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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!
Grapes Of Wrath, John Steinbeck. And probably Of Mice And Men.
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
All of HP Lovecraft's stories.
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?
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.
out of position
Iβve 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 Iβve love the Ascendance of a Bookworm series, know that this is one of maybe 2 or 3 series I actually read. Itβs 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 Iβve 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 !aoblightnovel@bookwormstory.social
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.
The Narrow Road to the Deep North by Richard Flanagan. Kalki by Gore Vidal. The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway. His Dark Materials trilogy by Philip Pullman. Starve Acre by Andrew Michael Hurley. Lord of the Flies by William Golding. Atonement by Ian McEwan. Being Dead by Jim Crace.
If you've already read a lot of books, you should give If On A Winter's Night A Traveller a go.
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
Edit - downvoted by the wanks that think reading George Orwell makes them clever lmao. Once you get over 30 you realise that books are for entertaining, not to leave on your coffee table to try to seem interesting
Thanks for the recs! I'll look into these, because I could always go for something light and entertaining, but I don't really think any medium is "for" anything.
Like with movies, most of the time I'm looking for something to laugh at to forget my problems, or at least an exciting adventure to get lost in. But sometimes I find something that just punches me in the gut and makes me think about life, and I see that as a positive experience, even if it's not strictly "fun".
I get the backlash, though. I think too many people have held literature up as the only way to be smart, and moreso, held book smarts up as the bare minimum for being treated as a human. I've heard it from all sides.
I've been on the opposite end of a pretty similar dynamic, too. I enjoy lifting weights, and people treat it like a virtue instead of a hobby. People say shit like "wow, you're better than me" or start giving me excuses for why they can't go to the gym, as if I was judging them for having different hobbies.
People are pompous dicks about fitness, but I do it because I really enjoy it. People are also pompous dicks about the classics, but I have to assume that most folks are like me. They just enjoy it.