Winesburgohio
03.30.23 | fuck, so many apologies! too many to list but at some juncture i will anyway. pls contribute should u wish |
Sharenge
03.30.23 | 2666 |
JohnnyoftheWell
03.30.23 | THERE ARE TOO MANY NOVELS i have just woken up how DARE you ask for 20 uhhhhfjjj
you shall have SIX you menace :]]]
Kafka on the Shore (Murakami)
Orlando (Woolf)
Gravity's Rainbow (Pynchon)
Mortal Engines (Reeve, best kids book)
Zeno's Conscience (Svevo)
Pale Fire (Nabokov) |
Winesburgohio
03.30.23 | i'll wring 14 more out of you so help me |
Trifolium
03.30.23 | Probably:
Les Misérables (Hugo)
The Lord Of The Rings (Tolkien)
The Count Of Monte-Christo (Dumas)
Het Lied Van Ooievaar En Dromedaris (Daanje, in Dutch, not translated yet)
War & Peace (Tolstoy)
Voor Alles Een Dame (Dorrestein, in Dutch, not translated yet)
Don Quixote (Cervantes)
Catch 22 (Heller)
North & South (Gaskell)
Nooit Meer Slapen (Hermans, in Dutch, translated as Beyond Sleep)
Frankenstein (Shelley)
The Tale Of Genji (Shikibu)
Jane Eyre (Brontë, C)
The Drawing Of The Three (King)
Schijnbewegingen (Zwigtman, in Dutch, not translated yet)
Butcher's Crossing (Williams)
1q84 (Murakami)
Narcissus and Goldmund (Hesse)
De Ontdekking Van De Hemel (Mulisch, in Dutch, translated as The Discovery Of Heaven)
Kristin Lavransdatter (Undset) |
Parallels
03.30.23 | Everyone's gonna have a different Murakami favorite, calling it now |
MiloRuggles
03.30.23 | holy dicks great list i am subscribing now and thinking about this and posting later
just finished The Recognitions recently—please give me your quick take if you can be assed. i loved it and regret nothing and will probably reread some day, but i thought the start and the end were far superior to the middle (admittedly my theology needs brushing up on) |
Parallels
03.30.23 | Norwegian wood (murakami)
Jurassic park (crichton)
Sons and lovers (lawrence)
Of mice and men (steinbeck)
The redbreast (nesbo)
2666 (bolaño)
Blindness (saramago)
Boy parts (clark)
Even cowgirls get the blues (robbins)
Lullaby (palahniuk)
Count of monte Cristo (dumas)
Misery (king)
Portnoy's complaint (roth)
Less than zero (ellis)
The outsiders (hinton)
Ethan frome (wharton)
Blood meridian (mccarthy)
To kill a mockingbird (lee)
The memory police (ogawa)
Of human bondage (maugham)
The way of all flesh (butler)
|
Trifolium
03.30.23 | Saramago and MISERY nice!!!!! Misery vs Drawing of the Three was a struggle for me, and was also thinking about adding The Double to my list. |
Zac124
03.30.23 | i can’t read |
Cimnele
03.30.23 | cool list!
but, god, I never read the classics or the big Murakami/whoever must-reads, i just read grotty environmentalist/social sci-fi, I love Philip K Dick and JG Ballard and Ursula K Leguin. also Neal Stephenson and William Gibson and John Shirley. and Iain M Banks. or like the obvious Pratchett and Adams. and a bunch of 2000ad or pseudo-indie/alt/underground comics. stunted gamer taste |
zakalwe
03.30.23 | Iain M Banks > |
Trifolium
03.30.23 | Ursula K Leguin!!! |
Parallels
03.30.23 | @zak Nobody tells me nothin.
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DxFbpMjW0AERefT.jpg |
Mort.
03.30.23 | according to my goodreads ratings, in no particular order
1. The children of men by PD James
2. Gormenghast by Mervyn Peake (the whole trilogy is a 5/5 but if i had to choose one novel its this one, the middle one)
3. Wilt by Tom Sharpe
4. Hawksmoor by Peter Ackroyd
5. 1984 by George Orwell
6. Catch-22 by Joseph Heller
7. The sirens of titan by Kurt Vonnegut
8. The bell by Iris Murdoch
9. The gods will have blood by Anatole France
10. We by Yevgeny Zamyatin
11. For whom the bell tolls by Ernest Hemingway
12. American Psycho by Bret Easton Ellis
13. The Dispossessed by Ursula K Le Guin
14. The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck
15. The Trial by Franz Kafka
16. The Wasp Factory by Iain Banks
17. Island by Aldous Huxley
18. The Remains of the Day by Kazuo Ishiguro
19. Crime and Punishment by Dostoyevsky
20. The Buried Giant by Kazuo Ishiguro
|
Mort.
03.30.23 | bit surprised i have We as a 5 because i dont remember too much about it.
would say Ishiguro or Vonnegut are my favourite authors |
zakalwe
03.30.23 | @Parallels.
Ha! I tell you what it’s a good choice he has there, that is an amazing book as well. |
Egarran
03.30.23 | Here are 20 random books OTTOMH that I like a lot:
Good Omens: The Nice and Accurate Prophecies of Agnes Nutter, Witch (Pratchett, Gaiman)
The Gardener's Year (Čapek)
The Man Who Was Thursday: A Nightmare (Chesterton)
The Illuminatus! Trilogy (Shea, Wilson)
Discovering Scarfolk (Littler)
Annihilation (VanderMeer)
Surface Detail (Banks) You know it Zak
The Mind Parasites (Wilson)
The Count Of Monte-Christo (Dumas)
2001: A Space Odyssey (Clarke)
Dune (Herbert)
Foucault's Pendulum (Eco)
Northern Lights (Pullman)
The Collected Short Stories of (Roald Dahl)
The Mysterious Stranger (Twain)
The Rabbi's Cat (Sfar)
The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (Adams)
Stranger in a Strange Land (Heinlein)
Snow Crash (Stevenson)
Hyperion (Simmons) |
Mort.
