Not sure if this has been recommended before, but among Brazilian authors, Jorge Amado and Graciliano Ramos are fine choices should definitely be checked out.
My favorites of '20: 1. Dancing Lessons for the Advanced in Age- Bohumil Hrabal 2. Kafka in the Shore- Haruki Murakami 3. Chronicles of a Liquid Society- Umberto Eco 4. VALIS- Philip K. Dick 5. Ladders to Fire- Anais Nin
Read it and many other Kurt Vonnegut books many years ago in college. I reread “Breakfast of Champions” recently and it was not as good as I’d remembered it being. I will be reading his others again.
2020 was a year I really got into reading again and finished 22 books before the year ended, which I'm really proud of! My top 5 of the year: 1. John Williams - Stoner It's almost a bit of a meme how good this book it, but it really is excellent. Fantastic through and through. 2. Haruki Murakami - Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and his Years of Pilgrimage Short and sweet, probably Murakami's best book in my opinion. A fantastic portrait of how friendship changes when you become an adult. 3. Cixin Liu - The Dark Forest Controversial author for sure, but the second book of his sci-fi trilogy is absolutely jaw dropping in terms if ambition and concepts. 4. Haruki Murakami - Kafka on the Shore Another one by Murakami I really enjoyed. Way more out there with a lot more magical realism. 5. George Orwell - 1984 Re-read this one for the first time in ages, and man, is this a good and important book. While there is no doubt the grander story of the novel is more and more pertinent every year that goes by, I was really surprised by how much the relationship between Winston and Julia drew me in. Both characters are way more well written than I remember.
Stoner- John Williams Invisible Man- Ralph Ellison Where Men Win Glory- John Krakauer H Is For Hawk- Helen Macdonald Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee- Dee Brown Thank you for this channel! Without it I never would have come across Stoner. This is the first Patreon I've ever contributed to and this channel resulted in me buying my first punk album. Happy 2021 everybody!
1. Inside Mari - Shuzo Oshimi 2. The King of Elfland's Daughter - Edward Plunkett, 18th Baron of Dunsany 3. fear and loathing in las vegas - Hunter S. Thompson 4. tranquility - Attila Bartis 5. the peregrine - J. A. Baker
Last year was the year I got back into reading books so I went through a few classics and man am I hooked. I loved Blood Meridian, The Grapes of Wrath, Moby Dick, Fictions, and One Hundred Years of Solitude. I had the time of my life and am excited to keep up the habit this year.
This year the best reads were: The Stormlight Archive series - Brandon Sanderson The Road - I mean you know who this is. Vineland - Thomas Pynchon Dusk and Other Stories - James Salter
I think I finally spot Gaddis laying there on the shelf? Just read that ... if you can. (: Some books I really liked last year, recommend all of them (you have already read some): Houellebecq's Serotonin, Harold Brodkey's Stories in an Almost Classical Mode, Temple of the Golden Pavilion by you know by who, Pynchon's Crying of Lot 49, Moby Dick and anything William Gass (always wondered why you didn't try him, can check out his interview with M. Silverblatt to get a taste). Good video, I love what you said about Houllebecq in the end. You said something similar once about the absurdity of trying to find the silver lining in everything a while back. Those are the parts I'm here for - thanks for these videos!
Your reviews put me on to NYRB Classics, which I read about seven of last year. A fantastic series of publications. Keen for another year of your reviews! Kaputt - Curzio Malaparte Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck The House in the Cerulean Sea - T.J. Klune The Lathe of Heaven - Ursula K. Le Guin Stoner - John Williams
Heyy so good to see brazillian books on your top 5!!! I never read this one, but im sure gonna seach and buy it. A suggestion for you, the books by Jorge Amado. He is absolutely brilliant 🇧🇷🇧🇷🇧🇷🇧🇷
My Top 5 reads this year were: 1. Moby Dick by Melville 2. A Gentleman in Moscow by Amor Towles 3. Chronicles by Bob Dylan 4. In Cold Blood by Truman Capote 5. Girl In A Band by Kim Gordon Honorable Mention would be Mark Fisher’s Capitalist Realism.
Great video!! My favorites were Lavoura Arcaica, by Raduan Nassar; The Stream of Life, by Clarice Lispector and The City and the Mountains by Eça de Queirós. I really recommend Nassar's book. It is so different from everything I've ever read.
A great list and video. Keep up the good work 👍 My favourite five reads of 2020 were Stoner, The end of the affair, Silence, The little stranger and A moveable feast. Honourable mentions must go to: Carol, Butcher's crossing, True grit and Hiroshima.
Educated by Tara Westover When I Hit You by Meena Kandasamy The Pisces by Melissa Broder The Fire Next Time by James Baldwin Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates Happy reading! ☺️📚
Definitely hurricane season for me, read it again a few weeks ago. Also read loads of Joan Didion and enjoyed some Cesar Aira, among others. Cheers man keep it up
great picks! here's mine: 1. Steppenwolf - Hermann Hesse 2. Why I Write - George Orwell 3. The Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas 4. Rebecca - Daphne du Maurier 5. Music For Chameleons - Truman Capote
Read over 30 books this year which was a great accomplishment for me but my top 5 would have to be: 1. Frankenstein - Mary Shelley 2. The Illustrated Man - Bradbury 3. The Sun Also Rises - Hemingway 4. Someday Angeline - Louis Sachar 5. Zuleika Dobson - Max Beerbohm
I am so glad you always recommend viewers to give the video a thumbs up if they're enjoying it. Always slips my mind. Look's like I've got 5 more books to read now..... one of my book's of the year would have to be The Door by Magda Szabó, also an NYRB Classic. I'd definitely suggest it. Just a wonderful, compelling, and alarming look at class, ideology, friendship, love, and two people world's apart coming together over the course of several years. It was a beautifully haunting way to enter 2020
I’m looking at The Peregrine on my shelf right now. Is it as amazing as everyone says? I’m guessing so. Edit to add: I’m a bit nervous to read it because I have such hopes for it and I am afraid of it falling flat. I need to get over that.
Ah moby dick, undoubtedly the greatest book ever written sadly normies worship Dostoevsky and Mark Twain, out of interest, did you read Carlyle before finishing Moby-dick because a lot of passages from Sarto resartus have been taken and given twist,
My picks: "Conversations" by Gilles Deleuze "Notes on literature I" by Theodor Adorno "Das Unheimliche(Uncanny)" by Freud "The Tower" by W.B. Yeats "Three studies on Hegel" by Theodor Adorno "Père Goriot" by Balzac "The seagull" by Anton Chekhov
@@ngdsmedia8189 thank you sir. I live in Brazil and bought in portuguese, so I dont think I can help you hahahah. But it´s a lovely book and probably the best introduction to the man
Hey! My favorites I read were The Sportswriter by Richard Ford. Call Your Mother by Barry Sonnenfeld. The Last Pirate of New York by Rich Cohen. On the Road Jack Kerouac. Bunker Hill by Nathaniel Philbrick. Glad I found your channel this year!
