Books like The Heart of Redness — picked by fans

It's not an easy read, but I read this one and Cormac McCarthy’s The Road back-to-back. These are two books about lost souls walking away from something, not knowing where they’re going.

Michael K is another character who invokes more sympathy/pity than admiration. Sometimes, I didn’t overly care about Michael K’s suffering, feeling he’d brought it on himself. Mostly, though, I wanted him to find his simple peace.

JM Coetzee is such a good writer. His sparse but full sentences always deliver something.

This South African classic, written in the 19th century, is set on an isolated farm in the Eastern Cape. It masterfully portrays the hardy existence and rugged mountain landscape of the region, but is also a sophisticated (and surprisingly modern) take on issues such as conservation, ecology, racism, and gender equality. Schreiner has a deep love for the fauna and flora of the region, which shines through in her writing.

Bosman is one of South Africa’s finest short story writers and these funny, gentle, poignant tales are set in the wild northern reaches of the country where farmers struggle to make ends meet. I am particularly drawn to the way Bosman captures the landscape of bushveld and Kalahari, of wild animals and a hardy pioneering way of life. It’s also a corner of South Africa that I love to go on safari to enjoy the Big Game experience, encountering elephants, rhinos, lions, and the like…

This novel is set in the beautiful, moody rainforests of South Africa’s Garden Route and captures the period of gold rush, ivory hunting, and logging at the end of the 19th century. The hero, Saul Barnard, is increasingly disturbed by the destruction of the ancient forest by miners, hunters, and woodcutters, and develops a relationship with one of the region’s reclusive elephants. It’s a novel that not only celebrates this wild corner of South Africa, but is an implicit cry for its conservation. I have spent time camping and hiking in those forests and have developed a love for their leafy embrace.

The Weight of this World is one of my absolute favorite additions to southern literature. I enjoyed this book, and honestly all of David Joy’s books, because it is crafted in a way to show darkness while at the same time showing glimmers of hope within the characters. This novel is real, raw, and a wonderful read that I would recommend to anyone who is looking to read a book that you can’t put down because of the action, the moments of self-discovery, and the depiction of the roughness within the world.

It follows German immigrant Fidelis Waldvogel and his family, and other characters in a small rural town in North Dakota in the years of and in between the First and Second World Wars.

The way the earthy and believable characters confront complex human issues intertwined with family, betrayal, death, are deftly told by a master storyteller. This one sits on my bookshelf for re-reads. I am in awe of Erdrich’s storytelling ability; you know these characters, you can smell the inside of the butcher shop, you feel a boy’s exhilaration as he watches a plane fly overhead.

The Cocktail Waitress is the last work of total master James M. Cain, posthumously published in 2014. I started this on a hike and did not stop listening until it was done, netting me quite a bit of cardio. This firsthand explanation of a tabloid murder scandal, as told by its prime suspect, is often hilarious, surprisingly feminist, and darkly sinister. As the titular waitress innocently recalls meeting and marrying a much older millionaire and his baffling demise soon after, it’s clear she’s lying through her teeth. But deducing how and why is the fun of the book. Still, the ending is a gut punch. My book hangover was a solid 72 hours (could’ve been the hike though). 

Another classic—this one, from 1955, which was twice made into a movie, in 1958 and in the superior 2002 remake, with Brendan Frazier and Michael Cain. The Quiet American is described as many things—as a Vietnam war book, as a critique of American imperialist impulses. But at heart, it’s the story of a love triangle.

And the woman at the center of the love triangle, Phuong, is an all-time favorite character of mine. With watchful attention and subtle silences, she dictates the fate of the two men. More important than anything we ever see her say are the things we see her do and not do. 

I love the novel’s spare prose and its observations and asides, which are astute and oftentimes quite funny. And in the book’s pages, Vietnam, in the years just before the disastrous French then American wars, comes vividly to life. But Phuong is the reason… show more.

Emotion, in particular love, knows no bounds of race, culture, past, or future. I think love reaches uncommon heights in times of stress, which accounts for falling in love with abandon–like in wartime. Or when culture curbs or forbids love’s expression.

So here in this book, Lin Kong, a doctor, feels constrained during the Chinese Cultural Revolution–perhaps seeing through its façade of freedom, particularly in his own marriage. And upon that conundrum rests the plot: Lin’s waiting 18 years (by law) for divorce so he can be with the woman he desires. But the longer he waits, the more he desires her; then, once the waiting is over, desire leaves him.

Perhaps it is better for Lin to live in never-ending desire? Was his grass greener on the other side? 

I’ve lived in Wisconsin since 1985, and somehow I had no idea there used to be a thriving Playboy resort in Lake Geneva, Wisconsin.

After the book came out I learned I even have a family member who worked security there—that’s how little people around here talk about this juicy history. Christina Clancy’s book is set in the 1980s in both Lake Geneva and the smaller community of East Troy, and she does an excellent job of balancing the celebrity and historical elements with the young Wisconsin women themselves and the complex relationship so many of them had with the seedy perception of Playboy. A lot of them were from farms and rural towns, and their families didn’t even know they worked there.

This particular Playboy resort was even known as a family-friendly destination. I loved learning about a world I had no idea existed, set against one I thought… show more.