Or, books you have recently read, and actually mean something to you. Just finished The Road by Cormac McCarthy, a story that moves you and highlights what it means to be human, something the film never managed.
Care to recommend a book worth taking the time to read?
Catcher in the Rye. If you haven't already. Come back to discuss what it's actually about if you like.
I’m reading Caitlin Moran’s “How to Build a Girl”.. it was cheap on Amazon, so I took a punt, didn’t really seem like my sort of thing, but its brilliant (so far). She’s a really good writer and the era it’s set in was a really important one in my life, so it really hits home.
I've put it up here before I think but
Alone in Berlin by Hans Fallada.
Moving, tense and harrowing. The story of a German mother and father who after the news of their son's death in France decide to drop anti war postcards around Berlin in Hitler's Germany.
To me the Trump/May/Putin era has also brought new meaning to 1984 by George Orwell.
The Bible. Specifically the New Testament
The Kindly Ones by Jonathan Littell
Not for the faint of heart, by any means, but one of the most complex and riveting novels I have ever read.
About a refined, educated German man who becomes an officer in the SS, whom we watch fragmenting into something subhuman and profoundly human at the same time.
Try "The Diceman" by Luke Rhinehart.
Makes you query your decision making process.
Catcher in the Rye. If you haven’t already. Come back to discuss what it’s actually about if you like.
Now. I read this on holiday last week, just 'cause I never had, and was very glad when it ended. Is there a website that explains it? I'm rubbish at spotting symbolism and subplot and metaphor and stuff - he just seemed like a bit of a waster kid to me.
1984.
It's ****ing horrible.
Brilliant, but horrible.
One flew over the cuckoo's nest is an excellent counterpoint.
Don't ever want to see/read either ever again.
1984 and One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest are both great books. So are Catch 22, Heart of Darkness, To Kill a Mockingbird. Pretty much anything by Hunter S. Thompson, but Hell's Angels is a good place to start. I mostly don't like Tom Wolfe, but The Right Stuff was his best book IMO. For non-fiction, The Making of the Atomic Bomb is excellent (not at all the warmongering drivel that I expected), as is Guns, Germs, and Steel. If you want something a bit more weird, Perfume and The Wasp Factory are excellent.
Pretty much all Cormac McCarthy's books do that. I'd also add House of Leaves, Lord of the Rings, Grapes of Wrath, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest and Swan Song.
PS. I thought they did a decent job with the film of The Road.
Birds Without Wings - Louis de Bernierres
Tells the story of a fictional Anatolian village prior to and leading up to the events of WW1, along with some semi-non-fiction accounts of Mustafa Kemal Ataturk and the Battle of Gallipoli. It is very definitely a story that moves you and highlights what it means to be human.
Collins English Dictionary; lots of meanings
Catcher in the Rye.
Personally i think its bloody boring and nithing else.
Bomber by Len Deighton
1984 has been mentioned so Fahrenheit 451.
as is Guns, Germs, and Steel
Is a terrible book, worth only to read to understand how to write a book about cultural imperialism while disguising it (badly) about history/anthropology
Brave New World by Aldous Huxley.
Really hit home for me when I read it living in Vancouver weirdly...
Burmese Days by Orwell felt far too close to the bone for me as it took the worrying little differences in mine and my wife's backgrounds, politics and aspirations, and exaggerated and caricaturised them into a whole novel. In some ways I really want to read it again, and in some ways I want to bury it at the back of my bookcase in case my wife decides to read it too...
Fiction ?
I don’t think I’ve ever read a book with “meaning”. I’ve read plenty that have either made me think about the subject matter and the context, yet never made that much of an impression on me.
Research or Factual ?
Yeah, Some autobiographical and biographical books have made an impression on me. Certainly the more Adventurous tomes.
And the Land Lay Still by James Robertson is up there, as an examination of the Scottich psyche and a great read - I felt like I knew several of the characters and some of the incidents in the book seemed to have relevance to me or people I know, and I almost felt like I was part of it in some way;
The Crossing by Cormac Macarthy I absolutely loved, I got very emotionally involved and cant bring myself to read the Cities of The Plain yet;
Never really got on with Orwell but when I was about 17 I read and loved Coming up for Air, a sort of tale of perceived failure and redemption in middle class post war England.
