Literature

A chain of voices - Andre Brink

Cosmos - Carl Sagan

The name of the rose - Umberto Eco (so much better than the movie)

A prayer for Owen Meany - John Irving

I used to read a lot when I was younger. Now I'm down to max two books per year. I miss it.

The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy. It's the first in a trilogy of six books. I haven't read the last book but I would recommend reading 1 to 5.

The radio series and audiobooks are all worth a listen as well. There is a version narrated by Douglas Adams himself and another narrated by Stephen Fry and Martin Freeman. Both are great.

One of my favourite quotes from the Hitchhikers:

“You know,” said Arthur, “it’s at times like this, when I’m trapped in a Vogon airlock with a man from Betelgeuse, and about to die of asphyxiation in deep space that I really wish I’d listened to what my mother told me when I was young.” “Why, what did she tell you?” “I don’t know, I didn’t listen.”

I also love this quote from the fourth instalment of the series So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish:

The storm had now definitely abated, and what thunder there was now grumbled over more distant hills, like a man saying “And another thing…” twenty minutes after admitting he’s lost the argument.

The whole series is worth a read. You're bound to laugh over and over reading them.

Contact by Carl Sagan

Recently:

• The Three Body Problem series by Cixin Liu is devestatingly good. It's a vast, prescient science fiction series that'll make you feel existential dread toward physics. It's great.

• The Children of Time series by Adrian Tchaikovsky is another fantastic science fiction series. The most compelling first person view into truly alien minds I've read.

• Everything Terry Pratchett ever wrote is worth reading.

Lord of the Rings just about saved my life in high school. Possession by A.S. Byatt. Foucault’s Pendulum by Umberto Eco. Oryx and Crake by Margaret Atwood, though I’ve yet to read the sequels. Atonement by Ian McEwan. Just about anything by Geoff Ryman, Ali Smith, José Saramago, or Sheri Holman.

In no particular order,

• Kurt Vonnegut, Cat's Cradle
• Albert Camus, The Stranger
• J.D. Salinger, Franny and Zooey
• David Foster Wallace, Brief Interviews With Hideous Men
• Milan Kundera, The Unbearable Lightness of Being
• Haruki Murakami, 1Q84

I can't pick a single title for Camus or Vonnegut, but those two respective titles are near the top.

motorcycle diaries by che guevara

i don't necessarily think it is a masterpiece, and i'm aware che is quite the controversial character, but the book struck all the right cords for me. adventure and history are some of my favorite themes, which was an immediate plus, but what had me hooked were the encounters with common folk. can't quite put into words why, frankly.

• the colour purple by Alice walker
• the seven husbands of Evelyn Hugo by Taylor Jenkins Reid

I'm a sucker for books that have the main character fight so hard for who they are and who they want to be. To see their transformation and growth into the people they stand proud as at the end of the day? 🥺

And yes the MCs are both queer!

(Feel free to drop a reply/pm to rec books like this!)

Definately project hail mary by Any Weir

I'm not a big reader these days but back in the 90's I was. The ones that really stuck with me and have been reread once or twice.

Ghost Story by Peter Straub

Consider Phlebas by Iain M Banks

Only Forward by Michael Marshall Smith

Far too many to list but some of my favourites are -

The Belgariad series by David Eddings
The Magician series by Raymond E Feist
Captain Corelli's Mandolin by Louis de Bernières
Pretty much anything written by Dan Abnett, Terry Pratchett and R.A. Salvatore

Lord of Light, Roger Zelazny. Brilliant, prescient, and genuinely a great work of literature all at once. The story of Rild, the telling of the metaphor about fire, so much else, it's been all these years and I'm still quoting it.

Bridge of Birds, Barry Hughart. When my will to go on falters, this is one of the books I turn to for comfort. It's beautifully written, it's hilarious, and it just makes me feel better.

Callahan's Crosstime Saloon, Spider Robinson. I genuinely have handed this book to a troubled young person and had them find a better understanding of the human condition between its covers. I didn't expect that, I thought I was sharing a cool book with them that was something I'd found influenced how I am, but it happened. It's kind of a big deal. It's also actually a lot of fun to read, it's just a collection of short science fiction stories set in a bar, right? ...right?

Why I Left Harry's All-Night Hamburgers, Lawrence Watt-Evans; Watt-Evans is largely a moderately obscure (as far as I can tell) fantasy author. I love the rest of his work because it's much more human than a lot of fantasy, with people who are bumbling and desperately trying to handle bizarre problems they're ill-equipped for and sometimes making their problems worse than they dreamed and also there are wizards. (I also like some of his worldbuilding choices, but let's get on with this). This one short story (that won a Hugo and stuff), though, lives rent-free in my head forever; it's got a simple point, which is that the world we're actually in has a lot of cool stuff, go enjoy it, but it makes it in a very fun way and, well, okay, enough, I love it.

