I LOVE "The Secret History"! Doesn't everyone? That masterpiece is destined for a special place in the canon. It is Gothic and superb. I also really loved "The Little Friend", it was an awesome Crime novel, and I believe it is usually misunderstood and not located properly in Crime genre. (I have not read her most recent novel.)
I have never read a Murakami novel and in fact I have hardly read anything "serious" at all since I finished my undergrad degree in 2011. But I have read Joyce's "Ulysses" and Richardson's "Clarissa" since then because I planned to boast about having read them, but they turned out to be my favourite novels I've ever read. Before that my favourite was Nabokov's "Lolita", but they managed to nudge it out just by an edge... which is maybe not really a valid comparison though, but it's a subjective thing also so I think I can get away with it. I also read them for a similar reason to why I read "Moby Dick" (also after graduation), because once some horrible person shamed me as a literature student for not having read it. "You're a literature student and you haven't read 'Moby Dick'? That's pretty bad." So I read them just so people wouldn't have an opportunity to shame me anymore. (I also enjoyed "Moby Dick". People say it's boring. To them I say, go watch some pornos if you are so dependent on incessant excitation... this is literature.)
I've been reading "War and Peace" for like seriously 2 years. I have read "Anna Karenina" before and really enjoyed it. But "War and Peace" is super heavy philosophically; in the sense of just not being very enjoyable. It's enjoyable because there is a lot of thrilling detail going on, but I am finding the philosophical aspects REALLY intense. But I swear I will finish it. I think the main reason I haven't finished is because I have been so busy with study and other things, it's just really difficult to concentrate.
For anyone who has endured a lot of my company on this forum you will also know that I have been an avid consumer of Adult Romance genre fictions and have probably read about 80 Romance novels in the past five years, not sure how many.
I think it depends what interests you and then if it interests you, you should read as much of it as you can. But I also think that people should try to read those things that they have never read and have always maybe fantasised about being able to say that they have read. There's nothing wrong with accomplishment, besides which, these books are rich with meaning and will nourish your mind, and you will get to learn for yourself what all the fuss is about... or at least puzzle over what it is about. My advice for reading "challenging" literary works is to persist even when you don't understand. If you don't understand something, don't get discouraged but just plough on through, and enjoy the parts that you do understand.
James, my view of art is that the most important thing is the experience of the creator. If you are enjoying your creative process, then that is what is important. I'm not going to go into detail with that, but I truly believe it. But if you also dream of being the next Dan Brown, why not try?
My book recommendation that everyone should read is Ovid's "Metamorphoses". I think it's the first Magic Realist text that ever existed, which is like fairly historically significant. It is also a cultural and artistic skeleton key.
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