Reddit reviews Riddley Walker, Expanded Edition

The Wanting Seed by Anthony Burgess

The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood (which is rapidly becoming a nonfiction work about the current state of the U.S.)

Riddley Walker by Russell Hoban

Stoner by John Williams (not the composer) is one of the best novels I've ever read. Fantastically well written, just a wonderful story of an ordinary man's life. I've read two of Williams' four novels (the other being Butcher's Crossing, about 19th century buffalo hunting, also phenomenal) and one of the others is Augustus, a national book award winner. I should get on that one...

Also, The Dog of the South by Charles Portis(author of True Grit, also an excellent book) is a hilarious, wonderful book that I would recommend to anyone. Actually all five of his books are great too.

Oh, can't forget Riddley Walker by Russell Hoban, incredible portrait of a post-apocalyptic world written in its own dialect. It takes a while to get used to, but once you do it's well worth it.

Riddley Walker by Russel Hoban is a wonderful post-apocalyptic book written in an unmatchable idiom. It takes a while getting used to the language--but it is really a wonderful story.

If you enjoy more apocalyptic literature, I'd highly suggest you read Riddley Walker. Don't look up too much about it though since it'd be a crime to ruin the plot. It's written in broken dialect, since most of civilization was destroyed and only traces of it remain.

As an example, the opening sentence of the book...

>On my naming day when I come 12 I gone front spear and kilt a wyld boar he parbly ben the las wyld pig on the Bundel Downs any how there hadnt ben none for a long time befor him nor I aint looking to see none agen.

Seconding Riddley Walker.

Hoban is mainly known as a children's author, but he wrote quite a different kind of book with Riddley Walker. I won't spoil it, but I will say you need to be prepared to learn how to read English all over again, much more so than any of the others listed so far.

I'd love to see someone's take on Russell Hoban, like Ridley Walker

Riddley Walker is set about two thousand years after a nuclear war has devastated world civilizations. The main action of the story begins when the young narrator, Riddley, stumbles upon efforts to recreate a weapon of the ancient world.

The novel's characters live a harsh life in a small area which is presently the English county of Kent, and know nothing of the world outside of "Inland" (England). Their level of civilization is similar to England's prehistoric Iron Age, although they do not produce their own iron but salvage it from ancient machinery. Church and state have combined into one secretive institution, whose mythology, based on misinterpreted stories of the war and an old Catholic saint (Eustace), is enacted in puppet shows.

http://www.amazon.com/Riddley-Walker-Expanded-Edition-Russell/dp/0253212340

Riddley Walker is one of my top five. Written in an argot that is a melange of religious imagery, science, slang and cockney working out the language becomes half the fun. Once you;ve got the hang of it, the story comes to life with an amazingly vivid power. Set in a tribal culture in the midst of England after a nuclear war, it tells the story of Riddley's coming of age. It's a searingly powerful wildly evocative work that stays with you years after you've read it. Popular in the eighties, no one ever speaks of it now. I think, perhaps because the language is a little difficult to begin with. HIGHLY RECOMMENDED
Here's the amazon link
http://www.amazon.com/Riddley-Walker-Expanded-Russell-Hoban/dp/0253212340/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1323858223&sr=8-1

Awesome lists. I'll add to those the book Riddley Walker. Among other things, it's like seeing English fast-forwarded a few thousand years.