Eye Reedz (book thread)

[Chef Boi RD]

Nice list, JP. I’m gonna go down Steinbeck road shortly. Wanna start with East of Eden

My current read is Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro . He wrote Remains of the Day, later adapted into a movie starring Anthony Hopkins. Never Let Me Go is completely different than Remains of the day, it is a sci-fi about cloning.

[JelloPuddingPop]

Loved the first Dune book Jello.

Dune Messiah was fine as well (to me) after that I lost interest.

Completely on board with that - they got pretty strange after Messiah. A bit too esoteric for my interest.

Good call on Robinson Crusoe and The Count of Monte Cristo!!!

You bringing those up reminded me of books I read as a youngster.

I think, and hopefully not being too presumptuous here, most of us were more "affected" by things we encountered in our youths, books, movies etc. A good majority of my all time favorite lists were read before I turned 15.

Speaking of great.

I left Great Expectations off my original list.

Also Heart of Darkness and Lord of the Flies.

Wonderful novels, all three. I should go back and read some of those.

[JelloPuddingPop]

Nice list, JP. I’m gonna go down Steinbeck road shortly. Wanna start with East of Eden

My current read is Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro . He wrote Remains of the Day, later adapted into a movie starring Anthony Hopkins. Never Let Me Go is completely different than Remains of the day, it is a sci-fi about cloning.

I have a few Ishiguro novels on my list - Klara and the Sun, and Remains of the Day. So many books to read, so little time to do so.

Let me know how you think Never Let me Go, Goes - I'll add it to my list.

[Chef Boi RD]

Nice list, JP. I’m gonna go down Steinbeck road shortly. Wanna start with East of Eden

My current read is Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro . He wrote Remains of the Day, later adapted into a movie starring Anthony Hopkins. Never Let Me Go is completely different than Remains of the day, it is a sci-fi about cloning.

I have a few Ishiguro novels on my list - Klara and the Sun, and Remains of the Day. So many books to read, so little time to do so.

Let me know how you think Never Let me Go, Goes - I'll add it to my list.

This is my first Ishiguro so I have no reference with his works. From what I understand this is not a typical genre for him, Sci-fi, involving cloning. About a third through it and really liking it. Pretty cool concept. He’s a good story teller. Doing a Sci-Fi/dystopian run at the moment. I highly recommend - I Who Have Never Known Men, a unique sci-fi/dystopian novel. Up next is a Handmaids Tale whom Mrs Chef has been trying to get me read for awhile. Needed these two as a build up to Handmaids, as I’ve been on a long run of Classic Crime Noir/Rural Noir, probably my favourite genre.

[Per]

The swedish movies are infinitely better made than the Americanized version. Very, very well done

I second that.

[Per]

I completely agree that paper books are superior to tablets. Never been able to do the switch.
I do listen to audiobooks while doing other stuff though, like mowing the lawn, driving or whatever, but then only lighter literature, like a crime novel. When I really sit down to read, I want it to be a real book.

Making a list is hard though. These days I read more history books than fiction, and in both cases mainly Swedish writers.

But if I go back in time to what I've read before, it may be more useful.

In my teens I read a ton of SciFi, favourites were probably Ray Bradbury and Isaac Asimov. the Martian Chronicles and Fahrenheit 451 by the former and the Foundation Series by the latter in particular. But also Heinlein, C Clarke and others. Flowers for Algernon.

A lot of the other classics a s well.
Catcher in the Rye, Lord of the Flies, 1984, Animal Farm, The Bell Jar, To Kill a Mockingbird.
QBVII by Leon Uris. Of Mice and Men. The Old Man and the Sea. All good.

Next I did a lot of "international" books:
100 Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez is good. Most of his books are.
Like Water for Chocolate by Laura Esquivel
The Interpreters by Wole Soyinka
My Father's Court by Isaac Bashevi Singer
The Painted Bird by Jerzy Koscinsky - now that is a book that shook my core!
The Unbearable Lightness of Being by Milan Kundera. For a while he was my favourite author.
Midnight's Children and The Satanic Verses are two must reads by Salman Rushdie. Great books.
The Handmaid's Tale. Really liked that one. Haven't bothered to watch the TV series though.
The Tin Drum by Günther Grass. That's a good one.
Norwegian Wood by Haruki Murakami
The House of the Spirits by Isabel Allende
The Shadow of the Wind by Carlos Ruiz Zafon
Unknown Soldier by Väinö Linna.
Actually, anything by Väinö Linna. By far Finland's best author imho.
Wild Berries by Yevgeny Yevtushenko. My favourite Russian; Dostoyevsky, Gogol and Tolstoy never really did it for me.
But sure, The Master and Margarita by Bulgakov was a blast. I did like that one.

Neither did I ever really get into French literature.
I mean, I've read The Plague as well as The Stranger by Camus, but - meh.
Bonjour Tristesse - the title says it all.
Although to be fair, I did enjoy some of Marguerite Duras's books. The Lover, Hiroshima Mon Amour.

Anyway, moving over to the non-fiction books that I read more of these days:

The Man In The Ice by Konrad Spindler
Neanderthal Man: In Search For Lost Genomes by Svante Pääbo
A History of God by Karen Armstrong
Sapiens by Yuval Noah Hariri
The Dawn of Everything by Graeber and Wengrow
Freakonomics by Levitt and Dubner - really eye opening
Soccernomics by Kuper and Szymansky
Las Venas Abiertas de America Latina by Eduardo Galeano
Dreams of My Father by Barak Obama - the man can write!
Too Much and Never Enough by Mary L Trump
Perestroika by Michail Gorbachev

The last one a bit dry, but all the others are definitly recommended reads, at least in my twisted opinion.

[Per]

And I'll add a list of recommended Swedish books:

The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson, and of course the rest of the Millennium series as well. Nordic Noir at its best.
Let The Right One In by John Ajvide Lindqvist, the only Swedish horror novelist worth the money.
To Cook A Bear by Mikael Niemi, magical realism meets popular history meets crime novel. Actually now on HBO, but the book is better.
Popular Music From Vittula, also by Mikael Niemi, a hilarious book about growing up in the far north near the Finnish border.
The Long Ships by Frans G Bengtsson. A classic about a young boy coming of age in the viking age
The Way Of A Serpent by Torgny Lindgren. The woodlands in the 19th century. Tough, cruel as life itself, beautifully told and full of strange light.

Two old classics but worth the effort:
Doctor Glas by Hjalmar Söderberg. Stark, brooding, and enormously controversial when first published.
Miss Julie by August Strindberg. This is actually a play, not a novell, but still.

“We want to be loved; failing that, admired; failing that, feared; failing that, hated and despised. At all costs we want to stir up some sort of feeling in others. Our soul abhors a vacuum. At all costs it longs for contact.”

― Hjalmar Söderberg, Doctor Glas

Not really my cup of tea, but I will still add a NYT bestseller author, Fredrik Backman.
His best book is probably A Man Called Ove. He writes quite funny books, if that's what you're into.

Here he is making a speech, which will give you an idea of what he is all about:


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NSuSyZ92Cjg

[donlever]

Have you seen the little piggies crawling in the dirt...

Neglected to mention Animal Farm on my list Per.

Good call.

[Cornuck]

And I figure Dude is reading 1984

[Chef Boi RD]

Let The Right One In by John Ajvide Lindqvist, the only Swedish horror novelist worth the money.

Let The Right One In. That one has been on my radar for awhile

[donlever]

Jonathan Livingston Seagull

The Talisman and The Black House (King Straub co-writes)