3 ms·

Any personal recommendations for a starter or favorites (perhaps top three or five or something like that)?

by AnonC 2y ago

okasaki 2y ago
Doris Lessing
stevoski 2y ago
Ernest Hemingway - starting with “The Old Man and the Sea”. After reading that, you’ll no longer think that Nobel Prize winners for literature write books that are difficult to read and understand.
- jgalt212 2y ago
  Most of Steinbeck is similarly approachable.
- otherme123 2y ago
  When someone ask for my favourite author my answer is Hemingway. Want to write better? Try to write like Hemingway. That said, people who read less tend to believe that more and bigger words equal better writting. My (usually scientific) texts are described as "telegraphic", and heavily expanded without adding any real content. E.g. "the house was white" gets transformed to "the paint that covered the beautiful house was pure white".
- bsenftner 2y ago
  I've never enjoyed Hemingway; his short sentences feel unnatural to me. I end up feeling like the narrative is trying, hard, to manipulate my feelings, to the degree that sense of being manipulated ends up being the loudest voice in my head as I try to read Hemingway. I've finished his books with only a memory of arguing with the prose the entire time.
matthew_stone 2y ago
Three Booker prize winners I’m particularly fond of: The God of Small Things - Arundhati Roy The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro Girl, Woman, Other - Bernardine Evaristo Pachinko by Min Jin Lee is another recent literary favorite
- atulatul 2y ago
  I haven't read Evaristo but I will add Salman Rushdie to your list. Particularly, Midnight's Children.
  - matthew_stone 2y ago
    I bounced off Midnight’s Children the first time I tried to read it, but that was probably 10 or 15 years ago now. I’m in between books at the moment, so your comment will push me to put it on the top of my list for the new year :) Girl, Woman, Other is one of my overall favorites from the last few years. Th character work is phenomenal. Do try to read a hard copy, rather than on an ereader, if you can. The book uses punctuation and the layout of text on a page creatively, and I’m not sure how well that gets preserved in an ebook.
    - Lyngbakr 2y ago
      I've tried my damnedest, but simply cannot get into Rushdie. Given that Midnight's Children won the "Booker of Bookers", I thought that would be a great place to start. When I finished the book I turned it over in my hands wondering if I missed something or if I'm simply not smart enough to get Rushdie. I read a couple more of his books and the result was much the same, unfortunately.
      - tirumaraiselvan 2y ago
        Big Rushdie fan here. I used to think it could be because of a lack of cultural context especially for books like Midnights Children and Moors Last Sigh but now I also think that it could also be a matter of taste. Rushdie himself quotes Milan Kundera who said: "...that the novel descended from two parents, Samuel Richardson’s Clarissa and Laurence Sterne’s Tristram Shandy". The latter is a style of writing where all conventional rules of literature are broken, it's just wildly creative so to speak. Rushdie's Midnights Children and James Joyce's Ulysses fall into this category. If you want to see the other style of writing in Rushdie, I can suggest Shalimar The Clown or The Ground Beneath Her Feet. But these are nowhere near as grand as Midnights Children. In either category, a fair amount of interest in history helps to enjoy his books.
smodo 2y ago
Imre Kertesz - Fatelessness Easy to read but provides a profound understanding of the unique historical situation it describes. A famous and heartbreaking sentence: ‘(…) I would like to live a little bit longer in this beautiful concentration camp.’
bsenftner 2y ago
It's subtle in how it delivers it's brilliance: A Clockwork Orange. Warning: spoilers follow that do not diminish the knock out punch this work delivers: It's written in it's own language, a mixture of Russian and UK slang, which one cannot read at first. About 3 chapters in, the language clicks and then a good reader starts the book over from the beginning. It is a popular book due to the film, and the ultra violence depicted within, but it is also ground breaking philosophical literature because the main character is a hardened criminal and is the narrator, he spends the entire novel explaining his philosophy of life, which by the end of the novel you realize is the same philosophy of modern politics, and the UK edition of the novel ends with the entire novel being the story of a senior member of parliament's youth origin story. The fact that the novel is in a fictional language increases the reader's submersion in the story line, creating one of the most impactful novels I know. Another great read, much shorter, more like getting into a street brawl: Notes From The Underground by Dostoyevsky. Practically the creator of self critical essays, and often the first read for people interested in Existentialism. Anything from the "Beat Generation" authors, anything from Philip K Dick, anything from Herman Hesse.
- mariusor 2y ago
  If one gets into the books that invent their own dialect, the most dense I found was "Riddley Walker" by Hoban Russel. As a non native English reader it was very difficult to make progress, but once the understanding settles in, it's a pretty nice story. Also of note is Anathem, even though Stephenson's jargon is more accessible, I think, to Latin languages speakers.
nihzm 2y ago
Roughly sorted by thickness (for the editions I own), these are among my favourites and arguably a good starting point * Animal Farm - George Orwell * The Fall - Albert Camus * Flowers for Algernon - Daniel Keyes * One hundred years of solitude - Gabriel García Márquez * The Master and Margarita - Mikhail Bulgakov
- internet_points 2y ago
  Master and Margarita is wonderfully burlesque and beautiful, and not that thick ;-)