Farenheit 451, Brave New World and 1984 are three that immediately spring to mind. Shadows of times gone by and portents of the future.
Something a little different, but still one to jog the brain into action is the semi-fictional Munch by Steffen Kverneland.
https://www.waterstones.com/author/steffen-kverneland/1113958Munch, by Stefan Kvae
Iain Banks - The Quarry
As mentioned above The Grapes of Wrath. Read when I was 19 and it left an impression I'll never forget. The book group I'm part of read it recently some 30 odd years since I'd first read it. I was a bit reluctant to read it again as I knew it could never have the same impact as it had when I was young. I couldn't have been more wrong. I won't claim it's the best book ever written but there certainly is no better book.
Zenn and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance - Robert Pirsig.
Total mind*&^^% - its a difficult read, but it gets you thinking!
There are two follow on books if you really want to go for it.....
not a big reader by any means, but what i do read tends to be more classical such as orwell, catcher in the rye, zen and the art etc.
no book has ever made me go 'wow' as much as 'and the ass saw the angel' by nick cave. i tried to read it once and gave up, then when i felt ready to give it another go i read it on holiday. i was just stunned by it. the story of a mute lad, dragged up by a drunken mother who he hates, a dad born through incest. cant really describe the way the books written other than copy and paste wiki......
"The story, set in the American South and told through the voice (or non-voice) of Euchrid Eucrow, was written in a kind of hyper-poetic thought-speak not meant to be spoken, a mongrel language that was part Biblical, part Deep South dialect, part gutter slang, at times obscenely reverent and at others reverently obscene."
really dark book, some horrible stuff in it and like i say, it just stunned me how NC could come up with the story, the language, i think the blokes a genius. maybe not everyones cup of tea but i really would recommend it.
Consider the lilies by Iain Crichton Smith is a short beautiful and merciless description of colonialism.
Homage to Catalonia always resonates with me.
I'll second Galloway boy regarding And the land lay still
I was really lucky to have read And the Land Lay Still at the perfect time, I'd just moved back to Scotland and spent the first month commuting by train between Glasgow and Edinburgh. Perfect reading time with some appropriate scenery rushing by outside.
The Very Hungry Caterpillar. It basically explains that if you eat enough you'll develop the ability to fly.
Some good calls already, I think 1984 is very timely in the age of Trump & 'enemies if the people' Brexiters. The Road was the book that leapt to mind first, though I'm stuffed if I know what the meaning is/was, but I read it just after out 1st child was born and it poleaxed me . His other books, the Plains trilogy all good.
Hubert Selby jr, last exit to Brooklyn & requiem for a dream. All the Iaian m Banks books for me. William Gibson, Dan Simmons, Philip k Dick, Alistair Reynolds, Dune, Asimov, I like sci-fis ability to talk about humanity by exploring what's not human- aliens, robots, cyborgs, consciousness, AI etc. joe Abercrombie's The Blade itself is a great character study of The Bloody Nine!
Adam Rutherford's 'A Brief History of Everyone Whos Ever Lived' stands out as is better than many popular science/history books. As did 'Selfish Gene' by Dawkins (God Delusion is a distraction from his better stuff imho) & Matt Ridley's 'Genome' when I'd just started as a scientist.
Also Brian K Vaughns graphic novels 'Saga' & 'Y The Last Man'
And the Land Lay Still by James Robertson
I had never heard of this but a quick Google suggests that I simultaneously really want to read it and really don't.
It might be a bit too close to home.
Not sure I read books with 'meaning' that much - I mean, you can only be reminded that humans can be bastards so many times. I usually go for entertainment. The nearest thing I could suggest is reading about five or six Culture novels, which is about what it took me to figure out what they are all actually about.
Is a terrible book, worth only to read to understand how to write a book about cultural imperialism while disguising it (badly) about history/anthropology
Have you actually read the book? His thesis was that the dominant nations got that way largely through geographical luck. A frequent criticism of the book is that he dismisses cultural factors as unimportant. You seem to have projected something onto the book that is completely the opposite of what it says.
