Can we get an /easybutgreat/

A Confederacy of Dunces
Anything Vonnegut
Catch 22
On the Road
Dharma Bums
Borges' short stories
The Old Man and the Sea
Babbit
Narcissus and Goldmund

Your mom.

If you're going to go Vonnegut, go Sirens of Titan, Galápagos, or God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater.

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If you're going to go Hesse, go Narcissus and Goldmund like # suggested.

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If you're going to go Heller, go Picture This.
I'll second Babbitt, though.

I'll add:
Any of the extant Greek plays (I particularly like Euripides' The Bacchae and Sophocles' Philoctetes)
Steinbeck's Travels with Charley
Kafka's Amerika
Poe's short stories (personal favorites are The Masque of the Red Death and The Fall of the House of Usher; The Sphinx would be a good rec for the purposes of this thread, too)
Ken Kesey's One Flew over the Cuckoo's Nest
Ivan Turgenev's Torrents of Spring
O. Henry's short stories (personal favorites are Last Leaf, While the Auto Waits, and The Cop and the Anthem
Tennessee William's The Glass Menagerie
Kaufman and Hart's The Man Who Came to Dinner

I just finished Perfume by Patrick Suskind. Short lil read with great prose, right up your alley OP.

>tfw /easybutgreat/ is all you read

A Hero of Our Time

Someone please post the starter kit. I don't have it because I'm not on my home computer right now.

OP I am curious: are you new to Veeky Forums? If so, did you come here through the new banner ad? You're welcome here so long as you actually start reading and have discussions.

If these are easybutgreat what about hardbutgreat?

No Joyce, DFW or Pynchon pls.

I'm quite enjoying The Prince by Machiavelli, but the syntax is like wading through lead soup.

Eh, "about nothing" is pretty disingenuous. Personally I really like Fitzgerald's prose and even though the story is simple it's told very effectively. The book is the perfect length, not a wasted sentence. I think it's achieved the status it has because it's short and relatively "easy", which leads to it being widespread taught in schools which leads to kind of a self-sustaining cycle of praise. That being said, I do think it's very good and deserves most of the praise it gets.

Knausgaard

ask the dust

pic not related?

The Master of Go

The Quiet American
Catcher in the Rye
Treasure Island
Fight Club
Animal Farm

Could get through any of these reasonably quick, I'd say.

>Travels with Charley
I chose to do my high school research paper on this, and it is quite possibly the comfiest book I have ever read. Minus making the South look bad at the very end.

Never seen any online discussion of God Bless You, Mr Rosewater. I read it when I was a hyper-depressed year 11 in high school. I kinda just wanted to kill myself. I read GBY,MR and I fucking loved it, I think it sort of changed my perspective on what "being a good person" meant, and I sort of simultaneously considered the intersect between "being a good person" and being happy, and the book was a really interesting exploration of that.

It's been a long while since then and I haven't read it since so I don't really remember the plot besides in broad strokes, but I remember how it made me feel-- optimistic at a time when thinking about my future was nigh-impossible

I'd recommend it

Stoner is the ultimate easy but great. One sitter quitter, reaaasonably paced.

Smooth as banana cake, goes down like 30 year old Bourbon. Hardly even realize you are reading, akin to time travel except the past and the future remain the same, the only thing that changes is the blood. The wind'll hit ya different

...

which translation? Apparently there's a newer one by Ann Slater; seems to be the only english version on library genesis

imgur.com/a/bXqZN

Hadji Murad, too. short and sweet Tolstoy.

Steppenwolf
The Stranger
Five Women (Musil)
Invisible Cities
Of Mice and Men

Douglas Adams is an easy read. They're also great books that happen to be about absurdism.

Breakfast of Champions.

Gaddis (though his difficulty is greatly exaggerated by most reviewers/critics)
Gass
Hawkes
McElroy
Barth

Just to list a few.

