[bLue_oNioN]

Hi,

Well, it's been a while since I've picked up a book and I miss it, I was always an avid reader. I'm looking for a book that stimulates thought, something insightful wrapped in prose that is no more complex than it needs to be (e.g. nothing unnecessarily pretentious and flowery).

My two favorites books are Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy and The Radetzky March by Joseph Roth.

Other books/plays I thoroughly enjoyed:
Unbearable Lightness of Being by Milan Kundera
Equus by Peter Shaffer
The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald
Macbeth by William Shakespeare

Gatsby was appealing, but a little too simple, and much too short.

The two plays I mentioned above were masterpieces, I felt, but I'm more in the mood for a novel.

I'm thinking about picking up Immortality or The Book of Laughter and Forgetting, both my Kundera, but have not yet decided because there were ideas in Being that I didn't agree with -- I'm not looking for a book where I'll likely find myself disagreeing, I'm looking for a book that give me a new perspective on the world.

Something most similar to Anna or Radetzky would be best =)

Thank you!

 

[Tyson]

Dostoevsky's "The Idiot", particularly the new Pevear translation.

 

[saturnine]

I'm currently reading The Torture Garden by Octave Mirbeau. Its a bit strange so far, but has some excellent quotes and interesting thoughts about humanities fixation on suffering and death.

Favorite quote yet from the book:

You're obliged to pretend and respect people and instituitions you think absurb. You live attached in a cowardly fashion to moral and social conventions you despise, condemn and know lack all foundation. It is that permanent contradiction between your ideas and desires and all the dead formalities and vain pretenses of your civilization that make you sad, troubled and unbalanced. In that intolerable conflict you lose all joy if life and all felling of personality, becuase at every moment they supress and restain and check the free play of your powers. That's the poisoned and mortal wound of the civilized world.

 

[daycart1]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Tyson Dostoevsky's "The Idiot", particularly the new Pevear translation.

Good one! I recently got a big kick out of -Quicksilver- by Neal Stephenson.

 

[1967cutlass]

tender is the night by fitzgerald is very good. oh, and its not really a story but read montaignes essays.

 

[iamsmrt]

i really liked choke by chuck palahniuk... he's the guy who wrote fight club (the book on which the movie was based)

 

[NormanBates]

i'm currently reading Short Stories of Ernest Hemingway

 

[blip]

Early cyberpunk is a good bet for a lot of ideas combined with an approachable literary style. Obvious choices are Neuromancer by W. Gibson or Islands in the Net by Bruce Sterling. Snow Crash but Stephenson would be good too. If you really want to wrap your head around some strange concepts then check out All Tommorrows Parties by Gibson or Zeitgeist by Stephenson.

Otherwise, how about some Orwell? I'm a big fan of his under-read Homage to Catalonia. Brilliant prose analysis of the Spanish Revolution. Most of his other work is good as well. Check out 1984 if you haven't already or Down & Out in Paris & London. Also, Burmese Days has a great involving story... it didn't make me think as much as other books by Orwell but it does have an enthralling plot. About the only thing I haven't enjoyed by Orwell is Road to Wigan Pier simply because it was a little too dry. (Though it is an interesting account of poverty that has definite academic merit).

Or if you want to get strange, then I recommend Philp K. Dick. Start with Flow My Tears the Police Man Said or VALIS.

 

[Welly Wu]

The Unbearable Lightness of Being & The Farewell Party by Milan Kundera are classics.

 

[NormanBates]

Quote:

Or if you want to get strange, then I recommend Philp K. Dick. Start with Flow My Tears the Police Man Said or VALIS.

i've read two of his, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep and Man in the High Castle. good stuff.

 

[scrypt]

Here are but a few of the bulky tomes it is your destiny to savor:

The Man without Qualities, by Robert Musil.

Cosmos (Kosmos), by Wiltold Gombrowicz.

The Saragossa Manuscript, by Jan Potocki.

Swann's Way, by Marcel Proust. If you like it, read the rest of the seven-volume novel, A la recherche du temps perdu (a/k/a In Search of Lost Time or Remembrance of Things Past). I grew up reading the C.K. Scott Montcrieff/Terrence Kilmartin translation, but I've been fiending for a copy of Lydia Davis's version.

The Ruined Map, by Kobo Abe: a vertigo-inducing descent into worlds within worlds. Sample dialogue:

"What were you looking at?"
"A window."
"No, no. I mean, what were you looking at through the window?"
"At a row of windows. One by one, the lights went off. That's the only time you know someone's there: when the window darkens."

For comic relief and linguistic virtuosity, try this: At Swim Two Birds, by Flann O'Brien.

 

[cupples]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Tyson Dostoevsky's "The Idiot", particularly the new Pevear translation.

Here's another vote for The Idiot; I'd also recommend The Brothers Karamazov, by the same author. They're both gripping reads, without being needlessly flowery.
Andrew

 

[jpr703]

Try "Atlas Shrugged" by Ayn Rand, it's a good read.

 

[viator122]

The Idiot and The Brothers Karamazov are both really good suggestions, but if you want meaty there's only one:


War and Peace

 

[episiarch]

Quote:

Originally Posted by daycart1 Good one! I recently got a big kick out of -Quicksilver- by Neal Stephenson.

Another vote for Neal Stephenson. Quicksilver, The Confusion, and The System of the World are definitely meaty, though I can't really guess whether a reader of Kundera, Fitzgerald and Shakespeare would love them or be a little turned off by them.

As much as I enjoyed Quicksilver, for me the kicks really began about halfway through The Confusion (with Ravenscar's letter to Eliza). Before that: enjoyment and some smiles. From there: grins.