Novels About Writers

Will Lavender

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What are your favorite novels about writers and writing?

I liked Wake Up, Sir! by Jonathan Ames, and All is Vanity by Christina Schwarz. There are also three or four Stephen King titles you could pick (The Dark Half would probably be mine).

Any that you enjoy?
 
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I've read All is Vanity but not Drowning Ruth (yet...I have my own copy).

I've also read Bag of Bones...was that about a writer? See how much of an impression it made on me!

Oh, and Dean Koontz's Lightning. Time travel and writing!
 

Will Lavender

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Oy, I forgot The World According to Garp!

Put that at #1-Infinity. Fantastic novel.
 

johnnysannie

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Bag of Bones, Stephen King
The Shining, Stephen King
Youngblood Hawke, Herman Wouk
Some Came Running, James Jones

Andrew Greeley's Nuala Ann novels, Irish Eyes, Irish Mist, Irish Whiskey, etc. in which MC (and narrator) Dermot Coyne is a writer

The Diviners, Margaret Lawrence

Those are some of my favs but there are more....many, many more....
 

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I love Death Rat! by Michael J. Nelson. The MC is a niche NF writer whose publisher boots him; he ends up writing a thriller, which (due to various complications) becomes a sensation because it's marketed as NF. It's a very funny book!
 

Claudia Gray

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The number-one favorite would have to be Possession by A.S. Byatt.
 

Susan Breen

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My book is about a writer and, if I could take a moment for self-promotion, The Fiction Class is coming out on Feb. 26. I always stayed away from writing about writers because it seemed like cheating, but then, after spending seven years working on a novel about a pianist, (and spending seven years taking piano lessons), I figured the heck with it. I might as well write about something I know.
 

Priene

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Doctor Zhivago. And then Pasternak was forced to turn down the Nobel Prize for Literature.
 

Shady Lane

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The Year of Endless Sorrows by Adam Rapp.

It's not as depressing as it sounds. But it's...kinda close.
 

Harper K

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I like John Updike's books about the mostly frustrated, mostly unproductive novelist Henry Bech: Bech: A Book, Bech is Back, and Bech at Bay.
 

rosebud1981

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The Shadow of the Wind by Carlos Ruiz Zafon.

It's a thriller about two writers and is one of the best books I've ever read
 

lkp

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The Shadow of the Wind by Carlos Ruiz Zafon.

It's a thriller about two writers and is one of the best books I've ever read


Ditto. Loved, loved that book. I expect to reread it many times.
Right now I am rereading another favourite, Doris Lessing's The Golden Notebook, a novel essentially about writing and writer's block.
 

Will Lavender

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The Shadow of the Wind by Carlos Ruiz Zafon.

It's a thriller about two writers and is one of the best books I've ever read

For some reason, I picked this book up many times but passed on it. But I think I'm going to try it in the next week or so. Right up my alley; sounds, in a lot of ways, like my book.

Noticed that Publishers Weekly was very harsh on it, which is odd because PW is pretty tame most of the time. Their review on Amazon cuts really sharply against the grain of the user comments -- which are overwhelmingly positive.

Just something weird I noticed.
 

gerrydodge

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I love the Bech series by Updike and I agree with Will Lavender that THE WORLD ACCORDING TO GARP is at the top of the list.
 

Will Lavender

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Just picked up Martha Grimes' Foul Matter, a crime novel set in the world of publishing. Pretty good so far, although I'm not a huge Grimes fan. (I really like her writing style, but she is far more interested in quipping and clever puns than she is in, you know, suspense. Her Richard Jury novels [I've read two. The Old Wine Shades, the last one I read, was interesting but strangely...flat. Grimes tends to just move quickly through the suspensful, scary scenes but linger on the scenes where Jury is drinking with his pals.] don't do anything for me at all. Hopefully this one will be a bit more up my alley.)
 

EriRae

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Another John Irving about writers: A Widow for One Year. King's short story Secret Window, at least, that was the movie title. Michael Chabon's Wonder Boys, and to an extent, Kavalier and Clay, since Sammy Clay was also a pulp novelist.
 

Will Lavender

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Another John Irving about writers: A Widow for One Year. King's short story Secret Window, at least, that was the movie title. Michael Chabon's Wonder Boys, and to an extent, Kavalier and Clay, since Sammy Clay was also a pulp novelist.

Forgot Wonder Boys! Tremendous novel. I think what made it so interesting was that it felt like an exercise. It was...loose, for lack of a better word. It just felt like Chabon was playfully experimenting -- which he was, as he had come off a failed five-year attempt at writing a behemoth of a "serious" novel.

WB is Chabon's thinnest book, and it might be his best.
 

aruna

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Well, I haven't read the book, but Stephen King's Misery...

Martin Amis The Information - I also haven't read it.

The Other Side of the Story - a chick-lit novel by whatshername.
 

gerrydodge

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Crap, I forgot THE GHOST WRITER by Philip Roth. Roth gets swept under the rug it seems--even by me even though I really like his writing.