Which writer do you think is best with narrative pull?

[Bossy Monkey]

Oh let's see... Professor Tolkien, John Grisham, Dashiell Hammett, John Le Carre, Andrew Vachss, that Hemingway guy, Carl Hiaasen.

Criteria? You skip meals, you don't sleep, you can't. put. the book. down. Know anybody who writes like that? Before you say, "I've read _____ and he didn't do anything for me," you should probably at least have some nodding interest in the genre they're working in. For instance, if you don't like fantasy, it's kind of silly to say, "I don't know what you're talking about. I tried to read 'The Lord of the Rings' and couldn't get into it at all."

The best narrative pull I ever encountered in any single book was "Ghost Story" by Peter Straub, but I have since read some of his other works and they were all bilge, right down to repeating some of the same plot devices and scares. I just read "Neuromancer" finally and twenty years late; Gibson's pretty good at that narrative pull stuff, too. But I have to give the nod to Vachss. He's been phoning 'em in more and more in recent years, but mediocre Vachss is still better than great almost anybody else, at least in the area of pull. So... whatchathink?

[ceile]

1. A couple

Stephen King, but only about every third book. Sometimes he really looses me. I couldn't put down Misery or Dolores Claiborne.
John Le Carre rocks. I can't wait to read his latest The Mission Song.
And sometimes PD James can grab me and hold tight, but at others I find her descriptions a bit tedious.

[Bossy Monkey]

2. Don't wait; it may be the best thing he's ever written

or at least the best-written one in decades. I posted as much here when I finished it, to a thunderous chorus of crickets.

[ceile]

32. Thanks for the push.

I may go get it this weekend. Better than "The Constant Gardner"? I know a lot of people who couldn't get through it, but I loved it.

[Avalux]

3. Tolkein did it for me.

Spent an entire summer indoors when I was 14 - finished the trilogy - couldn't stop. My mother thought I was crazy.

[Bossy Monkey]

4. I've read the dang thing dozens of times-- still gets me

even though I have large segments memorized. (Well it did; I haven't read it in a few years, but it was at least an annual event for a couple of decades there.)

[XemaSab]

5. I like fantasy

B8t Jesus Christ, LOTR was a struggle.

[reyd reid reed]

6. James Patterson sometimes...

Carl Hiaasen. Sometimes King. I'm not thrilled with Grisham, although I've read a few of his that I've enjoyed. I can't say that there's any ONE author that does it for me each and every time...every one of them has their highs and lows...the highs are incredible and the lows are dreck...but it all averages out in the end.

Hopefully.

Oh...and Sue Monk Kidd for lit fic. I have to confess to just finding myself pulled in on the strength of the language alone. I could wallow in it sometimes.

I do wallow in it sometimes.

[Robb]

7. Delillo

Ever read "Libra"? Freakin' amazing. Over-simplified, it's the JFK killing told through the eyes of Oswald and Ruby, through this device where a "secret history" government researcher has total access.

Kept me from getting up to pee more than once. That's good stuff. :D

[Bossy Monkey]

15. No, my DeLillo-obsessed friend was completely insane

I could never figure out which was cause and which was effect, so to be on the safe side I just avoided reading any DeLillo. Gotta fix that one of these days.

[Starbucks Anarchist]

8. James Ellroy.

[idgiehkt]

9. wow, you included Grisham

I think he's great at this. Most of his books were all-nighters for me. The worst case of this I ever had was reading "Girl in a Swing" by Richard Adams, just because it was so freaking weird. I still don't think I know what happened.

[Bossy Monkey]

16. It's probably been a few years since this was the case...

but it's been a few years since I've been to the beach, too. Back then, you could walk down a beach for miles and not see anyone reading anything but John Grisham. This is kind of an argument that the guy produces page-turners (or maybe just that his books are big enough to make good eye shades.:)) Anyway, I liked the ones that I read, except for The Pelican Brief.

[idgiehkt]

20. I only saw that movie

I don' think I read that but I could be wrong. The movie was just complete Julia Roberts overkill. It's like, yeah, she's pretty, we get it...next scene, next scene.

[Withywindle]

10. I know who's the worst!

Jenkins & LaHaye, those 'Left Behind' freaks. Takes two people to write a book that bad, I guess. It's like trying to jog when you're up to your knees in wet cement.

[Phillycat]

26. I don't know, I would put Jodi Picault up there.

Slog, slog, SLOG! Blergh.

[asthmaticeog]

11. This is way dorky, but...

the first time I read "Infinite Jest" I put my entire social life on hold for the damn thing. Once you get past the first 100 or so pages and the conceptual threads start to coalesce and make a kind of sense, it's a serious page-turner, and often funny as hell, too.

[RetroLounge]

12. Are you sure?

I always thought it was more of a dare...

as in, I dare you to finish this book.

I never have...

RL

[Broken_Hero]

13. Stephen King, Glen Cook, RA Salvatore,

Tom Clancy, Anne Rice....for starters...Troy Denning...:)

[swag]

14. Vladimir Nabokov, Mary Gaitskill, Christian Shapiro

[trof]

17. Elmore Leonard. His 'street' dialogue puts you there.

What an ear.

