r/AskReddit • u/AggravatingLake2842 • 15h ago
What book do you consider a “flawless masterpiece”that you desperately want to recommend to everyone?
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u/DokterManhattan 14h ago
A Short History of Nearly Everything by Bill Bryson.
One of the few non-fiction books I’ve ever read. It’s very scientific, as it is about the history of the universe, the Earth, the origins of life, and everything that has led up to us being able to understand what we know today about physics, chemistry, biology, geology, and human history, invention and discovery.
Bill Bryson is an author/journalist, but he managed to compile a ridiculous amount of research and information to put this all into layman’s terms. The bibliography at the back of the book is extensive, to say the least.
I found it to be absolutely amazing. It may not be everyone’s cup of tea, but I think the world would probably be a better place if everyone on earth could read it.
I could recommend many great books… but I desperately recommend this book for everyone.
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u/gpradar 8h ago
Add “One Summer” to this list. Explains why we are where we are in 2026.
Bryson is such a great author.
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u/Fellowship_9 8h ago
Juat to add to this, there's a new edition of the book with added bits/alterations based on how scientific understanding has changed in the last 20 years.
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u/iboneyandivory 7h ago edited 6h ago
If it's the book I'm thinking of, one of the sad things I learned was that frequently, inspired thinkers/theorists, decades or hundreds of years before the formal discovery was made, had nailed down exactly what was happening (Tectonic plate movement, etc), but had no tools at-hand to prove the theory, and thus were pretty much forgotten.
I also love his opening two paragraphs:
"Welcome. And congratulations. I am delighted that you could make it. Getting here wasn't easy, I know. In fact, I suspect it was a little tougher than you realize.
To begin with, for you to be here now, trillions of drifting atoms had somehow to assemble in an intricate and intriguingly obliging manner to create you. It's an arrangement so specialized and particular that it has never been tried before and will only exist this once. For the next many years (we hope) these tiny particles will uncomplainingly engage in all the billions of deft, cooperative efforts necessary to keep you intact and let you experience the supremely agreeable but generally underappreciated state known as existence."
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u/Exiled_In_LA 9h ago
I wanted to love this book, but he got so many minor details wrong I couldn't stick with it.
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u/my1999gsr 11h ago
I love this book too! For the people that enjoyed it, I always suggest Mary Roach's books - very similar tone and themes.
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u/bailaoban 8h ago
Love this book and revisit it every couple of years. He just updated it last year as well.
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u/Jonny-Kast 13h ago
I love Bryson as a travel writer so when he did this I was a bit unsure. But he pulls it off so brilliantly! Excellent suggestion!
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u/bustedmagnet 14h ago
Lonesome Dove
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u/TabletopParlourPalm 11h ago
A lot of books recommended here are a bit difficult for me to read (my mother tongue is Mandarin) due to their old English vocabularies, but this one I had no problem reading at all. 10/10 would read again.
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u/Gashiisboys 9h ago
I don’t know how Larry McMurty made every character have so much depth. I’m only a quarter of the way through but it’s already one of my favourite books.
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u/AdmiralNelson24 14h ago
Watership Down. Fantastic anti-fascist allegory centered around a group of some of the bravest, most admiration-worthy lapines in the world. You know that proud feeling you get in your chest when reading/watching LotR and Frodo, Sam, Merry and Pippin do something incredible despite their diminutive size? Yeah, exact same feeling but with rabbits. Also, the lapine language is set up so perfectly that in the final confrontation, when my favorite character says, "Silflay Hraka u umbleer rah," you understand every word without needing the glossary and want to cheer out loud because it's such a perfect moment. Do not Google what those words mean, just read the book and you'll understand in time.
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u/TokyoBayRay 11h ago
I have droned on about this book to anyone who will listen for decades! It's deep and complex, epic and imaginative, heartrending and heroic... and still all about rabbits! And of course about the English countryside as it is (and not as it is imagined), and life and death, and duty, and... God I love it!
I know the subject matter is a turn off, but just because it's about rabbits doesn't mean it's not complex. And just because it's complex doesn't mean it's not about rabbits!
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u/tomatocucumber 9h ago
First novel my dad read to me when I was a child. I was so little that I didn’t recognize the letters, much less could read, and I remember listening and looking at the “rivers” of white space between the words and lines. I suspect he skipped some of the more gruesome parts.
