I’m looking for something that isn't just a good story, but one that actually shifted your perspective on life or people. I feel like I’ve been reading the same types of plots lately and I really want to get "shaken up" a bit.
What’s the one book you finished and just had to sit in silence for a while?
Would you like me to generate a few more options with different "vibes," like specifically for thrillers or non-fiction?
by Lucky-Forever4042
7 Comments
The Bezzle by Cory Doctorow is the most recent book i had to sit with for a while, particularly relevant if you happen to live in the US
I’ll give you a book that had me sitting in silence and reflecting almost every chapter. I know I may start to sound like a broken record at this point, but I really fell in love with this book. M-0 by Florin Alexandru Tanasa. It’s sci-fi but not in the conventional way. It’s like Nietzsche suddenly decided to write an existential novel with sci-fi elements.
*The capital order* by Clara Mattei
*The Jakarta method* by Vincent Bevins
*Life of Pi* by Yann Martel
I’ll share some of my non-fiction recommendations:
**Secondhand Time by Svetlana Alexievich.** The author is a journalist and the books I have read from her are generally just a bunch of stitched together oral stories told by people that lived in the USSR with almost no editorializing. This specific book dealt with the fall of the soviet union and provides a very wide range of stories and thoughts from the people in Belarus that lived through this period. You get the full spectrum of people that were horrified by the fall of communism to those that celebrated. **Last Witnesses** by the same author tells the stories of various people who were children in WWII and talk about their experiences of the war, an absolutely incredible book that provides a perspective that is outside the common WWII narrative.
**Solito by Javier Zamora** stayed with me for a long time.
**Jesus and John Wayne by Kristin Kobes Du Mez** deals with the last 100 years of history of evangelism in the US and how it influenced recent elections.
**The Dead Hand by David Hoffman** may be the darkest most grim book I have ever read. It still creeps me out three years after reading it. It deals with the horror show that was the soviet biological warfare program, how it continued to operate in secret long after they pretended to dismantle it and how they tested a system that would automatically launch nukes in case they were attacked first (i.e. “the dead hand”). Bone-chilling.
Command and Control by Eric Schlosser. Whenever people talk about the problem of nuclear weapons, it’s usually framed from the perspective of how horrible nuclear war would be. Command and Control takes a different approach and focuses on how close the U.S. military has come to catastrophic accidents with nuclear weapons. I never realized how often we’ve nearly nuked ourselves (and that’s just the U.S…..imagine what the Soviet Union/Russia, China, the U.K., France, India, Pakistan, North Korea, or Israel could add….). It really left me shaken.
The Name of the Wind, and A Wise Man’s Fear (first, and second book in the king killer chronicles) are a tragedy wearing the costume of a progression fantasy revenge story. However, more than that, they are a story about stories. What they are, how they come alive, and what they can do. This story, though unfinished, has changed the way I think about my perception of others, and others’ perceptions of me. I have never viewed reputation or rumor the same since reading these books.