[Bossy Monkey]

19. Ok, trof, I'll give him a third try

I read "Touch" and "Gold Coast," I think. Might have been "Glitz," I dunno, maybe all three. Not that they were bad or anything; I just can't remember a single word, nor did I ever have any wish to read them again, both of which are unusual for me. But I went down to the $1 bookstore and picked up "Pagan Babies." We'll see how that one goes.

[trof]

31. google his early stuff too.

Started out writing westerns.
Did you know he wrote "Mr. Majestic"?
Charles Bronson was in the movie.

Then wrote Detroit crime novels. He was a police reporter there.
When got successful and moved to FL he wrote about crime there. Often with a humorous bent.

[HiFructosePronSyrup]

18. I like Tolkien as much as the next guy.

But LOTR starts off really boring. It really gets going later, but I understand why people say he's hard to get into.

Stephen King for me is that author that starts off right away and you can't put down.

[XNASA]

21. Henry Miller

[XNASA]

22. Oops. Delete.

[Richardo]

23. Michael Connelly

I read "Echo Park" so fast I had to intentionally ration the last few chapters one at a time to make the fun of reading it last. Quite the quandry, I tell you.

[Rabrrrrrr]

24. I so have to agree with "Ghost Story"! I often use that as an example

of a book that one cannot put down. The first hundred or so pages were kinda boring, but holy shit, once the story gets moving it's unstoppable!

I'm glad someone else knows that book!

Others with great narrative pull are:

David Eddings

Hemingway

Twain

Douglas Adams

Dan Brown (yeah, I know, not a great story constructer, but he does write in an insane page-turner kind of way)

Neil Stephenson

Saul Bellow

JK Rowling

Bruce Feiler

and the woman who wrote "Secret Life of Bees"

[Bossy Monkey]

35. When introducing people to the Hitchhiker's Guide, I have to warn them

to stop while they're still laughing. Eventually, his pull compels you to want to go on, but you're all laughed out, so you don't get all the enjoyment you could. This is certainly what happened to me the first time I read the series.

The insidious thing about Ghost Story and Straub's narrative pull is that once he keeps you reading until after dark, he's got you, and then you have to sleep with the lights on for the next six months. Or maybe that's just me.

[Phillycat]

25. Embarassing answer, but Stephen King and JK Rowling

Carry-them-to-the-bathroom-with-me books. And prop-up-on-the-kitchen-counter-while-I'm-trying-to-cook books. Also Gregory Maguire. And The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime. Read that in a day.

[Richardo]

28. Me too! Finished 'Curious Incident' in one day.

You'll like Mark Haddon's new one - 'A Spot of Bother'. A more traditional novel, but still funny. That one took me a few weeks - was not as not-put-downable.

[anarch]

27. Charles Willeford

I'm a fan of the Hoke Moseley novels in particular. If you like crime/detective stories, you owe it to yourself to read Willeford. Absolutely amazingly good stuff. :thumbsup:

[khashka]

29. Neil Gaiman

I'm rereading Sandman and American Gods. And I love Babycakes.

Colette - what she writes is so beautiful and it drags you in......

Iain M. Banks - a little too violent for me, but a brilliant writer. (I want a knife missile!)

Erica Jong - Any Woman's Blues is brilliant.

H.P. Lovecraft, Kate Orman, Paul Cornell, Tom Robbins, Ursula K. Leguin, Pat Murphy (The City Not Long After is amazing - fighting violence with art), Elizabeth Hand, Connie Willis, Sheri Tepper.........


Khash.

[SteppingRazor]

30. Gabriel Garcia Marquez...

he's the master. 100 Years of Solitude is like 500 pages long, but it flows so perfectly that it seems more like 50



On edit: Oh, and now that you've read Neuromancer, read Count Zero and Mona Lisa Overdrive -- quickly! Chop chop! ;)

[Bossy Monkey]

37. The thing about Gibson is...

that my first experience with him was hearing Virtual Light on tape, which was perfectly magical. I also read Pattern Recognition earlier this year. I'd rather hear his books on tapes or cd on the whole, but I never seem to have the gigantic blocks of listening time available anymore. (Also, whether or not I could find a couple of almost 20 year old books on tape is an open question.) But I'll try to track 'em down in whatever format.

[SteppingRazor]

38. The Neuromancer trilogy, though, should definitely be read together...

It's great how he ties everything together. Neuromancer and Count Zero have nothing to do with each other, and then Mona Lisa Overdrive ties them both together in an amazing way.

That's all I'm sayin' :hi:

[ceile]

33. Some more for me....

Frank Herbert-I spent a whole summer reading nothing but the "Dune" series.
Love Thomas Hardy ("Mayor of Castor Bridge" and "Tess of the Durbervilles" are probably 2 of the best books ever written IMO) and EM Forster

[khashka]

34. Cool!

Thomas Hardy and EM Forster? Great taste! Have you read Trollope? Barchester Towers is great!.

A couple more from me: Fay Weldon - The Heart of The Country is one of the best books I've ever read. And John Varley's Steel Beach is wonderful.

Khash.

[EFerrari]

36. Joan Didion in fiction and nonfiction. n/t

[Z_I_Peevey]

39. Recently, Rilla Askew.

"Fire in Beulah" in particular was impossible for me to put down.