Themes

Which themes do you enjoy reading about?
Personally, I appreciate a lot when the author tries to discuss themes regarding death and dying, the passage of time, and feelings of isolation. If you can rec me books directly dealing with these themes, I'll be thrilled.

Atheism

What specifically about atheism?

You would love The Sound and the Fury if you haven't read it

The Death of Ivan Ilych
As I Lay Dying
The Book of Disquiet
One Hundred Years of Solitude
The Stranger
No Longer Human

My favorite theme is... okay, this might be a little weird, but non edgy moral ambiguity and odd behavior treated as... fine.

A huge theme I use in my own work is the normalization of behaviors and feelings that are considered negative, and the juxtaposition between beauty and "negative things" and disregarding the idea that "pretty" = "good". People feel shit and sometimes you just want to get drunk and get punched in the face and I refuse to be kinkshamed for it.

Wow, I'm fucking bad at explaining myself.

tl;dr: I like reading about people being morally ambiguous fucking weirdos without the plot focusing "fixing" them. No edgy pls.

I haven't read it, but was planning on it. Thanks

Of those, I've already read The Stranger and The Death of Ivan Ilyich, I'll definitely check the rest out.

I forgot to add Natsume Soseki's Kokoro and Nabokov's Invitation to a Beheading, both has the elements of isolation and death in it.

I understand you. Human beings need to vent. It`s natural of them, and I can see how someone getting in a fight is not to be seen as imoral in its essence. However, I do believe that repeating the same self-destructive behaviour is bad for the individual (my parents, for instance, drink alcohol every single day, and I can see the effects it has on them), So I don`t think someone using meth is a bad person, but I feel that, if it becomes a vice, it should be considered a "bad" thing. Not sure if that's what you meant.

As for the themes I've talked about in the OP, there were some books I believe people should read that deal with those themes specifically:
The Magic Mountain: it doesn't really delve into the death/dying aspects of turbeculosis, but the general atmosphere of the sanitarium, with death hidden in every corner and not shown to the characters, really resonates with our need to keep the dead and dying far away from us, in that we are usually not prepared to deal with these aspects of life. A major theme in the novel, much more than dying, is the passage of time, and Mann knows how to describe it. It made very anxious reading it, seeing how years pass as if nothing happenned and everything is the same. Also, living in the sanatorium also creates a feeling of isolation and alienation from society: in the novel, people who live up there in the mountains feel like they have a different live than those in the surface world. So yeah, it became one of my favourite novels of all time. And it deals with a whole lot more.

The Death of Ivan Ilyich is probably my favourite short story. The way Tolstoy deals with death is very unique, all the sufferings the character has to endure, how no one else sees all the pain he is in. It's a rather melancholic story and deeply touched me. Another one from Tolstoy, which I liked almost as much as the story of Ivan, was Master and Man. Also deals with death, and has feelings of isolation regarding being lost in a snowy night.

The Gospel According to Jesus Christ, especially the first third of the book, which deals more with Joseph, is an exceptional tale of feeling isolated, as he is plagued with terrible, horrible nightmares.

I truly reccomend all these stories I've wrote about.

Hmm, yeah, but that's not really what I meant.
I mean more like anger, pain, death, etc, are natural feelings and shouldn't be vilified. It's not about pursuing them, but about not being abnormal for accepting them as part of nature.

Best example I can think of off the top of my head is the day of the dead. It's celebrating death. In european and north american countries, that's something you'd never see, because it's our social prerogative to avoid thinking about death for as long as possible to the point that people in the process of agonizing death are denied assisted suicide even if they beg for it. Death isn't evil, it just is. So is pain, or wanting to hurt, or feeling sad.

Things like alcoholism fall under a different perview.