A quick note. I am into and open to any genre. Non fiction I am mainly into politics and economics from a left perspective or popularized science or philosophy. Fiction, I will try anything. Literary fiction, scifi, historical fiction, thriller/horror are my go too.
Last year I read 42 books and had 11 five star ratings. This year I have read 14 and I have yet to give a five star review. Reading is beginning to feel like a slog. I need something to excite me again.
For some context here are some of my 5 star reviews over the past few years.
5 Star:
Fiction
Lonesome Dove
Pet Semetary
The Road
Stoner
East of Eden
11/22/63
A Thousand Splendid Suns
Dune
The Dispossessed
Anna Karenina
Non Fiction
Manufacturing Consent
The Shock Doctrine
The Myth of Normal
Evicted
The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine
The Biography of Malcolm X
A Peoples History of The United States
by atJamesFranco
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Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six is really good military fiction
James Clavell’s Shogun is really good culture clash fiction
Paolo Coelho’s The Alchemist is really good mystical fiction
*All Systems Red* by Martha Wells
*Dungeon Crawler Carl* by Matt Dinniman
*Sabriel* by Garth Nix
*The Amulet of Samarkand* by Jonathan Stroud
We overlap on some of these (East of Eden, The Dispossessed, A Thousand Splendid Suns, Anna Karenina, Malcom X’s autobiography), so here are some others I really loved. A variety of different vibes, but they’re all books with lovely prose and interesting characters and a lot of thematic stuff to chew on, since that seems
The French Lieutenant’s Woman by John Fowes
Pale Fire by Vladimir Nabokov
Beloved or A Mercy by Toni Morrison
Till We Have Faces by C. S. Lewis
Klara and the Sun or The Remains of the Day by Kazuo Ishiguro
The Light Bearer by Donna Gillespie
The Gift of Rain by Tan Twan Eng
Hild by Nicola Griffith
The Spy Who Came in from the Cold by LeCarre. He was an actual spy and wrote his experiences out into fictional stories. Everything he writes is extremely grounded in reality. All his books put you in the moral grey area of ends justifying means and asks if The West really are the good guys. Or at least as good as we often view ourselves.
Seems like you would like The Invention of the White Race, or maybe the Dawn of Everything.
the corrections – franzen
the power broker – caro
The Ides of March, Thornton Wilder. One of the few I reread.
We have a lot of overlap so here are a few of mine:
The Martian
Project Hail Mary
Recursion
We Are Legion (We are Bob)
The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon
The Long Walk
The Shining
A Confederacy of Dunces
The Secrets She Keeps- Michael Robotham
El talismán,Del maestro King a pachas con Peter Straub,es oro puro….me marcó en mi adolescencia, magia narrativa sin más.