03.30.23 | i should read more banks huh |
Egarran
03.30.23 | I blame the patriarchy for only having men on my list. |
Cimnele
03.30.23 | god, yeah, Vonnegut and Butler, I love them too
Illuminatus Trilogy is totally copied into my head as well
and I forgot China Mieville and Vona McIntyre and Samuel R. Delany and George Turner
but I can't make a top 20 at all, impossible. maybe it'd go 1. Stand on Zanzibar by John Brunner? or maybe that's wrong too lol |
Trifolium
03.30.23 | The Count is here on three different lists already 🥳💕 |
Egarran
03.30.23 | Yeah Cimnele I see now you namedropped like half of my list.
stunted gamer taste ON WEED
what Delany novel do you recommend? |
Cimnele
03.30.23 | :D I was big into Dhalgren imo, just based on a single readthrough years ago |
zakalwe
03.30.23 | Loved Surface detail, love it all.
Excession
Use of Weapons
Look to Windward
Consider Phlebas
Hydrogen Sonata
Player of Games
Surface Detail
Matter
Inversions
Although not culture I think Feersum Endjinn may actually be number 1.
|
fogza
03.30.23 | I put the books that people will rightly scoff at at the end; I was a fantasy nerd teenager
The Lord of the Flies - William Golding
The Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck
The Sound and the Fury - William Faulkner
Catch 22 - Joseph Heller
The spy who came in from the cold - John le Carré
The Corrections - Jonathan Franzen
July's People - Nadine Gordimer
Ernest Hemingway - The Garden of Eden
The Edible Woman - Margaret Atwood
Hocus Pocus - Kurt Vonnegut
Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters and Seymour: An Introduction - J.D. Salinger
Web - John Wyndham
The Dark is Rising - Susan Cooper
Microserfs - Douglas Coupland
Miss Smilla's Feeling for Snow - Peter Høeg
Rule of the Bone - Russell Banks
IT - Stephen King
Kringe in 'n bos - Dalene Matthee
Dragons of Winter Night - Margaret Weiss and Tracy Hickman
The Illearth War - Stephen Donaldson
|
robertsona
03.30.23 | I’m a dummy I haven’t read a novel in so long... This is really like 19 year old me talking lol here’s 10 I like legit feel like I started stretching around #12. Kill me
Mrs. Dalloway (Woolf)
Clotel (Brown)
Passages (Quin)
Tristram Shandy (Sterne)
The Road (McCarthy)
Swann’s Way (Proust)
The Street (Petry)
Beloved (Morrison)
Moby-Dick (Melville)
Don Quixote (Cervantes)
|
Egarran
03.30.23 | >Web - John Wyndham
Ooh I love Wyndham but haven't read that. |
fogza
03.30.23 | Yeah I think it's not one of the most loved in his canon but I found it fucking terrifying because I'm scared of spiders |
Mort.
03.30.23 | wyndham is great. love day of the triffids and the chrysalids |
AlexKzillion
03.30.23 | hmm idk if i can reach 20 cause i read mostly non-fiction but
to kill a mockingbird (lee) [fuck you i love this book]
1984 (orwell) [less pointed fuck you]
a clockwork orange (burgess)
the sailor who fell from grace to the sea (mishima)
the stranger (camus)
jane eyre (bronte)
inferno (dante)
okay lmfao that is quite literally all the fiction in my goodreads |
DocSportello
03.30.23 | nice list! fuckin love bolaño
this is a knee-jerk attempt but
Austen - Emma
Baldwin - another country
Barth - the sot weed factor
bolaño - the savage detectives
Cervantes - don quixote
chandler - the big sleep
Dostoyevsky - notes from underground
Ellison - Invisible man
Fowles - the magus
Ishiguro - remains of the day
Joyce - ulysses
lee - to kill a mockingbird
McCarthy - child of god
Nabokov - pale fire
Flann o'brien - at swim-two-birds
Tim o'brien - in the lake of the woods
Pynchon - mason & Dixon
salinger - franny & Zooey
sterne - tristram shandy
Woolf - mrs dalloway |
Trifolium
03.30.23 | Day of the Triffids yeesssss!!
EMMA yessss! That one probably should have made it to my top 20 too actually. |
zakalwe
03.30.23 | Credit to Eg as well. Don’t know how it translates to Danish but Banks Sci-fi is hard to get your head around. |
Egarran
03.30.23 | Don't know if he's translated, I only read the ogs. But yeah I wouldn't envy any translator.
I love how you're such a dedicated Banks fan.
Also recommend Espedair Street because it's about music and drugs and those things are important to sputnikkers |
CugnoBrasso
03.30.23 | I'll probably list them tomorrow or in the week end |
porcupinetheater
03.30.23 | Couple standouts in the order that I think of them:
Woolf - Mrs. Dalloway
Nabokov - Pale Fire & Pnin
Morrison - The Bluest Eye
Heller - Catch-22 & Something Happened
Bolaño - By Night in Chile
Barnes - Nightwood
Ellison - The Invisible Man
Also shouts to many of the stories of Cheever and Munro, both have some of my favorite stuff in fiction but can’t really put a full collection on the proper list for the inherent unevenness (even if slight) in most short story collections |
Mort.