I'm reading The Stars at Noon by Denis Johnson. While reading the other night I thought,"...Sonic Youth lyrics?!" Yes. "The Sprawl" is filled with lines from the novel.
My Top FIVE of 2020 - Less than Zero by Bret Easton Ellis - Animals Farm by George Orwell - The Old Man and the Sea by Hemingway - Breakfast at Tiffany's by Capote - Not forgetting the Whale by Ironmonger (My number 1 this year)
I’ve been reading No Longer Human because of your review and I love it! I can relate to Yozo on a certain level and I plan on rereading it after I finish it, thanks man!
Nice Cliff! I think mine were The Fall, by Camus ( thanks for that one ), Death of Ivan Ilyich by Tolstoy, Notes from Underground by Dostoevsky, and the man who Smiled, by Henning Mankell, great existential detective novel.
Thank you for sharing the joy of reading with us! My three favorites of 2020: The Golovlyov Family by Mikhail Saltykov-Shchedrin, Absalom, Absalom by William Faulkner and My name is Red by Orhan Pamuk.
I’ve only recently started to read seriously, last year I started and finished Infinite Jest by DFW and was somewhat proud that I conquered it. After that I read The Road by McCarthy and I got Equus by Shaffer and read that on Boxing Day. Great stuff.
my favorites of 2020 are The Picture of Dorian Gray, Oscar Wilde A portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, James Joyce Orientalism, Edward Said Against Interpretation and Other Essays, Susan Sontag My Mortal Enemy, Willa Cather
My personal favorites were: 5: Yoko Ogawa - the memory police 4: Irvine Welsh- trainspotting 3: William Burroughs- Naked lunch 2: Marlen Haushofer- the wall 1: Angela Carter- Nights at the circus Picked up so many great recs thanks to your Clifford, hoping for even more this year!
Go on then since everyone else is doing it I will do my own 1. Autobiography of Malcolm X 2. Rum Diary - Hunter S Thompson 3. Kitchen Confidential - Anthony Bourdain 4. Goodbye To Berlin - Christopher Isherwood 5. Homicide Life on The Streets - David Simon Honourable mentions would be Waiting for The Barbarians - JM Coetzee, Never Let Me Go - Kazuo Ishiguro and Post Office - Charles Bukowski
Hi. I've just found your RUclips page, after watching several of the early posts I just wanted to say thank you. For the time you take to create these videos but also because of your reading suggestions I have finally found literature that is brilliant and insightful. I was becoming bored with my usual books usually known as 'beach' reads, no substance. Because of your reviews, I have I have removed the potboilers I usually read and replaced them with some of your reviews. Now I have recovered my joy of reading and now 'read' not just scanning the page. Thanks again. All the best from Mike in the UK
1. The Temple of the Golden Pavilion- Yukio Mishima 2. Embers- Sándor Márai 3. A River Runs Through It- Norman Maclean 4. The Great Gatsby- F. Scott Fitzgerald 5. A Pale View of Hills- Kazuo Ishiguro
The Dying Grass - William T. Vollmann Ice - Anna Kavan Sweet Days of Discipline - Feur Jaeggy Dune - Frank Herbert Heavier Than Heaven: A Biography of Kurt Cobain - Charles R. Cross
I read The God of Small things last year and it blew me away. The lyricism and the rich descriptions, the use of motifs, was used in the most incredible way. I also read: choke by chuck palahniuk the book of disquiet by pessoa the sound of waves by yukio mishima a wild sheep chase by haruki murakami and a bunch of others
My top five in no particular order: Miracle of the rose - Jean Genet Invisible Man - Ralph Ellison Backlash - Susan Faludi If this is a man - Primo Levi Frisk - Dennis Cooper (anyways... your description of Act of passion reminded me of another book called “the dice man” by Luke Rhinehart)
Great Video as always! My favorites were: The perfume - Patrick Süßkind Fear and loathing in Las Vegas - Hunter S. Thompson The Dead - Christian Kracht Tyll - Daniel Kehlmann The Long Walk - Stephen King Greatings from germany:)
You have been doing book reviews for several years now, would you consider doing a post on the top ten best books you would highly recommend that people read and the reason why you especially chose them. Since finding your RUclips page I have changed my reading pattern and feel that I have improved not only in my reading but also my vocabulary has increased - which is not a bad thing, so I thank you for that. I would never have known or read these books if I had not found your channel and that would have been a travesty. Keep up the great work and stay safe. Keep drinking that coffee!
I'm working on the Magic Mountain by Thomas Mann. I read a bunch of Houellebecq this year, Submission, Platform, Possibility of an Island, and recently The Elementary Particles I somehow missed out on . I read Bolaño's Woes of a True Policeman, Nazi Literature of the Americas, and By Night in Chile, I re-read the Man Who Was Thursday By Chesterton, I read The Crying of Lot 49 by Pynchon, and started Mason and Dixon by Pynchon
I don't have one of last year, but you've inspired me to read out for the rest of this year for at least a book a month or hopefully more. 10-20 books this year. Thanks man! Please remind come Jan 2021 to give you my list.
The origins of totalitarism by H. Arendt, Orientalism by E. Said, storm of steel by e. junger, guns germs and steel by J Diamond, and Fictions by J.L. Borges (after watching your vídeo about him. Loved the book). Keep the good work
1. The Divine Comedy (read w/ La Vita Nuova as a sort of Prologue) by Dante Alighieri 2. Doctor Faustus by Thomas Mann 3. The Complete Illuminated Books of William Blake 4. Hard Rain Falling by Don Carpenter 5. The Portable Poe (Penguin) Probably started the most books in my life ever, at the beginning of this year, prime pandemic time, when everyone was panicked and no one knew what was going on, only to not complete them. But once I learned to ride the wave of chaos and scream into the void, I caught a good rhythm by summer lol.
My favorite books read in 2020 : 1. Pynchon's 'Gravity Rainbow' 2. Lowry's 'Under the Volcano' 3. Gardner's 'Mickelsson's Ghosts' 4. Perec's 'La Vie mode d'emploi' ('Life: A User's Manual') 5. Verhaeghen's 'Omega Minor' And thanks to you, Cliff, I've also read these other books I really liked: Melchor's 'Hurricane Season', Topor's 'Le Locataire chimérique' ('The Tenant'), Anger's 'Hollywood Babylone', Sacher Masoch's 'Venus in Furs', Gamboa's 'Necropolis', Piñera's 'René's Flesh'... and even Moynihan and Søderlind's 'Lord of Chaos'! Thanks a lot!
