Hello guyss. I need your expertise. I’m not a big reader myself, but my girlfriend is, so I figure it’d be nice to give her a book as a gift. Since I know nothing about literature, months ago I asked her to list some of her favorite books just so I can ask you guys for help. I’m hoping that you guys can detect a common theme between these books and help me choose a fitting recommendation.
These aren’t in order btw.
1. “Brave New World” (《美丽新世界》)
– Aldous Huxley
2. “Art as Therapy” (《艺术的慰籍》)
– Alain de Botton and John Armstrong
3. “The Art of Loving” (《爱的艺术》)
– Erich Fromm
4. “O. Henry Short Stories” (《欧·亨利短片小说集》)
– O. Henry
5. “The Conformist” (《同流者》)
– Alberto Moravia
6. “Montaigne: A Life” (《蒙田自传》)
– Phillippe Desan
7. “Limits to Growth” (《始于极限》)
– Chizuru Ueno
8. The story of the sahara
– San Mao
For background, my gf is chinese, so all her books are in mandarin or have been translated to mandarin. I tried my best to translate all the titles, but i’m not sure if they’re all correct so I included the mandarin titles too. I’m unsure if there’s a specific chinese literature subreddit or forum where can I ask for help from. If you know of any please let me know.
From conversations it seems her reading interest revolves around art, fashion, feminism, womanhood, and maybe philosophy. I’ve never seen her read any fiction. Maybe i’m wrong since I haven’t read any of the books on her list.
If you guys can sense a theme from the list, anything that fits would be greatly appreciated. Thank youu
by Point44Magnum
4 Comments
I really liked The Art of Travel by Alain de Botton.
Certainly you have listed a couple of fiction books. Also a few philosophical leaning works.
Alain de Botton has a published some other works. School of Life for instance about emotional intelligence.
Along the Montaigne theme there is a great book entitled: How to Live: A Life of Montaigne in One Question and Twenty Attempts at an Answer by Sarah Bakewell.
The Handmaids Tale by Margaret Atwood is dystopian fiction like Brave New World and feminist.
Montaigne’s Essays (蒙田散文集). Since she’s interested in his life already. But I find some passages misogynistic by modern standards.
Also other books by San Mao (三毛). It’s all autobiographical non-fiction. If she likes one she may like others in the series. 稻草人手记 (Notebook of the Scarecrow) or 温柔的夜 (Tender is the Night) are the lighter, more romantic titles.
I suggest short stories by Ambrose Bierce or Guy de Maupassant. I don’t know which ones have been translated into Mandarin.