For something very different to any of the above - With The Jocks by Peter White. A wonderfully written book about his own experiences in WW2 – so vivid and also full of compassion for not only his own men and innocent civilians, but also for the German troops his regiment was fighting against.
The Way of the Peaceful Warrior by Dan Milman. A bit Americany/schmaltzy but I enjoyed nonetheless.
The Old man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway. Perfect short story.
The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho. Might be a bit dated but I remember enjoying it at the time.
If you liked A Catcher in the Rye then some of the stuff in For Esme with love and Squalor is good. Particularly the title story.
Not sure I read books with ‘meaning’ that much – I mean, you can only be reminded that humans can be bastards so many times.
Intended or not, that could imply a very narrow definition of 'meaning', ironically almost to the point of rendering 'meaning' as 'meaningless' ?
I'll throw in:
'The Pearl' - John Steinbeck
'Jude The Obscure' - Thomas Hardy
'The Power Of Now - 'Eckhart Tolle'
'Narcissus and Goldmund' - Herman Hesse
'Swimming Studies' - Leanne Shapton
'Thursbitch' - Alan Garner
'The Wild Asses Skin' - Balzac
That's why I put it in inverted commas, as it's rather hard to define isn't it? According to many of these suggestions it does seem to be a synonym for 'depressing content' no?
it does seem to be a synonym for ‘depressing content’
maybe, but its that content that resonates with you most & leaves you thinking about it after youve finished, addressing topics that are easier to avoid
Have you actually read the book?
Yes, it's well written, I'll give you that, and it trundles along, the problem with it is that's its mostly made up bollocks to suit the authors' agenda
It fails as it offers any defence or explanation of individual actions, fails to deal with important concepts like governments (especially non European ones) or money exchange. Makes European domination look like a happy distant accident, becoming almost inadvertent occupying forces, and paints the natives as passive or even complicit in their own subjugation, and revives long abandoned theories about environmental determinism. Its a tremendously distorted and patchy work at best, and perhaps even racist at worst. He recounts the reasons/ability of expansion without ever once asking whether they "should've"
How's that?
maybe, but its that content that resonates with you most & leaves you thinking about it after youve finished, addressing topics that are easier to avoid
But those two things are orthogonal - something that leaves you thinking after you've finished, that's just a book with high impact; but something that's easier to avoid implies it's an uncomfortable topic that makes you miserable.
China Mieville - Un Lun Dun
Voltaire - Candide
BF Skinner - Walden 2
Doris Lessing - Re: Colonised Planet 5, Shikasta (<i>Personal, psychological, historical documents relating to visit by Johor (George Sherban) Emissary (Grade 9) 87th of the Period of the Last Days)</i>
Cory Doctorow - Little Brother
Hermann Hesse - The Glass Bead Game
One I really couldn't get into is:
Georges Bataille - The Trial of Gille de Rais
Some non fiction:
The Forest Unseen - David George Haskell
The Shining Levels - John Wyatt
The Living Mountain - Nan Shepherd
He recounts the reasons/ability of expansion without ever once asking whether they “should’ve”
It's not a book on moral philosophy, it's an attempt at explaining why Europeans colonized far away countries rather than the far away countries colonizing Europe (that's the question raised right at the beginning). It's about the "is" not the "ought".
He's very clear in his belief that humans everywhere have always been extremely good at exploiting any resources available. He's saying that Europeans weren't smarter than other people, just luckier, so the racist accusation doesn't stand up to scrutiny. He may well be wrong about his main thesis but it is a book that raises interesting ideas.
If this is a man - Primo Levi - It's a hard read because of the subject but amazing none the less.
Brave New World - I worry we're already there in some ways.
Latin American Trilogy - Louis De Berniers - Pretty harsh in places, hilarious in others but these three make you feel better about the world
The Hand that First Held Mine - resionated for me a alot but for personal reasons (might not for you)
A Farewell to Arms
If this is a man – Primo Levi – It’s a hard read because of the subject but amazing none the less.
A very good call. Somehow I had temporarily forgotten about it.
