Typically, my reading habits have primarily consisted of classics, fantasy, mystery, historical fiction, and an increasing amount on science fiction, but recently I've been wanting to read more 'modern literary fiction', i.e. books from the last century about relatively real-life circumstances. The problem is, I don't really know where to start. I've tried Jayber Crow by Wendell Berry (enjoyable, although I had some issues with it) and some short stories by Flannery O'Connor (kind of depressing, I think someone died in nearly every one). I know there most be a bunch of well-written and enjoyable books out there, but I'm not sure how to find the good ones among the hundreds on the library shelves. Any suggestions?

I'm more interested in longer works, but if any of you have suggestions for YA or children's that you think might fit, I'll listen to those too.

Rivulus, I'm kind of in the same boat. I took an inventory of my reading habits, and I was surprised at the absence of modern literature and non-fiction. I'm enjoying exploring them. I'm open to any reccommendations, too!
I'm most familiar with children's literature, which I have high regard for. Of those, I'd reccomend Flying the Dragon by Natalie Lorenzi, Thin Wood Walls by Davd Patneaude, and Leap of Faith by Kimberly Brubaker Bradley. The Book Thief by Markus Zusak is also a worthwhile, moving read.
I'd also reccomend some of Carl Sandburg's poetry. It's not full-fledged fiction, but it's mostly free-verse, which makes it kind of like very rhythmic prose.

Jo, I literally just finished In My Hands by Irene Gut Opdyke! What a coincidence. (I learned about it on the "Recommended Reading" page of The Book Thief--is that where you read about it, too?) I agree with you. It was a very moving read. The person who wrote it with her did a beautiful job. (I understand that Mrs. Opdyke narrated it, and the lady... Jennifer something, her name escapes me --wrote it.) It was a hard read, but it was a very poignant addition to WWII literature.
I'm in a hectic school semester with too many good books to read. (Too many good books on hand is a marvelous "problem" to have, except for the fact that I have very little time to do more than just longingly browse through them.)
I have been reading Carl Sandburg's Harvest Poems, a book by Dr. Henry Cloud, and some random books on business. I'm trying to include more non-fiction about ideas and topics I'm interested in.

I've been reading post-apocalyptic books of late and lots of sci fi and I've enjoyed it all. I just finished Divergent, which my wife recommended, and enjoyed it enough to purchase Insurgent. I tend to roll my eyes a lot at the hormone-laden teenager "romance" and angst at times, but it is a very good book and the author knows how to write a page turner. It is, however, not as good as The Hunger Games. Not by a long shot. Take out the needless way too much PDA stuff (which at times makes it feel like you're reading a Harlequin romance novel) and I'd boost it's rating by a half star alone. 4 stars as it is. Very good.

Also read an indie Kindle book called The Seventh Day (.99 cents is too good a deal) about a guy named Joad who is one of the Remaining, survivors of an alien visitation from 7 years prior which sucked away almost all signs of technology, and 99%+ of the inhabitants too. Those left behind are left in a world which is physically changed in many ways, and in others seemingly mystical. Certain of the Remaining have somehow developed "Gifts", basically superpowers, although somewhat limited in scope. One might be able to heal a person by touching them and concentrating...another can create bizarre weather. Joad has travelled for 7 years from China all the way to middle-America to reunite with his wife, whom he believes is still alive and waiting for him. He gathers a band of fellow travelers with disparate capabilities and motives and are pursued by four brothers who have bad intentions, powerful Gifts, and a pirate ship that sails over open land. Pretty good book, although the ending was a little anti-climactic in one or two places. It's open for a sequel, though I don't know if the author intends to write one. Four stars.

Any thoughts on Julie Klassen? This American Christian fiction writer loves Jane Austen and writes Regency-era novels. I've read one of her books (The Dancing Master) and have started two others: Apothecary's Daughter and Tutor's Daughter. My church library runs an adult reading program each winter.

http://julieklassen.com/

Any thoughts on Julie Klassen? This American Christian fiction writer loves Jane Austen and writes Regency-era novels. I've read one of her books (The Dancing Master) and have started two others: Apothecary's Daughter and Tutor's Daughter. My church library runs an adult reading program each winter.

http://julieklassen.com/

I have read four of the five books by her that my library has. I thought they were pretty good. I still need to read The Dancing Master sometime. I think I liked The Maid of Fairbourne Hall the best of the ones I read, but it's been a while since I read them.