Any personal recommendations for a starter or favorites (perhaps top three or five or something like that)?

by AnonC 2y ago

Any personal recommendations for a starter or favorites (perhaps top three or five or something like that)?

okasaki 2y ago

Doris Lessing

stevoski 2y ago

Ernest Hemingway - starting with “The Old Man and the Sea”. After reading that, you’ll no longer think that Nobel Prize winners for literature write books that are difficult to read and understand.

jgalt212 2y ago
Most of Steinbeck is similarly approachable.
otherme123 2y ago
When someone ask for my favourite author my answer is Hemingway. Want to write better? Try to write like Hemingway. That said, people who read less tend to believe that more and bigger words equal better writting. My (usually scientific) texts are described as "telegraphic", and heavily expanded without adding any real content. E.g. "the house was white" gets transformed to "the paint that covered the beautiful house was pure white".
bsenftner 2y ago
I've never enjoyed Hemingway; his short sentences feel unnatural to me. I end up feeling like the narrative is trying, hard, to manipulate my feelings, to the degree that sense of being manipulated ends up being the loudest voice in my head as I try to read Hemingway. I've finished his books with only a memory of arguing with the prose the entire time.

matthew_stone 2y ago

Three Booker prize winners I’m particularly fond of: The God of Small Things - Arundhati Roy The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro Girl, Woman, Other - Bernardine Evaristo Pachinko by Min Jin Lee is another recent literary favorite

atulatul 2y ago
I haven't read Evaristo but I will add Salman Rushdie to your list. Particularly, Midnight's Children.
- matthew_stone 2y ago
  I bounced off Midnight’s Children the first time I tried to read it, but that was probably 10 or 15 years ago now. I’m in between books at the moment, so your comment will push me to put it on the top of my list for the new year :) Girl, Woman, Other is one of my overall favorites from the last few years. Th character work is phenomenal. Do try to read a hard copy, rather than on an ereader, if you can. The book uses punctuation and the layout of text on a page creatively, and I’m not sure how well that gets preserved in an ebook.
  - Lyngbakr 2y ago
    I've tried my damnedest, but simply cannot get into Rushdie. Given that Midnight's Children won the "Booker of Bookers", I thought that would be a great place to start. When I finished the book I turned it over in my hands wondering if I missed something or if I'm simply not smart enough to get Rushdie. I read a couple more of his books and the result was much the same, unfortunately.
    - tirumaraiselvan 2y ago
      Big Rushdie fan here. I used to think it could be because of a lack of cultural context especially for books like Midnights Children and Moors Last Sigh but now I also think that it could also be a matter of taste. Rushdie himself quotes Milan Kundera who said: "...that the novel descended from two parents, Samuel Richardson’s Clarissa and Laurence Sterne’s Tristram Shandy". The latter is a style of writing where all conventional rules of literature are broken, it's just wildly creative so to speak. Rushdie's Midnights Children and James Joyce's Ulysses fall into this category. If you want to see the other style of writing in Rushdie, I can suggest Shalimar The Clown or The Ground Beneath Her Feet. But these are nowhere near as grand as Midnights Children. In either category, a fair amount of interest in history helps to enjoy his books.

smodo 2y ago

Imre Kertesz - Fatelessness Easy to read but provides a profound understanding of the unique historical situation it describes. A famous and heartbreaking sentence: ‘(…) I would like to live a little bit longer in this beautiful concentration camp.’

bsenftner 2y ago

It's subtle in how it delivers it's brilliance: A Clockwork Orange. Warning: spoilers follow that do not diminish the knock out punch this work delivers: It's written in it's own language, a mixture of Russian and UK slang, which one cannot read at first. About 3 chapters in, the language clicks and then a good reader starts the book over from the beginning. It is a popular book due to the film, and the ultra violence depicted within, but it is also ground breaking philosophical literature because the main character is a hardened criminal and is the narrator, he spends the entire novel explaining his philosophy of life, which by the end of the novel you realize is the same philosophy of modern politics, and the UK edition of the novel ends with the entire novel being the story of a senior member of parliament's youth origin story. The fact that the novel is in a fictional language increases the reader's submersion in the story line, creating one of the most impactful novels I know. Another great read, much shorter, more like getting into a street brawl: Notes From The Underground by Dostoyevsky. Practically the creator of self critical essays, and often the first read for people interested in Existentialism. Anything from the "Beat Generation" authors, anything from Philip K Dick, anything from Herman Hesse.

mariusor 2y ago
If one gets into the books that invent their own dialect, the most dense I found was "Riddley Walker" by Hoban Russel. As a non native English reader it was very difficult to make progress, but once the understanding settles in, it's a pretty nice story. Also of note is Anathem, even though Stephenson's jargon is more accessible, I think, to Latin languages speakers.

nihzm 2y ago

Roughly sorted by thickness (for the editions I own), these are among my favourites and arguably a good starting point * Animal Farm - George Orwell * The Fall - Albert Camus * Flowers for Algernon - Daniel Keyes * One hundred years of solitude - Gabriel García Márquez * The Master and Margarita - Mikhail Bulgakov

internet_points 2y ago
Master and Margarita is wonderfully burlesque and beautiful, and not that thick ;-)