These are some phenomenal books that aren’t commonly known to be phenomenal books.  I love A Brave New World as much as the next person.  It rocked my world and all.  But there are lists all over the interwebosphere with A Brave New World and Catch-22 and 100 Years of Solitude and all the great, world rocking books like that.

These are books I’ve read that had a similar effect but that I never see on any of these lists of great books.

Please to enjoy.

1.  The Blind Assassin by Margaret Atwood

I’ve never been affected by stories of great love affairs where one or both lovers die.  I guess it’s because, if you die, you’re not able to be sad or unhappy.  Dead people don’t miss their lovers.  And, if one of them lives, that person is generally young with a whole life ahead of them to get over it and meet somebody else.

Those stories are tragic in that death is tragic.  I don’t see the great love adding tragedy to the situation.

This book, however, got to me.  It sucker punched me in the gut and I’m still catching my breath.

This is how a tragic love story is done.

2.  The God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy

This book, the way Ms. Roy uses language in it, will make you feel like a child again.  I don’t mean the wonder and joy that we like to think childhood somehow managed to be exclusively.  I mean that you will fear the fear and anxiety the way you felt it as a child, when you had no perspective or point of comparison.

As a child, if your parents left you with a babysitter, you might actually wonder if your parents were ever coming back.  Do you remember the terror of taking tiny things that seriously?  You will if you read this book.

But it isn’t about that.  It’s about huge things that actually are serious as viewed through the eyes of a child who then becomes a pretty twisted adult.  But you won’t blame her.

3.  Les Liasons Dangereuses by Pierre Choderlos de Laclos

I know, I know, I know.  You’ve seen the movie.  And the other movie.  And then that other, other movie.  And the sequel to that other other movie.

The book is still worth reading.  First, it’s epistolary which is hard to get across in a movie.  The suspect, dubious nature of all the narrative doesn’t ever really translate effectively.  You don’t doubt the characters enough.

That is the true joy of this novel.  The more you doubt, the less you trust, the more interesting it gets.  And you can really question it.  It is a very careful deliberate work written by a tactical, military man.  Laclos was Brigadier General under Napoleon.

This is not a book to be merely read.  This is a book to be ruminated.

I will add more in the future.  If you like these suggestions, be sure to check back.