The Year of Magical Reading
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The Year of Magical Reading:
Week 1: Midnight's Children by
Salman Rushdie
Let others write about rags-to-
riches, Rushdie prefers to tell
us about riches-to-rags. Even
our hero's face, body and
internal organs take a severe
beating during the course of
these pages, and not all of his
constituent parts survive to the
end of the book...to read
more, click here.
Week 2: The House of the Spirits by
Isabel Allende
"In 1981, in Caracas, I put a
sheet of paper in my typewriter
and wrote the first sentence of
The House of the Spirits,"
Allende later recalled. "At
that moment I didn't know for
whom I was doing it, or from
whom."...to read more, click
here
Week 3: The Witches of Eastwick by
John Updike
Parents in Medicine Bow,
Wyoming rejected Updike's
work for its frankness and
profanity, while as recently as
2010, Updike's writing was
kept out of Texas jails in order
to "protect the safety and
security of our institution, but
also aid in the rehabilitation of
our offenders."...to read more,
click here
Week 4: Magic for Beginners by
Kelly Link
Where others offer plot, Link -
what an appropriate name
for this writer! - moves ahead
on the basis of free association.
I'm reminded of Yogi Berra's
advice: "You've got to be
careful if you don't know where
you're going, because you
might not get there."...to
read more, click here
Week 5: The Tin Drum by Günter
Grass
When granting Günter Grass
the Nobel Prize, the Swedish
Academy lauded him for
"recalling the disavowed
and the forgotten: the lies
that people wanted to forget
because they had once believed
in them." These words would
later take on unintended irony....
to read more, click here
Week 6: The Golden Ass by Apuleius
What was the first magical
realism novel? Some may
point to books by Gabriel
Garcia Márquez or Italo
Calvino or Franz Kafka or
Jorge Luis Borges, but my
choice predates those works
by almost 2,000 years....to
read more, click here
Week 7: The Tiger's Wife by Téa
Obreht
This is an imaginative book
that expands our sense of the
possible, but also a thought-
provoking work about different
levels of responsibility - of
child to elder, of doctor to
patient, of people to animals,
of races and religions to each
other....to read more, click here
Week 8: One Hundred Years of
Solitude by Gabriel García Márquez
Readers remember this book
for its fanciful impossibilities.
Yet Gabriel Garcia Márquez
starts his narrative with the
exact opposite - tapping the
unexpected power to delight
of the commonplace: magnets,
a telescope, false teeth and a
trip to ponder the hitherto
unknown marvel of ice...to
read more, click here
Week 9: The Book of Laughter and
Forgetting by MIlan Kundera
His career, began with a joke,
which is the literal translation of
the title of Milan Kundera's debut
novel Zert. The punchline could
have been predicted by readers
of this author's work - who know
that, for Kundera, jokes are
seldom a laughing matter...to
read more, click here
Week 10: Gargantua and Pantagruel
by François Rabelais
Forget the Nobel Prize in
literature. The highest literary
honor, accorded to a nobler
elite, comes when an author's
name enters the language as
an adjective. Hence
"Rabelasian" which my
dictionary defines as
"bawdy, coarse, gross,
lusty, raunchy."...to read
more, click here
Week 11: The Famished Road by
Ben Okri
The main characters of Ben
Okri's novel The Famished
Road, winner of the 1991
Booker Prize, move back
and forth between the human
and spirit worlds with the ease
of urban commuters changing
subway trains....to read more,
click here
Week 12: Like Water for Chocolate
by Laura Esquivel
An unexpected disclaimer is
hidden in the small print at the
front of my edition of Like
Water from Chocolate, the
debut novel by Laura Esquivel:
"The recipes in this book are
based on traditional Mexican
recipes and have not been
tested by the publisher"....to
read more click here
Week 13: Winter's Tale by Mark
Helprin
No author has attempted a more
ambitious or thorough literary
regeneration of Manhattan than
Mark Helprin. In his 1983 novel
Winter's Tale, Helprin aims for
nothing less than an apotheosis
of the city, a sanctification by fire
that, at times, crosses beyond
the familiar terrain of the novel
and enters into the realm of myth
or dogma....to read more click
here
Week 14: Dhalgren by Samuel R.
Delany
I have noticed that short quotes
from books are very popular
on the emerging media. After
all, why read a 800-page novel,
when you can savor the best
passages in 140-character
tweets? With that in mind, I
have distilled Mr. Delany's
Dhalgren into some bite-
size extracts suitable for
Twitter....to read more click
here
Week 15: Jonathan Strange & Mr.