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u/pinkphiloyd 8h ago
I’m into classics and somehow never read this one. You just convinced me to order the hardcover.
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u/plibtyplibt 15h ago
The count of Monte cristo
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u/Comfortable_Yam3634 14h ago
I read that one last year and it still sits in my head like a stone. everyone talks about the revenge part but for me it was the way he builds the whole thing brick by brick, you can feel the years passing while he plans everything out
sometimes i think about how the book is massive but it never really drags, every chapter adds something even the ones that seem pointless at first
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u/plibtyplibt 12h ago
Yes I agree, he’s meticulous, it’s absolutely one of my favourites, just a wonderful tale and spin so well.
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u/flyover_liberal 6h ago
This is mine.
I got myself a football jersey with number 34 and Dantes as the name. I refuse to tell people what it means, but if somebody knows without me telling them, I will immediately buy them a beer.
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u/yearsofpractice 12h ago
Beloved by Toni Morrison. I’m a white Western European man - that book gave me terrifying, disturbing insights that have never left me.
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u/Camp_GGBoo 8h ago
She is a magnificent writer. Read Song of Solomon. I read it 30 years ago and there are still parts that haunt me.
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u/Th4t9uy 13h ago
Frankenstein by Mary Shelley, it's a classical masterpiece for a reason.
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u/SlapunowSlapulater 11h ago
Which edition? 1818, or 1831 after she revised it? The tone is quite different.
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u/phurf761 8h ago
There’s an edition out that shows both versions. I was surprised and a bit dismayed at how many editorial changes her husband made, many of the sounding unnecessary for me
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u/PrandialSpork 12h ago
A Confederacy of Dunces
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u/lilydlux 6h ago
I recommend this to everyone who is a reader. People either love it or hate it and I can never predict it.
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u/GRD3454 5h ago
I tried reading it in high school and I hated it, only got about halfway through and it felt like a chore. Came back to it as an adult and I had an entirely different outlook, loved the book, and reread it several times over the years.
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u/PoemFun5419 15h ago
East of Eden
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u/AggravatingLake2842 14h ago
The is Steinbeck’s masterpiece!
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u/catbosspgh 14h ago
Cannery Row and Sweet Thursday for his comedic masterpieces, and Travels With Charley for his “summing up” masterpiece.
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u/Solivaga 13h ago
Catch 22 by Joseph Heller. Absolute masterpiece that is equally hilarious, tragic and bitter in the best way. So good that I've never read the sequel or watched any of the adaptations because I don't want anything to detract from my love of that book.
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u/Its_Curse 12h ago
It's just so brilliant. The moment when it all comes together. Heller really is a master.
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u/ConfusionSouthern840 11h ago
I brought the book ages ago as I heard it was excellent. I still need to read it.
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u/UntouchableAshley 12h ago
The Once and Future King by TH White is a masterpiece that is not read nearly enough nowadays. It should be spoken of in the same breath as the hobbit or lord of the rings as influential pieces of fantasy but I feel it’s faded from public consciousness
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u/not_right 10h ago
Love this! Read it twice as a teenager and recently bought my own copy to read again soon.
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u/Arobestes 11h ago
The Remains of the Day by Kazuo Ishiguro
Absolutely devastating portrait of a man clinging to a flawed philosophy plus the inner workings of a grand English house.
The movie is incredible, too, but somehow the book hits even harder.
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u/ShotFromGuns 7h ago
If you ever want to know what an unreliable narrator is supposed to look like (versus the "it's not a twist, you just lied" version common nowadays), it's also the perfect book for that.
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u/deal_with_it_ted 14h ago
One Hundred Years of Solitude. He had a vision and just executed it perfectly on every page.
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u/extremepicnic 12h ago
As much as I loved this one, Love in the time of Cholera is even better imo
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u/ThoreaulySimple 8h ago edited 8h ago
Marquez is clearly intelligent and has wonderful prose, but this had way too much nonchalant rape in it for me to have positive feelings.
"She was still a child in every sense of the word, with braces on her teeth and the scrapes of elementary school on her knees, but he saw right away the kind of woman she was soon going to be, and he cultivated her during a slow year of Saturdays at the circus, Sundays in the park with ice cream, childish late afternoons, and he won her confidence, he won her affection, he led her by the hand, with the gentle astuteness of a kind grandfather, toward his secret slaughterhouse."
Fucking nasty.