I am currently reading Me, Myself, & Bob by Phil Vischer. Well, actually I started it, I am only on the second chapter.

SnowAngel

@SnowAngel: I plan to read everything Mrs. Klassen has written, so I will read the Maid novel sometime this month.

I read The Dancing Master weeks ago. I liked it alright, but I much prefer The Apothecary’s Daughter, which I finished today. The story seems real in time and place (1810s England), the characters warm and empathetic. If you haven’t read this novel, I highly recommend it! [The book had six pressed four-leaf clovers, starting with chapter 13. Someone is superstitious! ]

I started reading The Tutor’s Daughter but skipped to the end because I didn’t like the story or characters. The book, set in Cornwall, is too Gothic for me. I also hated Emma Smallwood’s bad judgment of the Weston brothers. In Pride and Prejudice, we learn the true nature of Darcy and Wickham when the sisters do. That’s not true with Tutor. The result is angst.

I'm reading Brave New World by Aldous Huxley.

Reepicheep, I was interested in reading that. I'd be interested to hear your thoughts on it! It's a dystopian-like story, right?

I finished Milkweed by Jerry Spinelli yesterday. The sadness factor is about equal to The Book Thief. The writing is so poignant and beautiful. It's about an orphan boy who lives in the Warsaw ghetto and smuggles food from the other side of the wall. It was so realistically written, and there were these unpredictable moments when the prose turned into poetry. I'm definitely reading it again.

I would like to reread The Book Thief, this time to savor it for writing style. My sister and I have around 40-something books checked out from the library, and so I really need to work on trimming that down. Among them are FotR (this year, I will finish it...)

I finished a book called Integrity by Dr. Henry Cloud. It's one of the best books I've read; I'd recommend it in a heartbeat.

Reepicheep, I was interested in reading that. I'd be interested to hear your thoughts on it! It's a dystopian-like story, right?

It is indeed. It portrays a future where sex and procreation are firmly separated in the public consciousness. Babies are produced and cloned en masse in laboratories and subjected to various conditioning processes (e.g. giving the working class babies a dislike of books so they won't read and flowers so they won't desire to leave the city). The result is a society with rigid classes of citizens who don't question their place in society (with one notable exception ). It has a lot to do with society suppressing individuality, excessive hedonism, and the dangers of the worship of science.

I'm about halfway and I'm really enjoying it, but I'm a sucker for dystopian books.

@Reepicheep: I normally avoid dystopian books, except when they're assigned to me, as with Animal Farm. I didn't get very far in Fahrenheit 451 b/c of the swearing. But I liked the film with Julie Christie. Still, Brave New World sounds interesting. I may 'brave' it after all.

@Aslan: I haven't read The Book Thief, but I'm waiting very impatiently for the DVD to hit my local library, ever since I saw the trailer last November. I may read the novel this month. Who knows.

@Snow Angel: I read the first 100 pages of Klassen’s Maid of Fairbourne Hall last night. Then I skipped to the last 10 chapters. It galls me that this novel is just like Tutor’s Daughter. In both, a woman rejects a good man for his bad brother; a few years later, she’s forced to live in their home. The contrived plots are unrealistic. I also hate that both heroines are bad judges of character. It gets old. Apothecary’s Daughter was so different. I felt like I lived in that village, with those people. The last time I felt such oneness with a fictional person and place was Bodie and Brock Thoene’s Gathering Storm, which I read last year. Catherine in Wuthering Heights said, “I am Heathcliff.” Well, I am Loralei Kepler (Thoene) and Lilly Haswell (Klassen).

@Snow Angel: I read the first 100 pages of Klassen’s Maid of Fairbourne Hall last night. Then I skipped to the last 10 chapters. It galls me that this novel is just like Tutor’s Daughter. In both, a woman rejects a good man for his bad brother; a few years later, she’s forced to live in their home. The contrived plots are unrealistic. I also hate that both heroines are bad judges of character. It gets old. Apothecary’s Daughter was so different. I felt like I lived in that village, with those people. The last time I felt such oneness with a fictional person and place was Bodie and Brock Thoene’s Gathering Storm, which I read last year. Catherine in Wuthering Heights said, “I am Heathcliff.” Well, I am Loralei Kepler (Thoene) and Lilly Haswell (Klassen).