Calvin and Hobbes. All of it. Bill Watterson is a visionary genius.

I can go on, I haven't mentioned Douglas Adams or Sandman or Transmetropolitan or fnord or ten thousand other things, but I have other things to do and should content myself with finite length.

On mobile, too tired to write but... So many... But I honestly think Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy is as close to the perfect book as I can imagine (for me!). Also, Kafka for me is like the Final Boss, once you go through him, everything else pales in comparison

Neuromancer is still a solid favorite.

EDIT: Forgot to add, now that I wandered over to my little bookshelf, I have quite a bit of Raymond Benson's work. Along with the Metal Gear Solid novel adaptations.

The Archive of Alternate Endings by Lindsey Drager is my absolute favorite.

honorable mentions:

• Slumberland by Pauly Beatty
• A Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut Kafka on the Shore by Haruki Murakami The Thought Gang by Tibor Fischer The Things They Carried by Tim O'Brien The Cider House Rules by John Irving-

The Wheel of Time by Robert Jordan and Brandon Sanderson

I'm probably gonna be an odd one out here with a cleaning book, but I really, really like K.C Davis's "How to Keep House While Drowning" book about cleaning your house while mentally unwell and not considering yourself a moral failure for the state your house is in.

I think it's the one that had the most amount of positive benefits to my life. It turns out having a positive influence in the form of a book that tries to encourage you take things one step at a time, a book that even admits it doesn't know everything either---well, it's more beneficial than my real life acquaintances and family who opted for the shame method.

World War Z

I loved the His Dark Materials trilogy by Philip Pullman. Read it as a kid and every time I go back to reread my beat up copies it is a joy.

The Wooden Sea (Crane's View, #3) by Jonathan Carroll

• I suggest jumping into this novel blind and do not ask questions, just go with the flow

Dragonriders of Pern Series by Anne McCaffrey

• Self explanatory

I really didn't read much for a bunch of my life. Now that I'm out of school I'm finally trying to read a bunch of stuff. I recently did all the cosmere stuff so I guess for now I'd have to say stormlight, and war breaker. Just love those books a lot. I'm sure my opinions will change as I keep reading a bunch though

• The Alchemist
• Jonathan Livingston Seagull

Right now only these come to my mind:

• The Three Body Problem trilogy by Liu Cixin - I am on part two and can't stop reading, it is already joining my favourite books, whole-heartedly recommended. They are sci-fi books. :)
• "Rumo" and "The 13 1⁄2 Lives of Captain Bluebear" by Walter Moers (read in German but available in English), wonderful fantasy books, extremely creative and well written.

In no particular order:

The Flowers of Evil by Charles Baudelaire
A Season in Hell by Arthur Rimbaud
Romance of the Three Kingdoms by Luo Guanzhong
Six Records of a Floating Life by Shen Fu
The Red Night Trilogy of William S. Burroughs (Cities of the Red Night, The Place of Dead Roads, The Western Lands)
On the Road: The Original Scroll by Jack Kerouac
Book of Haikus by Jack Kerouac
The Stranger by Albert Camus
The Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka
The Idiot by Fyodor Dostoevsky
Notes from Underground by Fyodor Dostoevsky
After Dark by Haruki Murakami
The Unbearable Lightness of Being by Milan Kundera
Girl, Interrupted by Susanna Kaysen
One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest by Ken Kesey
Please Kill Me: The Uncensored Oral History of Punk by Legs McNeil and Gillian McCain

a few of importance to me:

One Hundred Years of Solitude

Guards! Guards!

Piranesi

The Scar

The Dune series. Especially books 1 and 4 left such a deep impression on me. Hard to put into words. Haven't experienced something similar yet.

Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance can be a difficult read at times, but is honestly incredible.

If you like having things to ponder and think on, it’s unforgettable

So, for me, the cliche answer is Lord of the Rings. But another book that I've always really loved, is East by Edith Pattou. It's a very simple fantasy story, but I read it when I was much younger and it's always just felt very comfy and cozy whenever I read it.

John Dies At the End series.

It is hilarious, dark, and gets a little nasty sometimes (not necessarily in a sexual way).

Jason Pargin used to be the cheif editor at Cracked, so that energy does pop in and out. What he is really great at is showing profound empathy despite the choas. He is not just a good writer, you can tell he is also a very good person.

Futuristic Violence and Fancy Suits is also awesome.