As 2016 draws to a close, share your recommended reads.
>Strong recommend - “Kubrick” - Michael Herr - “Hemingway in Love” - A.E Hochtner - “The Autobiography of Malcolm X” - Alex Haley - “When Breath Becomes Air” - Paul Kalanithi - “By Any Means Necessary” - Spike Lee
>Recommend - “Born Standing Up” - Steve Martin - “Art Life and the Other Thing” - Ashleigh Wilson - “Stanley Kubrick” - Vincent LoBrutto
>Don’t Recommend - “Popism” - Andy Warhol - “Essays in Love” - Alain De Botton
I'm on a non-fiction binge at the moment.
Owen Long
>Strongly recommended The Iliad, by Homer Blood Meridian, by Cormac McCarthy Journey to the End of the Night, by Louis-Ferdinand Céline Our Lady of the Flowers, by Jean Genet
>Recommend The Setting Sun, by Osamu Dazai The Elementary Particles, by Michel Houellebecq Augustus, by John Williams The Melancholy of Resistance, by László Krasznahorkai
>Don't recommend Imperial Bedrooms, by Bret Easton Ellis Marthe, by J-K. Huysmans
Nice year. Not very productive, but filled with good literary experiences.
Gavin Price
>The Iliad, by Homer
Wow you're a brave one
Mason Garcia
>Strong Recommend Virginia Woolf - Orlando Yukio Mishima - Temple of the Golden Pavilion William Gass - The Tunnel
>Recommend Phil Larkin - Jill Han Kang - The Vegetarian
>Don't Recommend Michel Houellebecq - The Elementary Particles Herman Hesse - Siddhartha
Evan Campbell
>Strong recommend Journey by Moonlight by Antal Szerb Skylark by Deszo Kosztolanyi The Tanners by Robert Walser The Robber by Robert Walser The Book of Ebenezer Le Page by G.B. Edwards
>Recommend Selected Poems, 1923-1958 by E.E. Cummings The Islandman by Tomas O'Crohan Men in Prison by Victor Serge Imperium by Ryszard Kapucinski How to Set a Fire and Why by Jesse Ball The Man Who Was Thursday by G.K Chesterton Maxims by Francois de La Rochefoucauld
>Do not recommend A Fraction of the Whole by Steve Toltz To Each His Own by Leonardo Sciascia One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
also mfw did not reach my goal of 40 books this year
Gavin Ortiz
Alright OP, I'll bite.
>Strongly Recommend Pale Fire - by Vladimir Nabokov Love in the Time of Cholera - by G.G. Marquez Impatience of the Heart (Beware of Pity) - by Stefan Zweig Fictions - by Jorge Luis Borges Notes from Underground - by Fyodor Dostoyevsky In Defense of Sanity: The Best Essays - by G.K. Chesterton How Green Was My Valley - by Richard Llewellyn A Temple of Texts - by William H. Gass
>Recommend A High Wind in Jamaica - by Richard Hughes Revolutionary Russia 1891 - 1991 - by Orlando Figes Invisible Man - by Ralph Ellison Antony and Cleopatra - by William Shakespeare Subtly Worded - by Teffi Jakob von Gunten - by Robert Walser
Pretty basic recommendations, but I very much enjoyed all of them.
Michael Hall
Strongly Recommend >Under the Volcano, Malcolm Lowry >As I Lay Dying, William Faulkner >To the Lighthouse, Virginia Woolf >Dispatches, Michael Herr >Republic, Plato >The Origins of the Political Order, Francis Fukuyama Recommend >A Clockwork Orange, Anthony Burgess >Dune, Frank Herbert >Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, Hunter S. Thompson >Naked Lunch, William S. Burroughs >The Quiet American, Graham Greene >Miss Lonelyhearts & The Day of the Locust, Nathanael West >SPQR, Mary Beard >A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms, George R. R. Martin Do Not Recommend >Anil’s Ghost, Michael Ondaatje >Dreams/Arteries, Phinder Dulai
Brandon Robinson
>Larkin Jill
how sexy and/or depressing is this out of 10? Because if it scores highly I want ot read it
Jace Nguyen
It's quite depressing. A rather flawed book, but it skirts by on premise and feels alone.
