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On mobile, too tired to write but… So many… But I honestly think Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy is as close to the perfect book as I can imagine (for me!). Also, Kafka for me is like the Final Boss, once you go through him, everything else pales in comparison
Lord of the Rings just about saved my life in high school. Possession by A.S. Byatt. Foucault’s Pendulum by Umberto Eco. Oryx and Crake by Margaret Atwood, though I’ve yet to read the sequels. Atonement by Ian McEwan. Just about anything by Geoff Ryman, Ali Smith, José Saramago, or Sheri Holman.
Your taste seems like exactly the sort of thing I’d enjoy, do you have any specific suggestions for someone who absolutely loves Eco’s metafictional novels in particular and metafiction in general? (Aside from Possession, which I’ve never heard of but is going directly on my to-read list)
I recently read How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe by Charles Yu, which I really liked. It is science fictional, though, but maybe not…maybe more surreal. Jorge Luis Borges, Italo Calvino, David Markson. I started Dictionary of the Khazars by Milorad Pavić many years ago, got interrupted, and haven’t got back to it, but I definitely need to because it was so intriguing in form.
Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. I had no idea writing, even fiction, could be so ridiculous and non-traditional. It really shaped my imagination from a young age.
The Road by Cormac McCarthy
It’s cliche I suppose, but 1984 by Orwell. It’s actually a fucking great read beyond it’s thematic meaning. People are correct in saying A Brave New World was more prescient, but it’s not as good a book in my opinion.
Joe Abercrombie’s The First Law series, all six mainline books and even the side books are all fantastic.
It’s manga, but Berserk by Kentaro Miura. IYKYK
I read Frankenstein in my highschool literature class way back, loved it then and love it now. Shelly was a pioneer.
- One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
- Primeval and Other Times by Olga Tokarczuk
- The Archive of Alternate Endings by Lindsay Drager
- The Book of Nightmares by Galway Kinnell
- Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind: Informal Talks on Zen Meditation and Practice by Shunryu Suzuki
- The Shadow of the Wind by Carlos Ruiz Zafon
- Stories of Your Life and Others by Ted Chiang
- Lincoln in the Bardo by George Saunders
- Parable of the Sower by Octavia Butler
a few of importance to me:
One Hundred Years of Solitude
Guards! Guards!
Piranesi
The Scar
I’m probably gonna be an odd one out here with a cleaning book, but I really, really like K.C Davis’s “How to Keep House While Drowning” book about cleaning your house while mentally unwell and not considering yourself a moral failure for the state your house is in.
I think it’s the one that had the most amount of positive benefits to my life. It turns out having a positive influence in the form of a book that tries to encourage you take things one step at a time, a book that even admits it doesn’t know everything either—well, it’s more beneficial than my real life acquaintances and family who opted for the shame method.
- Philip K Dick - Galactic Pot-Healer
- Jose Donoso - The Obscene Bird of Night
- Alfred Kubin - The Other Side
- Ursula K Le Guin - The Lathe of Heaven
- Stanislaw Lem - Memoirs Found in a Bathtub
- Boris & Arkady Strugatsky - Roadside Picnic
- H G Wells - When The Sleeper Wakes
- Stefan Wul - Oms en Serie
- Yevgeny Zamyatin - We
- Jerzy Zulawski - On The Silver Globe
I also really love all the Moomin & Oz books.
I like to hand out copies of WE to anyone who mentions 1984. I get chills when discussing it sometimes.
Far too many to list but some of my favourites are -
The Belgariad series by David Eddings
The Magician series by Raymond E Feist
Captain Corelli’s Mandolin by Louis de Bernières
Pretty much anything written by Dan Abnett, Terry Pratchett and R.A. SalvatoreLove all of those with the exception of Bernieres, gonna need to check them out
Captain Corelli’s Mandolin surprised me. It’s such a bittersweet and emotional book. It hooked me right from the start.
In no particular order:
The Flowers of Evil by Charles Baudelaire
A Season in Hell by Arthur Rimbaud
Romance of the Three Kingdoms by Luo Guanzhong
Six Records of a Floating Life by Shen Fu
The Red Night Trilogy of William S. Burroughs (Cities of the Red Night, The Place of Dead Roads, The Western Lands)
On the Road: The Original Scroll by Jack Kerouac
Book of Haikus by Jack Kerouac
The Stranger by Albert Camus
The Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka
The Idiot by Fyodor Dostoevsky
Notes from Underground by Fyodor Dostoevsky
After Dark by Haruki Murakami
The Unbearable Lightness of Being by Milan Kundera
Girl, Interrupted by Susanna Kaysen
One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest by Ken Kesey
Please Kill Me: The Uncensored Oral History of Punk by Legs McNeil and Gillian McCainRomance of the Three Kingdoms and Please Kill Me rank high for me too. I remember the first time I heard Blank Generation: I couldn’t listen to anything else for weeks. Just that album, over and over…
Are you familiar with Kharms?
Blank Generation is a special album for me too! Richard Hell is a genuinely foundational artist for my musical tastes, along with much of his NYC cohort. You know Blank Generation is going to be remarkable right out of the gate when you hear Hell wailing “Love comes in spurts! Oh, god… it hurts!”
I’m not familiar with Kharms, but a cursory search tells me that he checks a lot of boxes for what I like. Do you have any recommendations as to where I should start with him?
He wrote very short stories, so there’s a complete collection available.
Excellent—thank you for the recommendation!
My top 3, in order are:
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The Lord of the Rings
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Dune
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The Count of Monte Cristo
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Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance can be a difficult read at times, but is honestly incredible.
If you like having things to ponder and think on, it’s unforgettable
I was assigned Zen in college. I could not get into it. And I had to get it read. I took it chapter by chapter backwards and loved it.
I listened to it on Audiobook myself; i think it’s very suited to the format
I’m not a big reader these days but back in the 90’s I was. The ones that really stuck with me and have been reread once or twice.
Ghost Story by Peter Straub
Consider Phlebas by Iain M Banks
Only Forward by Michael Marshall Smith
I loved the His Dark Materials trilogy by Philip Pullman. Read it as a kid and every time I go back to reread my beat up copies it is a joy.
Small Gods by Terry Pratchett - which is interesting for me, because most of what I read is SciFi - but it’s such a fascinating, thought provoking, and entertaining read
I love Small Gods! It’s my go-to when people ask which Discworld book they should start with and want a good standalone.
The image of Om, in turtle form, piloting an eagle by biting it’s unmentionables to canonball the head priest is fantastic.