My favourites were: Ninth House by Leigh Bardugo, The Southern Book Club's Guide to Slaying Vampires by Grady Hendrix and Alex Approximately by Jenn Bennett (VERY different from your choices, but I love hearing about things completely outside my comfort zone)!! Although it's completely different to my normal tastes, I've added Act of Passion to my TBR!
Very well done. Now, if you show the book cover up in the corner as you talk about each book, that would help me decide and remember if I want to buy them.
I started reading again in 2020 thanks to Booktubers like yourself, so thank you for that! My favorites of 2020: Eat a Peach - David Chang Perfume - Patrick Suskind South of the Border West of the Sun - Haruki Murakami Let the Right One In - John Lindqvist
Hey Mr Sargent. You should check out Vigdis Hjorth's book Will and Testament. It's more of that Norwegian auto-fiction I know you like. Not very similar to Knausgård but it's cool stuff. A controversial book in Norway and in the writers own family too. edit: oh any my favourites were Nabokov's Ada, or Ardor and Knausgård's Min Kamp vol I.
1) S. Lipsett-Rivera - The Origins of Macho: Men and Masculinity in Colonial Mexico 2) J. Buisman - Duizend jaar weer, wind en water in de Lage Landen [Durch: A Thousand Years of Weather, Wind and Water in the Low Countries] (I read the first 5 books in the series) 3) G. Aalders - Oranje Zwartboek [Dutch: Orange Blackbook]
My top three books of 2020 was I Am Legend by Richard Matheson, The Cabin at the End of the World by Paul Tremblay and Mexican Gothic by Silvia Moreno-Garcia. It would be fun if you gave us a review of The Cabin at the End of the World. It's pretty dark and kind of different.
Tess of the D'Urbervilles Les Misérables (re-read) Things Fall Apart (re-read) 9 Florida Stories (by Marjorie Stoneman Douglas) East of Eden Tess was by far one of the greatest novels I have EVER read, and one of the most endearing characters. It was spectacular! The re-reads were timeless and I really enjoyed a collection of 9 short stories by Marjorie Stoneman Douglas. I read several of them while backpacking through the Everglades so the combination of scenery and stories is something I will never forget.
My favourite 2020 books: 1.Dostoevsky's Crime and Punishment; 2.Herman Hesse's Demian; 3.Stephan Zweig's Confusion of Feelings (short but intense); 4.Bulgakov's The Master and Margarita; and 5. a nonfiction book very much connected with Crime and Punishment, Nietzsche's Genealogy of Moral. Thanks for your videos. Cheers from Spain man!
Thank you Cliff. You got me back into reading, as well as introduced me to my new obsession George Bataille. You transformed my reading taste, and for that I'm eternally grateful. I'm starting the year off with Blood Meridian per your recommendation. Cheers man to another great year of reading.
Any chance you'd read anything by Salman Rushdie this year? Perhaps his latest ''Quichotte''? My 2020 top 5 were: 1. The True Story of Ah Q (Lu Xun) 2. The Catcher in the Rye (yeah, FINALLY managed to read it!) 3. Milkman (Anna Burns) 4. I Curse the River of Time (Per Petterson) 5. Days and Nights of Love and War (Eduardo Galeano)
What you said about "The Peregrine" making you realise that birds of prey are just killing machines was one of my main takeaways of "H is for Hawk" - thanks for the recommendations!
1. Norwood - Charles Portis 2. Hardboiled Wonderland and the End of the World - Haruki Murakami 3. Pedro Paramo - Juan Rulfo 4. The Dog Stars - Peter Heller 5. Tree of Smoke - Denis Johnson
Picked up The Peregrine on your recommendation. Looking forward to it! Also, just read Ada, Nabokov. I could have sworn you did a video on this book but can't seem to find it anymore. Am I mistaken?
Probably many commonly known books, but my favourite were... "Il fu Mattia Pascal" and "Uno, nessuno e centomila" by Luigi Pirandello "Dune" by Frank Herbert "1Q84(book1)" by Haruki Murakami "Crime and punishment" by Dostoevskij I started Borges' "Fictions", following your review, btw...
Great list! Here’s mine:( in no order) 1. After Dark Haruki Murakami 2.Sanctuary Faulkner 3.Solitude Anthony Storr 4.Paradise Lost Milton 5. The Birth And Death Of Meaning Becker
my Top 5 of 2020 would be: 1. Sculpting in Time, by Andrei Tarkovsky 2. Rashomon and Seventeen Other Stories, Ryunosuke Akutagawa 3. Memórias Póstumas de Brás Cubas (Epitaph of a Small Winner), by Machado de Assis 4. O Livro do Joaquim (The Joaquim's Book), by Daniel Faria 5. Traité de l'arbre: essai d'une philosophie occidentale, by Robert Dumas cheers from Portugal !
I think my favourite reads this last year were Repetition by Handke (a near perfect book), and Lust by Jelinek (think you’re gonna love this one, Cliff ;)
1) Serotonin - Michel Houellebecq 2) Public Enemies - Michel Houellebecq & Bernard-Henri Lévy 3) Die zitternde Welt - Tanja Paar (don't think there's an English translation yet; the title translates as "The Trembling World" 4) The Prisoner of Heaven - Carlos Ruiz Zafon 5) Enlightenment Now - Steven Pinker (not a novel, though, but challenged me profoundly).
In no particular order: - Out of the Dark - Patrick Modiano - A Heart So White - Javier Marías - Invisible Cities - Italo Calvino - Delirium's Mistress - Tanith Lee - Young Stalin - Simon Sebag Montefiore I'm currently reading "The Devil All the Time" by Donald Ray Pollock, which is likely to make this year's list - it's excellent.
1. A Ghost in the Throat, Doireann Ní Ghríofa 2. A Season of Migration to the North, Tayeb Salih 3. Clarice Lispector, The Passion According to G.H. 4. Máirtín Ó Cadhain, The Dirty Dust (Alan Titley's translation) 5. Anne Carson, Autobiography of Red You'd especially love the Ó Cadhain, Cliff. There are two English translations (OG title is Cré na Cille) - I think you'd prefer Titley's. Great video as always
The Ministry of Utmost Happiness-Arundhati Roy The Prague Cemetery- Umberto Eco The Wall -John Lanchester A white so white-Havier Marias Serotonin-Michel Houellebecq
Mine were: A Tale of Two Cities Dickens Chess Novella Zweig The Murderess (Greek classic I recommend) Jurassic Park Crichton Odyssey Homer Have a nice reading year!
@@mishababernathy7165 I just bought his complete short stories, and Chess Story. Can't wait to get into them. Heard him compared to Maupassant and Chekov, so bring it on!