It's also quite interesting what it gets away with, and the themes of loneliness and reconstruction that it tackles, considering it came out in 1946.
Daniel Taylor
strong recommend
Skylark Journey to the End of the Night V Sabbath's Theater
Recommend Man's Fate The Easter Parade Lanark Love in a Dry Season A Brief History of 7 Killings To the Finland Station
Don't Recommend The Recognitions (fuck you Veeky Forums memesters) The Lime Twig (fuck you Veeky Forums memesters) Beneath the Wheel The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam The City of Dreadful Night This is the Ritual A Burnt Out Case Là-bas The Pigeon The Fall of Paris
Sebastian Brooks
>Strongly Recommend
My Ántonia, by Willa Cather Warlock, by Oakley Hall At Swim, Two Boys, by Jamie O'Neill
>Recommend
Butcher's Crossing, by John Williams We the Animals, by Justin Torres The Confusions of Young Törless, by Robert Musil
>Don't Recommend The Goldfinch, by Donna Tartt Who Killed Palomino Molero?, by Mario Vargas Llosa The Big Sleep, by Raymond Chandler
Nicholas Jones
How is it flawed? Just poorly written, no flow, etc? Because I'd heard of it months ago and thought it sounded like something that would resonate with me, even though more recently I've tried to stay away from writers as jaded as Larkin
Connor Parker
STILL TIME !
Jonathan Howard
Next I'm gonna read Speak, Memory by Nabokov and Just So Stories by Kipling.
I expect them to be really good.
Christopher Lee
>manga version of scarlet letter
Austin White
A bit poorly written, kind of waffles a bit. There are large sections where not much is happening. Larkin wrote it when he was 18 or something, so he hadn't yet refined his writing.
Christian Ward
I read the original a couple of years back. The manga version I read on a thread on /a/. It was actually pretty well done, and after reading it I wanted to read again Hawthorne's original, since in my first read I didn't like it, but that's because I was too young a reader to appreciate it.
That version was a light read and, as I said, pretty well done. And since I spent like an hour reading it and lurking that thread, I thought, what the hell, I'll just include it since I read the whole thing.
Easton Smith
Why didnt you like hundred years of solitude?
Parker Edwards
I was absolutely loving it until about half way through, when I started losing track of all the characters and what was happening in the story. I reached until about 3/4 through but I just couldn't do it anymore. I had no idea what was happening, I wasn't enjoying any of it, and the prose of so exhausting that I couldn't be bothered to finish it, no matter how good the ending might have been.
I don't think it's a bad book, I wouldn't have enjoyed the beginning so much otherwise. But I just couldn't get back into it at that point.
Samuel Harris
for you
Isaiah Moore
>Strongly Recommend Paradise Lost-Milton Infinite Jest-Wallace Blood Meridian-McCarthy The Republic-Plato The Sound and The Fury-Faulkner
>Recommend Gravity's Rainbow-Pynchon The Plague-Camus Wuthering Heights-Bronte Consider the Lobster-Wallace
>Don't Recommend The Pale King-Wallace The Stand-King
Pretty meme year but I'm new to Veeky Forums so pls no bully
Ryan Taylor
Ill stick to just literature for this, though I've read some incredible non-fiction as well:
>strong recomendation Oblomov -- Translated by Marian Schwartz Pride and Prejudice Stoner The Karamazov Brothers -- Avsey
>recommended Sense and sensibility Butcher's Crossing Falling Man
>not recommended Mother Night The Chrysalids White Noise
Aiden Hernandez
well meme'd, my friend
*tips fedora*
Jeremiah Ward
>Who Killed Palomino Molero?, by Mario Vargas Llosa
Why not?
