Best short stories according to redditors
We found 1,999 Reddit comments discussing the best short stories. We ranked the 580 resulting products by number of redditors who mentioned them. Here are the top 20.
We found 1,999 Reddit comments discussing the best short stories. We ranked the 580 resulting products by number of redditors who mentioned them. Here are the top 20.
The day he opened the box was the day his carefully woven lifestyle had fallen apart. He remembered it like yesterday, thinking back to that little purple package, tied with a bow and delivered to his door like he was being sent cookies. He recalled with a wry smile and a sigh how easily the rules he'd built had come crashing down.
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"Two."
"Two!? I'd been told it was one...y-you sure?"
"You were misinformed. The price is two."
"Two hundred grand? You better be good."
The man laughed into the receiver, a deep chuckle that died softly almost as soon as it had begun.
"I'm the best."
Rule one: Don't ever sell yourself cheap.
Another day, another phonecall. The man shook his head as he hung up the payphone. He liked to take calls at payphones - in an age of convenience and, more importantly, surveillance, a payphone was an innocuous choice and it meant people were rarely late. If he told them to call x payphone at n time, they'd call. Rule two: Be careful and precise.
He lit a cigarette in the phonebooth, dark sunglasses letting him observe the crowds rushing around the busy city centre. To him, they looked like ants, scurrying around with their busy lives. To him, any normal life was a thing to be observed, critiqued, mocked.
His own life was far simpler. Or more complex, depending on the angle you viewed it from. His working life was about completion. His targets and bonuses were around one goal. His 9-5 about training, stalking, executing. Rule three: Research and know your target.
His business was death, and business was good.
The hitman had been doing this for a long time. Long enough to know there is a price on every man's head. Long enough to know that no one dies for free. Long enough to be the best, or one of them. Which meant, of course, his price was high. Two hundred thousand dollars a hit, rising in doubles for riskier or higher profile targets.
He had killed doctors, lawyers, lovers, fighters, escorts, strippers, judges, policemen, politicians, leaders. One thing was the same. He had never killed a man for less than his price. At least, he thought, not since the first.
He'd been an ex-military washout, desperate for work. He'd looked everywhere, travelling state to state in an attempt to pick up jobs as a security guard or bodyguard. Overnight stays in shanty towns and campsites, rubbing shoulders with the homeless and the degenerate. Things had gotten desperate, and a man had tried to take his food. That was his first kill. He'd gotten him in his sleep. No one suspected a thing. Another man had been his rival, and paid the hitman a hundred dollars. That was his first hit, and ever since his price had been high.
Then he'd found it.
It was simple really. Laughably so. On one of his many properties there was a small purple box wrapped like a cartoon gift, a pink ribbon bow tied around the top. Left on the doorstep of the back porch. At first, the hitman had been tempted to throw it away. It could have been a bomb, a deterrent, a threat. Anything.
But for some reason, some insane reason, he'd taken it inside.
He couldn't have told you why. He couldn't have told himself why. The obscenely cutesy gift, a child-like idea of what a gift should look like. It sat on his metallic table worktop, garishly out of place amongst the guns and knives littered in his apartment.
He'd opened it after some consideration, his fingers neatly undoing the bow and chuckling at the care someone had put into this. Perhaps it was because he'd never received a gift, merely saw them in cartoons. Perhaps it was the feeling it gave him: an excited, giddy rise in his belly that threatened to compromise everything he'd worked so hard to contain.
Inside had been a note, handwritten in the untidy scrawlings of a child. Alongside the note was a crumpled ten dollar bill and coins. He added them up slowly. They totalled $13.42. Added to the scruffy bill that was just over twenty dollars. He laid out the money on the table and turned back to the note.
Mister It said.
I think you can help me i have a problem and i think you can help me
The hitman looked around, his empty apartment chilly. He almost felt embarrassed to be reading the note. It was as if eyes were on him, knowing his lizard-like slits should not be cast across something as innocent as a child's note. Almost guiltily, he continued.
My daddy is a bad man. He hurts my mommy and he hurts me some nights he comes in my room and he tells me he loves me and hurts me in the bad way. mommy cries alot. she tells me well run away but then he always comes back.
Mister. I live near you and ive seen you soemtimes. i know u hide but ive seen your guns.
Please mister. I saved all my money that mommy tries to give me. my daddy takes it away to buy more bottles but i hided some.
Please mister my daddy needs to go away. he says he is gonna kill my mommy and ill be his new woman when i growed up. he says hes gonna put a baby in me but thats silly im a kid i cant have a baby. i dont want a baby mister.
here is all my money mister. i know you make people disappereah. please make my daddy disappere.
we live at 31 Oakfelt drive, autumn boulevard. daddy comes home late every night and works in the city. he is a teacher.
The hitman put the letter down, blinking back tears. He traced the lazy scrawl of the girls handwriting with the tip of his finger, imagining her writing it. Desperate, rushed. It would have been neater, he could tell, if she'd not been so afraid. The dots were absent, the curvature of her writing tilted right down as though she'd been writing flat-out. Against the clock, sort to speak.
She was against the clock, he understood that. She was probably waiting for him to visit her room again, her tiny body shaking in fear as she wrote this plea to him.
He shook his head, sitting down on his leather sofa. It had cost him ten thousand dollars, that sofa. A luxury easily afforded due to his rules. Rule one: Don't sell yourself cheap. A life was worth two hundred grand, minimum.
He thought of her letter. He picked it back up and looked at it for a long time, staring at the foot of the page.
Love from Melissa.
P.s dont worry i wont tell. i dont want a daddy anyway. daddys are mean
The hitman found his fist clenching, the paper crumpling in his hand. Tears gathered in his face and he stared at the last few words, hastily scribbled out by the girl. He noticed dark blotches on the paper, where tears had fallen and been stained forever into the sheet.
He thought back to his own father, a ghost of a man who was neither here nor there, ever-scornful and frightening but so often absent that the man had grown old thinking his father might have been imagined, rather than real.
He thought back to this desperate little girl, scrounging scraps of change to try and pay him.
Rule number one: Don't sell yourself cheap.
A kill might have been worth two hundred grand to the hitman he thought to himself. But, as he sat and read the note one last time, some kills are worth more than money.
No more rule number one. This time, the job cost $23.42. This time, the job would be worth that young girl's life.
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(Edit: Wow, thanks for the gold kind sir, you've made my day! Glad you all liked it - I've always enjoyed writing and I'm now getting more serious about it so hopefully there will be plenty more from me, and possibly this hitman, in the near future.)
(Edit part two: I'm absolutely floored by your responses and thanks for the gold again. It's amazing to have entertained you all.)
(PART TWO IS HERE. I may have rushed it but I don't care you guys deserve this for the amazing response you've given me. Part three will be later in the week but this gives some closure. I'm going to turn this into a series. http://thecagedtype.co.uk/writing/breaking-rule-two-short-fiction-part-two/
PART THREE: http://thecagedtype.co.uk/writing/implementing-rule-three-part-three-short-fiction/
PART FOUR: http://thecagedtype.co.uk/writing/establishing-target-part-four-short-fiction/
PART FIVE: http://thecagedtype.co.uk/writing/purging/
PART SIX: http://thecagedtype.co.uk/writing/circumstances-change-part-six/
PART SEVEN: http://thecagedtype.co.uk/writing/mansion-part-7-short-fiction/
PART EIGHT (The end): http://thecagedtype.co.uk/writing/warehouse-part-8-short-fiction/
NOTE TO CURRENT READERS: There's now an eBook version out priced at $0.99, it's still free on my blog so this is mainly just a helping me out kind of fee. You can buy it at this link: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Hitman-Rose-Craig-Thomas-Boyle-ebook/dp/B00OA0379C/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1412778474&sr=8-1&keywords=The+Hitman+and+the+Rose
Part eight is the end guys. This has been fantastic and a great way to get my writing out to the world. Please keep following me either on my blog, on facebook or on /r/groundfighterwrites. Hope you enjoyed it!
To keep track of updates and send me suggestions please follow either my author page at: https://www.facebook.com/CraigThomasBoyle/
or subscribe to /r/groundfighterwrites)
Congratulations on finishing ADWD, AKA the best novel of the five novels so far (totally not controversial). But wait, there's so much more out there!
A few months ago, I, along with lots of people who pointed lots more stuff out to me than I knew, created a ASOIAF Resource post where you can find all there is to know about ASOIAF.
Some highlights for you:
You finished the 5 ASOIAF books. Great! But there's more ASOIAF-universe material out there. Have you read Dunk & Egg, The Princess and the Queen or the Rogue Prince? And do you know about The World of Ice and Fire: GRRM's History of Planetos? Furthermore, it's a universally accepted fact that your re-read will be much, much better than your first read. Here's some links!
***
The Winds of Winter
***
ASOIAF News, Forums & Information
Have at it!
Obligatory The Churn recommendation. It's a novella focused on this character's backstory. It's all set well before the TV series and the full-length novels, so you can go into it having read nothing else.
Labyrinths, by JL Borges.
From Amazon:
> If Jorge Luis Borges had been a computer scientist, he probably would have invented hypertext and the World Wide Web.
Instead, being a librarian and one of the world's most widely read people, he became the leading practitioner of a densely layered imaginistic writing style that has been imitated throughout this century, but has no peer (although Umberto Eco sometimes comes close, especially in "Name of the Rose").
