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
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.
Grapes Of Wrath, John Steinbeck. And probably Of Mice And Men.
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.
Seconding this book. It’s one of the best books I’ve read this decade.
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.
It is always hard to pick just one, but I usually pick either one of the culture novels, or Sophie’s World by Jostein Gaarder.
out of position
I’ve always struggled to find a good book to read. I love having books read to me, but to pick one up myself has always been a struggle.
So when I say I’ve love the Ascendance of a Bookworm series, know that this is one of maybe 2 or 3 series I actually read. It’s a fantasy story about one little girls dream of trying to read books in a world without books. The premise is silly on paper, but the world building and characters are so detailed and flushed out that I’ve gotten sucked in and read throughout the whole series multiple times.
The novels just finished the main series with Part 5 Volume 12, there an anime of good to mixed quality, and a manga too. Tips for new readers is to watch the anime before reading as Part 1 is not as smooth as the rest.
There is also a lemmy server for discussions [email protected]
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.
Fifty Shades Of Grey
Sounds great, I love color theory
No idea what your reading level is, but here are some of the suggestions I’ve made to customers recently:
Harry Potter, if for no other reason than the cultural impact
Ender’s Game: children being taught to be elite military officers
Small Gods: satirizes religion, religious institutions, etc. If you ever want to read Discworld, this is a very good starting point
We Free Men: also Discworld, but YA-focused and about a girl who becomes a witch
Lamb, the Gospel According to Biff, Christ’s Childhood Pal: author imagines what Jesus and his BFF Biff were doing for those thirty years missing not recorded in the Bible.
Kindred: a woman starts to travel back in time to the pre-Civil War South. She can’t control it and she doesn’t know why. Probably Butler’s most accessible novel.
A Canticle for Leibowitz: humanity nuked itself back to the early medieval period and this one holy order watches it rebuild. It’s hard to describe this book in a satisfactory way without just summarizing it, but it’s one of my favorites and I’ve read it multiple times
The Giver: YA dystopian novel about a very structured society and the kid who is able to see through it. The sequels aren’t too bad either
The Hobbit: much easier to read than Lord of the Rings, but full of the same heroics plus dragons, dwarves and a clever hero
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.
Thanks for the suggestions! I gotta make a list when I get home. I haven’t heard of a few of these so that should be exciting.
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.
I’m anticipating this, not too worried. I have trouble comprehending thick prose, but part of why I’m asking for recs is because I won’t improve if I don’t try.
I loved having LOTR read to me as a kid so maybe it’s time to revisit it.
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
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!
Ben Franklin’s Autobio, Black Elk Speaks, Slaughterhouse Five
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!
The Mountain, The Brothers Karamazov, and The Magus.
Cloud Atlas.
The Brothers Lionheart, by Astrid Lindgren is one of my childhood favourites. Originally Swedish but has been translated into English.
The Letter for the King by Tonke Dragt another childhood fav., it has been translated from Dutch. Actually, anything by Dragt I loved, but not sure which have translations or not.
In terms of adult fiction, I was hooked on Stig Larsson’s The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo series (he only wrote the first 3 though).
Someone mentioned Kurt Vonnegut; I recommend the one I’ve read of his: Slaughterhouse 5.
The Circle still gives me pause more than 5 years later. It’s by Dave Eggers.
