I forgot to mention one more thing. Congratulations to your sister! It is a wonderful achievement.

LOL I hated Like Water for Chocolate too! You know, I first tried reading Beloved when I was 14, but it made me so nauseous and unsettled I quit and didn’t pick it back up until I was 20! (I know that because I remember we were getting ready to move, and I went to B&N to enjoy a comfy chair for awhile since our stuff was packed, and it was on a display table and I just picked it up to flip through but ended up reading half the book & buying it so I could take it with me and read the rest.) Obviously, I’m not saying that you have to try it again, but I understand your reaction. If you do want to give Morrison another go, I just read Tar Baby which I can really see you liking! No magical realism, lots of gender politics, and her writing power at full throttle.

And my first attempt at Angela Carter, The Bloody Chamber, didn’t go so well; I didn’t like most of the stories. Which makes me feel like a blogger outcast! lol But I do want to try again and have Nights at the Circus waiting for me.

I just thought of a book that’s a bit magical realist-y that you might like: New Moon’s Arms by Nalo Hopkinson. It does involve a mermaid (and the best backstory for mermaids EVER) but the narrator is this crotchety middle aged woman who is definitely like “Why does this boy seem like a mermaid? What the hell?” and she has to deal with hospitals, and social workers, and the kind of stuff people in real life have to deal with when they find a random little boy on the beach.

The funny thing is, even though I lurve magical realism, I can totally see why it drives so many readers batty. 😉 So I’ll stop pressuring you now, hehe.

Ummm, well, not all that many, I guess. I read One Hundred Years of Solitude and as I say hated it; I read Like Water for Chocolate and double-hated it; I (am so sorry because I know you love it!) hated Beloved with a passion and furthermore it made me sick to my stomach. I liked the one book I read of Angela Carter’s, but I liked it best when it was being least magical realismy. :/

Hehe, ok well at least you love Rushdie then! What other magical realist authors have you tried? (I’m just curious.)

Also, I just went back and read the first paragraph of your post, where it clearly says you love Rushdie. I don’t know how I missed that in my google reader: I think my brain was all “Shalimar the Clown! Squee!” and could not process anything else until the second paragraph. I just picked up The Ground Beneath Her Feet from the library; after that I’ll only have Grimus, Fury, and the new YA one of his fiction left and Imaginary Homelands from his nonfic. I try so hard to draw out the backlists of my favourite authors, but at the same time I’m impatient to read everything because they’re favourites! I try to follow a one or two book a year policy for most authors (except with DWJ she wrote so many I can indulge :D), but then I feel like a fraud calling them a favourite. Plus, once I finish an author’s backlist, I just start rereading, so I really shouldn’t worry about it so much! (I feel a blog post coming on…)

So true Jenny! Even though I lurve his books, I think I’d want to smack him over the head if I met him in person.

Eva!! I knew you liked magical realism, but I just don’t! I just don’t! I like for the characters to notice and be bothered when weird shit is going on. I loathed One Hundred Years of Solitude, alas, alas, alas. And I love Rushdie but not for his magical realism.

Hahahaha, I can understand. I have to be in a particular mood before I can read Rushdie. He’s not an everyday sort of read — those long-ass sentences can be wearing.

Yes! You have hit the nail exactly on the head. The characters are no good, and the women in particular are no good. That is why I liked The Ground Beneath Her Feet (most of the way through, until Vina died, that’s not a spoiler, you find that out at the very beginning), because the people were people. The three main people were the same all the way through, and I liked them.