Borges's stories are redolent with an intelligence, wealth of invention, and a tight, almost mathematically formal style that challenge with mysteries and paradoxes revealed only slowly after several readings. Highly recommended to anyone who wants their imagination and intellect to be aswarm with philosophical plots, compelling conundrums, and a wealth of real and imagined literary references derived from an infinitely imaginary library.
Reviews
“Borges is arguably the great bridge between modernism and post-modernism in world literature.” (David Foster Wallace - The New York Times )
“Borges anticipated postmodernism (deconstruction and so on) and picked up credit as founding father of Latin American magical realism.” (Colin Waters - The Washington Times )
Labyrinths - Jorge Luis Borges
The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar by Roald Dahl.
You can get all three stories collected in one volume entitled A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms for less than $20 on Amazon.
This edition contains exclusive new artwork but has the original three stories in their original form.
Yep. The Churn will help you understand Amos.
Read it, loved it. Bought a copy to support oyu, left a review as well. Looks like I was the first to review it on US Amazon.com.
Also may want to provide a US amazon link, for the lazy people who click into amazon.co.uk and dont bother buying it on the US site.
US LINK: http://www.amazon.com/Hitman-Rose-Craig-Thomas-Boyle-ebook/dp/B00OA0379C/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1412796930&sr=8-2&keywords=the+hitman+and+the+rose
The Churn is a short novella that was released between the third and fourth books.
If you like The Orville, you might like The Expanse (Formerly a ScyFy Show, now being produced by Amazon, also a series of books).
The character Amos is originally from Baltimore, there's a novella that dives into his past in a dystopian Baltimore. The Churn.
https://www.amazon.com/Fire-Blood-Thrones-Targaryen-History/dp/152479628X/ref=mp_s_a_1_1?keywords=fire+and+blood&qid=1557611644&s=gateway&sprefix=fire+and+blood&sr=8-1
https://www.amazon.com/World-Ice-Fire-History-Westeros/dp/0553805444/ref=mp_s_a_1_2?keywords=grr+martin&qid=1557611679&s=gateway&sr=8-2
https://www.amazon.com/Knight-Seven-Kingdoms-Song-Fire/dp/0345533488/ref=mp_s_a_1_5?keywords=grr+martin&qid=1557611730&s=gateway&sr=8-5
The last excellent work of fiction I read was City of Dreams by Beverly Swerling. The book that I feel best captures the feeling of New York City, however, is Winter's Tale by Mark Helprin.
I mostly read nonfiction books about New York City history, and I'll share a few of my favorites with you. The definitive tome, of course, is Gotham: A History of New York City to 1898 by Mike Wallace and Edwin Burrows. Another favorite of mine, as I love the history of New Amsterdam, is Island at the Center of the World:The Epic Story of Dutch Manhattan and the Forgotten Colony That Shaped America by Russell Shorto. One of the most fascinating subjects I have been learning about is Native American history at the period of first European contact, and I really recommend checking out Adriaen Van Der Donck's A Description of New Netherland (The Iroquoians and their World), which many scholars agree is just as much of a significant work as William Bradford's Of Plymouth Plantation, and would be the definitive guide to the new world if it had been written in English. Evan Pritchard's Native New Yorkers: The Legacy of the Algonquian People of New York also offers an incredible look at native culture.
If you are interested in the subway system, check out Stan Fischler's fantastic Uptown, Downtown. One of the most underrated books I have picked up recently explores the construction of the amazing Grand Central Terminal, and I learned an incredible amount from it: Grand Central's Engineer: William J. Wilgus and the Planning of Modern Manhattan. If you are interested in urban planning, I would also suggest The Measure of Manhattan: The Tumultuous Career and Surprising Legacy of John Randel Jr., Cartographer, Surveyor, Inventor.
At this point I've read a ton of nonfiction books about the city, so if you have any questions or want any other recommendations, feel free to ask!
It's a totally cheesy revenge plot, but the original Arena makes me smile every time and includes a fun, ground-level view of how magic warps a society. Completely standalone; quick read.
https://www.amazon.com/Arena-Magic-Gathering-No-1/dp/0061054240
I originally completed the first German tree almost exactly one year ago and decided in the last few months to make an effort to revisit the tree, seeing the new lessons/topics and attempt to regild everything. Like the last time I posted my shiny golden tree, I thought I'd do a small write-up of sorts just in case anybody would be interested in hearing what I think, along with some suggestions that could help other learners.
So since November I have actually been able to move to Germany! I came with the intention of staying for around a year, and with the primary intention of improving my German and joining a language course (I went for an integration course as it was a lot cheaper, I will be finished with B1 level soon but I feel in some regards a bit more advanced than this, with reading for example). So now I have had the experience of a real language course, I feel better placed to comment on Duo's effectiveness. People often say on here something along the lines of 'Duolingo will be able to take you somewhere around the A2 level, if you supplement yourself with other resources'. This of course largely depends on those other resources, but I find it very hard to believe it is anything more than high A1 level, possibly low A2 level in some things. The best thing Duo can do is improve your reading skills. I visited Germany before moving here for 3 weeks, and I was very surprised to see that I could understand most signs, newspaper headlines, restaurant signs, etc etc. but when I tried to listen to people on the street or tram, I was utterly clueless. Also, in terms of speaking, I was also extremely short. This is something that can only be improved outside of Duolingo, but I know this is easier said than done because I admittedly never sought this out alongside my own learning. Writing is a bit of a mixed skill, because when I was using Duolingo the first time, I noticed that I would be fine at writing the sentences on the website itself, but when it came to writing my own sentences, I found that I lacked the grammatical knowledge to help construct sentences. I think Duolingo could do a little bit more in that respect. Overall however, despite sounding like I am slating it a bit, I think Duolingo is a fantastic introductory resource, but must be used alongside other things!
Edit: One thing I forgot to mention.. The god damn abstract objects! No matter how much practice and memorisation I do with them words, I simply cannot remember them for more than a few hours at a time. They were by far the hardest part of the tree both last year and this year!
Okay I think I'm doing rambling for now. I know there are many resources around reddit, but here are a lit of my personal favourites that I used quite a lot. My personal favourite things are;
http://www.nthuleen.com/teach/grammar.html This website in general is incredible, but in particular the grammar worksheets are fantastic. They explain the topic in very simple terms (in English) and then tend to ease you in with simple exercises building up to harder exercises. It also has many 'answer sheets' so you can check your own work. It can be frustrating when you attempt the worksheets without knowing if you are correct or not, but I found that even practicising after reading the help was still a hugely useful exercise. You can attempt the sheets with just a notebook, but I found it best to physically print the sheets - but that's just me.
www.memrise.com I'm sure everyone knows this website as it is heavily recommended. It is excellent for vocabulary. Another option you could use is Anki. I personally found it a bit fiddly but I know a lot of people swear by it.
'Learn German with Stories' (https://www.amazon.co.uk/Learn-German-Stories-Berlin-Beginners/dp/1492399493/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1462113831&sr=8-1&keywords=berlin+cafe+stories) - This is incredible if you own a Kindle with a built in dictionary function. These books are written in extremely simple German, and are a great introduction to reading things fully in German. I think for this first book, anyone that is close to finishing the tree would have a good time with it. There are some words you won't understand, but once you look them up, or even work out what they mean by context, they become part of your vocabulary!
German music/film. This can be difficult as they are often quick, but just listening to things in the target language of German can be a huge help. If anyone would like any recommendations I can try my best.
http://slowgerman.com/ Another resource for listening comprehension is this website. It is essentially German news podcasts, but spoken slowly, and if I remember correctly, the handy app even gives you a transcript so you can follow along.
There are a few more things I could possibly recommend but I think that's enough for now, I am aware that this post is becoming long! If there are any other questions, don't hesitate to ask as I'd like to help, and sorry if this post is a bit of an unorganised mess!
it's still listed on amazon, and available for pre-order.. so hopefully it's just some error that will be fixed soon?
Flannery O'Connor was going to be my answer. She's breathtakingly and brutally honest.
I would just recommend getting her complete collection.
The best MTG novel by a lot in my opinion is "Arena", by William R. Forstchen
https://www.amazon.com/Arena-Magic-Gathering-No-1/dp/0061054240
It's not about any Magic set, but it's set in the MTG World. It's one of my favorite books, I must've read it over ten times.
If you're looking specifically for the set novels, I haven't read a whole lot of them but of the ones I did read my favorite was the Ravnica cycle.
I'm glad I could introduce someone to it :) It's a really great distopian sci-fi book, but it's also really depressing. https://www.amazon.com/Canticle-Leibowitz-Walter-Miller-Jr/dp/0553273817
Short stories are my favorite thing to read so here's a big list for you...
Dangerous Laughter by Steven Millhauser
Scribner Anthology of Contemporary Short Fiction
Jesus' Son: Stories by Dennis Johnson
Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman by Haruki Murakami
Civilwarland in Bad Decline by George Saunders
Sleep by Stephen Dixon
Samuel Johnson is Indignant by Lydia Davis
Extreme Fiction: Fabulists and Formalists edited by Robin Hemley and Michael Martone
Now get to the library!
On the UK site it's listed as no longer available. I hope it's just an error!
http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/0345533488
David Sedaris has a collection of short stories, Barrel Fever, that is laugh-out-loud funny.