03.30.23 | lot of people have catch-22 on their lists |
Drbebop
03.30.23 | The TB12 Method - Tom Brady
The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown
The Secret - Rhonda Byrne
Knitting with Dog Hair - Kendall Crolius/Anne Montgomery
Ready Player Two - Ernest Cline
Garfield: Livin’ the Sweet Life - Jim Davis
In Full Color: Finding My Place in a Black and White World - Rachel Dolezal
American Pyscho - Brett Easton Ellis
The Bible - God
Christian Humber Reloaded - Christian Humber
Fifty Shades Darker - E.L James
Biggles Learns to Fly - W.E Johns
Finnegan’s Wake - James Joyce
If I Did It - O.J Simpson
War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy
The Art of the Deal - Donald Trump
Pokémon: Go Poplio! - Unknown
Kamasutra - Vātsyāyana
Everything I Know about Women I Learned from My Tractor! - Roger Welsch
Natural Bust Enlargement with Total Mind Power: How to Use the Other 90% of Your Mind to Increase the Size of Your Breasts - Donald Wilson M.D |
Mort.
03.30.23 | ^
absolutely stunning choices |
DocSportello
03.30.23 | lol'd at god |
MiloRuggles
03.30.23 | Yesyes I have tryhard whiteboi taste I know, and apologies for numerous author double (and triple) ups
Don Quixote - Cervantes
Infinite Jest - David Foster Wallace
Omensetter's Luck - William Gass
The Tunnel - William Gass
Catch-22 - Joseph Heller
Brave New World - Aldous Huxley
The Dispossessed - Ursula Le Guin
Blood Meridian - Cormac McCarthy
Suttree - Cormac McCarthy
Moby Dick - Herman Melville
From Hell - Alan Moore
Watchmen - Alan Moore
Against The Day - Thomas Pynchon
Gravity's Rainbow - Thomas Pynchon
Mason & Dixon - Thomas Pynchon
Sophie's Choice - William Styron
The Silmarillion - J.R.R. Tolkien
Trainspotting - Irvine Welsh
The Fifth Head of Cerberus - Gene Wolfe
Mrs. Dalloway - Virginia Woolf |
Sharenge
03.30.23 | would be interested to read the new McCarthy book(s) but not dropping the money it costs to purchase a brand new book today... plus I kind of look at the release of that book and the whole splitting it into two separate books even though they were released pretty much simultaneously as a scam/money-grab - can't understand much other reason for such a decision, especially considering neither part is particularly long to say the least
so instead, grabbed a couple from his back catalogue that I've yet to read from the emporium for like a couple dollars apiece |
Trifolium
03.30.23 | Yeah Catch 22 seems to be one of the most acclaimed books here. Rightfully so, it's practically alive.
And Bolaño comes up a lot too, hadn't heard of them before. |
Sunnyvale
03.30.23 | In no particular order-weird list and also includes various novellas, series, and short story collections, but oh well...
The Lord Of The Rings-Tolkien
The Magic Mountain-Mann
The Demons-Von Doderer
Middlemarch-Eliot
Foundation-Asimov
Life And Fate-Grossman
Harry Potter-Rowling
Something Wicked This Way Comes-Bradbury
The Master And Margarita-Bulgakov
Crime And Punishment-Dostoyevsky
To The Lighthouse-Woolf
The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress-Heinlein
The Woman In White-Collins
War And Peace-Tolstoy
The Napoleon Of Notting Hill-Chesterton
The Heart Of Midlothian-Scott
Nostromo-Conrad
The Chronicles Of Narnia-Lewis
For Whom The Bell Tolls-Hemingway
Sherlock Holmes-Doyle |
Ryus
03.30.23 | hmmmm dunno about 20 but (in no order)
satantango - laszlo krasznahorkai
the bluest eye - toni morrison [2]
crime and punishment - fyodor dostoevsky
midnight's children - salman rushdie
one hundred years of solitude - gabriel garcía márquez
omensetter's luck - william h gass [2] |
Ryus
03.30.23 | not novels but i assume youve read borges in spanish wines. my favorite author ever |
MiloRuggles
03.30.23 | Sharenge, they're definitely worth your time. I think splitting them was justified—if you read them as intended (with a wee break in between) Stella Maris is a really phenomenal expansion on The Passenger. Certainly no harm in working through his back catalogue either way though
Catch 22 is so damn funny/sad, perfect novel. 2666 stuck with me, but much like The Recognitions I'm gonna need to sit with it for a bit longer and revisit at some point I think |
DocSportello
03.30.23 | "would be interested to read the new McCarthy book(s) but not dropping the money it costs to purchase a brand new book today... plus I kind of look at the release of that book and the whole splitting it into two separate books even though they were released pretty much simultaneously as a scam/money-grab - can't understand much other reason for such a decision, especially considering neither part is particularly long to say the least"
having read both of these novels I can assure you it is not a scam and that there are legitimate narrative/stylistic risks McCarthy takes that work to validate/elevate the 'experience' of the brother-sister structure. incredible stuff, challenging stuff, tempts me to say hyperbolic things but if you like McCarthy already you'd be doing yourself a disservice to sit this one out it's got a fire in it |
Jasdevi087
03.30.23 | i've only just gotten back into reading over the last couple of years, so i can't give you a 20 that I would stand by in, like, even a few months time. but i can give you about 10 or so.
