Good books to read?

[The_Hawk]

Hey everyone, I am trying to start reading a lot more, so if anyone has any good recommendations for me, it would help. Haha, there's so many books out there, I don't know where to start. ALthough, I am trying to start with a lot of the classics. Anyway, I could use some recommendations if y'all would be so kind. Books that make you think, open your mind, etc.

 

[chicago]

When I hear "classics" I think of anything older that is described as "classic", though I took a class titled "Classic Literature" once and it was all ancient Greek and Roman stuff like The Aeneid and The Odyssey (both were pretty good, but dense reading to say the least.) Not sure what you're looking for, but here are some I like:

My favorite has to be Crime And Punishment by Dostoevsky. Surprisingly, despite its length and reputation, it was a pretty easy read and once it got going, it kept my interest well through to the end. My only critique is that the entire book is over 3 days and then the epilogue rushes through a span of a decade. Though, I think this is because the book was originally a series of short pieces published periodically in some newspaper. I guess when they went bust or got bought out or whatever, Dostoevsky had to wrap it up quickly.

Other recommendations: anything by Mark Twain, Edgar Allen Poe, or Shakespeare. The Alice in Wonderland and Wizard of Oz books are good as well.

Almost all classic works can be found for free online, especially if you have a Nook, Kindle, tablet, or smart phone. You can download 'em from the Google Books app or whatever.

 

[milagros317]

1984 and Animal Farm by George Orwell are old enough to be called classics now. 😀

 

[IrvingKrebb]

Anything by Kurt Vonnegut, he's got a pretty broad appeal. It depends on what interests you. Orwell will definitely open your mind, so will Howard Zinn, Noam Chomsky, and Bertrand Russell - those guys are heavy. Howard Zinn's People's History of the United States is a real eye opener and a good intro to other honest historians. The big boys - Hemingway, F. Scott, and Cormac Mccarthy - him being probably the greatest living author on the planet right now.

 

[Bohemianne]

- Books of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

- "The Art of War" by Sun Tzu

- "The Prince" by Machiavelli

- Books of Og Mandino, if you want inspiration

- If you want to fly, try the books of Richard Bach

- If you seem to forget your life's meaning and want to see a track, read Napoleon Hill

- Already mentioned above, but if you want to simulate being alive 6-feet-under or see true melancholy, read anything from Edgar Allan Poe - I love the stories BTW.

- If you want a loooooong love story -omg- (stubborn and ironic overtones on conversation) and war, and you want to see which part the movie has been sabotaged from the book, read "Gone with the Wind" by Margaret Mitchell. - I read the book when I was in high school. (Are you crazy? I'll just watch the movie if I were you!!!)

- Maybe you can also read some from Erich Danicken, if you want to have further skepticism.

and so on and so forth...

 

[The_Hawk]

George Orwell is great! Read 1984, fantastic. Ill probably read everything else y'all suggested too, thanks! Haha, I am working on Lord of The Flies right now. Maybe I'll read Animal Farm, To Kill A Mockingbird, or The Catcher and the Rye after that... who knows?

 

[WorkInProgress]

I'm currently reading Bruce Courtenay's novel The Power of One, about a young white boy's adventures in South Africa during World War II.

I also hear there's an interesting new book coming out about Coxey's Army (1894 protest march of the unemployed demanding public works jobs building roads); I forget who it's by.

 

[Realist]

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo series is really, really good. Gone Girl is a fantastic read.

 

[Cosmo_ac]

If you want to read the classics, I would recommend the bible, if you haven't already. All religion aside, many of the English classics were inspired or influenced by the bible. Works such as Dante's Inferno or Paradise Lost, obviously, but also other ones such as Moby Dick, Frankenstein, works by James Joyce, and many more I can't recall off the top of my head. To be honest, I've recently picked up the bible and have begun to read it again, though I'm using a website which allows me to read the Kings James Version side by side the New International Version, which helps clarify things.

 

[chicago]

The entire Divine Comedy is worth a read.

 

[kopfhorer]

I don't think you can go wrong with Kurt Vonnegut.

As for nonfiction, I recently listened to the audiobook version of Life, Keith Richards' autobio (read by the author!).

 

[knicks255]

A lot of really old books that you could call the most "classical" ones are available on Project Gutenberg, which I'll link here:
http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/search/?sort_order=downloads

Personal recommendations?

