Top 20 Books that Make you Go, "Damn, that's really good writing!"

I was asked by two people recently to recommend my favourite books. One friend asked me for my top 10. I scoffed. Then he said, "fifty?" 

I said, "Pfft..."

"One hundred?"

"Impossible."

Upon further reflection, I thought: I can make specific lists based on books I've read in the last, say, ten years or so... Lists such as:

Best 20 Books I've Read Recently that Made me Go, "Damn, that's really good writing!"

(pretty pithy title, right?)

and

Top 20 Books I've Read Recently that Made me realize I'm part of a human race that maybe doesn't totally suck (that'll be my next list).

Ok, so back to the list in question:

Best 20 Books I've Read Recently that Made me Go, "Damn, that's really good writing!"

-- in no particular order:

• Glass Hotel, Emily St. John Mandel
• A friend of mine introduced me to Mandel's Station Eleven. Last year, I read Glass Hotel; currently, I'm reading Sea of Tranquility. Mandel writes beautifully and her take on humanness goes way beyond her years. 
• 11/22/63, Stephen King
• For years, I avoided King because I'm not a fan of horror. But any really good writer transcends his/her genre. And, besides, 11/22/63 is touted as being King's only non-horror work. It's pretty much a straight-up, time travel love story. The perennial knock against King is that he doesn't end well. I think this one ends really well (and it's not an easy plot to bring home).
• Acceptance, Jeff Vandermeer
• Vandermeer's attention to detail is something to behold. I read the Southern Reach trilogy and, must confess, it made me feel not so smart, as in, it was difficult to follow. His writing is all about characters and landscape -- stark under a microscope.
• Little Novels of Sicily, Giovanni Verga
• I'm in a book club with Italian cousins and this is a novel we read. I read the DH Lawrence English translation (not sure there are any others). It's one of the bleakest books I've ever read. Sicily was, at the time, one of the most economically depressed places in the world. Here's a quote that stuck with me: "...line like soldiers, and in every little road the bagpipes were heard, behind which swarms of peasants were just arriving from Calabria for the harvest, dusty people bent under their heavy saddle-sacks, the men in front and the women trailing behind, limping and looking with burnt, tired faces at the road which stretched before them."
• Cloudstreet, Tim Winton
• One day my son said to me, "I picked up a book from the library shelf [knowing nothing about it]. It looked interesting." Weeks later: "Dad, remember that book I was telling you about? I think it's really good but haven't read enough to know. You should read it." He was sixteen or seventeen at the time. It's one of the best books I've ever read. It's one of those novels that makes you realize your soul has pain receptacles. 
• Let the Right One In, John Ajvide Lindqvist
• This novel was recommended to me by a former colleague (whom I really like and respect, which is to say, when a friend of that calibre says you'd like a book, you read said book); the book was turned into a film in Sweden, its original language, in 2008.  This is a vampire story, but, like the Stephen King comment above, it's so much more than its  genre. 
• Daddy Lenin and other Stories, Guy Vanderhaeghe
• Vanderhaeghe is probably my favourite Canadian writer. He has won two Governor General Awards (both for short story collections). As a high school English teacher, I used to teach "The Dancing Bear" in a unit on aging. Vanderhaghe is the Peter Gabriel of literature; you wish he wrote more often.
• The Graveyard Book, Neal Gaiman
• one of those magical YA books -- like Harry Potter -- which makes you think this whole world is real and it's sad to leave behind when you turn the last page. 
• The High Mountains of Portugal, Yann Martel
• After his massive seller/world acclaimed novel Life of Pi, many -- including me -- were disappointed by his followup: Beatrice and Virgil. The High Mountains of Portugal, like Life of Pi, relies heavily on the relationship between man and animal in the grand tradition of so many writers that went before him. My criticism of Martel is that he complicates his stories unnecessarily with tricks instead of relying on his narrative prowess, which is quite formidable.
• On the Beach, Neville Shute
• Perhaps one of the saddest books I've ever read. It reminds me of a Bruce Cockburn line in his song, "Last Night of the World": If this were the last night of the world/
  What would I do?/ What would I do that was different/Unless it was champagne with you?
• Three Day Road, Joseph Boyden