If you like short stories, George Saunders is brilliant.
CivilWarLand in Bad Decline is one of my favorite books. There are scenes in CivilWarLand that reduce me to giggling like a sugared-out 10-year-old.
Saunders' Pastoralia is a more subdued kind of humor, but still very enjoyable.
I know I must be missing some, but these are all that I can think of at the moment.
Fiction:
Collected Fictions by Jorge Luis Borges
The Stranger by Albert Camus
The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay by Michael Chabon
White Noise by Don Delilo
A Visit from the Goon Squad by Jennifer Egan
The Waste Land by T. S. Eliot
Everything that Rises Must Converge by Flannery O'Connor
His Dark Materials by Philip Pullman
The Crying of Lot 49 by Thomas Pynchon
Cryptonomicon by Neal Stephenson
Brief Interviews with Hideous Men by DFW
Infinite Jest by DFW
Of these, you can't go wrong with Infinite Jest and the Collected Fictions of Borges. His Dark Materials is an easy and classic read, probably the lightest fare on this list.
Non-Fiction:
The Music of the Primes by Marcus du Sautoy
Chaos by James Gleick
How to be Gay by David Halperin
Barrel Fever by David Sedaris
Let's Explore Diabetes with Owls by David Sedaris
Secret Historian by Justin Spring
Of these, Secret Historian was definitely the most interesting, though How to be Gay was a good intro to queer theory.
Here you go, the first three D&E novels in print. :)
http://www.amazon.com/Knight-Seven-Kingdoms-Song-Fire/dp/0345533488
I think everyone should start with Arena. It is one of my favorite books of all time. A very good read. And if I am not mistaken, it is the first magic book. It really captures how someone goes from being a simple wizard to becoming a planeswalker. It is really a story about how it all starts. Also, it captures the true feel of how playing magic in the early days felt. When things were as simple as summoning a Giant Spider and having is Fireballed, or using a psyonic blast to finish off an opponents drudge skeleton because you know he is out of mana. Mana is limited and the battles are very exciting because they are simple, but chaotic, and the story is very Monte Cristo.
http://www.amazon.com/Arena-Magic-The-Gathering-No/dp/0061054240/ref=sr_1_9?ie=UTF8&qid=1345667581&sr=8-9&keywords=arena
Non-fiction:
Fiction
They are not, though there are graphic novel versions. The stories were initially published in three different short-story anthologies, but were recently republished together in A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms.
Dunk & Egg were written novellas before they were graphic novels. There's 2 versions. You want this one. And yes, they're amazing and I'd recommend reading them ASAP.
Here is the collection of them. As the other commenter said they are some stories that take place about 100 years before the ASOIAF novels.
I found them to be awesome. I highly recommend them for any fan of ASOIAF.
Hi! Congratulations and welcome to the Watch!
You might be wondering right now about what to do next while waiting for the 6th book to come out, so here are some suggestions.
GRRM already published some sample chapters from TWOW over the years. Here's some information about them and links to most chapters.
There are additional novellas that take place in this world. The Dunk & Egg stories take place about 100 years before the main series and are about a hedge knight and his companion. The Princess and the Queen and The Rogue Prince are historical retellings of the Dance of the Dragons event. They're somewhat drier reads than D&E because they're from the POV of a Maester chronicling these events but I really liked them personally.
My favorites, on the other hand, are the amazing analyses and essays being written about these characters and their stories:
There are many, many more of these if you liked them. Feel free to ask if you have any questions. Have fun!
Michael Swanwick, The Iron Dragon's Daughter. Yes it has elves and dragons and whatnot. On the other hand those dragons are massive sentient war machines, made by changeling slave labor. This was "steampunk" before that label ossified into "British colonialism with cool gadgets"; there are Dickensian orphans, student riots, strange Elven politics, and the raw animal lust of being mind-linked to a sleek black death-machine. It's a beautiful book. I also really love Swanwick's "Stations of the Tide", which straddles SF and fantasy in the last days of a planet of islands about to be engulfed by rising tides; a nameless bureaucrat from the Bureau of Technology Transfer chases a mysterious magician through the most lyrical apocalypse ever written.
David Mitchell, The Bone Clocks - a few groups of secret immortals war through the ages. Beautifully written, and delightfully coy in how it dances around the magical happenings for most of its length.
Russel Hoban, The Medusa Frequency, an unsettling little story about a writer looking for inspiration and getting lost.
And perhaps you are ready for Jorge Luis Borges. Short stories that are more about the concepts than the worlds: a near-endless library that contains every text that could ever be written, a cabal of rebel historians creating an alternative history that begins to swallow up the world... very fantastic, very not something a D&D campaign would be based on.
Jack Vance, Tales of the Dying Earth. And here is something that was an explicit influence on D&D - the 'forget a spell the moment you cast it' system comes from Vance. A thief named Cugel steals from the wrong target - a wizard - who sends him halfway across the world. Cugel's quest for vengeance drags him back, twice, and ends horribly, but really what the story's about is the weird people and places he encounters along the way. (Originally a series of short stories.)
And while I am talking about stories of Self-Serving Bastards Who Inspired D&D (and quite possibly Locke Lamora), how about the first of Fritz Lieber's books about Fafhrd and the Grey Mouser? A blonde mountain of a swordsman teams up with a little weasel of a thief (with a few bits of half-remembered cantrips); they wander the mean streets of the rotting city of Lankhmar, getting in and out of trouble. There's a bunch of stories about these two guys, with varied emotional tones. Also I liked his Our Lady Of Darkness a lot; it's about a person who stumbles into a skyscraper built with very particular magical proportions.
Oooh yes, also. Zelazny. Let's go right to the most wild and experimental, Creatures of Light and Darkness. Technomagical Egyptian gods war with each other through time and space. The story is told in a dream-like kaleidoscope of styles, but builds up to a beautifully strange whole. It is broken and difficult and short and rewarding.
Tim Powers. Would you like to read a story about pirates and voodoo magic? (A certain series of Disney movies owes a lot to this, not the other way around.) Or a story about time travel to Dickensian England and a disastrous attempt to resurrect dead gods? Or how about the secret history of how Byron, Shelley, and other consumptive poets were beset by vampires?
(And any mention of Powers should also include his buddy James Blaylock; I recommend "The Last Coin" and "Land of Dreams" in particular. The former is a madcap chase for thirty silver coins; the latter is an elliptical story about a Magical Carnival of Dubious Morality.)
Also if you are bored with traditional fantasy try reading some Lord Dunsanay. His work may rekindle the 'standard' fantasy for you; 'King of Elfland's Daughter' is melancholic, magical, and beautiful to read aloud; 'Idle Days on the Yann' is a wonderfully elliptic bit of world-building.
And finally, an extra-weird one. Larry Marder's Beanworld, an 'ecological romance' that I think is one of the best things to come out of the 80s B&W comics boom. It is gorgeous, alien, and familiar, all at once.
(Spoiler: The fate of the world hangs in the balance in one of these books. The protagonist, however, intends to destroy it. And succeeds. Despite this, there is a sequel to that book.)
read etgar keret! (wrote the story this was based on)
the story is in this book and the title story is pretty much perfect.
The Churn: An Expanse Novella (The Expanse) https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00I82884W/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_i_NVZrDbDR1342E
If this gets blocked or deleted I'll pm you.
As others have said, I would advise against that. Only watching say KL & the North in the show & skipping the others until you have watched all of those would be extremely difficult enough; doing so in the books would be a whole other world of pain.
I don't really have a tips for getting through them sorry (I'm something of an avid reader & absolutely devoured them first time & many subsequent re-reads, but not everyone is like that & that's fine), though I would suggest reading A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms after A Storm of Swords as bit of a breather after the first three books & before you launch into the behemoths that are A Feast for Crows & A Dance with Dragons. AKot7K is set decades before the main series (so you will probably pick up on a few historical references made in the main series), has a lighter tone, only a single PoV, many great illustrations & is only three short stories (the whole thing is only about half the length of the first book, A Game of Thrones, if that).
Once you get to AFfC & ADwD, you may be best to read them together as GRRM originally intended for them to be the one book but he expanded on them to maintain such. They mostly happen concurrently with a few PoVs starting towards the end of ASoS in terms of actual in-universe timeline & then the last part of Dance happens after Feast (with some of the Feast PoVs appearing once or twice in that part of Dance & some were pushed back to The Winds of Winter, the upcoming 6th book).
Just not to overload you with information now, once you finish ASoS make a post (or just do a search) asking about the combined reading orders & you will get detailed suggestions for such. Then once you make it through the main series, you can make another post/search about what other books within the ASoIaF universe you can also check out between re-reads ;)
Good luck!
I bought an illustrated copy of A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms by George R R Martin. The illustrations in it were really lovely, and I thought it added to the story.
However, I was never a fan of the illustrations in Roald Dahl's books. I hated Quentin Blake's art style, even as a kid.
This list needs more Neil Gaiman.
Children/YA books: Coraline, The Graveyard Book, and Stardust are my favs. Do yourself a favor and read the version illustrated by Charles Vess, it is far superior to the (non-illustrated) mass-market paperback. I would link to it, but I can't seem to find it on Amazon. Sorry.
