UK Amazon Kindle Forum discussion

My challenge is to read and review a different magic realism book a week. I have a blog where the reviews are first posted http://www.magic-realism.net but after a few week's they are also posted to Goodreads.

For the purposes of the challenge I define magic realism as "a literary genre that incorporates fantastic or mythical elements into otherwise realistic fiction"

Thanks Adam, I have. Aren't listopias wonderful? I used them to come up with my to-read list. I currently have a list of 180 books which I own, which I am working my way through. But I'm always on the look-out for more.

So far I've read the following:

The Knife Thrower by Steven Millhauser
The Enchantress of Florence by Salman Rushdie
The Story Sisters by Alice Hoffman
Winter’s Tale by Mark Halpern
The Wood Wife by Terri Windling
Like Water For Chocolate by Laura Esquivel
The Silver Cloud Cafe by Alfredi Vea
Beloved by Toni Morrison
Chocolat by Joanne Harris
Minotaur Takes A Cigarette Break by Steven Sherrill
Girl With Glass Feet by Ali Shaw
Snow Child by Eowyn Ivey
Fludd - Hilary Mantel
Life of Pi by Yann Martel
The Tiger's Wife by Tea Obreht
Ladies of Grace Adieu by Susanna Clarke
Metamorphasis by Franz Kafka
The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Diaz
The Scholar of Moab by Steven L Peck
The Alchemist by Paul Coelho
Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
The Hummingbird’s Daughter by Luis Alberto Urrea
The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake by Aimee Bender
Sputnik Sweetheart by Haruki Murakami
Orlando by Virginia Woolf
Bless me Ultima by Rudolfi Anayo
The Man Who Walked Through Walls by Marcel Ayme
The Cure For Death By Lightning by Gail Anderson-Dargatz
The Threads of the Heart by Carole Martinez
Tracks by Louise Erdrich
Black Juice by Margo Lanagan
This Magnificent Desolation by Thomas O'Malley

And over the next three months I'll be reading:
Mistress of Spices by Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni
The Tragedy of Fidel Castro by Joao Cerqueira
Sexing the Cherry by Jeanette Winterson
Life After Life by Kate Atkinson
Anansi Boys by Neil Gaiman
The Hearing Trumpet by Leonora Carrington
The Tooth Fairy by Graham Joyce
Mistress of Spices by Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni
Ceremony by Leslie Marmon Silko
Spirits of the Ordinary by Kathleen Alcala
Little Infamies by Panos Karneszis
In the House upon the Dirt between the Lake & the Woods by Matt Bell

Sexing the Cherry
The Man Who Walked Through Walls
Beloved
One Hundred Years of Solitude
The Hummingbird's Daughter
Nights at the Circus by Angela Carter (which I left off the list)
But that's just my taste

Never heard of this genre. Surprisingly, I've read 3 of the books.

In some ways it's less of a genre as an approach to writing.

What about House of the Spirits by Isabella Allende? and also the crime series by Colin Cotterill based in Laos - very witty but also a deep magical realism element.

House of Spirits is on my to read list. Yes Colin Cotterill's books qualify, but I had already read them before I started the challenge. There is a list of all the magic realism books I have on http://magic-realism-books.blogspot.c...

Nights at the Circus is a favourite of mine, but I was underwhelmed by One Hundred Years of Solitude. I see you've got some Rushdie on your list already, but my ex girlfriend who wrote her dissertation on magical realism singled out Midnight's Children in this style.

I'm also a massive fan of Paul Magrs and his early Phoenix Court books, particularly Could It Be Magic? - but I've an idea they're tricky to get hold of these days...

Thanks for the suggestion, Andrew. I have added it to my list of books to look out for.

I read One Hundred Years in my formative years and it blew me away at the time. I was less impressed this time, but still it is a classic of the genre.

Hi Zoe - have you had some fun reading some magic realism this year?

Elle wrote: "Hi Zoe - have you had some fun reading some magic realism this year?"

I have enjoyed it more than I had expected. In total I read 60 books in the year, so exceeding my target of one a week. It was so fascinating that I am continuing it. What the challenge has shown me is that magic realism books can be in almost any genre - detective stories, historical fiction, women's fiction, adventure...

As a writer I learned so much. I did a post on what I learned here http://magic-realism-books.blogspot.c...

One things that's great about writing the reviews for the blog is that increasingly I am being approached by authors and publishers with books to review.

I must look into some of the books a I still don't quite have a handle on the genre.