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
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.
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.
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.
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.
a few of importance to me:
One Hundred Years of Solitude
Guards! Guards!
Piranesi
The Scar
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
A chain of voices - Andre Brink
Cosmos - Carl Sagan
The name of the rose - Umberto Eco (so much better than the movie)
A prayer for Owen Meany - John Irving
I used to read a lot when I was younger. Now I'm down to max two books per year. I miss it.
My top 3, in order are:
The Lord of the Rings
Dune
The Count of Monte Cristo
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. Salvatore
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.
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
So, for me, the cliche answer is Lord of the Rings. But another book that I've always really loved, is East by Edith Pattou. It's a very simple fantasy story, but I read it when I was much younger and it's always just felt very comfy and cozy whenever I read it.
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
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 McCain
Romance 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?
Contact by Carl Sagan
I really didn't read much for a bunch of my life. Now that I'm out of school I'm finally trying to read a bunch of stuff. I recently did all the cosmere stuff so I guess for now I'd have to say stormlight, and war breaker. Just love those books a lot. I'm sure my opinions will change as I keep reading a bunch though
The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy. It's the first in a trilogy of six books. I haven't read the last book but I would recommend reading 1 to 5.
The radio series and audiobooks are all worth a listen as well. There is a version narrated by Douglas Adams himself and another narrated by Stephen Fry and Martin Freeman. Both are great.
One of my favourite quotes from the Hitchhikers:
“You know,” said Arthur, “it’s at times like this, when I’m trapped in a Vogon airlock with a man from Betelgeuse, and about to die of asphyxiation in deep space that I really wish I’d listened to what my mother told me when I was young.” “Why, what did she tell you?” “I don’t know, I didn’t listen.”
I also love this quote from the fourth instalment of the series So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish:
The storm had now definitely abated, and what thunder there was now grumbled over more distant hills, like a man saying “And another thing…” twenty minutes after admitting he’s lost the argument.
The whole series is worth a read. You're bound to laugh over and over reading them.
Oh man. “All time” is hard because I’ve been through so many phases of my life. I count a favorite as any book I’ve bought, since I’m usually such a library person.
Tween/teen:
college:
Now:
The Wooden Sea (Crane's View, #3) by Jonathan Carroll
Dragonriders of Pern Series by Anne McCaffrey
Lord of Light, Roger Zelazny. Brilliant, prescient, and genuinely a great work of literature all at once. The story of Rild, the telling of the metaphor about fire, so much else, it's been all these years and I'm still quoting it.
Bridge of Birds, Barry Hughart. When my will to go on falters, this is one of the books I turn to for comfort. It's beautifully written, it's hilarious, and it just makes me feel better.
Callahan's Crosstime Saloon, Spider Robinson. I genuinely have handed this book to a troubled young person and had them find a better understanding of the human condition between its covers. I didn't expect that, I thought I was sharing a cool book with them that was something I'd found influenced how I am, but it happened. It's kind of a big deal. It's also actually a lot of fun to read, it's just a collection of short science fiction stories set in a bar, right? ...right?
Why I Left Harry's All-Night Hamburgers, Lawrence Watt-Evans; Watt-Evans is largely a moderately obscure (as far as I can tell) fantasy author. I love the rest of his work because it's much more human than a lot of fantasy, with people who are bumbling and desperately trying to handle bizarre problems they're ill-equipped for and sometimes making their problems worse than they dreamed and also there are wizards. (I also like some of his worldbuilding choices, but let's get on with this). This one short story (that won a Hugo and stuff), though, lives rent-free in my head forever; it's got a simple point, which is that the world we're actually in has a lot of cool stuff, go enjoy it, but it makes it in a very fun way and, well, okay, enough, I love it.
Calvin and Hobbes. All of it. Bill Watterson is a visionary genius.
I can go on, I haven't mentioned Douglas Adams or Sandman or Transmetropolitan or fnord or ten thousand other things, but I have other things to do and should content myself with finite length.