asylum piece - anna kavan
annihilation - jeff vandermeer
animal farm - george orwell
pounamu pounamu - witi ihimaera
sleep has his house - anna kavan
the love songs of w.e.b. dubois - honoree fanone jeffers
my dark vanessa - kate elizabeth russell
a grain of wheat - ngugi wa thiongo
the boats of the glenn carrig - william hope hodgson
when we cease to understand the world - benjamin labatut
rings of saturn - w.g. sebald
the bell jar - sylvia plath
moby dick - herman melville
that's 10 right? |
Jasdevi087
03.30.23 | ""would be interested to read the new McCarthy book(s) but not dropping the money it costs to purchase a brand new book today... "
the passenger is $50 nzd and Stella Maris is $40 nzd, books are fucked thesedays |
DocSportello
03.30.23 | I pirated them and then found em used but in great condition for p cheap in a used bookstore. Sucks but I don't blame McCarthy for the economy lol |
Ryus
03.30.23 | i needa get crackin with moby dick like yesterday. picked it up used for like 3 bucks a few months ago but ive been neglecting it in lieu of other books |
DocSportello
03.30.23 | Moby dick fucks, we were given 2 weeks to read it in a seminar at the end of a semester while we were writing our end-semester papers on novels that we'd already read (so not Moby dick) so did I read it? yes. did I skim swaths of it? also yes. I owe it a major reread once life slows down. some of the finest American prose imo |
Jasdevi087
03.30.23 | Moby Dick will turn you into willem dafoe's character in the lighthouse |
Egarran
03.30.23 | Woah pretty sure Drbebop won this list. |
Sharenge
03.30.23 | should reread Moby Dick some day I guess - read it as a kid in middle school and really was just forcing myself through the entire thing - guess it was just completely lost on me at that age 'cus it did absolutely nothing for me - now that many years have passed, maybe I would get something out of it now and be able to appreciate it if I went back
honestly could probably about say the same exact thing about the LOTR trilogy, but before I revisit those, need to get myself a copy of The Hobbit which is the one I actually remember thoroughly enjoying when I read it as a kid, much more so than the trilogy, but alas it was a library read so don't have my own copy of that one |
Egarran
03.30.23 | I was a Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Seas kid. I read that book all the time. |
Sharenge
03.30.23 | lol that probably would have been a better choice for me back in the day |
Winesburgohio
03.30.23 | i have seen enough of my honourable mentions pop up here to die happily. compiling soon! surprised / happy / vindicated to see omensetter's luck and moby dick pop up with such frequency. this won't mean anything to someone who's not intimately familiar with nz but i picked up my copy of moby dick in kaikoura. "lol". the prose of the thing! nothing like the smell of sperm in the morning! |
Winesburgohio
03.30.23 | How to Good-Bye Depression: If You Constrict Anus 100 Times Everyday. Malarkey? or Effective Way? |
MiloRuggles
03.30.23 | [i]Whalewatch, Kaikoura[/i]. Yes boy. Have you read The Tunnel wines? Tis fucking wild |
DadKungFu
03.30.23 | Winesburgohio, how you not have Winesburg, Ohio? |
ToSmokMuzyki
03.31.23 | 1. Captain Underpants by Dave Pickle
2. Dead House (Goosebumps #1) by J.K. Rowling
3. 101 HOT Positions by Your Mom
4. Animorphs by Sum Furry Bitch
5. Jane's Hairs ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°) by Charmander Brontosaurus
6. The Qur'an by God
7. The Bible also by God
8. The Book of Mormon by God?
9. The Kama Sutra by Vaginasatan ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)
10. The Pokédex by Professor oak
11. Mine Cunt by Adult Tittles
12. Atlas Ejaculated by Anal Rain
13. 2005 Jeep Grand Cherokee Automobile Manual by Jeep
14. Naruto #16 by Masashi Kishimoto
15. Ohio Parking Laws by Ohio
16. How to Get Rich by Donald Trump
17. The Script to Super Size Me by Morgan Spurlock
18. JohnnyoftheWell's Diary by Egarran
19. The Burger King Menu by Jose Cil
20. Pride & Prejudice by Jane Austen |
ToSmokMuzyki
03.31.23 | damn it someone beat me to it
mines better tho |
ToSmokMuzyki
03.31.23 | >Natural Bust Enlargement with Total Mind Power: How to Use the Other 90% of Your Mind to Increase the Size of Your Breasts - Donald Wilson M.D
jesus christ thats real
*adds to cart* |
Winesburgohio
03.31.23 | Winesburg, Ohio regrettably omitted due to arbitrary rules i imposed to make life easier on myself (no short stories or YA, for example). Otherwise that would be here, as would Borges' Ficciones, which is so so brilliant and endlessly satisfying. Others that nearly made the cut: Moby Dick, Suttree, Naked Lunch, Beat of the Pendulum, Buddha of Suburbia, The Emigrants, 11 / 22 / 63, 10:04 |
Winesburgohio
03.31.23 | @Milo I love the Recognitions - the middle section is tough but a re-read yields certain threads and kind of recurring jokes throughout. I feel like his prose is very singular, ornate and erudite but with a wry sense of humour and occasional moments of mischief and fun wordplay, but his characters always feel real despite the cynicism; and a quest for authenticity and belonging amidst infinite possibilities of fakeness and enticing sirens *does* take time. something spiritually beautiful about it, lovely end section |
Winesburgohio
03.31.23 | Nice to see that not only does everyone have their own Murakami's, but to a certain extent their own Steinbeck's as well. Love him! So humane! |
Trifolium
03.31.23 | Stranded in The Red and The Black, maybe he isn't for me. Or maybe should give him another go sometime.
