this post was submitted on 16 Feb 2024
1 points (100.0% liked)

Books

10284 readers
3 users here now

Book reader community.

founded 4 years ago
MODERATORS
 

I've finally fallen in love with reading again over the last year. Problem is I've only been reading non-fiction. it makes my brain hurt. I'd like to have some stuff I can turn to when attempting to read gender trouble gives me another headache. I don't have any particular preference for genre. I used to read fantasy, historical fiction, dystopian stuff but I'm more than happy to explore other genres as well!

A short list of things I've read for reference:

  • The saxon stories, Bernard Cornwell
  • LOTR, the hobbit
  • 1984
  • The road, Cormac McCarthy
  • The plague dogs, Richard Adams
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[โ€“] [email protected] 0 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago) (1 children)

Nice, yeah Fahrenheit 451 is easily my favorite of the bunch. Ray Bradbury's passion for the human experience is infectious, and he has a way of elevating the idea of reading to an almost spiritual level ๐Ÿ˜….

For Lovecraft, try grabbing his complete works as an e-book if you can. It's usually only $2 or $3 dollars on e-book sites and will let you sample around in the stories.

Here's a few things that a might make the reading more enjoyable (at least it did for me.)

  1. Lovecraft was a very feaful, anxious person. His stories were a way that he tried to deal with fear of the unknown.
  2. There is a rythym to his writing: he spends a long time circling around an idea, painting a picture of mundane facts that don't mean much on their own, but then towards the end of the paragraph or the chapter he will drop one or two sentences that cast an eery, unsettling light on those mundane descriptions. Those payoff sentences were great, I was always on the edge if my seat waiting for them.
  3. The story is not so much to tell the story itself, but to try to communicate a feeling or emotion to the reader.

Here's a few stories to dip a toe in to:

The Call Of Cthulhu At the risk of sounding a bit front door, this is probably the best starting place. It may not be the best of his stories, but it is not too long or overworked, and has a nice array of the characteristic Lovecraft style. You'll probably be able to tell if you're onboard after this one.

At The Mountains Of Madness This is the one I started with. Its very long and incredibly dense in the beggining especially. I remember actually skipping the introductory set up, up to about page 15 ๐Ÿ˜„. Now I've gone back and appreciated the world building, but goodness H.P. gets wordy. It is a fantastic story and might be my favorite despite it's density.

The Lurking Fear This one crosses more from suspense in to horror. He doesn't get too dark, but this one definitely is meant to get you on an instinctual fear level.

The Shadow Out Of Time This one I read later on, and it is another good example of his world building and story construction. Interesting premise and good descriptive elements.

I took a look at my book shelf, here's a few more books that I've really enjoyed over the years:

"An Unsuitable Job For A Woman" - P.D. James, Mystery

"The Night Thoreau Spent In Jail - Jerome Lawrence and Robert Lee, Script of a stage play that is sold in book form

Vernor Vince, Author - mostly science fiction Any of his books are good, notably Deepness In The Sky and Rainbows End. Deepness in the sky is technically a sequel, but I read it out of order and still enjoyed it. "Fire Upon The Deep" is the prequel. It was good, but a little more scattered. I had a harder time visualizing the scenes.

EDIT: spelling

[โ€“] [email protected] 0 points 8 months ago (1 children)

You're awesome, I appreciate the thorough breakdown. I'm gonna be spending a lot of time on libgen tonight haha

[โ€“] [email protected] 0 points 8 months ago (1 children)

I totally didn't know about libgen, that's an awesome resource! I've used Project Gutenburg for public domain stuff, but sometimes they just haven't digitized the work I'm looking for. Between the two of them I bet there won't be much that isn't available.

[โ€“] [email protected] 0 points 8 months ago (1 children)

Happy to spread the word, enjoy! If you've got an e-reader, calibre is a handy library program that can format, find covers, edit metadata, etc. for your epubs/whatever format yours uses

[โ€“] [email protected] 0 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago)

Caliber is great! It's super nice to not be chained to some specific bookseller's store/library.