Jessica's comments (member since Aug 22, 2007)

Jessica's comments from the What can you tell me about....? group.

Scott Turow definitely writes a classy legal thriller, and they're fun to read in order, though not necessary, because many of the characters are recurring. His big splash in the legal thriller world (after his success with the nonfiction One-L) was Presumed Innocent.

Brad Meltzer's first book, The Tenth Justice, was a good read, though I wasn't taken with his subsequent books.

For legal amusement, I remain a fan of the Rumpole of the Bailey books.

Hmmm. Maybe a less dense/wordy A.S Byatt? A more male Kate Atkinson? These are imperfect comparisons, of course.

Davies also wrote some lighter fare (although the Deptford and the Cornish have a lot of wit in them), such as the first trilogy, the Salterton trilogy, as well as a fun book of ghost stories that were his annual holiday party address to Massey College, where he was the founding dean of the graduate school of the University of Toronto. He was a theater person, so he writes convincingly about amateur theatricals and has a great sense of how to make a story dramatic.

I am hugely in love with Robertson Davies, and I think the Deptford Trilogy is the best place to start. He writes about a lot of things -- academic rivalry, the arts and what inspires artists, intertwined lives -- with depth, psychological insight, and wit.

Reduced to just its plot, the Deptford Trilogy is about three men who grow up in the same small Canadian town -- one is the son of the town's newspaper editor, one is a child of wealth and position, and the third is a preacher's son who is born prematurely when the rich boy throws a stone concealed in a snowball at the newspaperman's son, but hits the preacher's pregnant wife instead. This act links them for life, through wars, journeys, attempts at self-reinvention, studies of saints, circuses, and magic.

I also highly recommend the Cornish Trilogy, which also covers linked lives, in academic and artistic milieus.

The portable edition is so great to poke around in. Short stories, poems, criticism, essays, all there.

Scott Turow's legal thrillers are very good, a cut above a lot of what's out there. Brad Meltzer is also a lot of fun, at least his first couple were.

If you want to try some mysteries/procedurals with historical settings, the Charles Todd books are really good. Some of the Anne Perry are good too, but the ones about the couple (names are escaping me at the moment) get a little cosy and twee.

I'm particularly fond of The Music of Chance, The New York Trilogy and Moon Palace. These aren't his most recent works, but I think they're his most emblematic.

Ghostwritten, too, in fact.

Also check out David Mitchell's Number9Dream.

I'd love some advice on how best to approach Don DeLillo. The only work of his I know is his play The Dayroom.