Tyler Taylor
>Strongly Recommend >Skylark My boys
Kevin Parker
I think you're the first person I've seen to not recommend White Noise
Cameron Thomas
> Strong Recommend
- "Goedel, Escher, Bach" - Douglas Hofstader
>Recommend VALIS - Philip K Dick
>norecommend
"The Handmaids Tale" - Margaret Atwood
Joseph Flores
Fuck off pale king is great
Nicholas Morales
Slow start this year.
Strong Recommend ~Warlock - Oakley Hall
Recommend ~Beware of Pity - Stefan Zweig ~This is How You Lose Her - Junot Diaz
Nonrecommend ~Whatever - Michel Houellebecq
Carter Mitchell
>read this fucking book now Suttree Arcadia (Stoppard) And quiet flows the don >recommended This book will save your life Dark as the grave wherein my friend is laid Master and Margarita
Everything else was low level desu whanau
Julian Johnson
>Strongly The Greeks by the Greeks Holy Bibble by the LORD your God
>Mildly Hungry by Hanson Journey to the End of the Rainbow by Docteur Destouches The Heart of the Darkness by Josef Konrad Pilsudski The Death of Ivan Ilych, The Death of Hadji Murad, The Death of Anna Karenina by Count Maglev The Complete Poetry of Rudyard Kipling by the author himself The ABC of Reading by Ezequiel Reichsmark The Compete Poetry of W. B. Yeast Till I End My Song by Harry Bloom
>Not really Anything by Vila-Matas The Trouble with Being Me by Cioran Just So-So Stories by Itzak Dinesen
Brody Morgan
>Strong recommended - Adventures of Tom Sawyer - Mark Twain - Death of Ivan Iliych and Other Stories (Oxford) - Tolstoy - Mythology - Edith Hamilton - To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee - The Sound of Waves - Mishima
>Recommended - Seize the Day - Saul Bellow - The Quiet American - Graham Greene - On the Road - Jack Kerouac - The Postman Always Rings Twice - James Cain - Sailor Who Fell from Grace with the Sea - Mishima - The Trial - Kafka
>Do not recommended - A Farewell to Arms - Hemingway - The Road - Cormac McCarthy - Pride and Prejudice - Austen - Storm of Steel - Ernst Junger - Cat's Cradle - Vonnegut
Christian Smith
Strongly recommended:
Mysteries - Hamsun Hunger - Hamsun Pan - Hamsun Growth of the Soil - Hamsun Havoc - Tom Kristensen Lucky-Per - Henrik Pontoppidan King Lear - Shakespeare Troilus and Cressida - Shakespeare Much Ado about Nothing - Shakespeare Hero of Our Time - Lermontov
Recommended
My Struggle - Knausgård (book 2, 5 and 6 are the best, 1 is very good, 3 and 4 are lackluster) The Kreutzer Sonata - Tolstoy Sketches from Sevastopol - Tolstoy The Fall of the King - Jensen The Inspector - Gogol Victoria - Hamsun Dreamers - Hamsun
Not recommended:
The Red Pony - Steinbeck Betwixt and Between - Camus Miss Marie Grubbe - Jacobsen
Caleb Flores
I also think it's worthless garbage.
