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What books are you reading?


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I was going to make a thread, but I figured I may as well ask on here.

I've been trying to search high and low for some good books to check out and there's so many options, I have absolutely no idea where to begin.

I know a lot of people here are avid readers and have read a good amount of books, so my question to you is:

If you could recommend me or ANY HUMAN a top ten books to read, which would they be?

I'm talking "I-think-every-human-needs-to-read-this" kind of books.

If more are selected, good!

If less, well, then that's also good!

I just really want to get into reading. It is something that I do love, but I just slack on it and don't give it a huge amount of attention.

And I want that to change, especially this upcoming year. (:

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Someone recommended the following to me:

Ariel & the Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath

Womem - Charles Bukowski

The Complete Poems - Anne Sexton

The Hours - Michael Cunningham

Girl Interrupted - Susan Kaysen

The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold

The Ego and the Id - Sigmund Freud

A Farewell to Arms - Earnest Hemingway

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I was going to make a thread, but I figured I may as well ask on here.

I've been trying to search high and low for some good books to check out and there's so many options, I have absolutely no idea where to begin.

I know a lot of people here are avid readers and have read a good amount of books, so my question to you is:

If you could recommend me or ANY HUMAN a top ten books to read, which would they be?

I'm talking "I-think-every-human-needs-to-read-this" kind of books.

If more are selected, good!

If less, well, then that's also good!

I just really want to get into reading. It is something that I do love, but I just slack on it and don't give it a huge amount of attention.

And I want that to change, especially this upcoming year. (:

 

 

I'd recommend:

The Dune series (the first six. I haven't read any of the non-Frank Herbert books) - Sci-Fi

The Wheel of Time series  - Fantasy

The Wind Up Bird Chronicles (anything by Haruki Murakami, really, but that's a good place to start.) - Magical realism?

Augustin Burroughs has some good books - Memoir

Battle Royale is like a better "The Hunger Games" - Fiction

I used to be really into Stephen King when I was younger, The Stand of Salem's Lot are good places to start with him. (Or the Dark Tower series. It's awesome and connects pretty much all his other books together.) - Horror/Fiction/Fantasy

Let Me In is a great vampire book. - Fiction

Tekkon Kinkreet is an awesome Manga

Akira is too.

aaaaaaaand American Psycho. - Fiction

 

 

10 recommendations.

 

 

You've got some sweet recommendations though that you posted. Classics mostly :) I actually need to read some of those.

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I've heard great things about Dune, but thanks for taking the time to send me all those!

I've marked them all down and will most likely purchase them relatively soon. (:

The others aren't necessarily in order, but Dune is my top recommendation. Might be my favorite book. Wheel of Time is a reeeeeally long series, but rewarding once you get all the way through it. Took me nearly a full year, but I mostly read just before bed. Others probably work through it faster.

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I'd recommend:

The Dune series (the first six. I haven't read any of the non-Frank Herbert books) - Sci-Fi

 

Backed hard.  If six books is too much of a commitment, the first three make a nice trilogy (and you'll want to read them all after the first two anyway).

 

If I had to suggest ONE book to anyone, it would be Ubik by Philip K Dick, hands down.

 

Other suggestions:

  • Pretty much anything else by Philip K Dick, out of what I've read (maybe a third of his bigger titles?) The Man In The High Castle, The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldrich, and of course Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep are all great.
  • The Foundation Series by Issac Asimov, the second book contains the single best executed plot twist that I've ever encountered.
  • The Silmarillion by JRR Tolkien was much better than the Hobbit or LotR (I thought)
  • The Myst series by Rand & Robyn Miller, not the best authors around, but a very interesting and compelling story.
  • I really enjoyed the 2001: Space Odyssey series by Arthur C Clark
  • Kurt Vonnegut - Slaughterhouse 5, BRILLIANT book
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Not ten, but the ones I always reccomend:

Adventures of Kavalier and Clay - Chabon

W; or, The Memory of Childhood - Perec

You've got Murakami already. You might start with one of his earlier ones though, as everything he's done is great, but his earlier ones are a bit more accessible and shorter.

Erasure - Everett

John Henry Days - Whitehead

Invisible Man - Ellison

My two favorites, but they're not very accessible:

The Canterbury Tales (Riverside Edition) - Chaucer

Ulysses - Joyce

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Top 10 every-human-needs-to-read-these books  a.k.a  Olsvik's favourite books:

 

1. "Homer" - The Odysssey

2. Marcus Aurelius - Meditations

3. Plutarch - Lives

4. Aeschylus - The Oresteia

5. Joseph Heller - Catch-22

6. Kurt Vonnegut - Slaughterhouse 5

7. Henry David Thoreau - Walden

8. Jorge Luis Borges - Collected Fictions

9. Gabriel Garcia Marquez - One Hundred Years of Solitude

10. Ernest Hemingway - The Sun Also Rises

 

I'll also throw my support behind Dune (I've only read the first one) and Ubik by Philip K Dick, which were already mentioned and are great.

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Top 10 every-human-needs-to-read-these books  a.k.a  Olsvik's favourite books:

 

1. "Homer" - The Odysssey

2. Marcus Aurelius - Meditations

3. Plutarch - Lives

4. Aeschylus - The Oresteia

5. Joseph Heller - Catch-22

6. Kurt Vonnegut - Slaughterhouse 5

7. Henry David Thoreau - Walden

8. Jorge Luis Borges - Collected Fictions

9. Gabriel Garcia Marquez - One Hundred Years of Solitude

10. Ernest Hemingway - The Sun Also Rises

 

I'll also throw my support behind Dune (I've only read the first one) and Ubik by Philip K Dick, which were already mentioned and are great.

I feel bad about my list, you guys are all slamming down some intellectual/classic works!

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I feel bad about my list, you guys are all slamming down some intellectual/classic works!

Why feel bad? He asked for the books you'd recommend, there's no shame in not revelling in the classics.

If you like fantasy, my highest recommendation is for Erikson's Malazan Book of the Fallen series. It's HUGE (almost WoT huge), but, to me, it surpasses all other epic fantasy series in basically every measurable way.

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Why feel bad? He asked for the books you'd recommend, there's no shame in not revelling in the classics.

If you like fantasy, my highest recommendation is for Erikson's Malazan Book of the Fallen series. It's HUGE (almost WoT huge), but, to me, it surpasses all other epic fantasy series in basically every measurable way.

One of my buddy's recommended that series to me and I haven't checked it out yet! I'll have to for sure.

(for the record, I love classics too, I'm always just hesitant to recommend them to people :))

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One of my buddy's recommended that series to me and I haven't checked it out yet! I'll have to for sure.

(for the record, I love classics too, I'm always just hesitant to recommend them to people :))

It's so ridiculously good.

I think classics need to be a really targeted recommendation, as some of the more florid language can be a real turnoff for a casual reader. I find most modern (post 1920's) stuff - even literary modern stuff - to be fairly accessible, barring some of the really experimental stuff (of which I'm a huge fan).

Oh, on that note, let me add:

Of Mice and Men - Steinbeck

The Quiet American - Greene (pretty much anything by him, I just wouldn't start with The End of the Affair)

Really recent:

The Gift of Rain - Eng

The Invisible Bridge - Orringer

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