I wonder if anyone could reccomend some books in first person POV? I have seen a lot of people around here saying that they love first person POV in books, but I always looked at it as amateur-ish. So maybe if I had some good books to read, I would change my outlook
It depends on the sort of thing you like, but a first person pov book I really enjoyed recently is China Meiville's The City and the City.
Try Eon and its sequel, Eona, by Alice Goodman. Although they are in the fantasy genre, they are both well-researched and draw their historical settings from medieval China.
Sue Grafton's alphabet mysteries (starting with "A is for Alibi") are a good example of first person writing done well.
Some great books written in first person: The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins (book 1, haven't read the rest) Into Thin Air by Jon Krakaeur (a non-fiction book that reads like a novel) Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov The Catcher in the Rye by J. D. Salinger Trainspotting by Irvine Welsch Those probably have more literary merit than my last recommendation, but I got a great feel for the first person after reading this book: Manson in his Own Words by Nuel Emmons It's famous cult leader Charles Manson's story as told by him. A quick read, and very intriguing. If you like to get in the minds of crazy people, I highly recommend it.
I'm sorry, I guess I should have stated. I'm open to anything and everything! If it comes in book-form, I'll read it.
A first person POV I've read and enjoyed is The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time bye Mark Haddon, it's quite interesting with how it's written since at some points the 'Show don't tell' rule is used literally, because the main character has Asperger syndrome and sometime it's hard for us to fully describe what something looks like without showing it as well.
Tony Parsons' Man and Boy is a truly wonderful book narrated from the point of view of Harry Silver. It is an extremely powerful story, not to mention humorous, which recounts Harry’s utmost attempts to raise his young son following his divorce. Man and Boy is the first of a trilogy; Man and Wife and Men from the Boys are well worth reading too. Nick Hornby has written a number of superb first person point of view books including Slam, High Fidelity, How to Be Good and Fever Pitch. Admittedly you may not enjoy Fever Pitch if you are not a football enthusiast since it is essentially an autobiography of Nick's love for Arsenal and experiences of visiting Highbury. However whilst the other three do have particular themes, I genuinely believe they can be enjoyed by anyone since they are all works of fiction. If you are fortunate enough to have already read these, consider Starter for Ten by David Nicholls or even The End of Everything by Megan Abbott. The former is quite different from Nicholls' more recent bestseller One Day for although his style of writing remains familiar, it is rather more comedic. The latter is an intriguing book which contains some dark themes and concepts, notably paedophilia. However being written from the point of view of a thirteen year old girl allows you to view this terrible phenomenon altogether differently than how it is generally perceived in society as rather than being condemned, it is romanticized by Lizzie.
First person was more or less made for Mika Waltari: The Roman, The Egyptian, The Etruscan, The Dark Angel (all historical fiction) Also there is the classic Satyricon
As far as popular fiction in 1st person POV, I really enjoyed Bernard Cornwell's Warlord Chronicles beginning with "The Winter King". Sub-Roman Britain from the perspective of a warrior. Another one I read recently, also in the vein of historical fiction, was Robert Silverberg's re-telling of the Gilgamesh epic, "Gilgamesh the King"
Steven Brust's Vlad Taltos novels. (Fast-paced fantasy Adventure) Sandra Kring's Carry Me Home (First Person, Present Tense--not common but well-written). It's set in Wisconsin in the 1940s. Roger Zelazny's Chronicles of Amber (A classic fantasy series by an Award-Winning Author)
Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain Any of the Dales series by Gervase Phinn Temperence Brennan series by Kathy Reichs Sherlock Holmes Across the Nightingale Floor by Lian Hearne
Lionel Shriver - We Need To Talk About Kevin. A very hard hitting, well written, prize winning novel. And it's not amateur-ish in the slightest I assure you.
Assassin's Apprentice by Robin Hobb is by far the most memorable/involving first person novel I've read. I read it again recently and it's still fantastic. Trainspotting as mentioned above is great, it's also just really fun to read because it's almost entirely written in phonetic scottish which at first is incredibly jarring but after a few pages you start to read it so fluently and it gives you such a good picture of the characters.
Some fantastic books (and series of books) that are told in first-person: -The Dresden Files, by Jim Butcher -- Fantasy. -The Lincoln Lawyer (Mickey Haller) novels (The Lincoln Lawyer, the Brass Verdict, the Reversal [it alternates chapters with 3rd person with Connelly's other main character Detective Bosch and 1st person with Mickey Haller], the Fifth Witness) by Michael Connelly -- Legal Thrillers/Crime/Detective. -the Catcher in the Rye, by J.D. Salinger -- Classic? -Secret Sanction by Brian Haig -- Legal/Army Thriller