Oh sorry, that was Stendhal, never mind! |
Sinternet
03.31.23 | ooh boy great idea, wish i read as much as i used to, but (mostly) unordered, one book per author
norwegian wood (murakami (h))
piercing (murakami (r))
the handmaid's tale (atwood)
never let me go (ishiguro)
the bell jar (plath)
the children of hurin (tolkien)
the outsider (camus)
when i do read im way more into graphic novels than i am regular books, or memoirs/music-related stuff - crying in h-mart is breaking my heart and making me hungry at the moment |
dedex
03.31.23 | some include:
Kafka on the Shore (Murakami)
Crime and Punishment (Dostoievski)
La gloire de mon pere (Pagnol)
Second Foundation (Asimov)
The Handmaid's Tale (Atwood)
La Horde du Contrevent (Damasio)
The Plague (Camus) |
Get Low
03.31.23 | Things Fall Apart - Chinua Achebe
Don Quixote - Miguel de Cervantes
The Brothers Karamazov - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Looking For Alaska - John Green
The Sun Also Rises - Ernest Hemingway
Ulysses - James Joyce
Taipei - Tao Lin
Life of Pi - Yann Martel
Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov
Pnin - Vladimir Nabokov
This is a distinct and definite top 10 for me in alphabetical order by last name. I couldn't do 20 bacause there are too many other novels that I love fairly equally. |
Get Low
03.31.23 | @Winesburg I'm interested to know, if you hadn't imposed a no YA rule on yourself, what YA novels if any you would have included. |
Winesburgohio
03.31.23 | Looking for Alaska, Angus Thongs and Full-Frontal Snogging, Tomorrow When the War Began, Series of Unfortunate Events would have been up for consideration |
DadKungFu
03.31.23 | Kafka On The Shore
Kafka Sweeping Sand Off His Car Seat
|
Mort.
03.31.23 | murakami seems very popular
|
WeepingBanana
03.31.23 | Man, I really wanted to like Drive Your Plow… but I just couldn’t. It has all the elements of shit that I love, but something about it just was not connecting with me |
Trifolium
03.31.23 | Tomorrow When The War Began omg yeeeeeeeeeeeesssssssssssssssssss!!!!!!!!!!!! |
MoM
03.31.23 | Haven’t done much reading lately, been mostly into short stories when i do read
-2666
-Infinite Jest
-House of Leaves
-Comedy in a Minor Key (Hans Keilson)
-Johnny Got His Gun (Trumbo)
-Invisible Cities (Calvino)
-Contact (Sagan)
-Illuminatus! Trilogy (love seeing it mentioned here so much)
-Trainspotting
-Open Water (Caleb Azumah Nelson)
-The Devil Wears Prada (my wife and i wanted to read something light and fun together and love the movie, so this turned out to be a very good time that i think of fondly)
-Harry Potter 1-7 (nostalgia aside, i still have a great time reading these)
Short stories
-Feeling Very Strange
-The Best Bizarro Fiction of the Decade
-The Weird
-The New Weird
-The Uncanny Reader
-The New Wave Fabulist
-The New Uncanny
-Labyrinths (Borges)
-The Complete Stories (Kafka) |
Get Low
03.31.23 | Looking for Alaska the goat |
Sinternet
03.31.23 | "murakami seems very popular"
he's almsot ubiquitous these days, if i were to hazard a guess as to why, a lot of his work always straddles the lines between realism and light science fiction elements in intense first-person character studies that feel very raw and relatable, add in the element for western readers of slight exoticism for foreign cultures and it's endlessly consumable but depper than light fiction. my favourite author and probably the only one of whom i've read every book of theirs (although i wish he knew how to write women) |
fogza
03.31.23 | Nice pick on Contact MoM |
Zig
03.31.23 | just to name a few:
〻 Posthumous Memoirs of Brás Cubas, by Machado de Assis
〻 Água Viva, by Clarice Lispector
〻 The Book of Disquiet, by Fernando Pessoa
〻 Dead Souls, by Nikolai Gogol
〻 Húmus, by Raul Brandão |
MoM
03.31.23 | @Fogza
It’s so good. Ending had me in my car going “naaah… yoooo!”
“ 〻 The Book of Disquiet, by Fernando Pessoa”
Have had this in my Kindle app for so long, waiting to be read. Might be time soon 🧐 |
Winesburgohio
04.01.23 | I can understand not resonating with Drive your Plow, but in terms of literature changing lives i offer a tangible example: it turned me pescatarian : O
The Tomorrow Series is what got me into reading and is responsible for All This. Utterly seminal!
