A Motivation to Write Better, Or a Sign That I Should Just Give Up Now?
Special Topics in Calamity Physics is the kind of début novel I hope to publish myself one day. The only problem: I seriously doubt that I have anything nearly as impressive inside me, waiting to come out. Marisha Pessl (who is only three or so years older than I am, but seems about twenty years ahead of me in life) has elbowed her way into the top of my “Favorite Authors of All Time” list, up there with Susannah Clarke (of Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell fame), Harper Lee (of “if you don’t know what book she’s famous for, you suck” fame) and Jane Austen (ditto, times at least six). Is it presumptuous of me to mention Pessl and Clarke in the same sentence as Lee and Austen? Of course. But that’s why it’s my list. (Note: to browse some of my other favorite authors/titles, click here.)
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May 3rd, 2007 at 6:01 pm
excellent taste in novels. I read about a third of Special Topics before getting snowed under with finals and moving back to Utah. The part I read I totally enjoyed. It’s on the top of my list to finish though.
May 3rd, 2007 at 8:48 pm
Like many of my favorite novels, Special Topics is like nothing I’ve ever read, but in a good way. And what’s great is that it stayed fresh and new all the way to the end, constantly transforming before my eyes—one minute, it was a coming-of-age story; the next minute, it was a lesson in modernist Italian film; the next, a portrait of an evolving father-daughter relationship; the next, a tense and compelling murder mystery . . . it just kept getting better!
May 4th, 2007 at 8:00 pm
Jane Austen? Was she the one who wrote “Art Thou There God? ‘Tis Me, Margaret”?
;-)
May 4th, 2007 at 8:57 pm
Ah, yes, the book that got thousands of Regency-era girls through puberty with its frank talk about menstruation, religion and bosom size. LOL