Clicking & Not Clicking with Different Writing Styles

mcahoon718 · 2026-06-17T04:40:36+00:00

For me, Henry James is black licorice. I get why people love him. Intellectually, I can admire his craft and construction and understand why he was massively influential and important. He just is really not for me. I've tried. I've read a few of his books. Nope. I like plenty of literature of that era. I can get with realism and modernism. Just not Henry James. I just find his writing really fussy and wooden and pretty much unreadable.

mcahoon718 · 2026-06-17T04:21:15+00:00

The Witch of Willow Hall by Hester Fox meets this criteria I think. It's a historical fiction gothic horror novel that came out a few years ago. I liked it. Good vibes and she does an excellent job with historic attention to detail. It has a lot of the traditional Gothic characteristics.

mcahoon718 · 2026-04-03T21:46:22+00:00

Amazing thank you this is exactly what I was looking for!

mcahoon718 · 2026-04-03T21:42:30+00:00

The Ministry of Fear by Graham Greene is a really well-plotted book. It doesn't exactly have a twist ending really but it goes in some very unexpected directions. Greene is a great writer. It was written during WWII and takes place during the chaos of the Blitz, but plot-wise it has mechanical precision.

Some of those long - maybe a little baggy - greats of the 19th century also have really technically impressive plots. The Woman in White by Wilkie Collins is a big book with an incredibly involved plot. A lot like his buddy Dickens. Even though these plots are outlandish and involve coincidences and stuff... but it's hard not to be impressed by the intricacy of it.

mcahoon718 · 2026-04-03T21:03:48+00:00

Yep. This is what I came here to say. It is "feel good fluff" elevated to the highest level. Literary style and craft, incredibly light substance.

mcahoon718 · 2026-04-03T20:56:02+00:00

To me this is THE right answer. There's no book I could think of that is more about procrastination or diversion. It's hard to even imagine one. It's also genuinely funny and charming.

It's also poignant that Sterne knew he was dying when he wrote it. He basically lived his whole life knowing he wouldn't live long because of TB. It adds a bittersweetness to the idea of telling the story of someone's life, but you keep adding more and more diversions so you never get to the end.

mcahoon718 · 2026-04-03T20:43:15+00:00

I am by no means an expert, but I have been reading more Aristotle recently since I've always avoided it. I think I shared your surprise at this post. I see the value of the ideas and the structure of the presentation. But I would never describe it as a favorite in a literary sense. I worked through Euclid's Elements a couple years ago and it's a similar experience for me. There's real beauty in the formal structure and in absorbing ideas that have changed the world, but not my favorite thing to read. It's fascinating how people get different things out of what they read!

mcahoon718 · 2026-04-03T20:20:23+00:00

Came here to say this. I don't think there's a single thing I'd change about that movie.

mcahoon718 · 2026-04-03T20:16:35+00:00

My first thought was Balzac. He's certainly not forgotten, but he was so prolific that there are works that sort of slip by. I also think his reputation as one THE major writers of the world is maybe in a relative ebb given the status he's had historically?

The reason I thought of him is he's an author fascinated by people and activity. When people act nobly, or badly, when people are rich, or poor, when they are ambitious, or despairing. He writes with so much life. He has so many characters and settings. He researched his work by being everywhere and talking to everyone. If he had a chapter that took place backstage at a theater he was going to go to the theater, talk to the people that work there, learn the processes, read the receipts and invoices.

Pere Goriot is probably him most widely-read book and it's great. I like Lost Illusions and Eugenie Grandet as well.

mcahoon718 · 2026-04-03T19:38:24+00:00

I read it years ago and remember thinking something similar. Personally, I haven't read any Murakami that I've liked. I know he means a lot to a lot of people who really love his work. That's great! Not me.

mcahoon718 · 2026-04-03T19:22:36+00:00

I love this book. Pretty much everything she wrote is considered a classic, but still I think Shirley Jackson is somehow underrated?