Now, at no point did you ask for short-fiction, though I would think it fits your criteria of being able to pick up and set down at a moment's notice, so I'm gonna rec some fine short fiction as well. Smoke and Mirrors is quite good, as is Fragile Things.
Now as long as I'm here I would be remiss if I did not at least mention The Princess Bride and the Discworld novels of Terry Pratchett. I linked to the first one in the series, but it has been my experience that you can read them in just about any order you want with very little trouble. I usually just go to my local library and grab whichever one strikes my fancy. Terry Pratchett is an amazing storyteller and he also made a sword out of metal ore mined from a meteor after being knighted. That is a true thing that happened. I kid you not. Read his books. They will make your life better. Also to bring this comment full circle, he co-authored a book with Neil Gaiman called Good Omens that is just fantastic.
I highly recommend that your DM read Arena, the very first MTG book; it is totally unrelated to the others, and aside from being a great book in it's own right, it treats each color as a separate house of magic, more or less. It also ads a lot of flavor depth to the colors, and uses them to represent both the commonly discussed upsides, and downsides through ties to sin like greed and gluttony, while doing a fantastic job of illustrating inter-planar travel.
This was, after all, when MTG was pretty directly based on D&D.
Labyrinths by Jorge Luis Borges
I absolutely love examining the characteristics of books. I especially like large books with heavy, glossy pages (like textbooks) although they are a pain in the ass to actually read.
My two favorite books (based on the feel) are:
After those two, my next favorite would have to be a 50-year old softcover Penguin Classics Crime & Punishment. It is super floppy, lightly yellowed, and has the perfect book smell.
Ambrose Bierce- The Devil's Dictionary.
Don't really read it as much as browse through it from time to time. It's an old book but much of its cynicism is as relevant and as funny today as when written.
Something a bit longer try Post Office by Charles Bukowski. That's semi-autobiographical, easily accessible and there's not really that much of a plot to it- so it doesn't really matter too much if you lose your place.
edit: Would you consider collections of short stories? I often find them the best thing to read if I'm unsure as to when I'll get the chance. Most definitely not light but short would be a collection of Jorge Luis Borges stories. Some of them are complete mind-fucks a few pages long. I have a copy of Labyrinths and it's pretty damn good, but there are many similar collections about. It's the only book that I've lent out, not had returned, and then replaced- usually I don't bother if it's something I've already read.
further edit: Both non-fiction and short- Anton Chekhov- A Journey to Sakhalin. Truly remarkable book, especially the letters to his family.
Try A Canticle for Liebiwitz by Walter M. Miller.
Oh my goodness, you absolutely cannot have a magical realism rec list without Mark Helprin's Winter's Tale on it! (Okay, maybe you could, but in my view it'd be like...like having a historical fantasy rec list without Guy Gavriel Kay on it. A travesty. Unless you're deliberately leaving off hugely successful books.)
The book is not at all like the movie of the same name. Like many magical realist novels, it's hard to describe; plus I find it hard to talk about because, as Benjamin DeMott said in his New York Times review, "I find myself nervous, to a degree I don’t recall in my past as a reviewer, about failing the work, inadequately displaying its brilliance."
It is a love letter to the New York City of the past, and of (at the time of the book's publication) the future. At times exhilarating, at others heartbreaking, simultaneously full of wry humor and grand vision. I suppose the back-of-book blurb I have on my battered, much-read copy is as good an overall description as any: "Vault into the cold, clear air across a frozen, fabulous time of love and laughter with Peter Lake, master thief, and his flying white horse. Thunder toward the 21st century, leading lunatics, lovers, rascals, and dreamers over snowdrifts, through raging storms, furious battles, walls of ice and pillars of fire, to the golden city of our glorious future."
Great article! I can't stand having to wait until the summer for the next book so learning they were releasing another novella is good news.
The next novella is released on April 15th:
The Churn: An Expanse Novella by James S.A. Corey
I highly recommend Darwin's "The Origin of Species [by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life]." It sets the groundwork for a lot of modern biology, while also being an outstanding philosophical endeavor (his second work, "The Descent of Man" even moreso, but it also carries some cultural artifacts that are less than ideal these days). Despite what you might assume, it does not require much technical understanding, and is not nearly as dry as modern scientific papers. I honestly very much enjoyed reading it, and Darwin does an amazing job of explaining himself. I highly recommend an annotated version of Origin with the illustrations from his notebooks.
EDIT: I recommend either this illustrated version or this annotated version. These have the first edition text, crisp and clear and strong, and not nearly as watered down as some of the later editions of Origin. I've heard that this particular annotated version is considered one of the best ever produced, so it's probably your best bet.
Nobody since, as far as I'm concerned, has really mastered the grotesque in quite the same way. Her Complete Stories is spectacular, there's really nothing in there that isn't worth your time.
If they end up making a series out of 'Knight of the Seven Kingdoms', I would be so happy
http://www.amazon.com/Arena-Magic-The-Gathering-No/dp/0061054240
This is the first Magic the Gathering book. Published in 1994. It contains planeswalkers.
The first Magic set not set on Dominaria was Arabian Nights which was set on the plane of Rabiah. It was the games first expansion ever - printed in 1993 a mere 4 months after Alpha was released (and the same month Unlimited was released). It didn't even contain any of the traditional Dominarian characters.
They neither needed planeswalkers to tell stories on other worlds nor did they invent planeswalkers to do that.
It did. It's quick read too (couple hours) and I think I only paid like $6 for it on Kindle. Actually, now only $2.99
On more than one occasion, Mike's brought up Layrinths. I think he even named it as a 'desert island' book.
Those are the three currently published, yes. Gurm has stated there will be (if my memory serves) 12 altogether. I highly recommend the edition of TKOTSK illustrated by Gary Gianni, it's beautiful.
You know, I don't have an answer. Most of the selections so far are from before Wallace's prime. (Quick aside: Philip Roth's best books are his latest, but who he was to the world was always the man who wrote Portnoy's Complaint. His worldview never changed. Rather he grew in his craft, and his later characters were various iterations of Portnoy getting old, perhaps with the great exception of American Pastoral.)
Anyway, I don't have an answer because Wallace arrived at a deadlock in American life that we have not yet overcome. He was a prophet of America's decline. What I believe Wallace wanted was certainty and authority in a time where it wasn't granted him.
Politically conservative (he voted for Reagan and admired John McCain), he was desperate for a sense of civic life that was already in decline, and he wanted badly to be led.
Raised by atheist academics, he sought out the comfort of the Church. He wanted unironically to believe in "the sub-surface unity of all things" but couldn't get himself to do so, conceding instead that, "You get to decide what to worship." His message, instead, was existential: life is what you make of it, so pay attention. But he wanted more. He sought "redemption" through literature and contemplation, seeking something of substance to soothe his "inner sap." Perhaps he found it in glimpses, but his long-time depression betrayed dissatisfaction. He searched endlessly in mythology, folklore, and collective subconscious imagery, only to catch his own tail in a Kafkaesque cat-and-mouse chase with himself.
In love, he was a bachelor, who one time contemplated murder over jealous love. He was a womanizer who held his manhood cheap, retreating to books to "feel less alone."
Like Hal in Infinite Jest, he found no authority, neither from his wild, filmmaking father, nor in the life-sucking entertainments of his time. Instead, Wallace found solace among the meek, the addicts, and the defeated (he himself suffered from alcohol abuse). Deep down, it wasn't enough. Deep down, beneath his giant brain, down in the bones of his Anglo-American stock, he knew something was wrong in America. He lamented our cafeteria democracy of boring politicians. He lamented what he called the "death of civics." Look at us now: government in chaos, the waning of religion across the West, an epidemic of addicts, no closer to cultural wisdom or unity, individuals still atomized and community still broken. (As an aside, I believe these premonitions sparked his interest in Quebec's secession movement. There, at least, people were fighting for something.)
In short, Tl;dr: Wallace was perfectionist born in a time that he couldn't perfect. What we have of him is a glorious attempt to surmount the chaos and fragmentation he felt in his heart and in the world around him. The reason I don't have an answer to your question is because I don't think anyone else got as close to articulating that as he did, and I think his fictions and his essays will be read in the future with great pity because I believe that we will rise to the occasion—in politics, in art, and in society—in due time. We always do.
So, I'm going to how deep do you want to go into the lore?
​
If you want to go from the beginning, this is the first book. Note that the formatting of the books changes drastically around Time Spiral, and after that , most of the lore isn't in actual book format anymore.
​
If you have a question about something in particular, you might even be better looking at the wiki stuff for a summary, and then it'z easier to really dig into it from there. That's usually enough for getting a quick idea of what's going on, especially from like Invasion forward.
​
Additionally, if you go to the wizards website, they have some good stuff. I'm not up to date on it anymore, but they used to host comics about the new walkers. They regularly post things (is it still weekly? I couldn't keep up between school and the website format changing a couple times) and keep a loose archive. I think you have to follow this more aggressively, but some of them are absolute gems.
​
It's not everything, but should be enough to get started.
If you ever do have a hankering for some good Southern fiction with strong typological themes, I do recommend picking up some of her work. My wife acquired this volume recently, and I'm stealing some reads/re-reads from it. (For whatever reason her *ahem* PUBLIC school didn't read O'Connor like I did while *ahem* HOMESCHOOLING.)