|
Sharenge
04.01.23 | hopefully third time will be the charm my next attempt at completing House of Leaves |
MoM
04.01.23 | @Sharenge
The way i look at it, some people just aren’t gonna click with it. I love everything but most of the Johnny Truant bits (the shit with his mom’s letters spooks me, though). His pornographic nonsense can fuck off
The book’s weird layout shit and the misdirections/dead ends in the footnotes make sense to me in that the book is about labyrinths while also trying to be one. I don’t know if it’ll help with the enjoyment or anything, but it’s also a really personal book to me, so i go on a bit. I hope you enjoy, but if you don’t, i think that’s okay too |
CugnoBrasso
04.01.23 | Borges - Fictions
Bufalino - The Plague-spreader's Tale
Buzzati - The Tartar Steppe
Calvino - The Cloven Viscount
Camus - The Stranger
Cartarescu - Solenoid
DeLillo - White Noise
Dostoevsky - Notes from the Underworld
Frisch - Survey (Fragebogen)
Gospodinov - Time Shelter
Kundera - The Unbearable Lightness of Being
Lem - Solaris
Marquez - One Hundred Years of Solitude
Orelli - The Year of the Avalanche
Paasilinna - A Charming Mass Suicide
Pavese - The Moon and the Bonfires
Pynchon - Gravity's Rainbow
Rilke - Letters to a Young Poet
Rushdie - The Midnight Children
Vonnegut - Slaughterhouse 5
|
CugnoBrasso
04.01.23 | "Although I wish Murakami knew how to write women"
Agreed hard |
Egarran
04.01.23 | >The Book of Disquiet, by Fernando Pessoa
Was just made aware of this bc of a yt-video. The clickbait title worked on me:
https://youtu.be/6qU1sDBU9Cs
>Illuminatus! Trilogy (love seeing it mentioned here so much)
So happy I read this in my formative years. RAW may be my favorite American. |
CugnoBrasso
04.01.23 | Wow, the Book of Disquiet looks like my kind of shit |
Drbebop
04.01.23 | Was reading the Mobile Suit Gundam novels and it ends with someone getting shot in the dick so hard they get blown in half. Kino writing from the master Tomino |
TalonsOfFire
04.01.23 | I have more on my to-read list, but this is from what I’ve read so far and can remember. Some of my favorite novellas are the works of H.P. Lovecraft and Edgar Allen Poe, The Metamorphosis by Kafka, The Lathe of Heaven by Ursula le Guin, The Stranger by Camus, and Animal Farm by Orwell. Not counting young adult/children’s books, biographies, non-fiction, epic poems, novellas, or classics, my top 20 in no order, just sorted alphabetically by author’s last name:
Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury
Peril at End House by Agatha Christie
And Then There Were None by Agatha Christie
So Much Pretty by Cara Hoffman
Brave New World by Aldous Huxley
Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro (probably in my top 5)
The Remains of the Day by Kazuo Ishiguro
The Long Walk by Stephen King (pen name Richard Bachman)
Pet Sematary by Stephen King
Misery by Stephen King
Carrie by Stephen King
Mystic River by Dennis Lehane
A Song of Ice and Fire 1-5 by George R.R. Martin (Storm of Swords in my top 5)
The Road by Cormac McCarthy (in my top 5)
1984 by George Orwell (probably the most soul-crushing book I’ve read haha)
Name of the Wind/Wise Man’s Fear by Patrick Rothfuss (latter in my top 5)
Harry Potter 1-7 by J.K. Rowling
The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien (favorite trilogy)
Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut
The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde
Guess I love fantasy, thrillers, and dystopia a lot haha |
Mort.
04.01.23 | surprising amounts of harry potter on these lists
i loved them as a kid/young teen but havent revisited them as an adult |
TalonsOfFire
04.01.23 | Like half my list is from memory as a teen 10+ years ago, which includes all the HP books haha. I used to be a more disciplined reader, but have also read other kinds of books in my 20s too. Gotta get on more novels tho, trying to read more cerebral stuff like Mrs. Dalloway, Catch-22, Bell Tolls, Pale Fire, Gravity’s Rainbow, House of Leaves, and In the Lake of the Woods which I’m halfway through. Would accept recs too if I’m missing any essentials. |
Sharenge
04.01.23 | nothing to do with 'not clicking with it' - just referring to actually completing it |
Trifolium
04.01.23 | HP is super nice as an adult too. Lovely to see quite a few people choosing King as well! |
Mort.
04.01.23 | @talonsoffire
if you have a goodreads it would be easier to rec you stuff and see what youve already read
but if you love dytopia i would reccomend We by Yevgeny Zamyatin |
TalonsOfFire
04.01.23 | Sure, and feel free to add me as a friend whoever has a Goodreads. I’ll read pretty much anything if it’s a good story. Here’s my profile: goodreads.com/user/show/4302710-benjamin |
Mort.
04.01.23 | hmm i would reccomend China Mieville, Mervyn Peake (the gormenghast trilogy), Brian Aldiss, Island by Aldous Huxley (this is the utopia to brave new worlds dytopia), john wyndham, iain banks (the wasp factory), the buried giant (you like ishiguro a lot and if you havent read this one already i think youll really like it) and JG Ballard (High Rise) |
mindleviticus
04.01.23 | Not one person here mentioned A Confederacy of Dunces wow. One of my favorites of all time. |
TalonsOfFire
04.01.23 | Cool cool. I didn’t know there was a companion novel to Brave New World. Yeah Ishiguro is amazing, I’m actually just about to start his new one Klara and the Sun which I’m very excited for, and might get to Buried Giant after but I thought it got mixed reactions? |
Mort.
04.01.23 | yeah it got mixed reactions but i dont know why. for me its up there with remains of the day for one of his best novels
if youre interested in the concept of utopia, thomas moore's utopia is also a good place to start.
