Ask Nathan Anything

[FEMA Camp Administrator]

Favorite fictional books and book series?

[FEMA Camp Administrator]

Favorite fictional books and book series?

The Makioka Sisters, which is a social-realist recent-history (set just before World War II, written during and immediately after) Japanese novel, something of an Austen pastiche, is my favorite individual book. The Tolkien legendarium is my favorite series/"body of work", but I don't think Tolkien's main strengths are with the nuts and bolts of writing so my favorite author qua author is Flannery O'Connor. I particularly like Wise Blood by her. My other favorite novels include A Canticle for Leibowitz, The Idiot, We Have Always Lived in the Castle, Real World (which is a Japanese crime novel), Brideshead Revisited, Fingersmith, Don Quixote (which I just read and fell gradually more and more in love with as I went), and various works of children's and young adult literature, some of them recent and some of it less so.

I know you asked about fiction, but my favorite nonfiction writer is probably Orwell. My favorite poets include Christina Rossetti, Gerard Manley Hopkins, W.H. Auden, Pier Paolo Pasolini (to the extent that translation captures him), Yosano Akiko (before her ultranationalist turn), Dylan Thomas, and Edna St. Vincent Millay. I really need to read more novels written before the twentieth century; I like a lot of the conceits of Victorian literature but have limited fluency (so to speak) in actual Victorian works.

I also like C.S. Lewis and the standard stable of great women writers of the Heian period (Lady Murasaki, Sei Shōnagon, etc.).

I know substantially little about Japan, and even less about its literary tradition. What made you fall in love with the country and/or its history and culture?

I think we've discussed Liebowitz, which I read ~2013, in the past. I should probably reread it at some point. I'd considered buying We Have Always Lived in the Castle when the whole thing about Hill House was big due to the Netflix series, but never got around to it. Do you recommend Shirley Jackson? Since I stumbled into a better job, I've started buying books again, but my recent fiction purchases were a John Le Carre novel and the five ASoIaF books. I foolishly let my mom sell (or try to sell) the seven-book Narnia book set we owned (nothing fancy, just the typical book fair package) last year and was considering trying to reclaim or buy that. Lastly, a Japanese crime novel sounds fascinating.

[FEMA Camp Administrator]

Tolkien or Lewis?

[FEMA Camp Administrator]

Magpie aesthetic?

[FEMA Camp Administrator]

Magpie aesthetic?

Borrowing, patching together, "remixing". Lewis throws whatever interests him into his fiction and isn't as interested as Tolkien in thematic unity or rigidly consistent plotlines. I don't dislike this about Lewis, not by a long shot, but it's an immediately recognizable difference.

Ah.

I’d asked the original Q because, while I just started the ASOIAF book series a few weeks ago, I’m definitely thinking of (re)reading the two (Christian) greats in the genre after I finish.

Do you know of any other notable authors in fantasy?

[FEMA Camp Administrator]

Would’ve been more amusing if Pete said his favorite book was “Infinite Jest”. Speaking of, ever read it?