - Cormac McCarthy
Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov
Invisible Cities - Italo Calvino


how does it affect you? i read it and it's pretty lengthy in description. it's a good book anyway.

[JZD]

Certainly Crime and Punishment and The Brothers Karamazov.

For me, the best feeling while reading a book is to sit back in amazement that a single human being could create a work of art this far-reaching, this perfect. When the prose is so good and lyrical that nearly every sentence looks like it took ten minutes to craft.

Other than Dostoevsky, the only novels that immediately come to mind that fit that description for me are Gulliver's Travels and Moby Dick.

[larryF]

John O'Hara - Appointment in Samarra

and ill second Brave new World, especially the last half.

[Mr. Pedantic]

Why, The Brothers Karamazov of course!

[breathtest]

Somebody mentioned Suttree by Cormac McCarthy, and i have to agree.
Also i have recently discovered the japanese writer Haruki Murakami. I read 'A wild sheep chase' and that took my breath away.
Obviously Crime and Punishment as well.
Kerouacs books take my breath away as well. The rush of language quite literally leaves you gasping for air.