Also interesting to note that utopia is a corruption of eutopia (literally meaning good place), such as like euphoria means good feeling or eulogy means good word. The spelling utopia was a joke that means 'no place'.
theres also a whole journal on utopioa studies you can read for free through jstor |
TalonsOfFire
04.01.23 | Interesting. The Buried Giant did win a bunch of awards, and looks like most reviews were positive. I certainly want it to be great, and looks like Guillermo del Toro’s set to make a stop motion animated movie out of it. |
CugnoBrasso
04.02.23 | Everyone should read The Tartar Steppe, it changed my worldview. |
MoM
04.02.23 | This list getting bookmarked for future potential readings |
budgie
04.02.23 | hey fogza are you excited for the new IT production?
i liked the book for the world building but it definitely dragged... |
fogza
04.02.23 | Didn't know there was another adaption coming. I loved how detailed IT was, I don't mind Stephen taking his time on that one. The Stand drags more for me |
MoM
04.02.23 | “ Didn't know there was another adaption coming. I loved how detailed IT was”
[2]
The ending was the part where i was like “hurry up, dawg.” But i didn’t like adult Bill and thought the Deadlights shoulda snatched that ass, so that’s probably why |
budgie
04.02.23 | https://bloody-disgusting.com/tv/3739933/welcome-to-derry-it-prequel-series-still-happening-and-showrunners-have-been-found/
thar
yeah MoM, it felt like the story arc had closed nicely but there were still like 250 pages left and then some shit about the cosmic spider light-racing through spacetime oh man
all the worldly! lore was fantastic though, and the two feature films and tv series are like 10/10s in my book |
RosaParks
04.02.23 | book of disquiet
nausea
Idk what else
Lord of the files |
TalonsOfFire
04.02.23 | Nausea wasn’t really an enjoyable reading experience I thought, but interesting. Same with Lolita. |
Colton
04.02.23 | Game Of Thrones
Game Of Thrones 2
Game Of Thrones 3
Game of Thrones 4
Game Of Thrones 5
Eragon
Goosebumps: Welcome to Dead House
To Kill a Mockingbird
Geronimo Stilton 1
Two Against The North
Artemis Fowl |
budgie
04.02.23 | colty u should read the conan stories |
Egarran
04.02.23 | Argh that lower case o implies that you wrote out the title every time. |
MoM
04.02.23 | ^ it looks like when you have a band’s discog all in jewel cases except one in the middle that’s a digipak |
budgie
04.02.23 | lmao egg |
Winesburgohio
04.02.23 | Book of Disquiet invented midwest emo ! |
MoM
04.02.23 | ^ that just made me want to read it immediately
Expectations currently through the roof
📈 |
RosaParks
04.03.23 | "Nausea wasn’t really an enjoyable reading experience I thought"
nausea being a shit book is exactly why i love it |
Winesburgohio
05.04.23 | sorry to bump this but wish to acknowledge that perhaps ranking novels is a futile enterprise, as i am appalled not to see certain other favourites but wouldn't know what to exclude. and to make manifest my love of V., my preferred Pynchon pick. and to ask if anyone has a Victoria University library card so I can get my hands on The Tunnel. And possibly to summon Havey, whose taste we can all chortle at |
Winesburgohio
05.04.23 | really loving Fitzcarraldo Editions stuff at the moment, fantastic and reliable imprint who really picked Quite the Shade of Blue |
MiloRuggles
05.04.23 | Bruh, i can maybe lend you my library card re: The Tunnel. Hutt City Libraries has a copy apropos my suggestion to purchase, hit me on email/discord if you wanna suss something
V. Is dope ye |
90m80s
05.04.23 | The Trial (Kafka)
Invisible Man (Ellison)
LOTR (Tolkien)
Fool the World (Frank/Ganz)
Remains of the Day (Ishiguro)
As I Lay Dying (Faulkner)
Watchmen (Moore)
Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead (Stoppard)
Journey to the West (Cheng'en)
Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test (Wolfe)
Catcher in the Rye (Salinger)
... |
TalonsOfFire
05.04.23 | Is Gravity’s Rainbow the best place to start with Pynchon? I love mystery and sci-fi btw. Anyone read Antkind by Charlie Kaufman, his first novel? As a big fan of his screenwriting and directing, I’m excited to try that one out. Almost done with In the Lake of the Woods and almost halfway through Klara and the Sun, enjoying it a lot. Added Buried Giant to by to-buy list as well. |
90m80s
05.04.23 | As much as I love Ishiguro, I couldn't get through Buried Giant. |
TalonsOfFire
05.04.23 | I know it got mixed reactions and is unconventional, but I can’t resist the idea of an Ishiguro Arthurian fantasy book. |
90m80s
05.04.23 | I'm a big fan of mythology overall. The pacing was incredibly slow and never got to anything I could really sink my teeth into. Perhaps I stopped before it got good...... |
Trifolium
05.04.23 | All of these different Murakami's made me read Kafka on the Shore. Just started, already loving it. |
90m80s
05.04.23 | I was deep into Murakami for a long time. Wind Up Bird is prob the only one I enjoyed revisiting after time passed. Kafka on the Shore is good though. |
TalonsOfFire
05.04.23 | To you or anyone else who’s read The Buried Giant, maybe a dumb question but is there any neat fantasy stuff or is the setting kinda irrelevant? Like creatures, swordplay, murder, supernatural stuff, court coups, scary villain, any of that? Ursula le Guin had accused him of not writing a real fantasy or something which was disappointing. |
90m80s
05.04.23 | I only got maybe 80 pages in. I'd lean towards le Guin's review. It had some fantasy structures built in like games and ferries in a psuedoquest environment, but it seemed more like a story about the adventure of real life from the perspective of wonder al la forgetting and remembering love. That was my impression anyway. I tried it twice and both times wasn't feeling it. |
90m80s
