Name one book that's just really fun

[Anonymous No.22776800]

fuck intellectual bullshit. fuck classics. what's a book that's just a casual fun read?

[Anonymous No.22776810]

>>22776800
Unfortunate events
Disc World series

[Anonymous No.22776812]

>>22776800
naked lunch

[Anonymous No.22776814]

100 Years of Solitude
Don Quixote
The Odyssey

[Anonymous No.22776817]

>>22776812

welcome to interzone

[Anonymous No.22776833]

Snow Crash

[Anonymous No.22776838]

>>22776833
If you ignore all the stuff about language and the Tower of Babel

[Anonymous No.22776852]

>>22776800
Jurassic Park, luv me comfy 90's technothrillers

[Anonymous No.22776854]

>>22776800
once & future king

[Anonymous No.22776858]

>>22776852
Just got with Crichton in general, shits fun as hell.

[Anonymous No.22776861]

>>22776800
True Grit

[Anonymous No.22776867]

>>22776800
count of monte Cristo

[Anonymous No.22776879]

>>22776833
I couldn't get into this book. His prose threw me off.

[Anonymous No.22776884]

>>22776879
it's overhyped

[Anonymous No.22776889]

no

[Anonymous No.22776912]

>>22776852
this

[Anonymous No.22776924]

>>22776800
I find most good books fun because i enjoy books but I'll go ahead and say The Stars My Destination

[Anonymous No.22776943]

>>22776800
Golden Ass

Audio book even better

[Anonymous No.22777008]

>>22776800
The Infinite and the Divine

[Anonymous No.22777014]

>>22776814
This nigga just HAD to post classics to show how fuckin smart he is

[Anonymous No.22777021]

>>22776800
asoiaf

[Anonymous No.22777027]

house of chains

[Anonymous No.22777029]

>>22776800
Conan

[Anonymous No.22777038]

>>22776800
Master and Margarita.

[Anonymous No.22777048]

>>22776800
Just read airport thrillers if all you want is goofy fast plot delivered in prose form.

[Anonymous No.22777052]

>>22776800
>>22777014
False dichotomy, classics are fun. Archilochus, Simondes of Amorgos, Hipponax, and Aristophanes are all 1000x more fun than whatever bourgeois fake mass-produced pseudo-comedy you have been memed into consuming. Epic and tragedy are 1000x more exciting than shitty Hollywood action pseudo-heroism.

Classics =/= dry, rationalistic philosophy, don't let /lit/ distort your view.

[Anonymous No.22777066]

>>22776800
Stranger in a Strange Land

[Anonymous No.22777095]

>>22777052
This nigga just had to throw a word salad out to show how fuckin smart he is

[Anonymous No.22777114]

>>22777095
Ok anon. You don't have to have real fun if you don't want to, keep slurping up that slop, those carcinogens sure are yummy. And keep making posts on the literature board about how you TOTALLY don't care about being perceived as smart, everyone believes you.

[Anonymous No.22777119]

>>22776800
Scorpius Rex by William Burke

[Anonymous No.22777153]

>>22777114
Im just shitposting guy. There are fun classics, I love Dostoevsky for instance and I think crime and punishment is a lot of fun. But slop really hits the spot sometimes and if you can't appreciate some dumb fun, then I think you are misunderstanding the purpose of reading and are taking the hobby, and yourself too seriously. Unless you're also shitposting, then good b8 m8

[Anonymous No.22777183]

>>22777153
Yeah alright I'm pretty autistic about this, sorry. But what I'm saying is true, if you are able to step outside yourself a little bit and understand a different cultural context, the most ancient classics have the very best "dumb fun" of anything you'll ever encounter. Dick jokes, sex jokes, poopoo peepee jokes, gay jokes, making fun of people for being peasants, getting drunk and feasting; and on the dramatic side there's fights between superhuman heroes, magic powers, fights with giant fantasy monsters. All coupled with descriptions of beautiful nature and religious festivities, and the most straightforward, powerful expressions of feeling.

I'm aware the part about trying to enjoy something that's not part of your own culture is pretty autistic and unnatural though, if you don't have 'tism powers it probably won't work.

[Anonymous No.22777196]

dungeon crawler carl (audiobook)

[Anonymous No.22777418]

>>22776800
Anything Hunter S. Thompson wrote

[Anonymous No.22777442]

>>22776867
I listened to the audiobook with accents and all for extra fun. The scene where the chick’s chad arabian dad goes out in an absolute blaze of glory with the floor collapsing underneath him is so fucking kino lmao.