Isaiah Rivera
Here's the list of what I read this year >would recommend, fantastic works The Great Heresies by Hilaire Belloc Everything That Rises Must Converge by Flannery O'Connor The Gulag Archipelago, 1918-1956 by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn A History of Philosophy Vol 1 by Frederick Charles Copleston A History of Philosophy 2 by Frederick Charles Copleston On Blue's Waters by Gene Wolfe Kiku's Prayer by Shūsaku Endō The Gulag Archipelago, 1918-1956 by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn The Servile State by Hilaire Belloc The Gulag Archipelago, 1918-1956 by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn The Complete Stories by Flannery O'Connor Whose Justice? Which Rationality? by Alasdair MacIntyre The Road to Serfdom by Friedrich Hayek God, Philosophy, Universities by Alasdair MacIntyre An Essay On the Development of Christian Doctrine by John Henry Newman Behold the Pierced One by Pope Benedict XVI Silence by Shūsaku Endō Return to the Whorl by Gene Wolfe The Categories by Aristotle After Virtue by Alasdair MacIntyre Innocents Aboard by Gene Wolfe Locke by Edward Feser Utopia by Thomas More Waiting for Godot by Samuel Beckett The Human Condition by Hannah Arendt Titus Groan by Mervyn Peake Heart of a Dog by Mikhail Bulgakov The End of the Affair by Graham Greene Heretics by G.K. Chesterton In Green's Jungles by Gene Wolfe Dubliners by James Joyce Philosophy of Mind by Edward Feser Resurrection by Leo Tolstoy A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man by James Joyce Aquinas by Edward Feser The Prince by Niccolò Machiavelli The Man Who Was Thursday by G.K. Chesterton How to Run a Country by Marcus Tullius Cicero The Dying Earth by Jack Vance The Jews by Hilaire Belloc Endgame by Samuel Beckett Napolean Of Notting Hill by G.K. Chesterton Dead Souls by Nikolai Gogol Selections from the Writings of Cicero by Marcus Tullius Cicero
Brayden Lewis
cont. >pretty good, but for this or that reason were not amazing, or are simply entertaining This Immortal by Roger Zelazny The Weird of the White Wolf by Michael Moorcock The Spiritual Doctrine Of Father Louis Lallemant Galactic Pot-Healer by Philip K. Dick Nine Princes in Amber by Roger Zelazny The Quiet American by Graham Greene The Tasks of Philosophy, Volume 1 by Alasdair MacIntyre Ethics by Peter Kreeft Meditations by Marcus Aurelius The Short Stories of G.K. Chesterton The Hand of Oberon by Roger Zelazny The Courts of Chaos by Roger Zelazny The Phoenix Exultant by John C. Wright Sign of the Unicorn by Roger Zelazny The Iron Dragon's Daughter by Michael Swanwick The Land Across by Gene Wolfe The Platonic Tradition by Peter Kreeft Elric of Melniboné by Michael Moorcock The Dispossessed by Ursula K. Le Guin The Jack Vance Treasury by Jack Vance The Dialectics of Secularization by Pope Benedict XVI Stormbringer by Michael Moorcock Considerations on France by Joseph de Maistre Aristotle on Method and Metaphysics by Edward Feser Cratylus by Plato The Philosophy of Thomas Aquinas by Peter Kreeft The Vanishing Tower by Michael Moorcock The Word for World is Forest by Ursula K. Le Guin The Heart of the Matter by Graham Greene The Death of Ivan Ilych by Leo Tolstoy A Wizard of Earthsea by Ursula K. Le Guin The Fathers by Pope Benedict XVI Interior Castle by Teresa of Ávila Crito by Plato Storm of Steel by Ernst Jünger The Golden Age by John C. Wright The French Revolution by Hilaire Belloc The Aeneid by Virgil >mediocrety or trash, depending on the work The Unbearable Lightness of Being by Milan Kundera Sabriel by Garth Nix Beyond Good and Evil by Friedrich Nietzsche The Conservative Mind by Russell Kirk Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson The Sailor on the Seas of Fate by Michael Moorcock The Golden Transcendence by John C. Wright Many Religions One Covenant by Pope Benedict XVI The Guns of Avalon by Roger Zelazny Starship Troopers by Robert A. Heinlein The Blade Itself by Joe Abercrombie
Jordan James
There didn't seem to me much to it. Just an average crime story. I was expecting a bit more thematically, but there was only some half-hearted race stuff.
I do plan on checking out some of his more acclaimed work.
Brandon Rivera
How many times did you read Gulag Archipeligo?
Camden Garcia
Once, it's 3 volumes.
Owen Phillips
Hungarian lit is the best lit
Grayson Lewis
I was busy making art and not being Veeky Forums no bully
>recommended Infinite Jest Pale King 1984 Master and Margarita Portrait of The Artist
>Sure go ahead and read it Arcadia Love in the Time of Cholera The Stranger Slaughterhouse Five
Ayden Powell
Raising this city
Ryder Reyes
Why did you have trouble remember the characters? I've seen this as a common criticism but it's one I never understand. There are multiple characters with very similar names but they never really seem to exist within the book at the same time.