I'm most intrigued by your assessment of society in the houellebecq discussion: hopeless but safe, meaningless but entertained, full of despair but polite. I'll have to read it, but it seems to me many of us want polar opposites at the same time, which I often want but have never found a way to have. We seem to want great meaning which I've found comes from struggle and being unsafe, but we also want to avoid the struggle and violence. Maybe future generations will succeed where the 60's failed but I feel like we tried the back to the land movement, in fact I lived in a few intentional communities and found them to be inauthentic though well intentioned largely because I dont think we have figured out how to get along with each other largely. Personally I think we read too much into how similar we are on the surface and ignore how different we are at depth, so when we live together in close proximity and encounter those depths we often come apart at the seams it seems (sorry couldnt help myself, but if Michel can have c and q in his last name I can allow myself this indulgence).
Like many people I got more time to read! Amongst my favourite fiction novels of 2020 were: 1) Conclave by Robert Harris 2) Libra by Don DeLillo 3) Bad Behaviour by Mary Gaitskill 4) Plender by Ted Lewis 5) Revenge by Yoko Ogawa
This year was the year I finally started reading every day and for the first time fully fell in love with reading. Thanks for all the great recommendations! I'm currently reading The War of the Worlds by H G Wells, but A Cup Of Rage is next in line! My 5 favourite books of 2020 were: The Sailor Who Fell From Grace With the Sea - Yukio Mishima Norweigian Wood - Murakami Dune - Frank Herbert I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings - Maya Angelou Siddhartha - Herman Hesse
Many by Dostojewski: 1st The Brothers Karamasow 2nd Demons 3rd The Adolescent 4th The Idiot 5th The Eternal Husband (all by Dostojewski, I read crime and punishment already in 2019 so it doesn't make the list) 6th Agnes by Peter Stamm 7th The Posthumous Memoires of Bras Cubas by Machado de Assis (Thank you very much for your suggestion it was great) 8th Brave New World by Huxley 9th Animal Farm by Orwell 10th Midas or the Black canvas by Friedrich Dürrenmatt (I reread it and it was great. I'm not sure if there's an English translation though. If not I recommend the Physicist, which should be translated.) Happy new year! I hope you all read many great new books in this new year. Hope you have a great time. And sty healthy!
Here are mine: Stoner by John Williams The Magus by John Fowles East of Eden by Steinbeck The Bog People: Iron Age Man Preserved by Peter Glob Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee by Dee Brown
5 favs of 2020: -The Argonauts: Maggie Nelson -My year of rest and relaxation: Ottessa Mossfegh -Conversations with Friends: Sally Rooney -Brideshead Revisited: Evelyn Waugh -The Art of Fielding: Chad Harbach
Best two books I read was Blood Meridian and The Road. Read a lot of McCarthy before those two, but not the two most known works of his. By the end of The Road I was damn near about to weep and at the end of Blood Meridian I had an existential crisis. Easily my favorite American author. I also read Albina and the Dog-Men by Jodorowsky and that book is fucking WILD it’s like LSD in book form. Goals for 2021 is to read all the classic literature that I missed. Don Quixote, Mody Dick, etc. I also want to finish the rest of McCarthy’s work as well as go back and re-read all of Jack London’s work. I definitely picked up Blood Meridian because of you buddy. Thanks again Cliff 🤙 Oh and Kafka, definitely wanna read more Kafka.
High fidelity - Nick Hornby La vie devant soi - Romain Gary Boussole - Mathias énard Ask the dust - John Fante The bricks that built the house - Kate Tempest
![VENEZUELA vs. ARGENTINA [1-1] | RESUMEN | ELIMINATORIAS SUDAMERICANAS | FECHA 9](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/SJfoPdeOPCQ/mqdefault.jpg)
And thanks for always bringing brazilian literature to your channel. We appreciate it
Yeah haha we do! 🇧🇷
Not sure if this has been recommended before, but among Brazilian authors, Jorge Amado and Graciliano Ramos are fine choices should definitely be checked out.
I don't think he brought it because it's Brazilian, he brought it because it's good.
I'm an Arab graduate in English literature but fond of Latin American literature. Western literature unfairly overshadows world literature.
@@europa7533 Don’t be a pedant. You know what they mean. Of course he bought it bc it’s good, but Brazilian lit is sorely under-discussed on booktube.
My favorites of '20:
1. Dancing Lessons for the Advanced in Age- Bohumil Hrabal
2. Kafka in the Shore- Haruki Murakami
3. Chronicles of a Liquid Society- Umberto Eco
4. VALIS- Philip K. Dick
5. Ladders to Fire- Anais Nin
Awesome picks, mine were:
1. East of Eden - Steinbeck
2. Submission - Houellebecq
3. Il Deserto - Buzzati
4. The Trial - Kafka
5. Norwegian Wood - Murakami
yass east of eden is a god tier!
The Trial is incredible!
East of Eden is one of my all time favorites.
I also read East of Eden and Norweigan Wood this years. First one, not my cup of tea, but Norwegian Wood turned out to be my number one
New, huh?
My top 3 were:
Cat's cradle - Kurt Vonnegut
The Bell jar - Sylvia Plath
No longer Human - Osamu Dazai
I just finished Cat's cradle, it was so funny!
Loved Cat's Cradle too, lots of laughs on some gloomy days.
Read it and many other Kurt Vonnegut books many years ago in college. I reread “Breakfast of Champions” recently and it was not as good as I’d remembered it being. I will be reading his others again.
The Bell Jar - painful.
The Bell Jar AND No Longer Human... i hope you didn't read them back to back! That would throw me into a depressive loop
- Story Of The Eye
- Notes From Underground
- The Master And Margarita
- The Catcher In The Rye
- Naked Lunch
Reading the notes right now, it's brilliant.
Have you read any of Boulgakov's shorter novels? "Morphine" and "Memoires of a young doctor" are good ones!
@@bookwaeys4686 I read morphine and the heart of a dog, both are excellent short novels from Bulgakov!
@@leadbellymidnightangel doesn't get better than Dostoevsky!
i re-read Notes from Underground in 2020, too. What an incredible, incredible work.
2020 was a year I really got into reading again and finished 22 books before the year ended, which I'm really proud of! My top 5 of the year:
1. John Williams - Stoner
It's almost a bit of a meme how good this book it, but it really is excellent. Fantastic through and through.
2. Haruki Murakami - Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and his Years of Pilgrimage
Short and sweet, probably Murakami's best book in my opinion. A fantastic portrait of how friendship changes when you become an adult.
3. Cixin Liu - The Dark Forest
Controversial author for sure, but the second book of his sci-fi trilogy is absolutely jaw dropping in terms if ambition and concepts.