Norrell by Susanna Clarke
Remember that ridiculously
long novel on magicians in
a fantastical England that
came out in 2004? Who
would have thought that a
supersized work of
imaginative fiction—almost
900 pages long!—would find
such an enthusiastic audience?
What’s that you say? Harry
Potter? Hogwarts? I don’t
know what you're talking
about....to read more click
here
Week 16: The Master and Margarita
by Mikhail Bulgakov
Bulgakov builds his story around
a compelling idea: the Devil
decides to visit the Soviet Union
in order to see firsthand whether
human nature has changed under
communism. Has a new era of
collectivism eliminated covetous-
ness, greed and all those other
familiar sins? Or have the old
vices merely found new outlets,
under different names perhaps?
to read more click here
Week 17: Dangerous Laughter by
Steven Millhauser
Steven Millhauser is
obsessed with obsession.
Each of the stories in his
collection Dangerous
Laughter presents an
unhealthy fixation—
sometimes exhibited by
an individual, at other
times by a small cadre
of friends, or even a
community or entire nation
....to read more, click here
Week 18: Conjure Wife by Fritz
Leiber
Few literary figures of the
early 20th century led less
predictable lives than Fritz
Leiber. He was a brilliant
chess player, a preacher, a
college teacher, a champion
fencer, a Shakespearian actor,
and even appeared on screen
with Greta Garbo. And then
there is the matter of his
writing....to read more, click
here
Week 19: 1Q84 by Haruki
Murakami
All the key characters ends up
in hiding or seclusion. Take your
pick, they are either (1) held
captive in a small room, (2) in
a coma, (3) hiding out on a
surveillance mission, (4) isolated
in a darkened room, (5) in-
accessible in a religious retreat,
(5) locked in a storage room
with a dead goat…to read
more, click here
Week 20: The Hobbit by J.R.R.
Tolkien
In 1961, C.S. Lewis attempted
to nominate his friend and
fellow Oxford don J.R.R.
Tolkien for the Nobel Prize in
literature. Recently released
files from the Nobel archive
in Stockholm indicate that the
jury briefly considered Tolkien,
before issuing a terse verdict
…to read more, click here


















Welcome to my year of magical
reading. Each week during the
course of 2012, I will explore an
important work of fiction that
incorporates elements of magic,
fantasy or the surreal. My choices
will cross conventional boundary
lines of genre, style and historical
period—indeed, one of my
intentions in this project is to show
how the conventional labels
applied to these works have
become constraining, deadening
and misleading.
In its earliest days, storytelling
almost always partook of the
magical. Only in recent years have
we segregated works arising from
this venerable tradition into
publishing industry categories
such as "magical realism" or
"paranormal" or "fantasy" or some
other 'genre' pigeonhole. These
labels are not without their value,
but too often they have blinded us
to the rich and multidimensional
heritage beyond category that
these works share.
This larger heritage is mimicked in
our individual lives: most of us first
experienced the joys of narrative
fiction through stories of myth and
magic, the fanciful and
phantasmagorical; but only a very
few retain into adulthood this
sense of the kind of enchantment
possible only through storytelling.
As such, revisiting this stream of
fiction from a mature, literate
perspective both broadens our
horizons and allows us to
recapture some of that magic in
our imaginative lives.

Follow Ted Gioia on Twitter at
www.twitter.com/tedgioia
Conceptual Fiction:
A Reading List
(with links to reviews)
Home Page
Abbott, Edwin A.
Flatland
Adams, Douglas
The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
Allende, Isabel
The House of the Spirits
Amis, Martin
Time's Arrow
Apuleius
The Golden Ass
Asimov, Isaac
The Foundation Trilogy
Asimov, Isaac
I, Robot
Atwood, Margaret
The Handmaid's Tale
Banks, Iain M.
The State of the Art
Ballard, J.G.
Crash
Ballard, J.G.
The Crystal World
Bester, Alfred
The Demolished Man
Bradbury, Ray
Dandelion Wine
Bradbury, Ray
Fahrenheit 451
Bradbury, Ray
The Illustrated Man
Bradbury, Ray
The Martian Chronicles
Bradbury, Ray
Something Wicked This Way Comes
Bulgakov, Mikhail
The Master and Margarita
Burgess, Anthony
A Clockwork Orange
Card, Orson Scott
Ender's Game
Chabon, Michael
The Yiddish Policemen's Union
Chiang, Ted
Stories of Your Life and Others
Clarke, Arthur C.
Childhood's End
Clarke, Arthur C.
A Fall of Moondust
Clarke, Arthur C.