You should definitely read "The Churn."
The Churn: An Expanse Novella (The Expanse)
The Bachman Books is a great collection, includes The Running Man and The Long Walk, plus Roadwork and Rage.
A Canticle For Leibowitz
Get A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms.
This series follows the story of Duncan the Tall (of the Kingsguard) and his squire called Egg.
GRRM wrote the stories in between writing the main ASOIAF story.
Trust me, they're absolutely fantastic. You'll fall in love the with the characters in no time and you'll get to see GRRM's legendary world-building writing skills.
A collection of all 3 D&E novellas is set to be published in October IIRC
EDIT: October 6th to be specific according to this pre-order page on Amazon
http://www.amazon.com/Knight-Seven-Kingdoms-Adventures-Duncan-ebook/dp/B00S3R6HAE/
If you want to read before October you'll have to go through the anthologies
It's not a book. This is an excerpt from a commencement speech by David Foster Wallace at Kenyon College. If you like this, you should definitely check out the full speech or check out one of his three collection of essays. He's also got a number of short story collections, including a particularly famous work Brief Interviews with Hideous Men. He's probably most famous for Infinite Jest, a novel well over a thousand pages in length.
Confermo sul fatto che sia un gran bel libro!
Io personalmente l'avevo acquistato in inglese a meno di dieci euro (precisamente da Amazon, ma eventualmente si trova pure su ebay).
Se invece preferisci un'edizione più vecchiotta c'è su Amazon a pochi euro in più.
The short story it's based on is worth a read as well. Some other enjoyable yarns in this collection by the Israeli writer Etgar Keret.
Just bought it! Had some trouble with amazon.co.uk because I'm not in the UK. Here's a standard amazon link to the story: http://amzn.com/B00OA0379C
Maybe a graded reader like Café in Berlin? Not free, but good materials can cost a couple bucks
This is it
https://www.amazon.com/Knight-Seven-Kingdoms-Song-Fire/dp/0345533488
Hey OP - the magic the gathering book caught my eye. That must be from the very beginning. Reminded me of when I played and one of my favorite used bookstore finds, one of my fave books all time: Arena
I'll just drop this here ;)
https://www.amazon.com/Knight-Seven-Kingdoms-Song-Fire/dp/0345533488
You might enjoy The Golem and the Jinni...It's set in turn of the century New York, and has strong cultural and religious overtones. The magical aspects of it are quite secondary to everything else.
A Winters Tale...the movie apparently sucked, but the book has stuck with me for quite some time. It's a lyrical piece of magic realism, much stronger on the realism. Another book on turn of the century New York.
Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell may be a bit more magic than you'd like, but it's astonishingly good. It's what Jane Austen would have produced if she'd decided to write a fantasy novel.
The Night Circus is good.
Ich habe in meinem "Deutschkurs" dieses Buch gelesen:
https://www.amazon.de/Learn-German-Stories-Berlin-Beginners/dp/1492399493/
Das ist ziemlich einfach und ganz lustig geschrieben.
Hmm.......
If you're a comics kind of person, I'd suggest Sandman Volume 4. Not the first in the series, but the best early one that gives a feel for the rest of them, and a self-contained story.
For YA, Coraline is fantastic, and even better than the quite good movie.
For an adult novel? See, I'm not sure his best work is the long-format Adult novel. My favorite adult text work of his is probably Smoke and Mirrors, which is a short story collection.
The Ocean at the End of the Lane is also very good, but might not be a good FIRST Gaiman novel. It's sort-of a magical realism book, and that can be off-putting sometimes.
GAH! He's such a good author, and such a great PERSON, that I want him to make a good impression!
You will enjoy the hell out of that book. Next, you should read "A Canticle for Liebowitz".
Since you like Bukowski, I suggest you check these out:
Ray and Airships- Barry Hannah
http://www.amazon.com/Ray-Barry-Hannah/dp/0802133878/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1370107760&sr=1-1&keywords=barry+hannah+ray
http://www.amazon.com/Airships-Barry-Hannah/dp/0802133886/ref=sr_1_3?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1370107719&sr=1-3&keywords=barry+hannah
Sylvia - Leonard Michaels
http://www.amazon.com/Sylvia-Novel-Leonard-Michaels/dp/0374271070/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1370107824&sr=1-1&keywords=leonard+michaels+sylvia
I would also suggest CivilWarLand in Bad Decline - George Saunders
http://www.amazon.com/CivilWarLand-Bad-Decline-George-Saunders/dp/1573225797/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1370107860&sr=1-1&keywords=civilwarland+in+bad+decline
Edit: These are all quick, easy reads.
In A Canticle for Leibowitz when paper is one of the most precious things there is, all the church has to go on is a shopping list. lol.
this isthe cover to one of my favorite books of all time:
http://www.amazon.com/Winters-Tale-Mark-Helprin/dp/0156031191/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1314131907&sr=8-1
The statue 10 shots in was used on the cover of "The Pugilist at Rest" by Thom Jones, an amazing collection of short story fiction with some awesome boxing stories.
This might be the one you're thinking of. Another texty one for OP is the Clown at Midnight, by Grant Morrison. But for actual books, here's a list of them. Also, don't forget novelizations of the movies.
Should be recognisable, it's a bestselling collection of the Dunk and Egg books:
https://www.amazon.com/Knight-Seven-Kingdoms-Song-Fire/dp/0345533488
Comes with awesome illustrations every couple of pages too
It's just the audiobook version of one of GRRM's supplemental novellas, titled The Princess and the Queen. The Rogue Prince is the companion novella which should be read first of the two. There's another trio of novellas, collectively called Tales of Dunk and Egg. There are audiobook recordings available on youtube, but with a not-so-great narrator. There's another audiobook version, A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms, narrated by Harry Lloyd (Viserys Targaryen) which is awesome, but not available as a freebie on youtube, unfortunately.
Hands down Bear, by Marian Engel. It's a somber introspective about a woman discovering herself through her connection to nature and a forbidden romance.
https://www.amazon.com/Learn-German-Stories-Berlin-Beginners/dp/1492399493
https://www.amazon.com/dp/0345533488/ Four versions for your consideration.
The short stories are all amazing, and a couple bucks each on Amazon. The Churn tell Amos's backstory. Wes Chatham read that book with a therapist to talk about what that sort of childhood would do to an adult to prepare to play Amos. The Butcher of Anderson Station reads like the attack on Thoth station, but way harsher. Much more details than the show portrayed. The Vital Abyss shows what happened to the surviving scientists from Thoth.
A Canticle for Leibowitz by Walter Miller.
An incredible book about a post apocalyptic America. Kind of talks about the human condition.
A more recent short story definitely made my list. Created by a redditor in response to a /r/WritingPrompts post he made.
Here is the amazon link.
He also has it available on his website, as stated in his post, here.
There's just something about the story that dragged me in and couldn't let me go. It's a quick read and definitely worth it.
I've not read any of the recent stuff, but I remember Arena fondly https://www.amazon.com/Arena-Magic-Gathering-No-1/dp/0061054240
What kind of stories does she like? Neil Gaiman has a book of short stories and poems called Smoke & Mirrors thats pretty good :)
Also, I just recommended A Canticle for Liebowitz by Miller in another thread, and noticed in an Amazon review someone pointing out that he is very similar to McCarthy. Thinking about it I think that's about right.
http://www.amazon.com/Canticle-Leibowitz-Walter-Miller-Jr/dp/0553273817
[Jorge Luis Borges] (http://www.powells.com/biblio/17-9780811200127-16)
[Flannery O'Connor] (http://www.amazon.com/Complete-Stories-Flannery-OConnor/dp/0374515360/)
For me, A Canticle for Leibowitz is one of the best.
I'm fairly terrible at giving good synopses, so I'll let Amazon's summary do the work for me:
> In a nightmarish ruined world slowly awakening to the light after sleeping in darkness, the infant rediscoveries of science are secretly nourished by cloistered monks dedicated to the study and preservation of the relics and writings of the blessed Saint Isaac Leibowitz. From here the story spans centuries of ignorance, violence, and barbarism, viewing through a sharp, satirical eye the relentless progression of a human race damned by its inherent humanness to recelebrate its grand foibles and repeat its grievous mistakes.
It's a seriously devastating book. You should be able to find a used copy of it somewhere fairly easy, it's considered a bit of a classic. Also, the Amazon link I provided isn't even the cheapest (new) edition you can get, that would be the mass-market paperback, but I linked to the trade paperback one first because it has the best cover-art.
Boom
http://www.amazon.com/Knight-Seven-Kingdoms-Adventures-Duncan/dp/0345533488
https://www.amazon.ca/dp/1444723537/ref=wl_it_dp_o_pd_nS_ttl?_encoding=UTF8&colid=6RK0TA7QDMIY&coliid=I3A9OUB1V6UL87
heres the link I found! :D
That's okay I get that way about stuff to, we all do.
I wonder if you were thinking of the interview where he said he thought it was a mistake to bring Gandalf back from the dead in Two Towers, because it robs the reader of the emotional weight of losing such a powerful character. Reading into that a certain way you could definitely see that as a critique on Tolkien. To me I think it's more his way of explaining why characters like Ned won't be coming back.
There's lots of great fantasy out there so if ASOIAF isn't your thing that's okay too. For example I love sci-fi, but Dr. Who and Firefly for some reason just don't work for me. Luckily we have tons of options!
