(Reversing order of things) -- CarlosTheDJ said, re Neal Stephenson: "The Baroque Trilogy is fantastic."
I feel that here, I'm going to shamingly make it clear that on things literary, I'm a total lightweight. A number of years ago, I saw a great deal of praise on another message board, of Neal Stephenson's work. This board's membership was largely American: I get the impression that Stephenson is very well thought-of in the US. I was led thus, to try
Quicksilver. Got a couple of hundred pages into the first book of that volume: initially found it quite quirkily amusing; but way before the end of even the first book, it palled for me -- came to feel it as just endless stuff about learned-and-weird 17th-century people, variously behaving weirdly, but the whole thing totally not going anywhere -- and becoming wearisome. I thus stopped reading. I don't dispute that Stephenson's writing has great merits; but have concluded that it isn't for me.
On that site or a similar one, I also encountered high praise of
The Sot-Weed Factor by John Barth. It was made out there, to be among other things, hilariously funny. I duly tried it: for me, an all-but-identical experience to that with Stephenson and
Quicksilver. Once again, 17th-century weird folk being weird, at colossal length -- first off, amusing enough; but point, and progress, came for me to feel distinctly lacking. One gathers that the (anti?)-hero goes to America to work in the tobacco trade -- hence the title -- but umpteen-score pages into the work, he's still behaving like a twit in England; I got sick of it, and abandoned the book long before the end.
This probably brands me as a typical present-day wretch with a pathetically short attention-span -- spoilt by modern fiction designed first and foremost to entertain: terse action-packed adventure or whodunnit stuff, and highly-obvious rapid-fire comedy with a sledgehammer lack of subtlety. So be it, then -- live and let live: Messrs. Stevenson, Barth, and others would plainly seem to produce material which for many, is wonderful -- have found, though, that it's not my scene.
Michel Bernanos’ “The Other Side of the Mountain". A novella/"long" short story narrated by an 18 year old press ganged onto a ship which becomes stuck in the doldrums at the equator long enoug for most of the crew to starve or murder one another before washing up on land that is depopulated but thoroughly alien. There's a sense of all encompassing dread and hostility reminiscent of the uncaring cosmos and entities of Lovecraft.
Was intrigued to read this post; just because long ago, in the course of (supposedly) studying French at school and university, I heard tell of the author Georges Bernanos -- splendidly succinct recently-found description of whom: "famous French Catholic writer of rural damnation". As I say, "heard tell of": wasn't compelled to read anything by him as course-work; and religious-gloom-and-terror stuff is not my idea of a fun read fiction-wise.
I'd never heard of Michel Bernanos, until seeing the above-quoted post; but, it being an apparently quite unusual surname even in France -- I immediately wondered whether he and Georges were related. I Googled him; and sure enough, Michel was one of Georges's numerous offspring. (Sounds like a little ray of sunshine, as his Dad was -- if of a different sort.) I think I'll pass on the joys of
The Other Side of the Mountain; as intimated above -- in the literature department, I'm a thoroughly frivolous trifler.