The last Vonnegut I read was Player Piano and it kinda sucked. I've read Slaughterhouse five and Sirens of Titan before which were better. Currently reading Mother Night which is ok but still feels kitschy in that usual way all of his books have so far.

The Stranger is the king of this sub-set. Can read it in an afternoon, but it's still brilliant

Are Camoo's other books worth reading? I found The Stranger entertaining enough.

Vonnegut, you gotta admit, is at least good in not writing cringily sentiments and jokes that should be cringey.

What other writer can get away with writing, "I think I am trying to make my head as empty as it was when I was born onto this damaged planet fifty years ago"?

...

Stoner
East of Eden
Grapes of Wrath
To Kill A Mockingbird
Watership Down
Sun Also Rises
Cannery Row
Dubliners

>it's still brilliant
why do people really believe this? the guy, if he was so damn scared of dying, could have easily lied and say he accepts god and got off. but no, the dumbass thinks pride is greater than living a lie. but wait, there is no meaning to life. so who fucking cares. if camus came out and said he was just too pussy to kill himself, i would agree. i could appreciate the guy for that. but the idea that you cant give in to the absurd because the absurd wins, even though the absurd doesnt mean shit, is just stupid. and also, camus loved sports, team sports for that matter. the guy is overrated

Please no

this is a wonderful thread but I'd like to thank
especially. got lots to look forward to.

and just in case you guys are wondering, I already have an extensive "to read" list, I just wanted a few to turn to in case I feel like my reading is boring me or tiring me out. Cheers.

>if he was so damn scared of dying
That's the point. He never was. Mersault's whole character was defined by not playing along with the trivialities of life imposed by society. He didn't actively want to die, but whether he lived or died didn't matter. You're supposed to be deeply distressed by your mother's death. You're supposed to care about right or wrong. You're supposed to believe in God. You're supposed to do everything you can to survive. He doesn't because none of it matters to him as opposed to most people who don't think about why you're told to act a certain way or believe certain things but still do because everyone else does. He's not a particularly deep thinker or anything, it just doesn't matter to him.

Player Piano was his first and he obviously hadn't found his voice yet.

>post in a thread about easy books
>misunderstand the book entirely
wew lad

Yeah but lots of people don't feel distressed when a parent dies if they weren't close to them. They may think they should care which can cause an unrest, but even Mersault wrestled with this fact.

I have mixed feelings about The Stranger. While I want to say the read was like the looking at a depressed, boring high schooler's twitter feed but it was still interesting in some ways. I think people read way too much into the book which has given it this status I don't believe it deserves. I feel like if I sat down and wrote out my thoughts about my day without attaching any feelings to them, it'd turn out the same way....minus the shooting. Speaking of which, that's my biggest problem with the book. It just seems like a ridiculous way to jumpstart the book after it started to reach mass staleness. So he *SPOILER* shoots a guy just because the sun was in his eyes and was pissing him off? That's retarded. Even more retarded is the constant foreshadowing Camus does about Mersault's relationship with the sun. Every other paragraph is "I was at mama's funeral and the sun beat down on me" or "I was swimming with Marie and the sun was shining on our tanned backs". Nigga should just wear shades and carry an umbrella.

It's about the emptiness of not only the American dream, but what it means to define yourself in your short and doomed life

Read Cat's Cradle

Read The Myth of Sysiphus.

>Nigga should just wear shades and carry an umbrella.
That's some goodreads-tier rhetoric

It's honestly a bit shit.

>We must imagine Sisyphus happy

Why?

Grahm Greene is probably the best recommendation for this request. But I think Power and Glory is a better choice.
While we are at it, Shusaku Endo's Silence is also superb.

The little prince

Cat's Cradle is shit

No it is not

yeah it is
>read Slaughter-house V
>it's great
>read almost universal acclaim for cat's cradle
>it's shit
prove me wrong

The Key by Tanazaki is easy but also really subtle. One of my favorites.

anything by graham greene

Thomas Mann

I remember reading most of the prince forever ago and being absolutely astounded by its simplicity

you think like a rampaging autist