The perfect story

So a story that resonates powerfully with you? I haven't found a book I'd call perfect, but I've certainly found ones that did so much so well that I pretty much do worshipful jazz hands at them afterward.

Books that have tripped over that threshold have included Woken Furies and The Steel Remains by Richard (K.) Morgan, most of Kate Griffin's Blue Electric Angels series, the first two books in Dan Simmons' Hyperion Cantos, London Falling by Paul Cornell, and Alif the Unseen by G. Willow Wilson.

Even though it's been 20-25 years since I've read them... Gone With the Wind and A Tree Grows In Brooklyn.

I loved The Old Man and the Sea, and Gone With the Wind hooked me so much that I read the entire huge thing in one sitting. But I love so many books that I can't really think of a perfect story that rises far above the others. Huckleberry Finn comes close, and I read it at just the right time.

But the one book that made the biggest impact on me, the book that made me realize how powerful a novel could be, was Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea by Jules Verne.

I read it in grade school, and at one point there was blood in the novel, and I could smell it. It startled me, and I actually looked around the classroom to see where the smell was coming from. Only then did I realize the smell was coming from the novel itself. I was just a kid, but that made a huge impression on me.

The Bell Jar. I read it for the first time when I was 16, and I felt like I was talking to myself. Gone With the Wind, because Scarlett was the first intelligent (to my child eyes) heroine I'd ever come across. What can I say--I'm a fan of a girl who's willing to shoot someone in the face. The Beautiful and Damned. The Fountainhead. Hamlet.

The Bell Jar is amazing.

I find as I've read more that searching for the perfect book often leads to dissappointment. Though I still search for the imperfectly perfect book.

That book that has errors, yet has characters that make the experience worthwhile. Wanting to give some books I bought months ago another read.

Jean Auel's The Clan of the Cave Bear -one of only two books I've read 5 times.

Hard to say now, i haven't read anything that just shouts out in my mind as the most amazing thing ever.

When I was younger though, it was "Battle Royale" by Koushun Takami, I loved everything about that book. I still have fond memories of that novel though, gave me plenty of late nights.

'Tk 'Tk 'Tk by David L. Levine -- it won the 2006 Hugo and it is awesome! You can read it here: http://www.asimovs.com/_issue_0503/tk.shtml

In the interest of full disclosure: I know Mr. Levine personally -- he teaches at a few workshops and conventions. He is a wonderful mentor to many up and coming writers.

RightHoJeeves said:

That is very interesting to me, because I found Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea really boring, but I thought Around the World in Eighty Days was one of the most entertaining things I've ever read.

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The funny thing is, I found it boring when I tried to read it again just a few years later. I think I read it at exactly the right age and time. Now, I think Around the World in Eighty Days is a much better book.

I had the same experience with The Chronicles of Amber by Roger Zelazny. I just flat loved them when I started read them at age eighteen. When I tried reading the first book again about fifteen years later, I couldn't even get past the first chapter.

I've also had the reverse happen. There are several novels that bored me to death when I first tried reading them, but that I loved years later.

There has to be something to reading a novel at just the right time and the right age that makes it special. And, I guess, reading one at the wrong time and wrong age that makes it boring.

Foucault's Pendulum - Umberto Eco. Funnily enough I still haven't managed to re-read this book. I've always given up halfway through. Mostly because life got in the way and when I wanted to pick it up again, I felt like I needed to start from the beginning.

But when I was 18, I thought it was perfect.

The Count Of Monte Cristo is the other novel that I just find to be an absolute masterpiece of storytelling where just everything fits exactly the way it's supposed to fit.

Pratchett and Gaiman's Good Omens. I'm not saying it's perfect, I'm not sure I know what perfect looks like. I just love that story. All of it. There's no bit that's boggy or doesn't make sense, and it makes me laugh. I guess for me it's perfect.

The Odyssey - Homer

lock thread

JulianneQJohnson said:

Pratchett and Gaiman's Good Omens. I'm not saying it's perfect, I'm not sure I know what perfect looks like. I just love that story. All of it. There's no bit that's boggy or doesn't make sense, and it makes me laugh. I guess for me it's perfect.

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A very highly rated book for me also! *nodnod* I often think of the fake horsemen of the apocalypse whenever I drive by the local Harley store and see all the bikers partying in the parking lot.

For me it was a YA book called Inhuman.

Mine's gotta be Pride & Prejudice.

I liked Good Omens a great deal, but nobody has ever surpassed Lord of the Rings for me. I'm surprised no one else chose it.

To Kill a Mockingbird. Sublime.

Oddly enough in a close second, Enders Game. Hmm.

I think mine is Zadie Smith's White Teeth. I've read other books that I've loved more, but that one is just masterful, flawless storytelling.

Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte- I couldn't stop think about the books for days after I finished it.

The Idiot by Fyodor Dostoyevsky
I generally love the way he makes his characters come alive.

Lilly

CathleenT said:

I liked Good Omens a great deal, but nobody has ever surpassed Lord of the Rings for me. I'm surprised no one else chose it.

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It surprises me, too. I thought about it, but I read 20,000 Leagues well before I read LotR, so picking only one meant picking it.

But I've lost count of how many people I know who re-read LotR every year or two. Wonderful, wonderful books.