4. Haruki Murakami - Kafka on the Shore
Another one by Murakami I really enjoyed. Way more out there with a lot more magical realism.
5. George Orwell - 1984
Re-read this one for the first time in ages, and man, is this a good and important book. While there is no doubt the grander story of the novel is more and more pertinent every year that goes by, I was really surprised by how much the relationship between Winston and Julia drew me in. Both characters are way more well written than I remember.
You have great taste, I've scribbled 'Cixin Liu' onto my bedside notepad. Thank you. Oh, and the user name, :D Love it.
Recently started reading and read 1984 and Stoner both are awesome. 1984 might be my best read ever with such a powerfull ending
It’s so nice to hear from you about Nassar. I’m Brazilian and I love him too!
Stoner- John Williams
Invisible Man- Ralph Ellison
Where Men Win Glory- John Krakauer
H Is For Hawk- Helen Macdonald
Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee- Dee Brown
Thank you for this channel! Without it I never would have come across Stoner. This is the first Patreon I've ever contributed to and this channel resulted in me buying my first punk album.
Happy 2021 everybody!
1. Inside Mari
- Shuzo Oshimi
2. The King of Elfland's Daughter - Edward Plunkett, 18th Baron of Dunsany
3. fear and loathing in las vegas - Hunter S. Thompson
4. tranquility - Attila Bartis
5. the peregrine - J. A. Baker
The House of Spirits - Isabel Allende
Narcissus and Goldmund - Herman Hesse
Killing Commendatore - Haruki Murikami
The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins
I have Killing Commendatore...is it good?
Also read Killing Commendatore and really enjoyed it.
Narcissus and Goldmund is my favourite book in the history of the world
Last year was the year I got back into reading books so I went through a few classics and man am I hooked.
I loved Blood Meridian, The Grapes of Wrath, Moby Dick, Fictions, and One Hundred Years of Solitude.
I had the time of my life and am excited to keep up the habit this year.
Blood Merridian is hard core
"Adaptable chaos fatigue" is my new favorite phrase.
This year the best reads were:
The Stormlight Archive series - Brandon Sanderson
The Road - I mean you know who this is.
Vineland - Thomas Pynchon
Dusk and Other Stories - James Salter
Rare to see someone interest in both Sanderson and Pynchon. Awesome.
I think I finally spot Gaddis laying there on the shelf? Just read that ... if you can. (:
Some books I really liked last year, recommend all of them (you have already read some): Houellebecq's Serotonin, Harold Brodkey's Stories in an Almost Classical Mode, Temple of the Golden Pavilion by you know by who, Pynchon's Crying of Lot 49, Moby Dick and anything William Gass (always wondered why you didn't try him, can check out his interview with M. Silverblatt to get a taste).
Good video, I love what you said about Houllebecq in the end. You said something similar once about the absurdity of trying to find the silver lining in everything a while back. Those are the parts I'm here for - thanks for these videos!
Thank you Cliff, and thank you to you're viewers; the suggestions in the comments below will provide me w/ enough reading for the next decade!
Your reviews put me on to NYRB Classics, which I read about seven of last year. A fantastic series of publications. Keen for another year of your reviews!
Kaputt - Curzio Malaparte
Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck
The House in the Cerulean Sea - T.J. Klune
The Lathe of Heaven - Ursula K. Le Guin
Stoner - John Williams
2020 was when I discovered you. and thus, A Heart So White. I still feel shivers down my spine everytime I look at my shelf and see it. Thanks, man.
Heyy so good to see brazillian books on your top 5!!! I never read this one, but im sure gonna seach and buy it. A suggestion for you, the books by Jorge Amado. He is absolutely brilliant 🇧🇷🇧🇷🇧🇷🇧🇷
I recently read "Angustia" by Graciliano Ramos in a Dutch translation. Damn, what a good book!
@@bookwaeys4686 yes! It's amazing....
I am definitely going to pick up A Cup Of Rage, thank you!
My Top 5 reads this year were:
1. Moby Dick by Melville
2. A Gentleman in Moscow by Amor Towles
3. Chronicles by Bob Dylan
4. In Cold Blood by Truman Capote
5. Girl In A Band by Kim Gordon
Honorable Mention would be Mark Fisher’s Capitalist Realism.
Thank you for Bob Dylan
Great video!! My favorites were Lavoura Arcaica, by Raduan Nassar; The Stream of Life, by Clarice Lispector and The City and the Mountains by Eça de Queirós. I really recommend Nassar's book. It is so different from everything I've ever read.
A great list and video. Keep up the good work 👍
My favourite five reads of 2020 were Stoner, The end of the affair, Silence, The little stranger and A moveable feast.
Honourable mentions must go to: Carol, Butcher's crossing, True grit and Hiroshima.
Educated by Tara Westover
When I Hit You by Meena Kandasamy
The Pisces by Melissa Broder
The Fire Next Time by James Baldwin
Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates
Happy reading! ☺️📚
Convenience Store Woman - Suyaka Murata
Don Quixote - Cervantes
Candide - Voltaire
Blood Meridian - Cormac McCarthy
Cat's Cradle - Kurt Vonnegut
Definitely hurricane season for me, read it again a few weeks ago. Also read loads of Joan Didion and enjoyed some Cesar Aira, among others. Cheers man keep it up
I'll have to try Aira. I also enjoy Melchor and Didion.
great picks! here's mine:
1. Steppenwolf - Hermann Hesse
2. Why I Write - George Orwell
3. The Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas
4. Rebecca - Daphne du Maurier
5. Music For Chameleons - Truman Capote
I enjoyed My Cousin Rachel more than Rebecca! Check it out if you haven't already.
Read over 30 books this year which was a great accomplishment for me but my top 5 would have to be:
1. Frankenstein - Mary Shelley
2. The Illustrated Man - Bradbury
3. The Sun Also Rises - Hemingway
4. Someday Angeline - Louis Sachar
5. Zuleika Dobson - Max Beerbohm
I am so glad you always recommend viewers to give the video a thumbs up if they're enjoying it. Always slips my mind. Look's like I've got 5 more books to read now..... one of my book's of the year would have to be The Door by Magda Szabó, also an NYRB Classic. I'd definitely suggest it. Just a wonderful, compelling, and alarming look at class, ideology, friendship, love, and two people world's apart coming together over the course of several years. It was a beautifully haunting way to enter 2020
Great favorites! My favorites of 2020 were: Moby Dick, Lolita, The Peregrine, Consider This, and Blindness
Solid list
Have you read Billy Budd? If not, I reccomend it.
@@estebanb7166 I have not! I will definitely add it to my list
I’m looking at The Peregrine on my shelf right now. Is it as amazing as everyone says? I’m guessing so.
Edit to add: I’m a bit nervous to read it because I have such hopes for it and I am afraid of it falling flat. I need to get over that.