I read The Maid of Fairbourne Hall before I read The Tutor's Daughter and because I ran out of time I only read the first and the last part of The Tutor's Daughter.

My library doesn't have The Apothecary's Daughter, so I haven't read it yet. Although I would really like to read it.

I finished Me, Myself, and Bob on Saturday. I love VeggieTales, so it was really cool reading about how Phil Vischer started Big Idea and VeggieTales.

Next on my non-fiction reading list is to finish Mere Christianity and then start the Screwtape Letters.

Late last summer my Mom purchased a set of TinTin books for all of the kids, but with the hope it would encourage the younger boys to learn to read. And I think it is working. My youngest brother is not yet old enough for school/reading, but he loves looking at the books, especially TinTin in America. He has been "reading" it a lot lately.

SnowAngel

I am reading some books my husband picked up at a Barnado's sale, thinking I might like to read them. Two of them are Salman Rushdie's Fury and Maeve Binchy's Circle of Friends. I don't like Salman Rushdie's book. His protagonist is Professor Malik Solanka, a rather selfish, self-centred, angry sort of man, incapable of a sustained human relationship, even with the son he does admit to loving. All the same, it is still a book that is hardly worth the effort the Iranian Ayatollah invested in putting a death sentence on Salman Rushdie for daring to write any book that has page long paragraphs, and rambles much more than I can follow.

Circle of friends is a different matter. The two girls who began the story as friends, one a rejected orphan (Eve) and the other, Bennie, an only child, who has never been considered any sort of beauty, go on to university at Dublin (Ireland) where they meet others, including romantic interests. Their stunningly beautiful "friend", Nan, uses both girls to try to make a well-connected marriage, firstly to Eve's landed cousin, then to Jack, Bennie's impossibly handsome boyfriend.

I understand from Wikipedia that this book was made into a film in the 1990's. But it is one film that I am glad I never saw. Maeve Binchy's book has some memorable characters, in particular, Sister Francis, who raises Eve whilst teaching in the convent school, and the mother of a boy who is killed on their first day at university. But Sister Francis' role is left out of the film altogether, it seems, and though Bennie forgives Jack, for dumping her for Nan, I think it would be rather weak if the film has her marrying Jack, after all.

@SnowAngel: Thanks for the reply. I almost did the same thing with Tutor's Daughter, skimming the beginning and end parts, but I'm glad I finally read the whole thing. Causation and character are important to me.

@Wagga: I saw "Circle of Friends" in the late 90s, but I've never read the book. The film wasn't too bad except for the making out scenes. My sister renamed it "The Naughty Cottage." The title stuck.

@Wagga: I saw "Circle of Friends" in the late 90s, but I've never read the book. The film wasn't too bad except for the making out scenes. My sister renamed it "The Naughty Cottage." The title stuck.

Hmm. I did get the impression that the film had been made a good deal more raunchy than the book by whoever made the screenplay. Set in 1950's and 1960's Ireland, in a village outside of Dublin, Maeve Binchy's Circle of Friends shows how conservative Irish society was at the time, much like Australian mores at that time.

"Making out", what used to be called "petting", was part of courting then, but as the film should have clearly demonstrated, it often used to be a contest, even a battle, between over-sexed and under-controlled boys and men, and their emotionally vulnerable girlfriends, only too aware of the possibly dire consequences of "giving in" to them. And university students of the time, though they included a fair amount of girls wanting to get that all-important "Mrs" degree, also included other girls who were only too aware of the vocational opportunities a good university education would open for them, and only too grateful for whoever was paying for it.

I hope the film also made clear that what was "naughty" about the cottage was not only what it was being used for but also the mere fact that it was being used at all, and I stress, without the owner's permission.

@wagga: The 'making out' scenes in the film were definitely PG-13, way beyond 'petting.' And on the cottage, yes to usage and permission. The film still had many risque scenes, especially with Nan and her lover.

@snow angel: I finished Klassen's The Girl in the Gatehouse this afternoon. I liked it almost as much as Apothecary's Daughter, mostly because it's set in a village and there's lots of intermingling among the characters, regardless of age, gender, and class. It felt homey. I like a sense of community in fiction.