The Joys of Friendship

[Anonymous No.11156456]

Friend's recommended reading list. What does /lit/ think?

Part One:

My all-time favourite writer is Hermann Hesse. If you haven't delved, I recommend:
Siddhartha {short yet powerful; the best place to start}
Steppenwolf {my favourite novel}
The Glass Bead Game {from his later career, with all the maturity and wisdom that comes with that}
Also, a huge fan of T.S. Eliot. Not sure if e-books of poetry are hard to come by, but I'd recommend the following (in chronological order, so you get a sense of Eliot's various phases and stylistic development):
Prufrock and Other Observations {his first collection, and possibly my favourite--the first four poems are exemplary}
Poems (1920) {includes classics like "Gerontion", "The Hippopotamus", and "Whispers of Immortality"}
The Waste Land {goes without saying}
Ash Wednesday {the best example from his religiously-reawakened period}
Four Quartets {his final work of poetry, and probably his most complex and stunning work}
The Cocktail Party {his best play, in my opinion. Murder in the Cathedral and The Family Reunion are pretty excellent as well, but this one just resonates with me on a deeper level}
If you really want more Eliot, "The Hollow Men" isn't perfect but it's the source of his famous "Not with a bang but a whimper" line; and Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats (the source of Webber's musical) is a fun time. He also wrote a lot of excellent literary criticism, but my book of his essays was just a Selected Works, so I don't really know where to point you first.
If we're talking living writers, Milan Kundera is my perennial dream for the Nobel Prize. This time, I think your best approach is in order of quality:
The Unbearable Lightness of Being
Immortality
The Joke
Now, if you're in the mood for some contemporary/postmodern literature, hypertextual and fragmented, check out:
Ken Kesey, Sometimes a Great Notion {absolutely stunning, and miles more nuanced than Cuckoo's Nest. This is the story of the Oregon logging family I was briefly telling you about, where the stream-of-consciousness is frequently shifting between characters}
Thomas Pynchon, Gravity's Rainbow {I'm pretty sure you've already read this, but since I'm not certain, here it is}
Julio Cortázar, Hopscotch {the foremost Argentinian author, situated squarely between Borges and Bolaño. This is the novel you can read the first half of straight-through, or jump back and forth with the ancillary chapters that flesh out the story a bit more. I recommend doing the first method the first time you read though: it definitely makes the novel stronger. Also, Cortázar is an exemplary short story writer, so check out some of those while you're at it (he wrote the story that Antonioni's Blow-Up was adapted from)}
Mark Z. Danielewski, House of Leaves {the sort of work that invites you into its world; less a novel than an experience}

[Anonymous No.11156467]

>>11156456
Your friend sounds like a Hillary voting cuck and a psued

[Anonymous No.11156472]

Part Two:

Vladimir Nabokov, Pale Fire {I assume you've already read Lolita--if you haven't, it's gorgeous, so read that first--but Pale Fire is a much more daring concept. A 999-line poem by one character, followed by the hundred odd pages of exegesis by another character editing the work. It plays with you like few works I've ever experienced}
Roberto Bolaño, The Savage Detectives {while Part 5 of 2666 is in my opinion the greatest thing Bolaño ever wrote, as a whole, The Savage Detectives is a better book}
David Mitchell, Cloud Atlas {conceptually incredible, this is an incredibly fun book to read, but I still somehow feel like it wasn't able to fully achieve all its lofty goals. But every Mitchell is a pleasure to read--check out The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet if you want Japanese historical fiction, or my personal favourite of his works number9dream if you want to read him channeling Murakami}
Italo Calvino, If on a winter's night a traveller {Calvino's most famous work, though I still prefer the short story collection Cosmicomics I let Will borrow}
I know that this is already two years' worth of reading material, but just for future reference, let's get down the order I recommend tackling the Russian literary canon:
Fyodor Dostoevsky, Notes from Underground {a short work, yet highly philosophical and a great exposure to the basic ideas Russian writers like to grapple with}
Fyodor Dostoevsky, Crime and Punishment {a classic, and though it's not my favourite Dostoevsky, it's the one that I believe every human being should read. A great starting place to fall in love with Russian lit.}
Ivan Goncharov, Oblomov {perhaps my favourite Russian novel. It takes hundreds of pages for the main character to get out of bed and live his life, instead of just imagining all the things he'd like to do. And then when he does, it's quiet and sublime}
Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov {Dostoevsky's greatest work, without a doubt, but I'd never recommend anyone to start here. There's just too much going on, and it helps to have greater contextualisation. Okay okay, the event that kicks off the plot doesn't occur until 600 pages in, but it still has a lot going on!}
Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace {feels less like a novel and more like a cinematic experience, years before film was invented. Exemplary, but I'll never quite appreciate Tolstoy as much as Dostoevsky}
Finally, some philosophical novels beyond those by Hesse/Kundera I already discussed:
Rainer Maria Rilke, The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge {short, but it's affected me like few other works. A perfect insight into Man's existential worldview on the brink of modernity}
Thomas Mann, The Magic Mountain {again, a novel that steals you into its world. Full of ideas, and outside of time}
André Breton, Nadja {very possibly my favourite French novel, and the best execution of surrealism in a literary form that I've ever encountered}