Ah moby dick, undoubtedly the greatest book ever written sadly normies worship Dostoevsky and Mark Twain, out of interest, did you read Carlyle before finishing Moby-dick because a lot of passages from Sarto resartus have been taken and given twist,
My picks:
"Conversations" by Gilles Deleuze
"Notes on literature I" by Theodor Adorno
"Das Unheimliche(Uncanny)" by Freud
"The Tower" by W.B. Yeats
"Three studies on Hegel" by Theodor Adorno
"Père Goriot" by Balzac
"The seagull" by Anton Chekhov
Great list, may I enquire where did you acquire your copy of "conversations" by Deleuze?
@@ngdsmedia8189 thank you sir. I live in Brazil and bought in portuguese, so I dont think I can help you hahahah. But it´s a lovely book and probably the best introduction to the man
1. Life and Fate
2. The Master and Margarita
3. I, Claudius
4. Perfume
5. Blood Meridian
Hey! My favorites I read were The Sportswriter by Richard Ford. Call Your Mother by Barry Sonnenfeld. The Last Pirate of New York by Rich Cohen. On the Road Jack Kerouac. Bunker Hill by Nathaniel Philbrick. Glad I found your channel this year!
Great show, Cliff. Agree with your credo in your excellent Serotonin critique. Wishing you only good reads in 2021.
I'm reading The Stars at Noon by Denis Johnson. While reading the other night I thought,"...Sonic Youth lyrics?!" Yes. "The Sprawl" is filled with lines from the novel.
My Top FIVE of 2020
- Less than Zero by Bret Easton Ellis
- Animals Farm by George Orwell
- The Old Man and the Sea by Hemingway
- Breakfast at Tiffany's by Capote
- Not forgetting the Whale by Ironmonger (My number 1 this year)
I’ve been reading No Longer Human because of your review and I love it! I can relate to Yozo on a certain level and I plan on rereading it after I finish it, thanks man!
Nana by Zola
King, Queen, Knave by Nabokov
Steppenwolf by Hesse
The Plague by Camus
Season of migration to the north
Steppenwolf and The Plague were in my top 5 too. I'm looking forward to reading Zola this year.
Happy reading:)
Nice Cliff! I think mine were The Fall, by Camus ( thanks for that one ), Death of Ivan Ilyich by Tolstoy, Notes from Underground by Dostoevsky, and the man who Smiled, by Henning Mankell, great existential detective novel.
Thank you for sharing the joy of reading with us!
My three favorites of 2020: The Golovlyov Family by Mikhail
Saltykov-Shchedrin, Absalom, Absalom by William Faulkner and My name is Red by Orhan Pamuk.
I’ve only recently started to read seriously, last year I started and finished Infinite Jest by DFW and was somewhat proud that I conquered it. After that I read The Road by McCarthy and I got Equus by Shaffer and read that on Boxing Day. Great stuff.
my favorites of 2020 are
The Picture of Dorian Gray, Oscar Wilde
A portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, James Joyce
Orientalism, Edward Said
Against Interpretation and Other Essays, Susan Sontag
My Mortal Enemy, Willa Cather
My personal favorites were:
5: Yoko Ogawa - the memory police
4: Irvine Welsh- trainspotting
3: William Burroughs- Naked lunch
2: Marlen Haushofer- the wall
1: Angela Carter- Nights at the circus
Picked up so many great recs thanks to your Clifford, hoping for even more this year!
I'm so glad i discovered this channel in 2020... Thank you Cliff for some awesome recomentadions and for showing me some dark literature
Go on then since everyone else is doing it I will do my own
1. Autobiography of Malcolm X
2. Rum Diary - Hunter S Thompson
3. Kitchen Confidential - Anthony Bourdain
4. Goodbye To Berlin - Christopher Isherwood
5. Homicide Life on The Streets - David Simon
Honourable mentions would be Waiting for The Barbarians - JM Coetzee, Never Let Me Go - Kazuo Ishiguro and Post Office - Charles Bukowski
My copy of Serotonin arrived only earlier this week. On page 26 at the moment.
A very pleasant surprise for me was Candide by Voltaire. The sarcasm and dark humour really got me.
Hi. I've just found your RUclips page, after watching several of the early posts I just wanted to say thank you. For the time you take to create these videos but also because of your reading suggestions I have finally found literature that is brilliant and insightful. I was becoming bored with my usual books usually known as 'beach' reads, no substance. Because of your reviews, I have I have removed the potboilers I usually read and replaced them with some of your reviews. Now I have recovered my joy of reading and now 'read' not just scanning the page. Thanks again. All the best from Mike in the UK
1. The Temple of the Golden Pavilion- Yukio Mishima
2. Embers- Sándor Márai
3. A River Runs Through It- Norman Maclean
4. The Great Gatsby- F. Scott Fitzgerald
5. A Pale View of Hills- Kazuo Ishiguro
The Dying Grass - William T. Vollmann
Ice - Anna Kavan
Sweet Days of Discipline - Feur Jaeggy
Dune - Frank Herbert
Heavier Than Heaven: A Biography of Kurt Cobain - Charles R. Cross
I read The God of Small things last year and it blew me away. The lyricism and the rich descriptions, the use of motifs, was used in the most incredible way.
I also read:
choke by chuck palahniuk
the book of disquiet by pessoa
the sound of waves by yukio mishima
a wild sheep chase by haruki murakami
and a bunch of others
My top five in no particular order:
Miracle of the rose - Jean Genet
Invisible Man - Ralph Ellison
Backlash - Susan Faludi
If this is a man - Primo Levi
Frisk - Dennis Cooper
(anyways... your description of Act of passion reminded me of another book called “the dice man” by Luke Rhinehart)
my favorites were:
Pedro Páramo - Juan Rulfo
Kim Ji-Young, born 1982 - Cho Nam-joo
Empty Set - Verónica Gerber Bicecci
Great Video as always!
My favorites were:
The perfume - Patrick Süßkind
Fear and loathing in Las Vegas - Hunter S. Thompson
The Dead - Christian Kracht
Tyll - Daniel Kehlmann
The Long Walk - Stephen King
Greatings from germany:)
You have been doing book reviews for several years now, would you consider doing a post on the top ten best books you would highly recommend that people read and the reason why you especially chose them. Since finding your RUclips page I have changed my reading pattern and feel that I have improved not only in my reading but also my vocabulary has increased - which is not a bad thing, so I thank you for that. I would never have known or read these books if I had not found your channel and that would have been a travesty. Keep up the great work and stay safe. Keep drinking that coffee!