If you don't like Game of Thrones, but maybe want to read some Martin to get a feel for his style that isn't as dark, I recommend his Dunk and Egg shorter stories. They take place before the events in the books/TV series in the same world and they're much lighter and about a wandering hedge knight.
There are three novellas by J.S.A. Corey, set in the world of The Expanse: 1) Gods of Risk, 2) The Churn and The Vital Abyss
Thom Jones, The Pugilist at Rest and Cold Snap: http://www.amazon.com/The-Pugilist-at-Rest-Stories/dp/0316473049
There were a couple of pretty sweet short story compendiums put out around 1989 when the first Batman movie came out that had some good stuff in them. The ones I had were devoted to Batman and the Joker individually... I'll see if I can locate them.
ETA: Here you go.
Edit 2: HOLY SHIT THE JOKER BOOK IS WORTH A LOT OF DOUGH!!!! I'm now sad that I have no idea what happened to mine.
Dofleini mentions that "what was on [the] desk at the moment."
Broom is much less demanding time-wise, although I agree with your sentiments... Not only is it much less polished than his later work, I think it's also less rewarding. It almost seems as though he was warming up for Jest... I enjoyed it, but I'm glad I read it after Jest & Interviews. For me, it falls into the same category as the early Dickens novels: entertaining in their own right, but more interesting as a window into the foundation for more developed later work.
I'd recommend Brief Interviews or A Supposedly Fun Thing as entry points for Wallace, followed by Infinite Jest if you like what you've read.
Bear v. Shark by Chris Bachelder. Excellent Satire
The Pugilist at Rest by Thom Jones. Wonderful short story collection.
Perhaps if you consider reading the synopsis on Amazon a spoiler. But I tagged it anyway.
They were compiled into a nice book A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms
Wow, that is a question I haven't gotten for a long time. My fav. books are mostly the ones I wrote actually - all of them are in Swedish, but this one made it over seas - sadly it became digital and not a paperback, but I guess it is the change of time.
I find it really hard to tell you my fav. books by other authors - there are so many and I appreciate them all for different reasons. I am going to say Treasure Island for a list of 20 specific reasons (that I can't list here because I would probably come up with even more...), Masters Of Doom - for the pop-culture explosion and the thrilling documentary way it is told and finally Roald Dahls "The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar and Six More". This book have some of the strongest, scariest, interesting and beautiful stories I ever come across.
Oh, and I totally agree with plays. I am a huge fan of screenplays. I actually wrote an Episode to the 2011 animated show "Thundercats" but it never made it to the show before it was canceled :(
https://www.amazon.com/Churn-Expanse-Novella-ebook/dp/B00I82884W
I'm absolutely the right person to ask!
There are 5 books in the series, out of a planned 7:
Fair warning, each book seems to take more and more years to be published. The 5th book came out in 2011 and ends on a huge cliffhanger! There are number of fans who are seriously concerned that the 6th book may never come out, or that it may not come out until the author George R R Martin dies and it is then published by another author.
If you get through these and want more, George RR Martin has also published a short story collection about some tertiary characters called Dunk and Egg in 2015 (A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms), as well as an encyclopedia for the entire history of the world in which that the series takes place (A World of Ice and Fire).
Some fans of the television show therefore may argue that it's not worth reading the books until the series is finished, or ever. I personally recommend them, they add a lot of depth to the show, and are just well-written pieces of prose on their own. The Dunk and Egg collection is also fun. I've not read the encyclopedia yet but I'll get to it some day.
So glad I clicked. Its only 14 bucks on amazon
Some Borges for you:
Consider every book possible.
Princess Bride:
You killed my father.
Alternatively, Star Wars:
I am your father.
Or the Da Vinci Code:
Murder, murder, murder, Pope.
Link
I highly highly highly recommend picking up a Flannery O'Connor anthology.
This version is what I have.
Flip around and start with "A Good Man is Hard to Find" and "Good Country People."
I have a few favorites. These are more really short stories to read in a day rather than a short book.
First Jonathan Livingston Seagull One of my favorite books of all time and it takes an hour or so to read.
Second The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar and other short stories
Children's books might be helpful in a way. I think with just duolingo you might be able to start tackling stuff like "german learning" books.
https://www.amazon.com/Learn-German-Stories-Berlin-Beginners/dp/1492399493
I own that book and it's very slow/simple. He also makes "choose your own adventure" books which I think are more difficult. I own one but haven't gotten into it yet.
There was also a post recently that had a bunch of resources in it https://www.reddit.com/r/German/comments/4symbk/82_german_youtube_channels_to_practice_listening/
Arena. Basiaclly Yojimbo told in a setting of wizardry and combat.
It may not be the typical combat book like the others on here but i'd like to recommend "The Pugilist at Rest" by Thom Jones a former Force Recon Marine. The book is actually a collection of short stories of which several deal with a Recon Marine during bootcamp, deployed in Vietnam and his psychological problems later on.
Oh I bought this: https://www.amazon.com/Knight-Seven-Kingdoms-Song-Fire-ebook/dp/B00S3R6HAE/ref=sr_1_8?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1511536122&sr=1-8&keywords=A+Song+of+ice+and+fire
Is it eligible to be turned into an audiobook? I don't really know what to look for, I'm a new Amazon user whose only ever use Audible before.
http://www.amazon.com/The-Driver-Wanted-Other-Stories/dp/1592641059/ref=pd_sim_b_2?ie=UTF8&refRID=09Z9VFV9SAG9G7HGJDFQ its based off of a short story from this book. weird, fun stuff if anyone is interested in more of the story.
they did a decent job with the movie
I honestly would not start with Good Omens. It's a brilliant book, but has very little of Neil Gaiman's writing style. His influence seems to be more in the plot and a bit of darkness here and there; whereas the writing is more Terry Pratchett than Neil Gaiman.
I highly recommend you start with one of his short story collections, like Smoke & Mirrors or Fragile Things. His Sandman graphic novels are also a great start in my opinion.
http://www.amazon.com/Arena-Magic-The-Gathering-No/dp/0061054240
i recommend this one; the rest of the series not as good but this one is great.
Bats Out of Hell - Barry Hannah
CivilWarLand in Bad Decline - George Saunders
Blood Meridian - Cormac McCarthy
Siddhartha - Herman Hesse
Actual Air - David Berman
I do this but it's a product of reading the early MTG books like Arena and the greensleeves trilogy
The Pugilist at Rest
http://www.amazon.com/Canticle-Leibowitz-Walter-Miller-Jr/dp/0553273817
That's written. There's also a free audiobook/radioplay here:
https://archive.org/details/ACanticleForLiebowitz
Overview
Overall, pretty good.. needs a fair amount of wordsmithing, but I think you're doing a fair job of getting you personality across
Photos
Your main sucks wind, it doesn't look like the person in any of the other photos. I suspect it's the most recent, but it's focus is so bad it makes you look kind of like the brown eyed office bound older brother of the blue eyed mad bro who's out in the world having a great time in all the other pictures.
How much time are we talking about between the oldest and most recent pictures here?
You're 22, you've changed a lot in just the last year, for that matter 3 years. None of these should be more than 6 months old.
My self-summary
>Here's a hint... My name's not Steve! Recent University grad, Computer Science major. I'm very easy going and love to meet new people. I'm interested in traveling, photography, techy stuffy and love vinyl records.
Beeb! Hipster alert!
You're hopefully going to put most of this in it's appropriate section, so it really doesn't belong here.
Then come back here and give it a fresh try.. make this section why you like all the things you're mentioning in the other sections.. All of those are what you're passionate about, this section should be why you're passionate about it.
What I’m doing with my life
> Just graduated University! Currently working in IT for a corporate office. My coffee mug says that I'm the worlds greatest computer whizz.
I hope your coffee mug doesn't really say that, and if it does I hope you take it home, otherwise I will guess at least one fellow employee has taken a piss into your mug.
This is what you're doing in the "what's occurring in your life" sense not "What are your life goals and what are you doing to achieve them" sense. The question can go either way, I'm personally more fond of the later.
I’m really good at
Meh.. not terrible, not fantastic.
The first things people usually notice about me
Leave it blank, let it disappear.
Favorite books, movies, shows, music, and food
Not bad.. covering most bases.
No book? Not even a single favorite book?
Winter's Tale Paperback – by Mark Helprin
Get it.. wait till the first snowflakes start to fall, open it and start reading. Thank me or tell me it was crap when you finish reading it.
The six things I could never do without
Fair enough.
I spend a lot of time thinking about
> If the Oxford Comma is truly a necessity.
Yep. It's like ending a SQL statement with out a ;
On a typical Friday night I am
Paint a more vivid picture. Give the potential date reading your profile something they can mentally place themselves into. Do you frequent sports bars, wine bars, craft brew taprooms, live music, what?
The most private thing I’m willing to admit
No.. clear it, make it go away.
You should message me if
I was good with that until you used Adventure.
NO.
Yup, the driver is a jerk, but I don't want to spoil the tale for you :) is for kids though, but very fun! http://www.amazon.com/The-Driver-Wanted-Other-Stories/dp/1592641059
Not zombie related, but A Canticle for Leibowitz is an interesting take on society carrying on after the earth is destroyed.