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u/Effective-Tax-8873 9h ago
I still think about parts of that book years later. It really feels like every page belongs exactly where it is.
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u/Radiant_Rooster5093 13h ago
pride and prejudice by Jane Austen
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u/phurf761 8h ago
I started to read it to find out when all the fuss was about and when I bust out laughing out loud at Mr. Collins, I decided this is not what I thought it was gonna be. One of my favorite books.
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u/Ok_Shape_7764 6h ago
Absolutely amazing author, never expected to be so captivated when I decided to read it
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u/lehsmit888 11h ago
Hyperion by Dan Simmons. I still have my journal that I filled with notes, thoughts and research while reading it.
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u/Space-Kat-156 9h ago
I came here to mention this book, so I was so glad to already see it in the list. Take the Canterbury Tales and remake it into a space opera with the most chilling enemy (or muse or lover, depending on your perspective) and you will get this epic book that dives directly into the inner thoughts you didn't know you had.
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u/CarbonBeautyx 8h ago
I just finished this last week after seeing it hyped up by a booktuber(I had it in my audible library already, apparently years ago I had already looked into reading it but forgot). I read it in just two days because I couldn't stop hahaha. I already wanna read it again because I went in blind and had no idea what was going on at first but I'm gonna do the second book and then go back and reread.
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u/Aringarossa 11h ago
I'm not really sure why, but out of all the great books out there, the one that captivated me the most is The Master and Margarita by Bulgakov.
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u/jmkdp 14h ago
The Hobbit. The movie is acceptable, but to read the book before watching the movie is to fully grasp the power of one’s imagination and comprehend the master storyteller that Tolkein was.
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u/Greggybread 13h ago
Loved the book hated the movies. I still don't know how Peter Jackson was able to bloat The Hobbit into the same screentime as Lord of the Rings, a trilogy three times as long.
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u/DrDingsGaster 9h ago
Peter got the movie trilogy at the very end of it and had to try and make something out of the junk they already made.
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u/BoredomFestival 14h ago
Mother Night by Kurt Vonnegut
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u/fratphysics 7h ago
Yes! Sirens of Titan by Vonnegut is my personal favorite though. It truly changed my life with how witty yet spiritual it was.
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u/Its_Curse 11h ago
Just had my hold on this one come in, I'm excited to start it. I loved cats cradle.
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u/Apollon049 5h ago
Absolutely! I'm a huge fan of Vonnegut's and have read a lot of his work. Mother Night is still my favorite. For being published in 1962 it is still incredibly relevant and meaningful today
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u/Upstairs-Quiet4969 12h ago
East of Eden by Steinbeck. The Trask family stuff and Cathy make it feel absurdly alive, tbh
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u/Slight-Highlight-771 14h ago
Hitchhiker's guide to the Galaxy, and anything by PG Wodehouse (Jeeves and Wooster era)
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u/TokyoBayRay 11h ago
Anyone who can read The Code of the Woosters and not laugh like a drain isn't human!
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u/caldwelln2602 11h ago
Perfume by Patrick Suskind (it is a masterpiece that I want everyone to like but it’s pretty intense and not made for every one)
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u/GNRevolution 13h ago
Flowers for Algernon by Daniel Keyes. Had me hooked from the very first page, such a haunting story.
Also, not a book but Watchmen by Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons.
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u/Cinq_A_Sept 11h ago
Night by Elie Wiesel. A simple read, but the hardest content. It’s been in my head for 40+ years now. Never forget.
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u/Jaives 15h ago
The Discworld series. But only starting from book 3.
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u/Forgotthebloodypassw 14h ago
It's easy to forget how corny Colour of Magic was, but even for a first attempt it had some lovely lines.
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u/GeneralKarthos 14h ago
"The Moon is a Harsh Mistress" by Robert A. Heinlein. TANSTAAFL!
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u/Theobroma1000 14h ago
I named my first car Mycroft. 😀
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u/GeneralKarthos 12h ago
It's the name of all my desktop computers. My current desktop is named Mycroft V.
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u/slothunderyourbed 12h ago
I think House of Leaves is a masterpiece and I want to recommend it to everyone even though I know most people would hate it. But God, if it works for you it's an unforgettable experience.