[Anonymous No.22777449]

>>22776800
goosebumps beast from the east or one day at Horrorland

[Anonymous No.22777462]

[Anonymous No.22777470]

Gravity's Rainbow

[Anonymous No.22777489]

>>22776800
The Autobiography of Benvenuto Cellini
Trust me on this one, page after page of insane exploits.

[Anonymous No.22777553]

Zorba the Greek

[Anonymous No.22777573]

Pickwick Papers

[Anonymous No.22778225]

>>22776800
If on a winter's night a traveller

[Anonymous No.22778248]

[Anonymous No.22778253]

>>22776800

[Anonymous No.22778277]

>>22776800
Any highly rated young adult sci-fi, science or horror book is gonna fit that bill.

[Anonymous No.22778409]

This one. I laughed out loud on each page. It's over-the-top detective writing with crazy maximally-unrealistic science fiction with a very young style for a 73 year old man, and it makes it look like the easiest thing in the world to write a captivating story in a completely different style.

The ideas in the novel are not deep or philosophical, they are writer ideas that make you smile, because you think "Why doesn't everyone write like this?"

It's also relatively short, you can read it in one sitting.

[Anonymous No.22778447]

>>22777489
I wouldn't call it fun exactly, but it's definitely nuts. Good example of a total narcissist from a previous century.

[Anonymous No.22778479]

[Anonymous No.22778487]

>>22776814
>autism
>>22777052
>more autism

[Anonymous No.22778490]

>>22778409
bukowski's both overrated and underrated, imo. he's horribly horribly overrated by grimy wannabes who don't read anything else and he's underrated by twentysomething theory types who know who Deleuze is. I remember reading Portions from a Wine-Stained Notebook and being pleasantly surprised. taut, clean prose. you just need to read him spread out, he gets repetitive after a bit. almost all his poetry fucking sucks though

[Anonymous No.22778664]

>>22777014
Being fair it’s not really an attempted flex on my part but I really just think they’re fun classics. The Odyssey is fun as hell if you’ve never read it before and I think Don Quixote speaks for itself on the lightheartedness aspect. 100 Years of Solitude isn’t even really a classic yet.

[Anonymous No.22778710]

>>22776810
>Unfortunate events
100%

Also Battle Royale

[Anonymous No.22778732]

>>22776800
>Verification not required

[Anonymous No.22778764]

>>22776800
Confederacy or Dunces.

[Anonymous No.22778846]

>>22778253
op just asked for a fun read. not for the greatest novel of our time.

[Anonymous No.22778856]

>>22776800
I read Fleming’s Casino Royale once and enjoyed it. Didn’t really feel the need to continue with Dr No though.

[Anonymous No.22778959]

>>22778487
>waaaaaaaahhhh I don't wanna understand anything outside of my cultural context even though that context is pure garbage mediated by 10 different levels of artificial ideological technological faggotry
You are richly deserving of the content you consume. I'm literally offering examples of pure, absurd, ridiculous, joyful fun in its most undiluted form.

To give an answer more in the spirit of the question (not for you, faggot, just because OP was a good sport earlier): I don't really read solely "for fun" anymore because the internet is just too convenient as a first option when I want to turn my brain off. So I'd just have to give something from when I was a kid, like I imagine Captain Bluebear by Walter Moers (someone posted about it recently) would hold up well for an adult. I liked the Warriors series a lot because it made me feel funny in my peepee when there was romantic tension between two of the cats. That's about all I can remember, I read a lot but most of the stuff that wasn't totally YA-tier was comics. Honorable mention to Percy Jackson for helping me start with the Greeks.

There were also these (British I think?) books about kids that were away somewhere for the summer, like an island or wetlands or someplace where they would go boating and have adventures - that might actually have only been in one of the books in the series, but that's what I remember. Not much to go on but if it rings any bells for someone, I'd love to find those again.

And along with my original suggestion, I'll add that medieval stuff like Chaucer's Miller's Tale or Reeve's Tale is absolutely great. Rabelais is supposed to be in the same vein, I haven't read him though.

[Anonymous No.22778969]

>>22778959
Ok actually I thought of another one: my parents had a ton of books of comedy columns by Dave Barry lying around and I read those a bunch of times, I was way too young to really know wtf he was on about but maybe those would be fun.

[Anonymous No.22778972]

>>22778959
Here. Have the Merchants Tale adaptation.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JAPEraW6Aok

This film was what got me interested in Chaucer.