The standard "High School Lit Class" pack:

-The Great Gatsby
-One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest
-To Kill A Mockingbird

More modern stuff:

-The Lovely Bones
-The Hunger Games trilogy
-V for Vendetta (I don't typically like graphic novels/comics/other names for this, but it's a really good read.)

 

[BrightEyes1082]

I am currently reading Habibi by Craig Thompson. It
is a graphic novel that has captivated me with both
the story and the art. I recently finished Man's Search
For Meaning by Viktor Frankl, which was also stellar
and even a little life-changing.

 

[Mitchell]

The Great Gatsby by F Scott Fitzgerald is considered a classic. I read it when I was 18, in HS., It's a very good book.

 

[Dactylicious]

A Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole is currently my all time favorite, until I read something better. 😀

Other reads that I like:

Catch-22 by Joseph Heller
Lost Horizon by James Hilton
20,000 Leagues Under the Sea by Jules Verne
The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck
A Separate Peace by John Knowles
Misery by Stephen King
The Chamber by John Grisham
Deliverance by James Dickey (yes, it was a book first, and of course goes slightly more in-depth than the film).

There are more out there, of course, but those in particular had an impact on me

 

[Bohemianne]

A Separate Peace by John Knowles

I love this book. Something is haunting about it. Can't forget Phineas.

Then, because of this book, it made me use the name "Gene" in some of my tickling fiction...

 

[sman9000]

1984 by George Orwell

 

[Wildtime]

Philip K. Dick is an acquired taste in terms of writing style, but his underlying themes are always thought provoking.

Jack London is a personal favorite of mine, but if you're sick of the snow and cold this winter you might want to postpone reading his stuff 'til the summer.

Robert E. Howard, H.P. Lovecraft and Edgar Allen Poe satisfies my dark side. Although dismissed as pulp fiction, there truly is an imaginative vein in all of their writing.

Finally, Tolkein's Hobbit and Lord of the Rings are epic.

 

[tcklft]

Here's a few I like

Novels:

The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald
We Have Always Lived in the Castle/The Haunting of Hill House - Shirley Jackson
The Big Laugh/Appointment in Samarra - John O'Hara
Haroun and the Sea of Stories - Salman Rushdie
Peace - Gene Wolfe
Miss Lonelyhearts/The Day of the Locust - Nathaniel West
Grendel - John Gardner
Waiting for the Barbarians - J.M. Coetzee
Wide Sargasso Sea - Jean Rhys
Song of Solomon - Toni Morrison

For crime fiction, anything by Jim Thompson or Charles Willeford

Short fiction:
The Complete Stories - Bernard Malamud
The Lottery and Other Stories - Shirley Jackson

Autobiography:
This Boy's Life/In Pharoah's Army - Tobias Wolff
Boyhood/Youth/Summertime - J.M. Coetzee


I've never read the book, but the audiobook of Nabokov's Lolita, read by Jeremy Irons, is terrific.

 

[Bizkit]

- "The Art of War" by Sun Tzu

Great book! I love the quote ''All warfare is based on deception'', beacause it's so true. In that mindset.

 

[Bizkit]

The entire Divine Comedy is worth a read.

Good stuff! One of my favorite quotes of all-time was from ''Purgatory'', I think....LOL. It went something like...''The more you learn, the more you hate the waste of time''.

 

[piyr]

I like W. Somerset Maugham. My favorite is the Razor's Edge. He seems to view life and the human condition with a sort of realistic pessimism and an appreciation of simplicity. You may want to skip it if it's not your thing. He wrote a lot of short stories if you want to sample first.

 

[Tickleslave83]

I agree with the majority of choices that people have recommended such as Kurt Vonnegut and George Orwell, but I will recommend some books that probably no one else has even heard of. Recently I read two great and fairly short books called The Razor Wire Pubic Hair and Ass Goblins of Auschwitz. It is really no way to explain what they are about, but you can tell from the titles that they are certainly unique.

 

[wolfman40]

Could I recommend God is a bullet by Boston Teran.

I got it as a gift years ago, great stuff.

Some early Mo Hayder, Birdman, the Treatment, really dark and gripping stuff, set in rather grimy South London where I grew up

David Peace, although his style may not appeal to all

 

[Vanillaphant]

'The Penguin and the Vacuum Cleaner' by Carolyn Sloan. Been a while since I read it... But if I remember correctly, it's about a penguin's attempts to operate a vacuum cleaner.

Notable themes: penguins; vacuum cleaners; penguins with vacuum cleaners