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Fiction Book Suggestions Wanted: March & April 2009

Assist us in selecting our upcoming FICTION book for group discussion in this forum. A minimum of 5 posts is required to participate here!
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Chris OConnor

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Fiction Book Suggestions Wanted: March & April 2009

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Fiction Book Suggestions Wanted: March & April 2009

Please make some quality suggestions for our March & April 2009 fiction book discussion in this thread. Post a link to where your fiction suggestion can be researched on Amazon.com. And most importantly please read about the book suggestions other members make and leave comments about these suggestions.
Last edited by Chris OConnor on Fri Feb 20, 2009 12:51 am, edited 1 time in total.
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I really like reading the classics. One that has intrigued me is The Potrait of Dorian Gray

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Picture_of_Dorian_Gray

It has the elements of controversary of Lolita, the magic of Orlando. I think that this we could get some really good discussions started on this.
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I always wanted to read Dorian Gray. Good suggestion!

I wanted to suggest The Satanic Verses by Salman Rushdie.
This is the book that put the fatwa on Rushdie and he went into protected hiding for about a decade I believe.
Amazon.com Review
No book in modern times has matched the uproar sparked by Salman Rushdie's The Satanic Verses, which earned its author a death sentence. Furor aside, it is a marvelously erudite study of good and evil, a feast of language served up by a writer at the height of his powers, and a rollicking comic fable. The book begins with two Indians, Gibreel Farishta ("for fifteen years the biggest star in the history of the Indian movies") and Saladin Chamcha, a Bombay expatriate returning from his first visit to his homeland in 15 years, plummeting from the sky after the explosion of their jetliner, and proceeds through a series of metamorphoses, dreams and revelations. Rushdie's powers of invention are astonishing in this Whitbread Prize winner. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

From Publishers Weekly
Banned in India before publication, this immense novel by Booker Prize-winner Rushdie ( Midnight's Children ) pits Good against Evil in a whimsical and fantastic tale. Two actors from India, "prancing" Gibreel Farishta and "buttony, pursed" Saladin Chamcha, are flying across the English Channel when the first of many implausible events occurs: the jet explodes. As the two men plummet to the earth, "like titbits of tobacco from a broken old cigar," they argue, sing and are transformed. When they are found on an English beach, the only survivors of the blast, Gibreel has sprouted a halo while Saladin has developed hooves, hairy legs and the beginnings of what seem like horns. What follows is a series of allegorical tales that challenges assumptions about both human and divine nature. Rushdie's fanciful language is as concentrated and overwhelming as a paisley pattern. Angels are demonic and demons are angelic as we are propelled through one illuminating episode after another. The narrative is somewhat burdened by self-consciousness that borders on preciosity, but for Rushdie fans this is a splendid feast.
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Grim

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I'll second that suggestion, I've been meaning to reading The Satanic Versus for some time now, this is a great excuse to all end present and future procrastinations (about this particular book anyway).

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I have a copy of this book waiting to be opened, The Potrait of Dorian Gray , so I'll second that suggestion. Except it really should be Grey, not Gray.
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I've read some of Oscar Wilde's plays and they were what I would describe as rather uninteresting. He was a very extravagant socialite within the upper class of society which he intentionally reflected in his writing in a manner which I found displeasureable. Almost a flippant, very fanciful tone when giving out his ideas which are if anything prosaic puns colored in high class robes.

I have never read anything of Rushdie so I would be interested to hear some comments on his other works. I am to understand that he is a prolific novelist?

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Folks

I would recommend any of the following five. All award winning novels:

Waiting for the Barbarians, J.M. Coetzee
Master and Margarita, Mikhail Bulgakov
Ali and Nino: A Love Story, Kurban Said
Ishmael, Daniel Quinn
The Magus, John Fowles


Each unique in its own right; and these are my suggestions.

Look forward to hearing back

sandy krolick (zietz)
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Sorry about no links

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I would really opt for Cotzee, Waiting for the Barbarians.

Here is the link:

http://www.amazon.com/Waiting-Barbarian ... 078&sr=1-1
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