[Anonymous No.22779013]

>>22776800

[Anonymous No.22779016]

>>22778972
>This film was what got me interested in Chaucer.
That’s cool, I really hope it can do the same for others as well.

It genuinely makes me sad how much great stuff from the past people end up missing because they have been fed totally wrongheaded ideas about how inaccessible it is. I don’t think it takes much more than a base level of sentience to be able to step slightly outside your comfort zone in order to become acquainted with something which can *then* become a seamless, effortless pleasure for the rest of the experience.

[Anonymous No.22779072]

>>22776800
My book

[Anonymous No.22779108]

>>22777462
seconding


>a fucking hand!

[Anonymous No.22779126]

>>22776800
disco elysium

[Anonymous No.22779258]

>>22779072
So, your diary, which you thought is a tragedy but is actually a comedy?

[Anonymous No.22779266]

[Anonymous No.22779454]

>>22777052
>false dichotomy
You're actually a pseud, you know that, right? The term doesn't even fucking apply here.

[Anonymous No.22780134]

Murder on the Orient Express

[Anonymous No.22780162]

>>22779454
>Fuck classics. what's a book that's just a casual fun read?
Implied that books are either a part of the group called classics or a part of the group considered fun. This is a false dichotomy. Sorry if thats too "smart" for you.

[Anonymous No.22780169]

>>22776800
Just play video games

[Anonymous No.22780332]

>>22776800
Anything by Tao Lin prior to Trip
Especialy Eeeee Eeeee Eeeee

[Anonymous No.22780684]

>>22776800
the gun seller by hugh laurie

[Anonymous No.22780696]

>>22778409
By far his worst book…

[Anonymous No.22780791]

>>22776800
Choose Your Own Adventure #22 Space Patrol

[Anonymous No.22780797]

>>22778959
I think you should report yourself.
Do the right thing.

[Anonymous No.22780852]

>>22780684
>59
sexo

[Anonymous No.22780853]

>>22776800
This one is very entertaining and weird

[Anonymous No.22781027]

>>22776814
>>22777052
Fuck you. You're the reason why people can't have discussion on things you disingenuous fuck.

[Anonymous No.22781072]

>>22777183

You seem like a cool guy, and I agree with you.

[Anonymous No.22781160]

>>22780853
Is this based on the Ugaritic Ba'al cycle or something else? It's sad that we don't have any Phoenician texts (and highly ironic considering their innovations in writing), that would be pretty huge in understanding the pre-Jewish Canaanite culture.

>>22781072
Thanks anon. I admit I could've phrased my initial post a little more nicely, I was speaking in 100% good faith though, anyone who's read the authors I mentioned will be able to recognize that.
Cool chart, plenty of overlap with my own sensibilities although I'm not a particular fan of any dogma. Hopkins, Flaubert, Baudelaire, and Pound are interesting picks all of which I personally love.

>>22780162
Don't bother, even if it was technically right, pedantry doesn't deserve a serious response.

>>22781027
>>22780797
>>22779454
Um... rude?!?

[Anonymous No.22781220]

>>22781160
It has the Baal text and others

[Anonymous No.22781242]

>>22781220
Ok, cool. I've glanced at an online version of the text and it's obviously quite fragmentary at least at the beginning - if they do a good job of filling in the blanks with context/educated guesses, that sounds awesome, thank you for sharing it.

[Anonymous No.22781253]

>>22776814
midwits seething

[Anonymous No.22781967]

>>22780162
>Implied that books are either a part of the group called classics or a part of the group considered fun
No, inferred. You inferred that from his comment.
>This is a false dichotomy
Not in and of itself.
>Sorry if thats too "smart" for you.
This is solid evidence of your intent behind sharing these books that others, too, have picked up on.

Unless you are supremely autistic or have never read anything but the classics, then you would know that there are, objectively, more light and entertaining books than even the most whimsical classic. This is a matter of language, primarily. You were not raised speaking Ancient Greek, nor antiquated English translating Ancient Greek. No person finds such a thing "casual" nor especially "fun" unless you desire escapism so much that you would prefer not to hear modern English, which is cemented by:

>more fun than whatever bourgeois fake mass-produced pseudo-comedy you have been memed into consuming
>than shitty Hollywood action pseudo-heroism

Not only have you failed to identify a false dichotomy, but with the above you have fallen into presenting one.

You also named three. You were asked for one but instead named three - all classics, as if it is a point of pride. You then dropped the term you have been fucking WAITING to use, likely learned from memes considering the stances you take and how you express them (Reject the false dichotomy, embrace the third position), and stated some opinions without actually providing a reason for them.

