So basically I was unschooled, and the amount of books I’ve read in my life is embarrassingly low. It was never emforced like in a school, and with my family’s religious hangups, I never tried getting into new things because I never knew what would be deemed “offensive”.
But I’m always interested when I hear people talk about both storycraft and also literary criticism, so I want to take an earnest stab at getting into books.
No real criteria, I don’t know what I like so I can’t tell you what I’m looking for, other than it needs to be in English or have an English translation. Just wanna know what y’all think would make good or important reading.
ETA holy shit thanks for all the suggestions! Definitely gonna make a list
im a piers anthoy fan and his incarnation of immortality series is his known magnus opa but the geodesy serries is the real one. foundation was isaac asimovs but he ends up sorta combining a bunch of his work into all one mega world. his ip is really undervalued. nine princes of amber for zelazny. The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant, the Unbeliever for donaldson. river of the dancing gods is neat. oh there are many really
How about some pre-transhuman solarpunk? I recommend my favorite book, Walkaway by Cory Doctorow. It’s about the birth pangs of a post scarcity society. Absolutely brilliant.
I’d happily recommend anything by Brandon Sanderson, I generally find everything he writes to be an easy read.
Also, get an account at your local library, it’s much easier/cheaper to fly through books that way. Tip: if your library sucks, many libraries will accept you as local if you work in the town. (I belong to two library systems this way)
I also come from a religious family, which is why I say: For a fun read, please read Lamb, the Gospel According to Biff by Christopher Moore. Honestly, everything by Kurt Vonnegut, but if I have to pick, Harrison Bergeron is one of the best short stories I have ever read, and I carry Cat’s Cradle in my heart.
Someone else suggested Catch-22, and I consider it a must read.
The Sun Also Rises is my favorite cock-and-bull story, but also, incredible for learning how to read critically. What I mean is, Hemingway is a 2 for 1 deal. There’s the story that’s written out, but when you read it again, you see everything he didn’t say is a whole different story. Hemingway was a very deliberate writer, every word chosen for a reason, so when reading his work, it enhances the experience to ask yourself why he would choose to write that way.
But if you want some real good recommendations, I suggest finding a banned books list.
Lamb was great! Really does a fantastic job of highlighting the hypocrisy inherent in modern religious constructs.
The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy
The best five-book trilogy you’ll ever read, even though there are six of them.
I hope you’re referring to the unfinished compilation Salmon of Doubt as the sixth, and not that weak sub-fanfic tripe by Eoin Colfer.
Won’t be taking very much of your time:
Kafka’s The Trial, Shelley’s Frankenstein, Machiavelli’s Prince, Rulfo’s Pedro Paramo
Just to avoid naming the very obvious ones.
Solid choices.
a few books that I found enjoyable recently
- Doors of Sleep
- The City and the Stars
- The Windup Girl
- Consider Phlebas
- A Scanner Darkly
- The Lifecycle of Software Objects
- The Mountain in the Sea
+1 for the whole Culture series of books. My personal favourite is Look to Windward but they’re all good.
Yeah, it’s a good series overall.
Ursula Le Guin’s the dispossessed is pretty impactfull. Very confronting anarchist utopia that is not a Paradise.
The lions of al rassan by guy gavriel Kay (worked on the silmarillion). A deeply melencholic fictional reflection on the reconquista of the Iberian peninsula.
The liveship traders by Robin Hobb has the best realised characters in fiction I’ve ever seen. Jaw dropping craft.
And finally, an entire shelf of book: The malazan book of the fallen. you will laugh, you will cry, and in the end you will love compassion.
I’ve heard that about The Dispossessed. I tried to listen to it on audiobook and the narration was terrible, so I just couldn’t get far into it. I need to pick up a physical or digital copy.
Oh, and Malazan is great. That one took me two tries to really get into as well, mostly because I initially had trouble keeping track of so many characters.
Yeah you can’t go wrong with Ursula Le Guin IMO. I loved The Left Hand of Darkness too.
Also 'cause I love sharing it, her 2014 book award speech is worth a read as well:
We live in capitalism, its power seems inescapable — but then, so did the divine right of kings. Any human power can be resisted and changed by human beings. Resistance and change often begin in art. Very often in our art, the art of words.