I love Bridge of Birds... It's a phenomenal book, I'm so glad to see another fan.
Recently:
The Three Body Problem series by Cixin Liu is devestatingly good. It's a vast, prescient science fiction series that'll make you feel existential dread toward physics. It's great.
The Children of Time series by Adrian Tchaikovsky is another fantastic science fiction series. The most compelling first person view into truly alien minds I've read.
Everything Terry Pratchett ever wrote is worth reading.
In no particular order,
I can't pick a single title for Camus or Vonnegut, but those two respective titles are near the top.
@Kamirose
1984, Lord of the Flies, The Wheel of Time, and the Death Gate Cycle.
Off the top of my head:
I've been using The Little Prince in my language studies, because it's a great book but simple, and I know it well. I can get through it no problem in French, but it's still a little over my head in Vietnamese.
The Void Trilogy from Peter F. Hamilton read the books and listened to the audio books several times already.
It's sci-fi and fantasy in one stunning epos.
I will throw down for Pride and Prejudice. It is 95% shade.
John Dies At the End series.
It is hilarious, dark, and gets a little nasty sometimes (not necessarily in a sexual way).
Jason Pargin used to be the cheif editor at Cracked, so that energy does pop in and out. What he is really great at is showing profound empathy despite the choas. He is not just a good writer, you can tell he is also a very good person.
Futuristic Violence and Fancy Suits is also awesome.
The Dune series. Especially books 1 and 4 left such a deep impression on me. Hard to put into words. Haven't experienced something similar yet.
it's three books, but i got Kim Stanley Robinson's Three Californias Triptych in a one-book volume (the volume is huge) for $20 and that's probably pound for pound the single best book purchase i've ever made. his writing may not be for you, but if it is he's kind of one of a kind as an author. i don't know anyone who writes quite like he does
Oh, this looks cool. I am a sucker for stories that take place only a few years into the futute, that slice of life sci fi drama.
Tenously related, The Nexus Trilogy by Ramez Naam is dope as hell. Probably my favorite science fiction that takes place 20 minutes into the future.
Since I was a kid, I always loved the Star Wars expanded universe. My favorites of the whole thing are probably the Republic Commando series and the Thrawn Trilogy. Also love the Gotrek and Felix books, and ive been getting into the Dragonlance franchise
Probably the one I re-read the most with fond memories is Hellspark by Janet Kagan.
A series I enjoy because I felt it captured the sheer horror of the xeno-menace the best was called The Vang series by Christopher Rowley, in particular book 2 always gives me the heebeejeebee's.
For more modern books, the Cradle series by Will Wight that just wrapped up has been a fun time for me and I re-read my favorite sections often.
I'll use a few categories for my favorites.
For my most nostalgic book series, I'd choose the Redwall Series by Brian Jacques. It was one of the first series I got seriously into, and at one point I had all of them collected (I think they're in a box in my parents' house right now). Sure, they get formulaic and samey after a while, but they're comfy reads for me.
For my favorite recent read, I'd probably choose Bunny by Mona Awad. I'm a huge fan of the "weird book" genre and this book came up over and over as a suggestion so I picked it up. And oh boy is this book a wild ride. I enjoyed it, but I'd add a caution that I would proceed with caution if you are prone to psychosis, because at the end it made me feel like reality itself was unwinding.
One of my favorite authors of all time is Akaweke Emezi, and my favorite of their work is The Death of Vivek Oji. Reading it fully tore my heart apart, and then taped a few pieces back together.
I have a few favorites, but if I were stranded on a desert island, the one book I’d take with me would be Cage of Souls by Adrian Tchaikovsky. The book is so layered, and the world is so unusual. It’s one of the few books I kept trying to put off finishing because I didn’t want it to end.
The Lies of Locke Lamora was so good I had to take a break from reading afterwards cause nothing could compare.
Neuromancer is still a solid favorite.
EDIT: Forgot to add, now that I wandered over to my little bookshelf, I have quite a bit of Raymond Benson's work. Along with the Metal Gear Solid novel adaptations.
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