• I saw Boyden speak once. Unlike what I've heard about many authors who speak (boring), he was a natural story-teller. He had ten- and eleven-year olds, teachers and educators, eating out of the palm of his hands. And he was humble. He's a vegetarian and couldn't eat the food offerings we provided, so he was going to walk across the street and buy his own lunch until we told him we had him covered.
• All the Light We Cannot See, Anthony Doer
• tender is the word that comes to mind as I recall this novel. It reminds us that people who go to war are not that far off from being mere children themselves. I'm looking forward to the Netflix series. 
• Go Set the Watchman, Harper Lee
• Some would argue that this publication was a shameless money-grab after the author died. Apparently, Go Set the Watchman was Lee's first kick at the To Kill a Mockingbird can. Supposedly, the publisher liked child-Scout better than adult-Scout and told the Lee to do a massive re-write. What I appreciated about the novel was the same thing I appreciated about Uncle Tom's Cabin. If we're willing to read literature through the lens of historical literary criticism, there's much value to be gained. 
• My Antonia, Willa Cather 
• This was a novel that I was supposed to have read in grade twelve English class. I'd always wondered if it was any good and felt guilty for not doing my homework ;) You know those people whom you knew once upon a time? People that made an indelible mark on your life and you couldn't get out of your head? And then you wonder, where are they now? It's the stuff of legend and myth and awe and fiction... and then you meet them years later and reality meets dreams... or doesn't.
• Game of Thrones, George R. R. Martin
• The sheer complexity and scope of Martin's world-making. *Wow. I'm sure there's other stuff out there that's in the same class, but nothing I've read is this huge a narrative undertaking. Will we ever see Winds of Winter, I wonder...
• Picture of Dorian Gray, Oscar Wilde 
• King of aphorisms. A classic with universal, significant subject-matter. A must read for anyone that wants to read the top 200 English classics of all time.
• Every Day, David Levithan 
• This a YA book, but that descriptor potentially sells it short. On the one level, it's an extremely clever plot. The main character is born into a different body every day (different genders, ethnicities, sexual orientation) always in love with the same girl. On another level, as you might imagine, it deals with sexuality and gender issues, but it does so without being didactic. 
• The Perks of Being a Wallflower, Stephen Chbosky 
• When I was a Secondary English and literacy consultant, I read a whack of YA books so that I'd be able to recommend some to the English teachers in my care. The jacket of the edition I read highlighted Chbosky's background in film. I've had a pet peeve for the past several years with new/young authors that seem to be writing more for film than print. I was wary but, in the end, pleasantly surprised to say the least. 
• Cloud Atlas, David Mitchell
• This book is a wild ride and an ambitious feat of imagination. How do I even begin to describe this novel? Not a rhetorical question. Allow me to borrow from Wikipedia for an answer: "Cloud Atlas is a work combining metafiction, historical fiction, contemporary fiction and science fiction. Its text is interconnected nested stories that take the reader from the remote South Pacific in the 19th century to the island of Hawai'i in a distant post-apocalyptic future. The title was inspired by the piece of music of the same name by Japanese composer Toshi Ichiyanagi. The author has said that the book is about reincarnation and the universality of human nature, and the title references a changing landscape (a "cloud") over manifestations of fixed human nature (the "atlas"). It is not a direct reference to a cloud atlas."
• The Poisonwood Bible, Barbara Kingswood
• A tour of narrative, story-telling, character force. And the subject-matter is worthy as well. Told through narrative points of view of various family members, the story chronicles an evangelical Baptist missionary family's time in Congo in 1959 and the three ensuing decades. Random unrelated side-note. Kingswood was the founding member of a rock band comprised of all published writers including Stephen King.

My next list -- Top 20 Books I've Read Recently that Made me realize I'm part of a human race that maybe doesn't totally suck -- should be up in the next week or two. 

____________________

*Wow... should "wow" as a stand-alone always be followed by an exclamation mark, I wonder... And if it's not, what are we saying? That something is whelming as opposed to overwhelming?