I'm working on the Magic Mountain by Thomas Mann. I read a bunch of Houellebecq this year, Submission, Platform, Possibility of an Island, and recently The Elementary Particles I somehow missed out on . I read Bolaño's Woes of a True Policeman, Nazi Literature of the Americas, and By Night in Chile, I re-read the Man Who Was Thursday By Chesterton, I read The Crying of Lot 49 by Pynchon, and started Mason and Dixon by Pynchon
i'm so delighted you read Brazilian books!! That makes me so happy, thank you
I don't have one of last year, but you've inspired me to read out for the rest of this year for at least a book a month or hopefully more. 10-20 books this year. Thanks man! Please remind come Jan 2021 to give you my list.
The origins of totalitarism by H. Arendt, Orientalism by E. Said, storm of steel by e. junger, guns germs and steel by J Diamond, and Fictions by J.L. Borges (after watching your vídeo about him. Loved the book). Keep the good work
I read Submission earlier this year, and didn't know he had a new book out. Will definitely check out Serotonin
1. The Divine Comedy (read w/ La Vita Nuova as a sort of Prologue) by Dante Alighieri
2. Doctor Faustus by Thomas Mann
3. The Complete Illuminated Books of William Blake
4. Hard Rain Falling by Don Carpenter
5. The Portable Poe (Penguin)
Probably started the most books in my life ever, at the beginning of this year, prime pandemic time, when everyone was panicked and no one knew what was going on, only to not complete them. But once I learned to ride the wave of chaos and scream into the void, I caught a good rhythm by summer lol.
My favorite books read in 2020 :
1. Pynchon's 'Gravity Rainbow'
2. Lowry's 'Under the Volcano'
3. Gardner's 'Mickelsson's Ghosts'
4. Perec's 'La Vie mode d'emploi' ('Life: A User's Manual')
5. Verhaeghen's 'Omega Minor'
And thanks to you, Cliff, I've also read these other books I really liked: Melchor's 'Hurricane Season', Topor's 'Le Locataire chimérique' ('The Tenant'), Anger's 'Hollywood Babylone', Sacher Masoch's 'Venus in Furs', Gamboa's 'Necropolis', Piñera's 'René's Flesh'... and even Moynihan and Søderlind's 'Lord of Chaos'! Thanks a lot!
My favourites were: Ninth House by Leigh Bardugo, The Southern Book Club's Guide to Slaying Vampires by Grady Hendrix and Alex Approximately by Jenn Bennett (VERY different from your choices, but I love hearing about things completely outside my comfort zone)!!
Although it's completely different to my normal tastes, I've added Act of Passion to my TBR!
Very well done. Now, if you show the book cover up in the corner as you talk about each book, that would help me decide and remember if I want to buy them.
I started reading again in 2020 thanks to Booktubers like yourself, so thank you for that!
My favorites of 2020:
Eat a Peach - David Chang
Perfume - Patrick Suskind
South of the Border West of the Sun - Haruki Murakami
Let the Right One In - John Lindqvist
Hey Mr Sargent. You should check out Vigdis Hjorth's book Will and Testament. It's more of that Norwegian auto-fiction I know you like. Not very similar to Knausgård but it's cool stuff. A controversial book in Norway and in the writers own family too.
edit: oh any my favourites were Nabokov's Ada, or Ardor and Knausgård's Min Kamp vol I.
The Plague, A Heart So White and Siddhartha are definitely my favourites from last year. All ones I bought on recs from this channel.
Brazilians are also looking forward to this video!
I have discovered so many great books from you, Cliff. A thousand thank you’s from my past, present, and future selves!
1)
S. Lipsett-Rivera - The Origins of Macho: Men and Masculinity in Colonial Mexico
2)
J. Buisman - Duizend jaar weer, wind en water in de Lage Landen [Durch: A Thousand Years of Weather, Wind and Water in the Low Countries]
(I read the first 5 books in the series)
3)
G. Aalders - Oranje Zwartboek [Dutch: Orange Blackbook]
My top three books of 2020 was I Am Legend by Richard Matheson, The Cabin at the End of the World by Paul Tremblay and Mexican Gothic by Silvia Moreno-Garcia. It would be fun if you gave us a review of The Cabin at the End of the World. It's pretty dark and kind of different.
Tess of the D'Urbervilles
Les Misérables (re-read)
Things Fall Apart (re-read)
9 Florida Stories (by Marjorie Stoneman Douglas)
East of Eden
Tess was by far one of the greatest novels I have EVER read, and one of the most endearing characters. It was spectacular!
The re-reads were timeless and I really enjoyed a collection of 9 short stories by Marjorie Stoneman Douglas. I read several of them while backpacking through the Everglades so the combination of scenery and stories is something I will never forget.
My top 5 in 2020:
1. The Brothers Karamazov - Dostoyevsky
2. Vertigo - W.G Sebald
3. Kolyma Tales - Shalamov
4. Collected Stories (Only the published ones) - Kafka
5. Notes on Cinematography - Bresson
My favourite 2020 books: 1.Dostoevsky's Crime and Punishment; 2.Herman Hesse's Demian; 3.Stephan Zweig's Confusion of Feelings (short but intense); 4.Bulgakov's The Master and Margarita; and 5. a nonfiction book very much connected with Crime and Punishment, Nietzsche's Genealogy of Moral. Thanks for your videos. Cheers from Spain man!
Thank you Cliff. You got me back into reading, as well as introduced me to my new obsession George Bataille. You transformed my reading taste, and for that I'm eternally grateful. I'm starting the year off with Blood Meridian per your recommendation. Cheers man to another great year of reading.
Any chance you'd read anything by Salman Rushdie this year? Perhaps his latest ''Quichotte''? My 2020 top 5 were:
1. The True Story of Ah Q (Lu Xun)
2. The Catcher in the Rye (yeah, FINALLY managed to read it!)
3. Milkman (Anna Burns)
4. I Curse the River of Time (Per Petterson)
5. Days and Nights of Love and War (Eduardo Galeano)
What you said about "The Peregrine" making you realise that birds of prey are just killing machines was one of my main takeaways of "H is for Hawk" - thanks for the recommendations!
1. Norwood - Charles Portis
2. Hardboiled Wonderland and the End of the World - Haruki Murakami
3. Pedro Paramo - Juan Rulfo
4. The Dog Stars - Peter Heller
5. Tree of Smoke - Denis Johnson
Picked up The Peregrine on your recommendation. Looking forward to it! Also, just read Ada, Nabokov. I could have sworn you did a video on this book but can't seem to find it anymore. Am I mistaken?
Probably many commonly known books, but my favourite were...
"Il fu Mattia Pascal" and "Uno, nessuno e centomila" by Luigi Pirandello
"Dune" by Frank Herbert
"1Q84(book1)" by Haruki Murakami
"Crime and punishment" by Dostoevskij
I started Borges' "Fictions", following your review, btw...
