The most recommended stream of consciousness books

This one’s an intentionally short read, fast-forwarding through Leith’s life at breakneck speed, only stopping to check in every few years to see what game he was into then. The whole thing feels like a strange fever dream or stream of consciousness, particularly in the first few chapters when his childhood memories are probably as fuzzy as the TV he played Planetoid on. Still, it’s a fascinating look at how certain games stick with you over the years. I have my own collection of games that don’t necessarily reflect my favorites of all time but certainly define key moments in my life.

Lake Wobegon Days begins Keillor’s epic creation of a mythical and nostalgic world, entire unto itself.

The obvious analogy is the world of P. G. Wodehouse. But Wodehouse centres his world on the English country estate, and the froth and frolics of the toffs (albeit undercut by the wily wisdom of Jeeves), whereas Keillor takes us deep into the American heartland, where life is lived close to the soil, and the humour is tinged with the darkness of hard choices and wrong turns - and imbued with the absurdity of the human condition.

There’s fun and laughter aplenty because it’s the only possible response to the odds against us; but every character, howsoever absurd, is redeemed by a pervasive compassion. This was always a fine book – in the broad tradition that runs from Mark Twain to James Thurber – and it has now become a politically important one.

My favorite of Miller’s books, Tropic of Capricorn is based on Miller’s life in Brooklyn in the 1920s. It’s a dizzying stream-of-consciousness array that sweeps you along. Miller’s occasional poignant reminiscences about the magic of his boyhood and friendships contrast with the soul-sucking realities of adulthood and workplace bureaucracy that try to stamp out the embers of wonder and passion like a boot heel. Like most of his books, Capricorn celebrates the absurd miracle of consciousness. Miller’s influence on my education as a writer was indispensable. His books didn’t serve so much as a template as how to write, as how to be a writer, specifically how to observe and appreciate the vast madness of the world, reject conformity, and the embrace the anarchist spirit of artistic creation.

Eben Venter, though born in the heart of the South African ‘platteland’ (the South African equivalent of ‘fly-over country’), has spent much of his adult life in Australia, and the novel poignantly straddles the two locales: the constricting conservatism of the protagonist’s farm background, and the bewildering freedoms and opportunities of a more cosmopolitan setting. Here that conflict is heartbreakingly acted out and in a grim sense resolved in the main character’s losing battle against AIDS, and his death-bed reconciliation with his hitherto unbending father. Venter gives us a harrowing account of what it is like to die of a disease that wastes your body, blinds you, and makes you mad before killing you. It is all the more remarkable that the experience is registered from the inside, as it were, in a subjective stream of consciousness. The poignancy of the novel is intensified for me by knowing that the… show more.

I loved this odd and audacious book, which is written in a single stream-of-consciousness sentence over a thousand pages long and follows a mother's struggles with economic duress, raising a daughter, running a small baking business, and dealing with a major flood.

There is a parallel story involving a mother mountain lion searching for her lost cubs that periodically interrupts the main narrative. I loved the interjections of the narrator’s humorous views of the life around her, and I admired the subtle ways the author wove the two stories together so they enhanced each other. I enjoyed it so much I could barely stop reading it to go to bed!

Pete the Irish Wheaten was supposed to comfort the children as their father lay dying of cancer. But it was their mother, author/illustrator Maira Kalman, who became his inseparable companion, following the pup into a whole new world of humor, heart, and inspiration.

Through Pete, she discovered the dogs of Franz Kafka, Gertrude Stein, and E.B. White—all captured in these pages with her customary wit and radiance. You’re never too old for a picture book, and if you have a soft spot for dogs, this one deserves a permanent spot on your nightstand.

Beloved Dog shows that “the most tender, uncomplicated, most generous part of our being blossoms, without any effort, when it comes to the love of a dog.”

Virginia Wolf's Mrs. Dalloway is the perfect book for writers interested in the mastery of the stream of consciousness style. Executed by Wolf, the narrative provided a level of intimacy so difficult to achieve in narrative writing particularly when the character is so far removed either historically or culturallly.

This book is sort of an alternate take of On the Road. Cody Pomeroy here is Dean Moriarty, this book is his legend, and instead of unravelling it all in a chronological spiel it's the koans and page-long dreams of remembrance, some of the richest extended prose he ever made.

The writing is true to the soul and heart of the continent and it captures the electric twentieth century.

He wanted to roll up all his books together, standardize the names, and call it The Duluoz Legend. When I read him now I think of all those words as a part of it. There are so many pieces and places to dive into, but if you're ready for the deep stuff then get digging into this golden loam and be glad.

This is the book that enabled me to make the transition from legal writer to novelist. I purchased it at an aspiring writer’s conference without knowing it was well-respected in the publishing industry. I quickly liked the clearly stated, practical guidelines: show not tell, resist the urge to explain, what is point of view, dialogue that works, easy beats. And the book contains humorous illustrations by George Booth. Every writer needs a laugh in the midst of giving birth. 

I love this book not just because of its enduring importance - Woolf remains a towering feminist figure - but because of its vivid, imaginative writing.

Based on lectures given to female students at Cambridge, Woolf’s essay argues powerfully for the intellectual independence of women. Such independence, she reasons, must first be materially possible, hence the female writer’s need for that famous "room of one’s own."

To exemplify this, Woolf imagines a certain Judith Shakespeare, the playwright’s equally talented sister: would she not be incapable of achieving the same success as her brother owing to the patriarchal structures of society? In our post-Me Too world a century later, the question remains vital.