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Ask HN: What are some good books?
Looking for good books to read. Any recommendations? I liked these:
Everything and More, David Foster Wallace
Gödel, Escher, Bach, Douglas Hofstadter
Collected Fictions, Jorge Luis Borges
In Praise of Idleness, Bertrand Russell
Antifragile, Nassim Taleb
The Long Way, Bernard Moitessier
Deceit, Desire, and the Novel, Rene Girard
The Wu-Tang Manual, RZA
Meditations, Marcus Aurelius
Essays, Michel de Montaigne
We Tell Ourselves Stories in Order to Live, Joan Didion
- bloodorange 13y ago"Alice's Adventures in Wonderland" - Lewis Carroll "Through the Looking Glass and What Alice Found There" - Lewis Carroll "Dracula" - Bram Stoker "Frankenstein" - Mary Shelly "On Education" - Bertrand Russell "The Hitchhiker's Guide to The Galaxy" - Douglas Adams "Animal Farm" - George Orwell "1984" - George Orwell "Lord of The Flies" - William Golding "Brave New World" - Aldous Huxley "Gulliver's Travels" - Jonathan Swift "The Selfish Gene" - Richard Dawkins
- youngbenny 13y agoThanks, that's a great list. Reminds me to read some classic fiction again.
- thoughtcriminal 13y agoI read Frankenstein recently and its pretty intense. Recommended. Probably the most exhilarating read for me in a long while has been "The Secret Race" by Tyler Hamiliton. But don't take my word on it, read the reviews.
- bloodorange 13y agoAdding more: Siddhartha - Hermen Hesse Narcissus and Goldmund - Herman Hesse The Glass Bead Game - Herman Hesse The Consolations of Philosophy - Alain de Botton A Brief History of Nearly Everything - Bill Bryson Politics and The English Lanaguage (essay) - George Orwell A Modest Proposal (essay) - Jonathan Swift
- jolenzy 13y agoTake anything from Fyodor Dostoyevsky.
- youngbenny 13y agoDostoyevsky is a great. Still haven't read The Brothers Karamazov.
- gruseom 13y agoDon't miss The Double. This was the book that Dostoevsky wrote after his early rock-star debut. It was widely hated at the time, and Dostoevsky found himself in the doghouse as quickly as he had been celebrated before, but it's fabulous—much better than that initial book and one of the best things he ever wrote.
- brudgers 13y agoBlood Meridian, Cormac McCarthy. Philosphical Investigations, Ludwig Witgenstein. The Analects. Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs, Ableson and Sussman. The Hamet and The Town and The Mansion, William Faulkner.
- youngbenny 13y agoWittgenstein is tough reading. Amazing that he conceived of Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus in the trenches of WW1 (literally).
- brudgers 13y agoHe wrote a significant portion while a POW.
- IanChiles 13y agoI'd also add Faulkner's The Sound and the Fury - it's excellent, despite being a bit tough to understand
- cenazoic 13y ago* The Quincunx, Charles Palliser (historical fiction: "Those for whom this...will be a special treat are those who enjoy solving word or logic puzzles. To be enjoyed to its fullest, this is a book that benefits from active participation on the part of the reader." * Playing at the World, Jon Peterson ("Explore the conceptual origins of wargames and role-playing games in this unprecedented history of simulating the real and the impossible.") * The Years of Lyndon Johnson (v1-4, 5 in production), Robert Caro. (If you ever wanted to see how political power actually works in the US, you can't beat this biography of LBJ, which reads like a (very long) novel.)
- youngbenny 13y agoHas anyone read Information: The New Language of Science by Hans Christian von Baeyer? I just read Metaphors We Live By by Lakoff, George and Johnson, Mark. It's an interesting study of how metaphors unconsciously drive thinking and perception.
- cju 13y agoIf you liked DFW and Borges, you may like Matt Ruff (especialy "Set this House in Order", "The Mirage" and "Fool on the Hill"). It's not as complex but the style is similar and really enjoyable.