One must infer from such banal and childish sophistry that you either have never read them, or have such a joyless life that playing literary connoisseur on the internet is succour to you.

The Odyssey, by no metric, is a "casual" read. You just wanted to sound like something better than you are and, in the process, sounded like a faggot.

This was a fun writing exercise. Please give me more.

[Anonymous No.22782089]

>>22781967
I'll state right off the bat that the initial two recommendation posts were by two different people, myself being the second, and the guy who replied to you was a third person. As I said above I'm not going to engage with your pedantry. What I will respond to is this:
>objectively, more light and entertaining books
Agreed, as I acknowledged above, but *only* because of cultural/era differences. The "classics", if your definition of classic is "anything written more than X years in the past", were absolutely not all super serious in their original intent, and the ones I mentioned were the exact opposite. I, along with everyone else raised in our current cultural environment, once had that misconception, but it is in fact a misconception, and one that bothers me whenever I see it because it reminds me of how many different paths I had to go down before being able to discover/appreciate some of the things I now dearly love. So I was addressing a pet peeve of mine that was closely related to the question, not necessarily answering the question itself. I answered the question a while later, and I really have nothing against people having fun or consuming trashy media, that part was just me reacting in annoyance; it just makes me sad that they aren't able to make an actually informed choice.
The other thing I said above, which is that once you get past that initial barrier it becomes something you can engage with relatively casually, is also true to an extent, so it could perhaps still function as an answer to the question, albeit at a slight remove.
>nor antiquated English translating Ancient Greek
I'll take issue with this, because there are plenty of new translations of most major classics, and the minor "classics" (e.g. Archilochus and Hipponax) exist almost exclusively in new translations, because they were only recently rediscovered. However they're fragmentary so that's a big point against them on the count of approachability.
I think you're operating on a narrow definition of "fun" though, something can be more fun or exciting by virtue of being exotic in some way, but I'm aware that wasn't really the type of fun OP was specifically asking for.
>you have fallen into presenting one
True, there's plenty of stuff published commercially that still has lots of heart, I was being overly rhetorical.
>unless you desire escapism so much that you would prefer not to hear modern English
Tbf I've heard this sort of sentiment expressed here many times but again, not the OP's intent, and it wasn't really what I was going for either.
>the term you have been fucking WAITING to use,
Lol, believe it or not the phrase "false dichotomy" holds no romance for my cynical, hardened heart. However, I'm not entirely innocent on that count: if I were presented with the opportunity to disdainfully refer to a work as "post-Sumerian", with the implication that it's all been downhill since then, I would gleefully avail myself of it.

[Anonymous No.22782120]

>>22778479
This is something I never really had any interest in getting into SOLELY because of how much Reddit energy it gives off. I'm not even a fag who obsesses over Reddit but something about Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy is supremely Reddit.

[Anonymous No.22782124]

>>22780684
>2 memeshit litshill books in the first two rows
Great way of telling me this shit doesn't matter right off the bat.

[Anonymous No.22782186]

>>22776800
Decided to read Twilight for the first time... I liked the movie when it first came out, what can I say? But then I saw this version was released, so I read it instead. Honestly? Way better than I thought it'd be, and I totally get it now. I really understand now. Holy fugg. Need me some emo goth vampireussy NOW

[Anonymous No.22782215]

I like Delicious Tacos.
It's just so easy to read his stuff.

[Anonymous No.22782253]

>>22776800
Goosebumps series. Nothing can go wrong with 90s horror and creative plots

[Anonymous No.22782259]

/lit/ is the most pretentious community on the Internet.

[Anonymous No.22782280]

>>22782259
I’m unsure if op/ you would consider it a classic or not but Beau Geste is a fun genre book I have been meaning to read. I never got around to it but it is a fun story. It would be a decent answer for someone asking about fun action books.

[Anonymous No.22782283]

The pre-Disney Star Wars books. They hit just the right nostalgia buttons for me. For a few hours I feel like I’m ten again.

[Anonymous No.22782297]

>>22776800
Anything Murakami is kino.

Dude is also a complete degenerate and it filters normies.

[Anonymous No.22782320]

>>22782089
NTA but just chiming in to call you a faggot. Since you deserve it

[Anonymous No.22782329]

>>22782297
Is this a constant across Japanese writers? I read Osamu Dazai and he also is a pervert, with no regard for women past their condition of warm holes to put your dick in or extract money from.

[Anonymous No.22782446]

>>22782253
Do you have a particular favorite? I haven't read these since elementary school but the nostalgia goes hard with these.