All of HP Lovecraft’s stories.
Soooooo many pretentious replies in this thread, they’re always the same.
Fuck that boring crap, start with good old light-hearted fiction.
Try -
The One Hundred Year Old Man Who Climbed Out Of A Window And Disappeared
The Breach by Travis Lee
The Dublin Trilogy by Caimh McDonnell (all 5 of them, dear god they’re hilarious)
The Girl With All The Gifts
Invasion by DC Alden
A Man Called Ove by Fredrik Backman (Anxious People is amazing too)
Wayward Pines by Blake Crouch (Recursion too)
The Idiots’ Club by Tony Moyle
And of course, The Internet Is A Playground by David Thorne
Waaaaaay more entertaining than all the classics mentioned, a very small selection of contemporary authors are vastly superior to the writers of yesteryear
Books are not meant to entertain. If you “realize” when you are over 30 that books are only for entertainment, then you are simply put, a lazy person.
Classics never outdate. They will forever remain as the must-reads for people who want to expand their knowledge and perception of the world because they come from a time where information was not as easily exchangeable as it was today. The only way to share ideas effectively and permanently was writing books.
You have no right to downlook on classics. Reading a classic book that has proven it’s value long ago will forever be more beneficial to a person than an author’s silly book that is written with the sole purpose of entertainment.
Reading 1984 WILL make a person clever.
Of course, you can always say some stuff like “damn who hurt you” and leave the discussion if you wish. Don’t make ignorant comments if you don’t know what you are speaking about.
Ha ha didn’t realise what instance I was on and forgot it was all 15yo edgy wankers
As you were mate
Of course, you can always say some stuff like “damn who hurt you” and leave the discussion if you wish.
Thanks for obeying! Much appreciated.
Enjoying a classic book is not pretentious. Conversely, gatekeeping what people think is a must-read is pretty pretentious.
Reading books which make you think is also not pretentious, and I get the idea that you sure think it is. There’s nothing wrong with light reading for fun, but some people enjoy more variety than that.
The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentlemen
Most things by Henry James
James Joyce has a good catalogue, I recommend treating a book like the Odyssey as a college course and reading prerequisite reading such as A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man and the original Odyssey (and it’s precursor the Iliad).
This should be a good years worth on its own!
Discword series is really good. - very witty comedy with subtle commentary about real world
I wouldn’t say it’s must read but I can’t reccomend it highly enough: “Ascendance of a Bookworm” - an slow adventure about a girl struggling with an unknown disease in another world, and all she wants is to read books.
you can also hang out in !chat@literature.cafe and tell about your experience.
I’m not sure how subtle discworld really is 🤣
Lots of great suggestions involving story craft and the like, so I’ll target the “religious hangups” bit with a couple non-fiction books:
-
Sentience by Nicholas Humphrey (great to get a perspective on consciousness and sentience that isn’t marred with religious doctrine)
-
Determined by Robert Sapolsky (a primatologist with a knack for getting you comfortable with the notion that we don’t have as free a will as religion tells us)
And just to include a bit of fiction:
-
Children of Time by Adrian Tchaikovsky (about life as we know it, or maybe as we don’t)
-
Fourth Wing by Rebecca Yarros (deals with overwritten cultures. Also dragons.)
-
Especially if you’re new to reading, the books worth reading are the ones you enjoy reading.
Like anything else reading is a skill and you get better at it the more you do it. There’s a reason we don’t start kindergarteners on Tolstoy and Shakespeare.
There are great suggestions in this thread so I’m not going to suggest any more. But I’d recommend to start every new book with an open mind, but if you’re not “feeling it” by page 10 or 20 it’s 100% okay to put it down and try a different one.
You can always come back to it later. Or not. There are more “must read” books than can ever be read in a lifetime. Find the ones you enjoy and which make an impact on you.
It’s YA but I suggest Hatchet because it’s the book I remember actually making an impression on me.
That is an excellent suggestion. I would also like to add Jack London’s To Build A Fire for a similar impact.