And SeveNeves by Stephenson is about a group of people that left earth before a cosmic event made it uninhabitable, coming back thousands of years later to start over.
The very first Magic novel had some very nicely-detailed descriptions of two mages locked in combat.
Oh, it's really good! Etgar Keret is a pretty great writer.
This is the book I have with it in it, along with several other good short stories.
> but it also means that you can't read for long periods of time without your eyes hurting.
Strongly disagree. I use a black background and white text, and never have issues with eye pain and am prone to frequent 2~3 hour reading sessions before bed, with the occasional 5~6 hour overnighter when the book is really good - which is what I did about a week ago two nights in a row when I read the entire Knight of the Seven Kingdoms.
Yes! As for books these one's have really helped me:
I know I have more but these are my favorites! As for movies/shows.. when I watch like youtube videos (try 'easy german') or kids shows I tend to watch them without subtitles. If I'm watching an adult movie/show I pretty much have to use subtitles otherwise I can't pick up anything. I usually put the subtitles in German though, because I read better than I listen!
Let me know if I can help you with anything else :)
Amazon has the collection of all three novellas here.
A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms, is a collection of 3 short stories about Sir Duncan the Tall. Its a good quick read, even though it only has Sir Duncan's POV. https://www.amazon.com/Knight-Seven-Kingdoms-Song-Fire/dp/0345533488/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1501465671&sr=8-1&keywords=a+knight+of+the+seven+kingdoms
the world of ice and fire
A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms (A Song of Ice and Fire)
Okay, I think you will like George Saunders. Pick up a collection of short stories called Civilwarland in Bad Decline.
It's dark, funny and weird. Never boring, I promise. An easy read, too.
A book I have wanted for a long time!
Used - Prime Time eligible :)
If you are still interested in the D&E novellas, the release date for the collected book has just been announced on Amazon it seems: http://www.amazon.com/Knight-Seven-Kingdoms-Adventures-Duncan-ebook/dp/B00S3R6HAE/
I've been wanting to read Bear for ages.
The Saint of Impossible Causes sounds good too.
I highly recommend this book of short stories about the Joker. Very slept on. Many of the stories have a Stephen King vibe.
I’m pretty sure you’re mistaken, I had the Lloyd version in a torrent a few years before ADWD. I’ll look into it later and let you know if I can prove it.
EDIT: But I'll start here, A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms was published in 2015: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00S3R6HAE/ref=dp-kindle-redirect?_encoding=UTF8&btkr=1
Audiobooks discussed on Reddit in 2012: https://www.reddit.com/r/asoiaf/comments/14sd4a/spoilers_dunkegg_different_versions_of_the_3/
Yet you're right, looks like they may have actually been read by other authors, so I guess I was mistaken too.
This was perfect for me, for what you're describing. There's a bunch of these little books with different short stories in them.
I also like reading books I love in translated to German. I find novels I read as a teenager (so they're a bit easier, without being super young) really great to read in German, as I can use context to figure out any confusing bits.
There is a trilogy of short stories called "A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms". It's very good.
Bloodraven is actually a character introduced in the prequels. Are you aware of the Dunk and Egg stories now collected in A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms?
They are well worth reading. The first story was published before A Clash of Kings so they are really integral to the series I believe.
According to Amazon: 77 pages
Anything by the Argentine author Jorge Luis Borges. After reading his short stories, I would always have to sit and think about what I had read for a while. Here's one of his more famous stories, The Zahir. I highly recommend the book Labyrinths, which is an English-language collection of his short stories.
You can buy the prequel trilogy here. Plus the artwork is great.
http://www.amazon.com/Knight-Seven-Kingdoms-Song-Fire/dp/0345533488
Did you read The Churn? It's about Amos' past growing up in Baltimore and talks about a food-stamp/credit chit like program for basic IIRC.
"The further adventures of the Joker" a rather hard to find novel but you can get one on Amazon, really messed up stories also brilliant ones. http://www.amazon.com/Further-Adventures-Joker-Martin-Greenberg/dp/0553285319/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1453274143&sr=8-1&keywords=the+further+adventures+of+the+joker
Thom Jones writes in a style called Micro fiction. lots of very short stories, but they're very well written. http://www.amazon.com/The-Pugilist-at-Rest-Stories/dp/0316473049
If you have a bookstore nearby, I would recommend looking for the new edition of A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms by George R.R. Martin. It's the psuedo-prequel to ASOIAF and this edition has beautiful illustrations and a heartwarming story.
To this day there is still no greater book for opening up the world of thought than Will Durant's The Story of Philosophy. This book is indispensable.
Aside from that the best advice, as many here have noted, is to simply read widely and often. Here are some other books I can personally recommend as being particularly insightful:
Try this, or anything by Etgar Keret, I've never read anything better.
Any short stories collection by Thom Jones. I really enjoyed The Pugilist at Rest
The brother's war, Chainer's torment, and Nemesis are the 3 best standalone novels. IE, if you look at the novel alone, not in context of the cycle it's in.
http://www.amazon.com/Brothers-War-Artifacts-Cycle-Book/dp/0786911700/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1345670302&sr=1-1&keywords=the+brother%27s+war
http://www.amazon.com/Chainers-Torment-Magic-Gathering--Odyssey-Cycle/dp/0786926961/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1345670284&sr=1-1&keywords=chainer%27s+torment
http://www.amazon.com/Nemesis-Magic-Gathering-Masquerade-Cycle/dp/0786915595/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1345670264&sr=1-1&keywords=magic+nemesis
Edit * Forgot Arena : http://www.amazon.com/Arena-Magic-The-Gathering-No/dp/0061054240/ref=cm_cmu_pg__header
I have a couple of books on my wishlist that I would love!!! Specifically this one.
> then I remembered he doesn't have any new books to initiate a signing :/
Did you miss this when it was published in October?
	
	
	
> # A New Refutation of Time: Borges on the Most Paradoxical Dimension of Existence - Brain Pickings - Pocket
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> borges_time1.jpg
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> “If our heart were large enough to love life in all its detail, we would see that every instant is at once a giver and a plunderer,” the French philosopher Gaston Bachelard wrote in contemplating our paradoxical experience of time in the early 1930s. “It is the insertion of man with his limited life span that transforms the continuously flowing stream of sheer change … into time as we know it,” Hannah Arendt wrote half a century later in her brilliant inquiry into time, space, and our thinking ego. Time, in other words — particularly our experience of it as a continuity of successive moments — is a cognitive illusion rather than an inherent feature of the universe, a construction of human consciousness and perhaps the very hallmark of human consciousness.
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> Wedged between Bachelard and Arendt was Jorge Luis Borges (August 24, 1899–June 14, 1986), that muscular wrangler of paradox and grand poet-laureate of time, who addressed this perplexity in his 1946 essay “A New Refutation of Time,” which remains the most elegant, erudite, and pleasurable meditation on the subject yet. It was later included in Labyrinths (public library) — the 1962 collection of Borges’s stories, essays, parables, and other writings, which gave us his terrific and timeless parable of the divided self.
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> Borges begins by noting the deliberate paradox of his title, a contrast to his central thesis that the continuity of time is an illusion, that time exists without succession and each moment contains all eternity, which negates the very notion of “new.” The “slight mockery” of the title, he notes, is his way of illustrating that “our language is so saturated and animated by time.” With his characteristic self-effacing warmth, Borges cautions that his essay might be “the anachronistic reductio ad absurdum of a preterite system or, what is worse, the feeble artifice of an Argentine lost in the maze of metaphysics” — and then he proceeds to deliver a masterwork of rhetoric and reason, carried on the wings of uncommon poetic beauty.
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> Writing in the mid-1940s — a quarter century after Einstein defeated Bergson in their landmark debate, in which science (“the clarity of metaphysics,” per Borges) finally won the contested territory of time from the dictatorship of metaphysics, and just a few years after Bergson himself made his exit into eternity — Borges reflects on his lifelong tussle with time, which he considers the basis for all of his books:
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> > In the course of a life dedicated to letters and (at times) to metaphysical perplexity, I have glimpsed or foreseen a refutation of time, in which I myself do not believe, but which regularly visits me at night and in the weary twilight with the illusory force of an axiom.
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> Time, Borges notes, is the foundation of our experience of personal identity — something philosophers took up most notably in the 17th century, poets picked up in the 19th, scientists set down in the 20th, and psychologists picked back up in the 21st.
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> Borges compares the ideas of the 18th-century Anglo-Irish Empiricist philosopher George Berkeley, chief champion of idealist metaphysics, and his Scottish peer and contemporary, David Hume. The two diverged on the existence of personal identity — Berkeley endorsed it as the “thinking active principle that perceives” at the center of each self, while Hume negated it, arguing that each person is “a bundle or collection of different perceptions, which succeed each other with an inconceivable rapidity” — but they both affirmed the existence of time.
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> Making his way through the maze of philosophy, Borges maps what he calls “this unstable world of the mind” in relation to time:
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> > A world of evanescent impressions; a world without matter or spirit, neither objective nor subjective, a world without the ideal architecture of space; a world made of time, of the absolute uniform time of [Newton’s] Principia; a tireless labyrinth, a chaos, a dream.
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> Illustration by Lisbeth Zwerger for a special edition of Alice in Wonderland.