- eli_gottlieb 13y agoNobody has listed "Anything by Terry Pratchett" yet? Of course, it very much depends what you like. Your list contains a lot more nonfiction than I usually read in book form, for instance.
- youngbenny 13y agoYeah, I read a lot more non-fiction than fiction. I'm trying to discover good fiction to read. Open to suggestions on anything.
- gruseom 13y agoIt depends on what you like. Flannery O'Connor's fiction is extraordinary. I bet you'd like Nabokov based on what you've said so far; I like his earlier Russian novels best (which have excellent English translations), like The Defense, for example. If you want to go whole hog into postmodernism then try Pynchon or Gaddis. The 19th century Russians from Gogol to Chekhov are pretty much can't-lose. Turgenev's Fathers and Sons is beautiful and captures the spirit of youth. Ford Madox Ford's The Good Soldier is a short masterpiece. The Great Gatsby is as good as its reputation says. Read Dickens if you want the essence of the English language and the English character. Read Kafka for the strangest articulation of modernity. Bruno Schulz is more whimsical. Borges is another whom your list suggests you should try. If you really want to go down a rabbit hole, find Martin Seymour-Smith's Guide to Modern World Literature and browse through it to blow your mind. It covers everything and seems impossible, except it exists so it can't be.
- youngbenny 13y agoAppreciate it, this will keep me busy :)
- steve_g 13y agoSilverlock by John Myers Myers - a fantasy novel written in 1949 with hundreds (maybe thousands) of allusions to mythology, history, and classic literature. It's a lot of fun.
- JackGibbs 13y agoSome authors and a rec or two for each. DFW - Infinite Jest Pynchon - Really anything, but in particular Against the Day, V, and Gravity's Rainbow. Rushdie - Shame and Satanic Verses, a lot of good other ones. Neal Stephenson - Cryptonomicon Gaddis - JR, hence my name. Heller - Catch-22
- japhyr 13y agoThe Abstract Wild, Jack Turner Honest and challenging, without being sentimental.
- maxerickson 13y agoNobody has suggested Umberto Eco yet.I would try The Island of the Day Before or Baudolino before Foucault's Pendulum. Alistair Reynolds is space opera done nicely (if you want to look in that direction). Chasm City stands on its own, but there are some similar works there. Twain fits in with some of your other comments.
- youngbenny 13y agoThanks for the suggestion on Eco. I picked up a few books by Fernando Pessoa too.
- gruseom 13y agoWait, how'd you get to Pessoa from there?! Pessoa is fascinating. I believe it was he who wrote: Poets pretend They pretend so well They even pretend They suffer what they suffer. ... something that lodged itself in my brain years ago and never left. Pessoa wrote under countless pseudonyms. He is like Kierkegaard in that respect. You might like Fear and Trembling, in fact, based on your list.
- youngbenny 13y agoPessoa created his own worlds. Reminds me of Henry Darger. Check out IN THE REALMS OF THE UNREAL if you haven't seen it http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MSzzirIP0No http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MSzzirIP0No.
- gruseom 13y agoThanks; I've run across his stuff tangentially a few times but not seen that film. You might like Gormenghast: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gormenghast_(series) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gormenghast_(series) Wyndham Lewis's novels, especially the Human Comedy that he wrote at the end of his life, are something I've always been meaning to get to. It's hard to tell if they're meaningful or impenetrable.
- meerita 13y ago
- cadalac 13y agoHeaven is real but so is Hell by Vassula Ryden
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- Casseres 13y agoThe Unincorporated Man by Dani Kollin & Eytan Kollin. It's a sci-fi set a couple hundred years in the future where everyone is incorporated at birth. Just like you can own shares in a company, you can own shares of another person. It's my second favorite novel. It has some interesting ideas. Ender's Game by Orson Scott Card. Don't let the movie fool you. The book is very good. It was at one point it was on the suggested reading list for the United States Marine Corps.