Great list!
Here’s mine:( in no order)
1. After Dark Haruki Murakami
2.Sanctuary Faulkner
3.Solitude Anthony Storr
4.Paradise Lost Milton
5. The Birth And Death Of Meaning Becker
my Top 5 of 2020 would be:
1. Sculpting in Time, by Andrei Tarkovsky
2. Rashomon and Seventeen Other Stories, Ryunosuke Akutagawa
3. Memórias Póstumas de Brás Cubas (Epitaph of a Small Winner), by Machado de Assis
4. O Livro do Joaquim (The Joaquim's Book), by Daniel Faria
5. Traité de l'arbre: essai d'une philosophie occidentale, by Robert Dumas
cheers from Portugal !
The elementary particles by houellebecq was a game-changer
That’s in my top 5-10 for sure
I think my favourite reads this last year were Repetition by Handke (a near perfect book), and Lust by Jelinek (think you’re gonna love this one, Cliff ;)
1) Serotonin - Michel Houellebecq 2) Public Enemies - Michel Houellebecq & Bernard-Henri Lévy 3) Die zitternde Welt - Tanja Paar (don't think there's an English translation yet; the title translates as "The Trembling World" 4) The Prisoner of Heaven - Carlos Ruiz Zafon 5) Enlightenment Now - Steven Pinker (not a novel, though, but challenged me profoundly).
my favorites of the year: hurricane season, tender is the flesh, and my reread of all the ugly and wonderful things.
Man, would love to see a video on Lolita or Pale Fire, if you ever get to them. Feel like you'd be super into Nabokov's more famous stuff.
In no particular order:
- Out of the Dark - Patrick Modiano
- A Heart So White - Javier Marías
- Invisible Cities - Italo Calvino
- Delirium's Mistress - Tanith Lee
- Young Stalin - Simon Sebag Montefiore
I'm currently reading "The Devil All the Time" by Donald Ray Pollock, which is likely to make this year's list - it's excellent.
1. A Ghost in the Throat, Doireann Ní Ghríofa
2. A Season of Migration to the North, Tayeb Salih
3. Clarice Lispector, The Passion According to G.H.
4. Máirtín Ó Cadhain, The Dirty Dust (Alan Titley's translation)
5. Anne Carson, Autobiography of Red
You'd especially love the Ó Cadhain, Cliff. There are two English translations (OG title is Cré na Cille) - I think you'd prefer Titley's. Great video as always
The Ministry of Utmost Happiness-Arundhati Roy
The Prague Cemetery- Umberto Eco
The Wall -John Lanchester
A white so white-Havier Marias
Serotonin-Michel Houellebecq
Mine were:
A Tale of Two Cities Dickens
Chess Novella Zweig
The Murderess (Greek classic I recommend)
Jurassic Park Crichton
Odyssey Homer
Have a nice reading year!
Zweig is FANTASTIC!
@@mishababernathy7165 I just bought his complete short stories, and Chess Story. Can't wait to get into them. Heard him compared to Maupassant and Chekov, so bring it on!
I'm most intrigued by your assessment of society in the houellebecq discussion: hopeless but safe, meaningless but entertained, full of despair but polite. I'll have to read it, but it seems to me many of us want polar opposites at the same time, which I often want but have never found a way to have. We seem to want great meaning which I've found comes from struggle and being unsafe, but we also want to avoid the struggle and violence. Maybe future generations will succeed where the 60's failed but I feel like we tried the back to the land movement, in fact I lived in a few intentional communities and found them to be inauthentic though well intentioned largely because I dont think we have figured out how to get along with each other largely. Personally I think we read too much into how similar we are on the surface and ignore how different we are at depth, so when we live together in close proximity and encounter those depths we often come apart at the seams it seems (sorry couldnt help myself, but if Michel can have c and q in his last name I can allow myself this indulgence).
Man these videos are so chill
Like many people I got more time to read! Amongst my favourite fiction novels of 2020 were:
1) Conclave by Robert Harris
2) Libra by Don DeLillo
3) Bad Behaviour by Mary Gaitskill
4) Plender by Ted Lewis
5) Revenge by Yoko Ogawa
Mothering Sunday by Graham Swift and The Machine Stops by E.M. Forster are two must-reads. Both are short but deeply touching.
This year was the year I finally started reading every day and for the first time fully fell in love with reading. Thanks for all the great recommendations! I'm currently reading The War of the Worlds by H G Wells, but A Cup Of Rage is next in line!
My 5 favourite books of 2020 were:
The Sailor Who Fell From Grace With the Sea - Yukio Mishima
Norweigian Wood - Murakami
Dune - Frank Herbert
I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings - Maya Angelou
Siddhartha - Herman Hesse
Many by Dostojewski:
1st The Brothers Karamasow
2nd Demons
3rd The Adolescent
4th The Idiot
5th The Eternal Husband (all by Dostojewski, I read crime and punishment already in 2019 so it doesn't make the list)
6th Agnes by Peter Stamm
7th The Posthumous Memoires of Bras Cubas by Machado de Assis (Thank you very much for your suggestion it was great)
8th Brave New World by Huxley
9th Animal Farm by Orwell
10th Midas or the Black canvas by Friedrich Dürrenmatt (I reread it and it was great. I'm not sure if there's an English translation though. If not I recommend the Physicist, which should be translated.)
Happy new year! I hope you all read many great new books in this new year. Hope you have a great time. And sty healthy!
Here are mine:
Stoner by John Williams
The Magus by John Fowles
East of Eden by Steinbeck
The Bog People: Iron Age Man Preserved by Peter Glob
Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee by Dee Brown
5 favs of 2020:
-The Argonauts: Maggie Nelson
-My year of rest and relaxation: Ottessa Mossfegh
-Conversations with Friends: Sally Rooney
-Brideshead Revisited: Evelyn Waugh
-The Art of Fielding: Chad Harbach
Best two books I read was Blood Meridian and The Road. Read a lot of McCarthy before those two, but not the two most known works of his. By the end of The Road I was damn near about to weep and at the end of Blood Meridian I had an existential crisis. Easily my favorite American author. I also read Albina and the Dog-Men by Jodorowsky and that book is fucking WILD it’s like LSD in book form.
Goals for 2021 is to read all the classic literature that I missed. Don Quixote, Mody Dick, etc. I also want to finish the rest of McCarthy’s work as well as go back and re-read all of Jack London’s work.
I definitely picked up Blood Meridian because of you buddy. Thanks again Cliff 🤙
Oh and Kafka, definitely wanna read more Kafka.
High fidelity - Nick Hornby
La vie devant soi - Romain Gary
Boussole - Mathias énard
Ask the dust - John Fante
The bricks that built the house - Kate Tempest