The Sheltering Sky
'The Sheltering Sky is a book about people on the edge of an alien space; somewhere where, curiously, they are never alone' Michael Hoffman. Port and Kit Moresbury, a sophisticated American couple, are finding it more than a little difficult to live with each other. Endeavouring to escape this predicament, they set off for North Africa intending to travel through Algeria - uncertain of exactly where they are heading, but determined to leave the modern world behind. The results of this casually taken decision are both tragic and compelling.
Stats for nerds
3recommend
4mentions
4people
2012–2024years
75% recommend25% neutral
Mentions per year
What Hacker News says
- The Sheltering Sky by Paul Bowles. Existentialist novel—like Camus' The Stranger but better.
- > One thing that struck me is how much he reads. He had a list of suggested books to read in the back page, and there were probably hundreds
Here's the list, from the ebook I have at least:
- Abrahams, Peter: A Perfect Crime - Abrahams, Peter: Lights Out - Abrahams, Peter: Pressure Drop - Abrahams, Peter: Revolution #9 - Agee, James: A Death in the Family - Bakis, Kirsten: Lives of the Monster Dogs - Barker, Pat: Regeneration - Barker, Pat: The Eye in the Door - Barker, Pat: The Ghost Road - Bausch, Richard: In the Night Season - Blauner, Peter: The Intruder - Bowles, Paul: The Sheltering Sky - Boyle, T. Coraghessan: The Tortilla Curtain - Bryson, Bill: A Walk in the Woods - Buckley, Christopher: Thank You for Smoking - Carver, Raymond: Where I’m Calling From - Chabon, Michael: Werewolves in Their Youth - Chorlton, Windsor: Latitude Zero - Connelly, Michael: The Poet - Conrad, Joseph: Heart of Darkness - Constantine, K. C.: Family Values - DeLillo, Don: Underworld - DeMille, Nelson: Cathedral - DeMille, Nelson: The Gold Coast - Dickens, Charles: Oliver Twist - Dobyns, Stephen: Common Carnage - Dobyns, Stephen: The Church of Dead Girls - Doyle, Roddy: The Woman Who Walked into Doors - Elkin, Stanley: The Dick Gibson Show - Faulkner, William: As I Lay Dying - Garland, Alex: The Beach - George, Elizabeth: Deception on His Mind - Gerritsen, Tess: Gravity - Golding, William: Lord of the Flies - Gray, Muriel: Furnace - Greene, Graham: A Gun for Sale (aka This Gun for Hire) - Greene, Graham: Our Man in Havana - Halberstam, David: The Fifties - Hamill, Pete: Why Sinatra Matters - Harris, Thomas: Hannibal - Haruf, Kent: Plainsong - Hoeg, Peter: Smilla’s Sense of Snow - Hunter, Stephen: Dirty White Boys - Ignatius, David: A Firing Offense - Irving, John: A Widow for One Year - Joyce, Graham: The Tooth Fairy - Judd, Alan: The Devil’s Own Work - Kahn, Roger: Good Enough to Dream - Karr, Mary: The Liars’ Club - Ketchum, Jack: Right to Life - King, Tabitha: Survivor - King, Tabitha: The Sky in the Water (unpublished) - Kingsolver, Barbara: The Poisonwood Bible - Krakauer, Jon: Into Thin Air - Lee, Harper: To Kill a Mockingbird - Lefkowitz, Bernard: Our Guys - Little, Bentley: The Ignored - Maclean, Norman: A River Runs Through It and Other Stories - Maugham, W. Somerset: The Moon and Sixpence - McCarthy, Cormac: Cities of the Plain - McCarthy, Cormac: The Crossing - McCourt, Frank: Angela’s Ashes - McDermott, Alice: Charming Billy - McDevitt, Jack: Ancient Shores - McEwan, Ian: Enduring Love - McEwan, Ian: The Cement Garden - McMurtry, Larry: Dead Man’s Walk - McMurtry, Larry, and Diana Ossana: Zeke and Ned - Miller, Walter M.: A Canticle for Leibowitz - Oates, Joyce Carol: Zombie - O’Brien, Tim: In the Lake of the Woods - O’Nan, Stewart: The Speed Queen - Ondaatje, Michael: The English Patient - Patterson, Richard North: No Safe Place - Price, Richard: Freedomland - Proulx, Annie: Close Range: Wyoming Stories - Proulx, Annie: The Shipping News - Quindlen, Anna: One True Thing - Rendell, Ruth: A Sight for Sore Eyes - Robinson, Frank M.: Waiting - Rowling, J. K.: Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets - Rowling, J. K.: Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azakaban - Rowling, J. K.: Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone - Russo, Richard: Mohawk - Schwartz, John Burnham: Reservation Road - Seth, Vikram: A Suitable Boy - Shaw, Irwin: The Young Lions - Slotkin, Richard: The Crater - Smith, Dinitia: The Illusionist - Spencer, Scott: Men in Black - Stegner, Wallace: Joe Hill - Tartt, Donna: The Secret History - Tyler, Anne: A Patchwork Planet - Vonnegut, Kurt: Hocus Pocus - Waugh, Evelyn: Brideshead Revisited - Westlake, Donald E.: The Ax - The sweet immaturity of the OP is amusing, but of course, he's in good company in expressing these sentiments. Many people have written about it but I think Paul Bowles nailed it in The Sheltering Sky:
"Death is always on the way, but the fact that you don't know when it will arrive seems to take away from the finiteness of life. It's that terrible precision that we hate so much. But because we don't know, we get to think of life as an inexhaustible well. Yet everything happens a certain number of times, and a very small number, really. How many more times will you remember a certain afternoon of your childhood, some afternoon that's so deeply a part of your being that you can't even conceive of your life without it? Perhaps four or five times more. Perhaps not even that. How many more times will you watch the full moon rise? Perhaps twenty. And yet it all seems limitless."
- And Port had said: "Death is always on the way, but the fact that you don't know when it will arrive seems to take away from the finiteness of life. It's that terrible precision that we hate so much. But because we don't know, we get to think of life as an inexhaustible well. Yet everything happens only a certain number of times, and a very small number, really. How many more times will you remember a certain afternoon of your childhood, some afternoon that's so deeply a part of your being that you can't even conceive of your life without it? Perhaps four or five times more. Perhaps not even that. How many more times will you watch the full moon rise? Perhaps twenty. And yet it all seems limitless." - The Sheltering Sky, Paul Bowles (1949).