[Anonymous No.22782714]

>>22782320
"If you open your mouth, I'll shut it with shit."

[Anonymous No.22782717]

Normal People

[Anonymous No.22782733]

>>22776800
valis

[Anonymous No.22782764]

>>22782446
Not that anon but the early ones like say "cheese and die" and "welcome to dead house", and then I remember "Werewolf Skin" being good out of nowhere (its one of the later ones)

[Anonymous No.22782775]

>>22782253
>>22782764
The only one I remember reading is “The Blob That Ate Everyone”. I was too much of a pussy for horror. Remember “Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark”? They had those at my school for some ungodly reason, that shit was nightmare fuel.

[Anonymous No.22783122]

>>22780684
rolling bells, rolling bells,
rolling all the way

[Anonymous No.22783388]

>>22776814
>100 Years of Solitude
>casual fun
bro please
it contains heaps of navelgazing. i mean i liked it but it's not "fun", even the sex is stifling rather than passionate

[Anonymous No.22783394]

>>22777052
based and true

[Anonymous No.22783507]

>>22776943
Is the narrator jonathan keeble?

[Anonymous No.22783519]

>>22776800
Christopher Moore, Elmore Leonard

[Anonymous No.22783526]

>>22776800
I'm reading breakfast of champions by Vonnegut rn and loving it, could not name a book filled with more pure retarded fun.

Confederacy of dunces too very fun book

[Anonymous No.22783554]

>>22781967
A reader infers what a writer implies my man. I don't know what to tell you. I already made 2 recs that are not classics. My understanding of what OP was looking for has no baring on your inability to spot false dichotomies.

[Anonymous No.22783588]

>>22776867
The Count of Monte Cristo is honestly an incredible novel. If a novel is just supposed to be a good story, then that book is one of the best ever.

[Anonymous No.22784293]

Vonnegut

[Anonymous No.22784441]

>>22778248
>divorced
Shocked. SHOCKED I SAY

[Anonymous No.22784451]

>>22778253
This

[Anonymous No.22784480]

>>22782120
How dare you compare it to Reddit.

No seriously: I only read the first book and i stopped halfway through cause it was just way too absurd. It's like being sober at a party and listening to all the drunk people. All funny until some guy tries to pinch your nipples and you're like "No papa, not my nipples again" and then he punches you and tells you what a miserable son you are. After that you drive home, cry and heat up some pasta cause you were too lazy to cook sonething actually good.
Then your daddy knocks at your door and screams at you to open the door but now you're frightened and you dont wanna open the door. Now out of nowhere a spaceship with some weird dude with two heads teleports you into the next galaxy and you're dead.

The book is like that

[Anonymous No.22784564]

>>22776800
Electric kool aid acid test wolfe

[Anonymous No.22784592]

>>22776800
Cirque Du Freak

[Anonymous No.22785983]

>>22776800
Slapstick by Vonnegut

[Anonymous No.22786001]

>>22781027
>>22783388
>tfw I was being 100% earnest and not trying to be pretentious at all

[Anonymous No.22786022]

>>22782297
Way overrated for some reason but he's a lot of fun.

>>22782329
Pretty much. They love sex and hate women.

[Anonymous No.22786110]

>>22776879
>>22776884
It's a lot better written than Neuromancer, at the very least. Gibson is the most overhyped tard in scifi.

[Anonymous No.22786174]

>>22776814
Two outta three ain't bad, anon.

>100 Years of Solitude.
But when you pick bad, you go all out. Gack.

[Anonymous No.22786598]

>>22786022
>They love sex and hate women.
based

[Anonymous No.22786729]

>>22776800
my personal choice. although you can read deep into it you don't have too in order to enjoy it, it also has some of the best action of any book I have ever read.

[Anonymous No.22787292]

>>22782259
It's not pretentious enough. Suck my big toe (and eat my shorts), DORK!

[Anonymous No.22787362]

>>22777066
It was a better Iron Maiden song than a book

[Anonymous No.22787451]

The Good Soldier Svejk is hilarious
Gargantua and Pantagruel as well
Anything by Celine

[Anonymous No.22787493]

>>22778846
It will never be finished…. You have no idea if it’s the greatest or not.

[Anonymous No.22787619]

>>22776800
most of John Fante books are actually funny. Hunter S Thompson have some good moments

[Anonymous No.22787709]

>>22776800
The hobbit. It is pure comfy fun

[Anonymous No.22787762]

>>22776858
>>22776852
Greetings fellow Crichton chads

OP you should also try the Flashman series