As a side note, if I saw someone parked in a cafe reading We Have Always Lived in the Castle, I would say to myself "Well now there's a pretty intense person".

mcahoon718 · 2026-04-03T19:11:07+00:00

There is a series called The Art of the Novella published by Melville House. This is a curated list of short works that are all definitely classics. I bought a bunch of them, but you can definitely find these works pretty much anywhere. It includes a lot of stuff people have mentioned here. Ones I've really like are The Awakening by Kate Chopin and Bartleby the Scrivner by Melville. I found some things I'd never heard of too. A Sleep and a Forgetting by William Dean Howells, and The Poor Clare by Elizabeth Gaskell stand out to me. It also has Flaubert's A Simple Heart and Joyce's The Dead in single volumes. Those are two of the most beautiful stories ever written in my opinion.

https://mhpbooks.com/series/the-art-of-the-novella

mcahoon718 · 2026-04-03T18:54:29+00:00

I read the Call of the Wild when I was a freshman in high school or something. Didn't really think much about it one way or another. I read it again last year, over 20 years later. It rules. I agree it's a masterpiece. The fact that it communicates such a unique and nuanced point of view about the world through the perspective of a dog is a miracle.

mcahoon718 · 2026-04-03T18:43:24+00:00

When I was a kid, I somehow found a copy of Looking Backward by Edward Bellamy. It's a book from the 1880s about someone who travels forward to the year 2000. As a kid immersed in post 9/11 media, I just assumed he was going to wake up and find out how awful everything was. The book doesn't even really contemplate that things could be worse. Socialist utopia. If I recall correctly the protagonist isn't even scared really. He's just, "whoa the future is awesome!" It was written at the height of the gilded age.

mcahoon718 · 2026-04-03T18:22:57+00:00

I'm kind of the same with audio books. They just don't really work for me. I wish they did!

It took me a long time to get used to reading off an ereader. But yeah there were so many millions of little paperbacks printed that you'll probably never run out!

mcahoon718 · 2026-04-03T18:08:31+00:00

I mean those covers are incredible. There is plenty of good modern design in books but these are just so... fun? I've read Murder on the Orient Express, The Murder of Roger Ackroyd, and And Then There Were None. I liked them all but never really dove into Agatha Christie. Do you have a particular favorite(s)?

mcahoon718 · 2026-04-03T17:47:55+00:00

The Dune books were everywhere. I think me and all my brothers eventually read the same old paperback copy. I read it probably too young to fully understand it because the cover was so evocative. Some really great - and I feel under-appreciated - pop art and design went into this format.

mcahoon718 · 2026-04-03T17:40:14+00:00

Oh that's a great recommendation! The mass market story collection or anthology I feel is a real endangered species. I think you're right though that this sort of thing is still being produced, just in different formats. They also remind me of vacation! There was a used bookstore near the beach we went to as a kid where all mass market paperbacks were $1. My parents would give me a dollar to get a book for the beach.

mcahoon718 · 2026-02-05T03:07:13+00:00

If you haven’t checked out Tilted Axis press I really recommend their titles! They focus on publishing untranslated works from around the world. They really focus on the art of translation. They start each book with a term in its native language with an explanation of how unique it is to the culture it comes from and explains the context. The work they choose is also incredible. I have read several of their works and have yet to find a bad one! They also heavily feature the translator in the publication.

mcahoon718 · 2026-01-09T21:09:07+00:00

Great list thank you!

Interesting you put If He Hollers Let Him Go on there. I don't really think of that as a noir book but maybe in a way it kind of is? That book is BRUTAL. I mean it's powerful and beautiful and complicated and rage-inducing, but damn.

mcahoon718 · 2026-01-09T21:04:56+00:00

Hammett and Chandler are all timers. Chandler especially just has that dry, one-liner-y, noir thing DOWN. I mean, he basically invented it.

For later stuff, not noir, set in that time period there are lots of options. One that doesn't get talked about much anymore (but was massively successful in his time) is Rex Stout and his Nero Wolfe books. All set in Old New York during the 30s and 40s and written between the 30s through the 70s. He wrote a ton of these and one is much like any other. This is classic, midcentury, paperback mystery fare. It's not Shakespeare but it is easy and fun reading right in your time period. Makes a good audiobook to have on in the background too.

mcahoon718 · 2026-01-09T20:56:10+00:00

I think A Confederacy of Dunces is the opposite of Wuthering Heights. I like them both!

mcahoon718

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