Reddit reviews The Art of Fielding: A Novel

Recently finished: A visit from the Goon Squad by Jennifer Egan -- read it all in about two sittings, this book is amazing!

On now: The Art of Fielding by Chad Harbach -- really enjoying it thus far, and it is not what I expected.

Next up: Against the Day by Thomas Pynchon -- Pynchon is my favourite author and I've been saving this one for a while because of how long it is.

Two of my favorite gay-interest novels are Blind Fall by Christopher Rice and The Art of Fielding by Chad Harbach.

Christopher Rice writes a ton of other gay-interest books, so check those out as well. Blind Fall is just my personal favorite.

If I think of any others, I'll let you know.

The Art of Fielding -- http://www.amazon.com/The-Art-Fielding-A-Novel/dp/0316126675

Not sure I can meet your exact criteria, but here are a few "real" books I recommend.

"The Art of Fielding" by Chad Harbach.

"We, the Drowned" by Carsten Jensen.

"The Imperfectionists" by Tom Rachman.

Of those, "The Art of Fielding" is probably closest to what you're looking for. It's a baseball novel, but it's really about college age kids (like you) and their ambitions, uncertainty, relationships and whatnot. "We, the Drowned" is a historical epic focusing on a Danish harbor town. "The Imperfectionists" is a collection of related short stories about a fictional English language newspaper in Italy. The last one may be a bit depressing. I've never read an author better at writing unhappy, miserable people than Rachman.

If you read a lot of non-fantasy, allow me plagiarize a comment I wrote a couple months back and make a recommendation:

> I'm going to take your "It doesn't have to be fantasy" statement and go very far abroad.

> I wholeheartedly endorse Chad Harbach's The Art of Fielding. It was my absolute favorite novel published last year, and the first piece of fiction I read after finishing A Dance With Dragons.

> It's nominally about a gifted baseball player and the people surrounding him at a small college in Wisconsin, but it's really about friend love and love love and mental illness and joy and heartbreak and uncertainty and discovery and Moby Dick and growing older and growing even older still. There are some stylistic similarities with ASOIAF, namely that the book utilizes different POV characters, and that there's a lot of time and thought given to the giant mish-mash of relationships between the characters. It starts pretty simply, and just gets deeper and deeper as the book goes on.

> I don't know what you do and don't like, but allow me to just end with this: you don't have to like baseball to love this book. Much in the same way that tons of football agnostics adore Friday Night Lights, Harbach uses baseball as a canvas for his characters' hopes and dreams and aspirations and anxieties. Please please please, give it a shot.