I was going through the top posts of the year on this sub, and most of the top posts are about books which are overhyped yet popular, or downright bad, like –
https://www.reddit.com/r/books/comments/1fbyr71/why_are_popular_books_so_bad/
https://www.reddit.com/r/books/comments/1e0bk49/which_book_was_a_bestselling_sensation_only_to_be/
https://www.reddit.com/r/books/comments/18xiw27/whats_that_popular_overhyped_book_that_you_dont/
https://www.reddit.com/r/books/comments/16sp5uz/what_is_a_book_that_was_popular_that_you/
While I love these and LOVE the hate that comes towards books like The Secret, The Alchemist, Tomorrow x3, A little life, The Subtle Art of Not Giv…, Atomic Habits, RDPD, etc., I would really love to know which books you guys adore and loved reading, which felt effortless, and help create a thread which would stand in stark contrast to the others I found.
PS: Going through these links introduced me to a podcast called If Books Could Kill, and I've been laughing from an hour. It is so good, please check it out!
by araneid
12 Comments
Jurassic Park is easily my favorite book of all time.
No longer human, absolutely love it. Even have it tattooed on my arm.
The Grapes of Wrath. Great story. great message.
As simple as snow
I who have never known men.
Not at all related to men or gender dynamics. Beautiful and bleak in every single way. A group of women surviving in a baren land all alone. It’s a mix of very loose science fiction and philosophy?
Constantly jockeying for position of FAVORITE is Middlegame by Seanan McGuire and The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue by V.E. Schwab (don’t @ me). My favorite trilogy is the Shades of Magic trilogy, also by Schwab. But I’ll take this a step further and mention my top three favorite graphic novels: Eight Billion Genies, The Many Deaths of Leila Star, and Kingdom Come.
Song of Achilles and The Percy Jackson series
There are so many tbh, I’m an easy audience lol
But the top 6 listed on my Goodreads:
1. Catch 22 by Joseph Heller
2. The Brothers Karamazov by Dostoevsky
3. No Longer Human by Osamu Dazai
4. Gilead by Marilynne Robinson
5. The Hour of the Star by Clarice Lispector
6. A Short Stay in Hell by Steven L Peck
Alternatively, I finished James by Percival Everett and I was afraid it wouldn’t live up to the hype but it ended up surpassing my expectations. I adored it.
Hunger by Lan Samantha Chang (Includes the titular novella and five short stories. Beautifully written and I only know one person, beside myself, who has read it.)
Night Boat to Tangier by Kevin Barry (Beautiful, gritty writing)
These two books do not get enough attention. I have others, but they are better known.
1.Into the Wild by Jon Krakauer
2.The stranger by Albert Camus
3.The unbearable lightness of being by Milan Kundera
4.Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky
5.The Death of Ivan Ilyich by Leo Tolstoy
6. The trail by Franz Kafka
And many more
Piranesi has my heart. No other book has given me so much peace in a long time. It was like a sanctuary especially when real life had been a bit of a roller coaster.
the cat who saved books! such a cosy read. it’s a translated book by a japanese author. and i really enjoyed the message conveyed by the book surrounding the conversation around yes, books. and the side character of that book is a tabby cat that can speak!