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
All of HP Lovecraft’s stories.
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.
Recently, I really enjoyed the scholomance trilogy by Naomi Novik. Had anti capitalist themes and cool world building. main character can be a little polaraizing though, she can be “b wordy” for lack of a better less misogynistic term coming to mind, I’ve seen some talk about how much they hated her character and others how much they loved her (I personally loved her)
as an aside, https://annas-archive.org/ is your friend for getting books for free!
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.
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.
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.
Godel, Escher, Bach
Infinite Jest
The Lord of the Rings
The Demon-Haunted World
The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy
Slaughterhouse-Five
Small Gods
Master and Commanderand everything else written by those authors.
The first two or three on that list might take several fits and starts to get through, YMMV, but they are WELL worth the effort, and you will come out the other side changed by the experience. The others are all pretty easily digestible, but no less transformative.
Godel, Escher, Bach
Christ I know so many people who love this book, but I can never make it past the first few pages. Something about the giddy tone that the author uses to tell you exactly how you should feel at any given time just feels hard to stomach. Just present the facts and their connections in a concise manner, and let me feel my own sense of awe. Don’t rob me of my own excitement by trying to imprint yours onto mine.
The rest of the books, solid recommendations.
Lots of great suggestions involving story craft and the like, so I’ll target the “religious hangups” bit with a couple non-fiction books:
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Sentience by Nicholas Humphrey (great to get a perspective on consciousness and sentience that isn’t marred with religious doctrine)
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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:
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Children of Time by Adrian Tchaikovsky (about life as we know it, or maybe as we don’t)
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Fourth Wing by Rebecca Yarros (deals with overwritten cultures. Also dragons.)
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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
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
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.
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.
lmao.
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 [email protected] and tell about your experience.
I’m not sure how subtle discworld really is 🤣
For nonfiction I would recommend books about media criticism and history. Manufacturing consent and The Jakarta Method, for example. These can help set you up for further reading. For media criticism, it will help you recognize when to keep reading about the people that journalists talk to and who they don’t, why they are writing this article rather than that one, and identify others that take a media critical approach, as they are good people to read. For history, I think it is good to read widely and critically. We are not taught particularly thorough or accurate history in school. Much is left out or glossed over with selective narratives. For example, I was taught that the US Civil War was about states’ rights, not slavery, because the text was from Texas and my teacher taught from the book. This was, of course, nonsense. A People’s History of The United States is a pretty good way to start out if you want to start with US history. That might be better than The Jakarta Method, actually.
For fiction, it really depends on what you enjoy! What kinds of stories or topics do you find most interesting?
Ben Franklin’s Autobio, Black Elk Speaks, Slaughterhouse Five
Fahrenheit 451 is certainly worth a read. I read it late in life, and could see immediately why it’s so often read in schools. Very well written, and a compelling story.
Another book that you may find quite personally compelling is The Chrysalids by John Wyndham (Archive.org has a free audio book version), due to the themes it covers.
+1 for The Chrysalids … read it on English class in high school and loved it
- Brave New World. After the Fact? The Truth About Fake News.
While other books have made a larger personal impact, Piranesi is a wonderful, easy to read mystery novel with a charming, innocent protagonist that I wish I could read for the first time all over again.
It’s only a couple hundred pages as well, as opposed to the thousand page monsters many people love.
Piranesi is a real gem, I ran across it last year and it was absolutely delightful.
I know! I love Piranesi as a character, the way he sees the world and justifies it is charming. Read it a few weeks ago and it hasn’t left my head, I hadn’t been so enthralled by a book since I was a kid.
It left a big impression on me as well, the world the way he sees it is so peaceful and tranquil, but then you start gradually realizing the horrific situation he’s actually in. And this contrast between the way the character perceives his circumstances and the reality of the situation is kind of haunting.
It’s really well-written, absolutely. Wish I could wipe it from my mind and read it again anew.
It is rare that you run a book that sucks you in the way Piranesi does.
Seconding this book. It’s one of the best books I’ve read this decade.
