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Alice @beehaw.org

What books do you consider must reads?

So basically I was unschooled, and the amount of books I've read in my life is embarrassingly low. It was never emforced like in a school, and with my family's religious hangups, I never tried getting into new things because I never knew what would be deemed "offensive".

But I'm always interested when I hear people talk about both storycraft and also literary criticism, so I want to take an earnest stab at getting into books.

No real criteria, I don't know what I like so I can't tell you what I'm looking for, other than it needs to be in English or have an English translation. Just wanna know what y'all think would make good or important reading.

ETA holy shit thanks for all the suggestions! Definitely gonna make a list

ETA if I reply extremely late it's because it took me this long to get a library card in my new locale.

99 comments

  • Fahrenheit 451 is certainly worth a read. I read it late in life, and could see immediately why it's so often read in schools. Very well written, and a compelling story.

    Another book that you may find quite personally compelling is The Chrysalids by John Wyndham (Archive.org has a free audio book version), due to the themes it covers.

    • +1 for The Chrysalids .... read it on English class in high school and loved it

  • For literature I find 100 years of Solitude to be without equal. An absolute joy to read.

    For nonfiction I have learned so much from 1491. It was recommended to me by a friend though I have never heard of it elsewhere. The premise is that basically everything we think about Native Americans before Columbus arrived is wrong. I could go on but here is one tidbit: we tend to think of Native Americans as peoples without government. Now of course there are so many different groups of peoples all over the Americas and across so many eras it’s foolish to even think of them as being this way or that way because who and when are you referring to? But there were many types of government. In fact the Incas were total bureaucrats! Anyway I’m doing a poor job selling it i know but it’s a great read.

    For self-help try How to Win Friends and Influence People. I know the title sounds like it’s a guide to manipulation but it’s really not. It’s 100 years old but still holds up so well. Times change, but people don’t, you know what I mean? People 100 years later still appreciate it when you remember their name and look them in the eye and make time to listen.

    • May I ask, why did you like 100 years of solitude? Did you read it in Spanish or translated to another language? I read it in Spanish and can appreciate a lot of good things in it, but I always wonder how it feels like for people who don't have a latin/Spanish background. Perhaps you do, I don't know. Still curious!

  • No idea what your reading level is, but here are some of the suggestions I've made to customers recently:

    Harry Potter, if for no other reason than the cultural impact

    Ender's Game: children being taught to be elite military officers

    Small Gods: satirizes religion, religious institutions, etc. If you ever want to read Discworld, this is a very good starting point

    We Free Men: also Discworld, but YA-focused and about a girl who becomes a witch

    Lamb, the Gospel According to Biff, Christ's Childhood Pal: author imagines what Jesus and his BFF Biff were doing for those thirty years missing not recorded in the Bible.

    Kindred: a woman starts to travel back in time to the pre-Civil War South. She can't control it and she doesn't know why. Probably Butler's most accessible novel.

    A Canticle for Leibowitz: humanity nuked itself back to the early medieval period and this one holy order watches it rebuild. It's hard to describe this book in a satisfactory way without just summarizing it, but it's one of my favorites and I've read it multiple times

    The Giver: YA dystopian novel about a very structured society and the kid who is able to see through it. The sequels aren't too bad either

    The Hobbit: much easier to read than Lord of the Rings, but full of the same heroics plus dragons, dwarves and a clever hero

  • It depends on what you are looking for.

    Look at the classics, some can be a bit heavy. But there is generally a reason they are considered classic stories.

  • For nonfiction I would recommend books about media criticism and history. Manufacturing consent and The Jakarta Method, for example. These can help set you up for further reading. For media criticism, it will help you recognize when to keep reading about the people that journalists talk to and who they don't, why they are writing this article rather than that one, and identify others that take a media critical approach, as they are good people to read. For history, I think it is good to read widely and critically. We are not taught particularly thorough or accurate history in school. Much is left out or glossed over with selective narratives. For example, I was taught that the US Civil War was about states' rights, not slavery, because the text was from Texas and my teacher taught from the book. This was, of course, nonsense. A People's History of The United States is a pretty good way to start out if you want to start with US history. That might be better than The Jakarta Method, actually.

    For fiction, it really depends on what you enjoy! What kinds of stories or topics do you find most interesting?

  • I’ve always struggled to find a good book to read. I love having books read to me, but to pick one up myself has always been a struggle.

    So when I say I’ve love the Ascendance of a Bookworm series, know that this is one of maybe 2 or 3 series I actually read. It’s a fantasy story about one little girls dream of trying to read books in a world without books. The premise is silly on paper, but the world building and characters are so detailed and flushed out that I’ve gotten sucked in and read throughout the whole series multiple times.

    The novels just finished the main series with Part 5 Volume 12, there an anime of good to mixed quality, and a manga too. Tips for new readers is to watch the anime before reading as Part 1 is not as smooth as the rest.

    There is also a lemmy server for discussions !aoblightnovel@bookwormstory.social

99 comments