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
ETA if I reply extremely late it’s because it took me this long to get a library card in my new locale.
The dystopic books that warn us of what we could be.
1984, Fahrenheit 451, Brave New World, Animal Farm, The Giver (and yes, you should still read The Giver even if you’re an adult if you’ve never read it before).
But the first book that flashed through my mind when I read the question was Slaughterhouse Five.
Ah yes, all those books whose plots are being used as manuals these days. :( lol
The Giver was really neat. Accessible too. The movie adaptation was such a bad idea because I thought one of its strengths was how it was set in an ambiguous time, iirc. The reader’s visuals seemed really important for that story.
Hmm, considering your religious upbringing you might want to try some absurdist literature to break the mold.
- The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy
- The Cyberiad
- Discworld
- The Little Prince
These are accessible too, as you’re not used to reading yet.
I can also recommend subscribing to a monthly magazine and making a point to read it from cover to cover. That way your skills will improve. You can also buy a whole stack of old national geographics cheaply. This will expand your horizons.
Won’t be taking very much of your time:
Kafka’s The Trial, Shelley’s Frankenstein, Machiavelli’s Prince, Rulfo’s Pedro Paramo
Just to avoid naming the very obvious ones.
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All the Pretty Horses and The Crossing are beautiful western novels by Cormac McCarthy. Both are very much “a boy and his horse” kind of stories about learning to be yourself. They’re loosely related and there’s a third book that brings the boys together and concludes their stories
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The Jungle and Oil! by Upton Sinclair are novelizations of Sinclair’s investigative journalism work in the meat packing industry and the nascent workers rights movement respectively. Oil! was very loosely adapted into the film There Will Be Blood (the film covers maybe the first 3-4 chapters by greatly expanding upon the material
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Hatchet by Gary Paulsen was a very impactful book for me as a child. It’s a YA novel, but still worth a read. The main character Brian survives a plane crash in the Canadian wilderness and is forced to find a way to survive on his own
A few more recent novels that I enjoyed:
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Prophet Song by Paul Lynch. Won the 2024 Booker Prize (best English language novel) about an authoritarian government taking power in Ireland and how that unfolds from the perspective of a mother with young children. It’s a hard read, but very well written
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Our Share of Night by Mariana Enriquez. Translated into English. A friend described it as “sexy witches in South America deal with authoritarian rule.” And that’s pretty close…
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Same Bed Different Dreams by Ed Park. A semi-fictionalized history of the Korean Peninsula and the desire to have a unified identity. Many people come to the peninsula (same bed) with very different goals for its use (different dreams). Really fascinating book and engaging
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Tomorrow, and Tomorrow and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin. Follows a trio of friends as they explore the world of video game design. Starts in the early 80s and runs through the 2000s. Reminder me very much of the show Halt and Catch Fire.
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My Friends by Hisham Matar. Follows a Libyan immigrant living in England in the 80s through 2010s as he wrestles with his identity, his homeland, his friends and family. Khaled’s closest friends serve as foils to his own feelings, reacting to the same circumstances very differently from himself
The only McCarthy book at my library was The Passenger. The librarian told me I was brave and that last time she checked out a McCarthy book, she needed therapy.
Absolutely not what you recommended but I’m in for a treat.
The Passenger is mild… but only half the story. You want to read the companion novel Stella Maris too
Some of his books are fucked up. The Road and Blood Meridian are stomach turning, gut-wrenching explorations of the awful side of humans.
All the Pretty Horses is: young man likes horses. Moves to Mexico to work on a ranch. Young man falls in love with woman. Hijinks. horses. Done
Ooh OK, good to know! I’ve read excerpts of The Road that made me cry from descriptions alone. I wasn’t wasn’t sure how his other works compare.
My friend is obsessed with The Road so I’m sure I’ll read it somewhere down the line. I’m just starting with what I can check out for free right now.
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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.
The best science fiction has to offer:
Metro 2033
Sphere
Jurassic Park
Roadside Picnic
Metamorphosis
Add from Stephen King:
Night Shift
4 Minutes to Midnight
(Both are novellas/story collections)
And also:
The Call of Cthulhu and other weird tales
I agree with more than one of these, but I would call out The Metamorphosis as one that everybody should read. You can appreciate it at any age (well, within reason–maybe not for the 8-year-olds), it’s dramatic and captivating, and it’s short.
I always try to recommend books of short stories to my friends who like to read but don’t have much time for it.
Michael Crichton in a list of “best sci-fi”? Really? He just does mass market pulp. It can be entertaining, in the same way a Transformers movie can, but it hardly qualifies as “best”.
Your “best of sf” doesn’t include many recognized classics. That’s weird. No LeGuin, no Bester?
Only classics? Geez. OP, forget my recommendations.
Correct answer:
https://www.esquire.com/entertainment/books/g39358054/best-sci-fi-books/
I’m a week late but I never specified classics! I kept my request vague for a reason, I’m looking for variety. :) So I appreciate the recs.
As far as good storytelling, some of my favs are:
- The count of monte cristo
- The arabian nights
- 100 years of solitude
- The silmarillion
- A confederacy of dunces
- The three musketeers
I have a very long ranked list, but there’s a few.
You know, I was on vacation and saw a newer translation of The Arabian Nights and pondered getting it for a REALLY long time before deciding not to spend all my money on the first day of my trip. Thank you for reminding me, gonna put it on my list!
No probs! I’m obsessed with adventure stories, and you can’t get much better than 1001 nights.
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
Enjoying a classic book is not pretentious. Conversely, gatekeeping what people think is a must-read is pretty pretentious.
Reading books which make you think is also not pretentious, and I get the idea that you sure think it is. There’s nothing wrong with light reading for fun, but some people enjoy more variety than that.
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.