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> Returning to Hume’s notion of the illusory self — an idea advanced by Eastern philosophy millennia earlier — Borges considers how this dismantles the very notion of time as we know it:
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> > Behind our faces there is no secret self which governs our acts and receives our impressions; we are, solely, the series of these imaginary acts and these errant impressions.
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> But even the notion of a “series” of acts and impressions, Borges suggest, is misleading because time is inseparable from matter, spirit, and space:
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> > Once matter and spirit — which are continuities — are negated, once space too is negated, I do not know with what right we retain that continuity which is time. Outside each perception (real or conjectural) matter does not exist; outside each mental state spirit does not exist; neither does time exist outside the present moment.
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> He illustrates this paradox of the present moment — a paradox found in every present moment — by guiding us along one particular moment familiar from literature:
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> > During one of his nights on the Mississippi, Huckleberry Finn awakens; the raft, lost in partial darkness, continues downstream; it is perhaps a bit cold. Huckleberry Finn recognizes the soft indefatigable sound of the water; he negligently opens his eyes; he sees a vague number of stars, an indistinct line of trees; then, he sinks back into his immemorable sleep as into the dark waters. Idealist metaphysics declares that to add a material substance (the object) and a spiritual substance (the subject) to those perceptions is venturesome and useless; I maintain that it is no less illogical to think that such perceptions are terms in a series whose beginning is as inconceivable as its end. To add to the river and the bank, Huck perceives the notion of another substantive river and another bank, to add another perception to that immediate network of perceptions, is, for idealism, unjustifiable; for myself, it is no less unjustifiable to add a chronological precision: the fact, for example, that the foregoing event took place on the night of the seventh of June, 1849, between ten and eleven minutes past four. In other words: I denny, with the arguments of idealism, the vast temporal series which idealism admits. Hume denied the existence of an absolute space, in which all things have their place; I deny the existence of one single time, in which all things are linked as in a chain. The denial of coexistence is no less arduous than the denial of succession.
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> One of Norman Rockwell’s rare illustrations for The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.
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> This simultaneity of all events has immense implications as a sort of humanitarian manifesto for the commonness of human experience, which Borges captures beautifully:
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> > The vociferous catastrophes of a general order — fires, wars, epidemics — are one single pain, illusorily multiplied in many mirrors.
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> (continues in next comment)
Resumen de la noticia
>> The essay, as everything in Labyrinths, is an exceptional read in its continuous entirety; excerpting, fragmenting, and annotating it here fails to dignify the agile integrity of Borges’s rhetoric and the sheer joy of his immersive prose.
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Source Code | Tell me how to improve | Created by: u/Alawichu u/BaraBatman u/Craccini u/louislagrange
Glad you like the taste of Wallace, not too many people do. His work can be tough to chew and digest. Check out Brief Interviews with Hideous Men, a collection of short stories. There is also Girl With Curious Hair, also a collection of short stories, but there's a story in there call Westward the Course of Empire Takes its Way that's absolutely amazing.
YES. for solo series read Arena https://www.amazon.com/Arena-Magic-Gathering-No-1/dp/0061054240
For a epic storyline like whats currently happening (but WAY better) start with the brothers war and work your way throught the artifact cycle.
https://www.amazon.com/Brothers-War-Artifacts-Cycle-ebook/dp/B07C91KLV8/ref=sr_1_2?keywords=the+brothers+war&qid=1554126310&s=books&sr=1-2
my personal favorite set was the kamigawa set but its not as .. well liked by all as the other two. i just REALLY liked Toshi.
My wife prefers the Lorwyn cycle.
that may be a lot. I say start with either arena if you just want a single story, and artifacts cycle if you want a reaching storyline.
Edit if you like epic fights, Arenas got you covered. Half the story is about a wizards tournament in Dominaria with mages beating the shit out of each other and killing each other.
Edit x2: everyone who plays magic should know the basics behind Urza Planeswalker from the artifacts cycle. And how much of an annoying punk his lab assistant teferi is. :p
David Quammen's Illustrated Origin of Species is good.
amazon
https://www.amazon.com/Thrones-Clash-Kings-Swords-Dragons/dp/0345535529
https://www.amazon.com/Fire-Blood-Thrones-Targaryen-History/dp/152479628X/ref=sr_1_3?crid=2DQWE4ERVXNM2&keywords=dunk+and+egg&qid=1556622006&s=books&sprefix=dunk+%2Cstripbooks%2C126&sr=1-3
https://www.amazon.com/Knight-Seven-Kingdoms-Song-Fire/dp/0345533488/ref=sr_1_1?crid=2DQWE4ERVXNM2&keywords=dunk+and+egg&qid=1556622024&s=books&sprefix=dunk+%2Cstripbooks%2C126&sr=1-1
https://www.amazon.com/World-Ice-Fire-History-Westeros/dp/0553805444/ref=sr_1_2?crid=2DQWE4ERVXNM2&keywords=dunk+and+egg&qid=1556622024&s=books&sprefix=dunk+%2Cstripbooks%2C126&sr=1-2
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x0DhLQqsZQw&list=PLCsx_OFEYH6uDx4PBx6uAH_Pbfc5Sg1EQ
Have you read this?
If not, it's really great and I couldn't stop thinking about this while reading Anathem.
Three of my favorite Catholic books:
Flannery O'Connor - The Complete Stories
Walker Percy - The Message in the Bottle: How Queer Man Is, How Queer Language Is, and What One Has to Do With the Other
Joseph Ratzinger - Introduction to Christianity
edit--A fourth,
Thomas Merton - Seven Storey Mountain
I love short stories. Have you read any Etgar Keret? I've got all of his books, and he's one of my favorite authors. Here's my favorite book of his, if you're looking for something to read.
I've actually read at least one book by each of those authors, and I've seen "The Diving Bell and the Butterfly" movie, so it seems we have pretty similar taste. I have a bit of a hard time getting into books after having seen the movie; that said, would you say the book is still worth checking out? The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, that is.
Not so much an if...
http://www.amazon.com/Knight-Seven-Kingdoms-Song-Fire/dp/0345533488
Fire and Blood is like an extended encyclopedia. It's not a novella.
The three novellas you're referring to are already published in this book: https://www.amazon.com/Knight-Seven-Kingdoms-Song-Fire-ebook/dp/B00S3R6HAE/
Hmm, yeah that's a bit trickier. Some ideas:
Not sure if any of these will be helpful - I wish I had something better to suggest! If only the world had more Assimil lol.
Edit: formatting and comment on last link.
Aside from Amazon, I'd read this: http://www.amazon.com/Brief-Interviews-Hideous-Foster-Wallace/dp/0316925195
Great title. Stunning. This guy needs more bandwidth.
edit: Crap. According to the Table of Contents, it looks like he is foreshadowing his suicide.
J'ai lu Un cantique pour Leibowitz.
J'avais envie d'un truc post apo qui ne soit pas pour ado, qui ne soit pas un power trip pour un héro sans peur et sans reproche, se battant contre un monde devenu hostile et fou.
C'est l'histoire d'un ordre de moine qui dévouent leur vie à la préservation d'un savoir devenu impie pour la population (alors que les scientifiques furent brulés vifs et martyrisés au lendemain de l'holocauste nucléaire).
On sent bien la lassitude de l'auteur vis à vis des batailles d'égo des hommes, combien leurs petites lâchetés n'ont rien d'extraordinaire et que dans le grand schéma certains principes comptent plus.
C'est de plus un vétéran de la guerre du Vietnam qui a vécu dans le sud des état-unis. Il a été choqué après avoir dû lors d'une mission bombarder un ordre de moine.
Je ne suis pas complètement d'accord avec ses idées, mais c'est quelqu'un d'honnête. Il ne se moque pas des idéologies qu'il ne défend pas. Ce bouquin m'a permis de me retirer un peu du monde ambiant et de réfléchir sur des questions plus profondes.
C'est un beau bouquin, je vous le conseille, en anglais si possible (je ne connais pas la traduction française, je ne sais pas si elle est bien).
Sinon là je lis Lolita de Nabokov. En anglais c'est très impressionant, la maîtrise pour un mec pour qui c'est la seconde langue. C'est aussi assez bizarre de se sentir dégueulasse et écoeuré par le héro en le lisant, tout en s'y identifiant simplement en le lisant.
https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/1444723537/ref=dp_ob_neva_mobile
It's not the graphic novels I'm talking about. It's a book regrouping the three novellas in one book and it has a lot of sketches representing some scenes and characters. It's not the graphic novel, although I've seen it and it looks great.
This is what I read (the cover is different in Europe, it's white) :
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0345533488/ref=s9_simh_gw_g14_i1_r?pf_rd_m=ATVPDKIKX0DER&pf_rd_s=desktop-1&pf_rd_r=05K601XAQJFJVZCGSZB1&pf_rd_t=36701&pf_rd_p=2079475242&pf_rd_i=desktop
The dudes were sharp-eyed.
Dahl wrote this one short story, The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar, about a guy who studied yoga and got a magic power. I recommend it.
http://www.amazon.com/Winters-Tale-Mark-Helprin/dp/0156031191/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1335458478&sr=8-1
Same photo on my favorite book's cover
http://www.amazon.com/Knight-Seven-Kingdoms-Song-Fire/dp/0345533488
I believe the interview was done in November of 2014