Layman looking for an "ideal" book for my tastes

[Ruben Meijerink]

Hi folks:)

I spend all my time on classical music(ology) and for some reason I've had to much of it now (for a while). So let's try literature I thought.
But I find reading sometimes very inaccessible, sometimes the logic of sentences escapes me, and this in turn results to slow comprehension/reading/
It'd be great to find a book I honestly enjoy; so maybe looking at my musical taste can help.
I deeply love W.A. Mozart's music and maybe a good book to get me started in literature can embody a similar kind of aesthetic.

What book has formal clarity (sectionalized), is written elegantly, is both accessible (tuneful) and profound, has no traces of labor. So with a kind of Classical Period aesthetic, but it's -of course- perfect if the book's modern. The main + for me would be that you feel were you are going, that it's comprehensible, but that the joy of writing shines from it, so to speak.

I -sort of- liked the writing style of A Farewell to Arms (Hemingway) and to a lesser degree Lady Chatterley's Lover

Would be totally awesome if anyone could help
Thanks :)!

[Lykren]

Perhaps The Great Gatsby, although that's a little more Baroque than Classical in style. Brideshead Revisited has less flourish to it, but is very good nonetheless. Some people say Anna Karenina is the best novel ever written. I disagree, but it is certainly very good, being both powerfully written and fastidiously constructed.

That said, Jane Austen's novels would probably be your best bet; in their humor, grace, and style, they are certainly worthy of the epithet 'Mozartian'. Pride and Prejudice is a fine place to start.

If you're willing to venture a little farther off the beaten path, I'd like to suggest The Tale of Genji, though it is more in the manner of Rachmaninoff than Mozart (you can see I'm getting into the idea of comparing composers to authors). It's deeply passionate and often breathtakingly beautiful. It is also, however, quite long, and may undermine your expectations of exactly how focused a plot should be. If you're interested, I would recommend the Tyler translation, though others will have their favorites.

Have you considered reading poetry? If you're looking for, above all, a strikingly beautiful style, poetry is where you'll find it. John Keats is of course sublime. Emily Dickinson is more complex, at least thematically, and very rewarding to read.

I assume you've read Shakespeare? If not, try A Midsummer Night's Dream, Romeo and Juliet, Hamlet, Macbeth, and The Tempest, as well as a smattering of his sonnets.

Others, hopefully, will have their recommendations. I hope you find mine useful, and please let us know what you think of those you follow up on!

[mtpspur]

Not sure if your tastes run to this sort of thing but perhaps Robinson Crusoe by Defoe???

[chrisvia]

What book has formal clarity (sectionalized), is written elegantly, is both accessible (tuneful) and profound, has no traces of labor.

Well, I keep thinking of books that fit this until I apply the criterion "has no traces of labour." For example, I'm reading Thomas Mann's The Magic Mountain, and it is accessible and profound, written elegantly (unless you mean stylistically; though I think you mean more like, architecturally), and it is sectionalized. But I'm not sure it's without traces of labour. I mean, he wrote it over the course of 12 years, 4 of which saw the Great War. But perhaps, without thinking about this context, the book as a finished product can be perceived to be without labour.

[MorpheusSandman]

I'd second all of Lykren's mentions: Tolstoy, Austen, Keats, and Shakespeare, especially (with Shakespeare the only difficulty is in how language has changed between then and now, but any decent edition will have glosses of those confusing words). Dickens is another author that comes to mind that fits your criteria: accessible, elegant, but frequently profound. Great Expectations is a good choice.

[mal4mac]

I just read, Kazuo Ishiguro's "Nocturnes". This should appeal to any music lover, or any fan of Hemingway and Fitzgerald. Although I think his best book is his early novel, "An artist of the floating world". I'll second everything in this thread, some great recommendations here.

Lady Chatterley isn't Lawrence's best novel; try "Sons and Lovers". Hardy, Conrad, Isherwood, and Forster are other great, accessible novelists from the early part of the twentieth century.

[Ruben Meijerink]

Thanks a lot all, it's really helpful, good recommendations:-) I checked all of 'em

Poetry is indeed interesting for me since it resembles music in some ways but also not quite. I must say I have next to none experience with it though.

Once again thanks!

[Dono]

For modern classics try the works of Cormac McCarthy (border trilogy), Khaled Hosseini (Kite Runner or a Thousand Splendid Suns), or Yann Martel's Life of Pi. You cannot go wrong with anything by Samuel Clemens. It strikes me that if Hemingway is a style you enjoyed, you would prefer simpler, more straightforward but brilliantly wrought prose. Shakespeare is probably not for you. The above writers all have a direct but carefully crafted style that is at once easy to read yet well-crafted and effortless.