>whanau Kia ora bro
>Adventures of Tom Sawyer - Mark Twain I read it recently. I wasn't expecting much form it but I really liked it. I found it funny when these moments that removed from the larger context could have been mistaken for Faulkner. Sadly I didn't find any moments like that in Huck Finn.
>Strongly Recommend Gaddis - Agapē agape Inoue - The Counterfiter and other Stories Marquez - One Hundred Years of Solitude Pushkin - The Complete Prose Works
>Recommend Hemingway - Death in the Afternoon
>Why did I read this? Le Guin - Left Hand of Darkness Wallace - Infinite Jest
Logan Johnson
>>read Dear Life - Munro The Pillowman - M. McDonagh The Lt. Of Inishmire - M. McDonagh Married Life - Tessa Hadley Beverly - Nick Drnaso Julius Caesar Midsummer R & J Othello Sunstroke and Other Stories - Hadley Howards End* - EM Forster Everything Ravaged, Everything Burned - W. Tower Midair - Frank Conroy Killing and Dying - Adrian Tomine The scripts for the promotional videos for Overwatch There’s Something I Want You to Do - Charles Baxter Where I’m Calling From* - Raymond Carver
>>garbage Emerald City* - J. Egan Aerograms* - Tania James Carbide Tipped Pens* Fates and Furies* - L. Groff Delicate Edible Birds* - L. Groff A Doubter’s Almanac* - Canin Redeployment - Phil Klay O. Henry Prize Stories 2015* Women with Men - Richard Ford The Brink - Austin Bunn Microserfs* - Coupland Oblivion - DFW Fortune Smiles - Adam Johnson
Easton Stewart
>strong recommendation Kawamata Chiaki - Death Sentences Don Delillo - White Noise Roland Barthes - Writing Degree Zero Theodor Adorno - Minima Moralia Dashiell Hammett - Red Harvest
>recommended Haruki Murakami - Hard-Boiled Wonderland Gary Snyder - Mountains and Rivers Without End Joan Didion - The White Album Chuck Klosterman - But what if we're wrong?
>not recommended Joe Hill - Heart-Shaped Box China Mieville - Perdido Street Station Tim Harford - Undercover Economics
Ethan Gonzalez
What was wrong with Microserfs? I got that ready in my stack to read
Michael Adams
I'd like to bump this, if only because being able to read people's recommendations and spot things I've either liked or disliked in their lists has been a brilliant indication of what I might like to read in the future.
Logan Robinson
>Strong rec Moby-Dick World as Will and Representation by Ol' Shopey Everything by Marx & Engels Marxism and Philosophy by Antonio Labriola Everything by Luxemburg Everything pre-1910 by Karl Kautsky Everything by Lenin Lenin: A Study in the Unity of His Thought by György Lukács Everything by Amadeo Bordiga Everything by Onorato Damen The Birth of Fascist Ideology by Zeev Sternhell
>Rec Phenomenology of Spirit by Heggle Reflections on Violence by Georges Sorel The Crowd by Gustave Le Bon Lenin as Philosopher by Anton Pannekoek On the Foundations of Leninism by Joseph Stalin On Practise by Mao Zedong
>Shit An Enquiry Concerning Political Justice by William Godwin What is Property by Pierre-Joseph Proudhon Everything else by Anton Pannekoek The Preconditions of Socialism by Eduard Bernstein Everything by Trotsky Everything by Neetshee Revolt of the Masses by Jose Ortega y Gasset
Been busy this year.
Grayson Ortiz
Cool that you read this much and all but why the fuck did you bother typing all that out?
Jason Harris
Copy paste from goodreads mate. My autism does not go so deep.
Ethan Moore
Bloat. It was an 11000-word essay on employee culture padded into a novel. Ymmv, I thought Gen X was fun but similarly anti-novelistic