[Anonymous No.11156476]

>>11156467
Friend irrevocably BTFO by BASED psuedposter
He can never recover

[Anonymous No.11156487]

Part Three:

Whew, what is that, like 30 works? When you need a break from that, here's a couple of light, enjoyable reads:
Philip K. Dick, A Scanner Darkly {even better than the film, which is the single greatest adaptation I've ever read/seen. If you want more Dick (heh-heh), Ubik and The Man in the High Castle are also near-perfect; avoid the lackluster-yet-famous Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?}
Alan Lightman, Einstein's Dreams {the concept of this short work is the various dreams Einstein has in the month leading up to his discovery of special relativity, each dream taking place in various realms where the laws of science operate differently. A beautiful summertime read}
Hunter S. Thompson, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas {even if you've already read it, it never gets old to re-read}
Kurt Vonnegut, Breakfast of Champions {not as good as Slaughterhouse-Five, but arguably funnier. Also check out Vonnegut's short story collection Welcome to the Monkey House. And I've never read the Sirens of Titan, but it's been recommended to me highly}
Michael Crichton, Jurassic Park {a book that will disappoint you greatly when you finish it, not because it was bad but because it was perfect and so much fun that you're disappointed it's over. Luckily, the sequel The Lost World is just as good as the first and way better than the second film, and if you're looking for more Crichton, Sphere is probably his third-best work. (I loved State of Fear when I was younger, as it reads like Dan Brown if Dan Brown was actually good, but I don't think I can accept its climate change denial and preposterous plot of "terrorists are manufacturing symptoms of climate change, so let's stop them from blowing a rift in the Antarctic ice sheet, etc. etc.)}
Arthur C. Clarke, Childhood's End {the book that inspired Led Zeppelin's cover to Houses of the Holy. Probably the single greatest sci-fi book I've ever read, though it's been a few years. Clarke's 2001: A Space Odyssey and 2010: Odyssey Two are close behind though}
Anthony Burgess, A Clockwork Orange {so good that I'm pretty sure everyone who loves Kubrick's film has never read it, because it will make you realise how piss-poor of an adaptation it is}
Anything by Haruki Murakami. Isn't it all the same? {In all seriousness, The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle is his most accomplished work, followed by his incredible nonfiction piece on the 1995 Tokyo Metro sarin attacks, but this is supposed to be the fun lighthearted reading section so we can't talk about that here. For characters and emotion, his relatively early work Norwegian Wood is actually his most mature. If you're looking for short stories, I recommend after the quake. Kafka on the Shore is pretty good, though similar to Wind-Up Bird and not quite as complex. And if you really want a lighthearted adventure that feels more akin to Journey to the Centre of the Earth or The Maltese Falcon, go for his early works like A Wild Sheep Chase}

[Anonymous No.11156493]

Part Four, the Finale You're Sure to Love:

Anyway, hope I'm not forgetting anything! Haha. (Shit: Beckett, Faulkner, Brecht, Joyce, Sartre, Strindberg...Aristophanes.) I guess I'm a terrible person to make literature recommendations, since I've read too much and so many feel like my babies, which makes it so damn hard to choose my favourite ones. This is far from comprehensive, but it should give you enough direction until you get tired of reading and cycle back to film ; )

[Anonymous No.11156507]

In the past few days, I've been reading through Crichton. I don't understand what I'm doing. I'm completing this list, and re-reading much of it, out of politeness. I'm sure he'll want to discuss much of it later. But so much of it is baby's first reading list with the occasional "oh, that's different" thrown in. I'm having trouble, /lit/.

[Anonymous No.11156514]

None of Eliot's plays is good, House of Leaves is trash, the rest of choices is not terrible but it's mostly go-to literature for european art hoes.

[Anonymous No.11156537]

>>11156514
He tends to idolize many European artists and speak of people as if their nationality is the primary component of their work and identity, so that's no surprise to me. I guess I expected more when I asked for recommendations. I'm finishing up Crichton now, and I'm not having fun at all.

[Anonymous No.11156547]

>>11156456
Very scattered. I genuinely don't understand people who recommend only Eliot as poetry.

[Anonymous No.11156564]

>>11156547
As far as I'm aware, he doesn't ever read poetry. I think he read Eliot when he was in university five or six years ago.