best books – fiction

I read a good deal of books, and picking out the best 10 was too difficult, so here is a handful, in no particular order. These I read and re-read over and over. I have probably forgotten some (best non-fiction and best covers coming up later). ..and please do not say the word post-modernism, social realism or stream-of-consciousness. I’ll throw up all over your tie.
Feel free to nominate other books.

The poisonwood bible
Barbra Kingsolver
A stunning story about a bible-bashing missionary, his wife and four daughters, in the last days of Belgian Congo. Impressively, the five women have distinct voices and their common story unfolds in different facets through their different viewpoints. The family and the country disintegrates, and the girls all choose different lives based on those two years in Africa.

.

.

.

To kill a mockingbird
Harper Lee
A classic, I am told. A beautiful story told with subtlety and simplicity. The two children of Atticus Finch, Jem and Scout, discover and learn what is important, and that majority does not mean right or fair. About race, racism, childhood, prejudice and secrets. Secrets kept by families, and by whole communities.

.
.

.

.

Life of Pi
Yann Martel
Fairytale, metaphor.
Pi, is a 16 year old indian boy who have been a practicing christian, hindu and a muslim at the same time, to his secular parents’ great dismay. The family is moving to Canada, the freighter sinks, and Pi finds himself stuck in a lifeboat with a zebra, a hyena, a female orang utan – and a royal Bengal Tiger.
.

.
.

.

The last king of Scotland
Giles Foden
A brilliant view on Idi Amin through the eyes of a young scottish doctor. A comment on raving mad, lovable and manipulative dictators everywhere. The balance and the line between funny fruitcake, strong leader and rabid mass murderer is well described, and the rather gullible and naïve doctor realise it all a tad too late.
.

.

.
.

.

Cat’s cradle
Kurt Vonnegut
See the cat? See the cradle?
Wild, funny and desperate social comment from the good Vonnegut. A sharp and glittering view on what motivates people, and what makes the world go ’round.
.
.
.
.
.

Slaughterhouse five
Kurt Vonnegut
Based on Vonneguts own experiences from the bombing of Dresden, it’s wild, mad and utterly believable. Frightening yet funny.
.
.
.

.

.
.
.
.

Out stealing horses – Ut å stjæle hester
Per Petterson
An amazing story that only gets better on second and third reading. Trond, an old man moves to a cabin, and meets a man that brings back memories of the last summer he spent with his dad in a similar place. It seems like a pleasant exercise, but a darkness lies behind everything.
.

.

.

.

Midnight’s children
Salman Rushdie
I have read this a few times, and I still think it is Rushdies best. It is fantastic, imaginative; suffused with the weirdness of India, Indias independence and crazy magic, poverty and curry. It is written in a clear language, light-years from Rushdies later see-how-many-complicated-words-I-can-spell tendencies. Quiet, simple.

.

.

Eureka street
Robert McLiam Wilson
“All stories are love stories.”
So begin the story of Jake and his friends, a mixed bunch of people in Belfast. It is wildly funny, shocking, and very very Belfast. Soft and hard, surprising and sweet.
Jakes fat, protestant friend comes up with a scheme to make money, and nothing is ever going to be the same.
.

.

.

The trial / the process
Franz Kafka
Dark, disturbing and funny. The trial is an excellent story of a man accused without knowing what for, and the senseless labyrinth of mysterious, dark ways to secure support. The desperation of K as he traverses unknown parts of the city to seek knowledge and information, and how his mind changes focus in the process. He stops asking the obvious questions, and accepts.

.
.

.

.

One hundred years of solitude
Gabriel Garcia Marquez
Tells the story of a family and their fictional town, Macondo, spanning a hundred years. An exercise in history, fiction and a smattering of magic realism, Marquez weaves histories, generations and actions of different times together in an intricate mesh.
.
.

.

,

.

Crime and punishment
Fydor Dostoevsky
The classic story of Raskolnikov, the hatchet and the old lady pawnbroker. Teeming with impossible russian play on words, it is a hard read, but at times hilarious. Raskolnikov justifies his actions and the murder of the old lady, and paranoia takes over his every waking moment. Obsessing with his own justifications, he is also unable to stay clear of the detective Petrovich in charge of the case. Raskolnikovs inhuman philosophy crumbles, and he understand his humanity at last.

War and peace
Leo Tolstoj
Witty and informative, it is not as impossible as some will make you believe. Some rants on history and how and who makes history, but basically entertaining and interesting. And it does indeed describe war. And peace.
.
.

.
.
.
A tale of two cities
Charles Dickens
Dramatic, funny and interesting, it is a story about London and Paris during the french revolution. The plot is tighter than other of his books, and I am thankful that there are less of the hysterical humour too. It is a dramatic story, a traditional storyline, and though it gets soppy in places, I still think it is a great book.
.
.
.
.
.

Foucaults pendulum
Umberto Eco
This is a riot in history, traditions, myths and the ability to see connections everywhere – you see what you want to see. The story is about three friends that works for a small publishing house. After reading too many manuscripts about occult conspiracy theories, they decide they can do better, and set to invent their own conspiracy for fun. They call this game “The Plan”. It blows out of all proportions, and escalates, as others seems interested in it too…
.
.

The shipping news
Annie Proulx
Brilliant story of a simple guy and his two daughters moving to Newfoundland, where his ancestors are from. Surprisingly much happens in this book, and the language is economical to the roughly hewn, matching the scenery it describes.
.
.
.

.

The butcher boy
Patrick McCabe
Mad story of boy growing up in rural Ireland. A mother in the asylum, a classic alcoholic father, Francis talks to the virgin Mary, and murders his best friends’ mother. It is bordering on stream-of-consciousness which I greatly detest, but McCabe pulls it off, and the disturbed mind of Francis comes through.
.
.

.

Kafka on the shore
Haruki Murakami
My first Murakami book, this is a rollercoaster of whims, talking cats, fish raining from the sky, and some Kafkaesque scenes in dark alleys. Bizarre, brilliant, absurd and funny, the book hardly have head or tail, and is a law unto itself. “Linear” is not a word in Murakamis vocabulary.
.
.
.

.

My name is Red
Orhan Pamuk
On the surface a murder mystery set in Istanbul during the Ottoman rule of Sultan Murat III. The story is told by different narrators, including a coin, the corpse and the colour red. Evocative and surprising.
.
.
.

.
.

The island of the day before
Umberto Eco
In 1643, an italian nobleman is shipwrecked, and finds himself washed up to a seemingly abandoned ship at anchor near an island. Not being able to swim, he is trapped. It turns out that the ship is a research vessel, it’s original occupants attempting to solve the problem of longitude, so crucial to mastering the seas. Our man is convinced that the ship is anchored exactly at the date line.
The book is wonderful, covering a lot of interesting stuff, such as the belief that things with relations have “sympathy” with each other, such as a sword and a wound. There are also a memorable logic in the way Father Caspar tries to explain religion with science: there are not enough water on earth or in the heavens for the flood. Where did God get the water from? Simple: our lord used the water from tomorrow.. and therefore, science, religion and power have the same goal: solve the longtitude problem, to be able to rule the sea. And fate.