05.04.23 | You mentioned Arthurian fantasy. Tolkien's got a great version of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight if you haven't read that classic yet. |
YoYoMancuso
05.04.23 | Blood Meridian (McCarthy)
Mason & Dixon (Pynchon)
House of Leaves (Danielewski)
Slaughterhouse-Five (Vonnegut)
The Idiot (Dostoevsky)
East of Eden (Steinbeck)
White Teeth (Smith)
The Count of Monte Cristo (Dumas)
War and Peace (Tolstoy)
Wise Blood (O’Connor) |
TalonsOfFire
05.04.23 | The Buried Giant is an Arthurian fantasy I believe? Yeah medieval fantasy is probably my favorite kind of literature, I’ve read Tolkien’s Gawain translation multiple times. I was fortunate enough to take the rarely offered JRR Tolkien class at my college where we read everything he wrote and translated. The Green Knight was also my favorite movie of the past few years, I think it’s a masterpiece. |
90m80s
05.04.23 | Maybe it is lol someone who finished it would need to speak up. I saw the Green Knight movie got bad reviews. Hearing a posi view now I may look into it. |
TalonsOfFire
05.04.23 | The Green Knight got great reviews but divisive response from the public. Wikipedia says Buried Giant takes place after King Arthur dies. Gawain shows up apparently. I gotta read this thing cause Arthurian mythology is so interesting and Ishiguro is one of my favorite authors. But man being a fantasy fan is so frustrating cause it’s by far the best type of literature imo but none of these authors today who do multi-book sagas can finish their freaking series. Even Tolkien was notorious for that; never finished any full-length novel, set in Middle-Earth or otherwise, after TLotR which I think drove his publisher crazy, so his son and others do their best to compete them like The Silmarillion. At least he had kind of an excuse unlike modern fantasy writers cause he was a brilliant professor and scholar and did all this other stuff. Maybe if he were alive today tho he’d do stuff like those guys and make deals with Hollywood and go to cons and f&%# around on Twitch streams instead of finish their stories lol |
90m80s
05.04.23 | Hmm. I didn't know that about the setting. Maybe I'll revisit it again when I have enough patience. Tbh it took me 3 tries to get through The Hobbit. Now Im a huge Tolkien fan. I have bad luck with fantasy. Recently tried Game of Thrones and Malazan... got two books in each and dropped them. I am at a high reading level. A lot of it seems purely escapist without any anchoring principle or value. I get bored of that feeling easily, but I know people who love the crap out of it. Anyway, I feel the same way about HxH manga never moving forward so I def relate. |
TalonsOfFire
05.04.23 | In general I don’t love fantasy more than any other genre I guess, but the best it has to offer I love. TLotR trilogy is my #1 favorite book, and the first three Game of Thrones and the first two books of the Kingkiller Chronicle (Name of the Wind and The Wise Man’s Fear) aren’t far behind. But there’s no ending in sight for either Game of Thrones or Kingkiller Chronicle, even tho each series is mostly done but hasn’t had an installment in over a decade… |
Flugmorph
05.04.23 | just finished "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?", thats a new fav.
Otherwise my list is pretty old because I just recently started reading recreationally again, before that I didnt really do that since 2015.
Tuf Voyaging - Martin, George R.R.
Watership Down - Adams, Richard
The Martian - Weir, Andy
these four are the only ones I ever gave a 5/5
|
Flugmorph
05.04.23 | also recently read All Tomorrows which is pretty fantastic aswell |
90m80s
05.04.23 | I hear ya. HxH has an English ver of a new volume dropping in October then nothing again for who knows how long. You might enjoy Journey to the West if you want epic and enjoy mythology. |
TalonsOfFire
05.04.23 | We read Tolkien’s translation of Beowulf which was excellent, would love a great movie adaptation of that instead of the mediocre Angelina Jolie one since there’re perfect versions of TLotR and Green Knight. And The Northman too, my fav movie of last year, which was based on the real life Danish king that Macbeth is based on with some fantasy flourishes. I detect a Beowulf influence on whoever wrote Sir Gawain, tho the latter is more strange and elusive if that makes sense. |
90m80s
05.04.23 | Oh yea that Beowulf translation is good too. Those old texts have strange origins. Speaking of, I still find the Faust and Dr. Faustus origins curious as the same legend was sourced without any plagiarism. |
DocSportello
05.04.23 | “Is Gravity’s Rainbow the best place to start with Pynchon”
it’d be like first time souls player doing ER with deprived class: very doable, possibly maddening. i would start with inherent vice or the crying of lot 49 personally and then bon voyage : ) |
TalonsOfFire
05.06.23 | I’m not familiar with Faust or Dr. Faustus.
Hm good to know, I’ll think about that with which Pynchon to start with. |
Winesburgohio
06.15.23 | R.I.P. 2 McCarthy, who managed to save some of his best for last!, Stella Maris what a stellar note to end on! |
Piglet
06.15.23 | Yeah, the prose in In Search of Lost Time is astonishingly beautiful. Almost wanted to learn French, just so I could reread it in it's original form. And the way he describes certain emotions and situations is so visceral.
Other favourites of mine would have to be Tao Te Ching, The Brothers Karamazov, Shakespeare's complete works, Don Quixote, Catch 22, The Histories, The Stories of English, I Am That, The Arabian Nights, The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, Magician and Dune. |
MiloRuggles
06.15.23 | Massive RIP indeed. I keep picking up Stella Maris and reading bits at random whenever I see it. Sublime bloomin work from a master! |
DocSportello
06.16.23 | Huge RIP, the passenger/stella maris ruled |