2001: A Space Odyssey
Clarke, Susanna
Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell
Danielewski, Mark Z.
House of Leaves
Delany, Samuel R.
Babel-17
Delany, Samuel R.
Dhalgren
Delany, Samuel R.
The Einstein Intersection
Dick, Philip K.
Flow My Tears, the Policeman Said
Dick, Philip K.
The Man in the High Castle
Dick, Philip K.
Ubik
Doctorow, Cory
Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom
Esquivel, Laura
Like Water for Chocolate
Gaiman, Neil
American Gods
Gibson, William
Burning Chrome
Gibson, William
Neuromancer
Grass, Günter
The Tin Drum
Haldeman, Joe
The Forever War
Hall, Steven
The Raw Shark Texts
Harrison, M. John
Light
Heinlein, Robert
The Moon is a Harsh Mistress
Heinlein, Robert:
Stranger in a Strange Land
Heinlein, Robert
Time Enough for Love
Helprin, Mark
Winter's Tale
Herbert, Frank
Dune
Huxley, Aldous
Brave New World
Kundera, Milan
The Book of Laughter and Forgetting
Le Guin, Ursula K.
The Lathe of Heaven
Le Guin, Ursula K.
The Left Hand of Darkness
Leiber, Fritz
The Big Time
Leiber, Fritz
Conjure Wife
Leiber, Fritz
Swords & Deviltry
Leiber, Fritz
The Wanderer
Lem, Stanislaw
His Master's Voice
Lem, Stanislaw
Solaris
Lethem, Jonathan
The Fortress of Solitude
Lewis, C. S.
The Chronicles of Narnia
Link, Kelly
Magic for Beginners
Márquez, Gabriel García
100 Years of Solitude
McCarthy, Cormac
The Road
Miéville, China
Perdido Street Station
Miller, Jr., Walter M.
A Canticle for Leibowitz
Millhauser, Steven
Dangerous Laughter
Mitchell, David
Cloud Atlas
Murakami, Haruki
1Q84
Niffenegger, Audrey
The Time Traveler's Wife
Niven, Larry
Ringworld
Noon, Jeff
Vurt
Obreht, Téa
The Tiger's Wife
Okri, Ben
The Famished Road
Pohl, Frederik
Gateway
Pynchon, Thomas
Gravity's Rainbow
Rabelais, François
Gargantua and Pantagruel
Robinson, Kim Stanley
Red Mars
Rowling, J.K.
Harry Potter & the Sorcerer's Stone
Rushdie, Salman
Midnight's Children
Saramago, José
Blindness
Shelley, Mary
Frankenstein
Silverberg, Robert
Dying Inside
Silverberg, Robert
Nightwings
Simak, Clifford
City
Simak, Clifford
The Trouble with Tycho
Smith, Cordwainer
Norstrilia
Smith, Cordwainer
The Rediscovery of Man
Stephenson, Neal
Snow Crash
Stross, Charles
Glasshouse
Sturgeon, Theodore
More Than Human
Sturgeon, Theodore
Some of Your Blood
Tolkien, J.R.R.
The Hobbit
Updike, John
The Witches of Eastwick
Van Vogt, A.E.
The Mixed Men
Van Vogt, A.E.
Slan
Van Vogt, A.E.
The Voyage of the Space Beagle
Van Vogt, A.E.
The World of Null A
Verne, Jules
Around the Moon
Verne, Jules
From the Earth to the Moon
Verne, Jules:
Journey to the Center of the Earth
Vonnegut, Kurt
Cat's Cradle
Vonnegut, Kurt
The Sirens of Titan
Vonnegut, Kurt
Slaughterhouse-Five
Wallace, David Foster
Infinite Jest
Wells, H.G.
The First Men in the Moon
Wells, H.G.
The Island of Dr. Moreau
Wells, H.G.
The Time Machine
Zelazny, Roger
Lord of Light
Special Features
Notes on Conceptual Fiction
Ray Bradbury: A Tribute
The Year of Magical Reading
Remembering Fritz Leiber
Samuel Delany's 70th birthday
The Sci-Fi of Kurt Vonnegut
Curse You, Neil Armstrong!
Robert Heinlein at 100
A.E, van Vogt Tribute
Links to related sites
The New Canon
Great Books Guide
Postmodern Mystery
Ted Gioia's web site
SF Site
io9
Graeme's Fantasy Book Review
Los Angeles Review of Books
Big Dumb Object
Jospeh Peschel
The Misread City
Reviews and Responses
SF Signal
True Science Fiction
Disclosure: Conceptual Fiction
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review copies and promotional
materials from publishers, authors,
publicists or other parties.