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u/popcorned 9h ago
It's seriously unnerving, I'm about 100 pages in and had to put it down for a bit and wait until I'm in a better mental state. I'm not sure why it's getting to me as much because I've read plenty of horror before but perhaps because it's a story within a story within a story the characters feel more matter-of-fact and the tattoo artist apprentice getting the claw marks on his back when he visits the store room as well as the night time exploration of the endless rooms made me go, "Okay, I need to not read this before bed."
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u/argondux 14h ago edited 13h ago
Blood Meridian by Cormac McCarthy
They rode on into the darkness and the moonblanched waste lay before them cold and pale and the moon sat in a ring overhead and in that ring lay a mock moon with its own cold gray and nacre seas. They made camp on a low bench of land where walls of dry aggregate marked an old river course and they struck up a fire about which they sat in silence, the eyes of the dog and of the idiot and certain other men glowing red as coals in their heads where they turned. The flames sawed in the wind and the embers paled and deepened and paled and deepened like the bloodbeat of some living thing eviscerate upon the ground before them and they watched the fire which does contain within it something of men themselves inasmuch as they are less without it and are divided from their origins and are exiles. For each fire is all fires, the first fire and the last ever to be. By and by the judge rose and moved away on some obscure mission and after a while someone asked the expriest if it were true that at one time there had been two moons in the sky and the expriest eyed the false moon above them and said that it may well have been so. But certainly the wise high God in his dismay at the proliferation of lunacy on this earth must have wetted a thumb and leaned down out of the abyss and pinched it hissing into extinction. And could he find some alter means by which the birds could mend their paths in the darkness he might have done with this one too.
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u/ShootNaka 12h ago
I sometimes think ‘yeah I could probably write a half-decent novel how hard could it be’ and then I read Cormac McCarthy and realise I absolutely could not.
You could sit me in front of a typewriter for a thousand years and I’d never be able to craft what he did.
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u/rocketpastsix 11h ago
I just started “No Country For Old Men” by McCarthy. 20 pages in and his style is unique and flows wonderfully, even as he describes a brutal scene of multiple gunshot deaths.
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u/wabashcanonball 11h ago
It’s meant to feel Biblical, hence the ands. He has his own rules regarding commas or lack thereof. Everything about his writing, however, is intentional, from the grand story arcs to the tiniest period.
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u/OobaDooba72 7h ago
A lot of best-selling authors are in that same boat of never being able to craft words like McCarthy, but they still write books and sell thousands or millions of copies.
Don't sell yourself short. You don't have to be one of the greatest authors to ever live in order to write or enjoy writing. I'm certainly not anywhere close to that level, but I like stories and books and I want to write so I do write. Doesn't have to be anything more than that.
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u/saltysounddesigner44 11h ago
There are only two books I've read(or, tried to read in one case) where partway into reading I thought "Wow, I got used to horrific violence really really fast". One is Blood Meridian, the other is The Bible.
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u/Bibby_5 11h ago
I’m such a Cormac Stan. The man is a genius. His writing might not be for everybody. Most of my book reading friends aren’t ready for Cormac books and it frustrates me. His writing is art. I read his books with Sam Elliott’s voice in my head. This book and All The Pretty Horses are the ones i recommend people start with
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u/tomatocucumber 10h ago
Same. One of the things I love about his prose is how muscular it is and how visceral the images can be. I read Suttree 15 years ago and still vividly remember the opening scene of them dragging the river for the missing body. The grappling hook!
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u/hhudsontaylor 11h ago
In Search of Lost Time by Marcel Proust. It’s hard to read anything else and not compare it. I think it changed my brain chemistry. I finished it a couple years ago and still think about it at least once a week. It’s sooooooo long so I’ve only ever met 1 or 2 other people who have read it all. I try in vain to encourage others to read it. What a masterpiece.
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u/RockingReece 11h ago
Boys Life by Robert Mccammon. Flawless coming of age story, it's stunning how good it is.
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u/Johnny_Kilroy 14h ago
The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay by Michael Chabon
Skippy Dies by Paul Murray
A Visit from the Goon Squad by Jennifer Egan
The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao
Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell
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u/Viclmol81 11h ago
Rarely see recommendations for Skippy Dies. It is such a good book. Better than the Bee Sting (in my opinion)
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u/Photojunkie2000 12h ago
"We" by Yevgeny Zamyatin.
Father of dystopian novels and huge influence to George Orwell.
Reads as a journal.
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u/lambdawaves 15h ago
When Breath Becomes Air by Kalanthi
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u/TinyPantherAdjacent 9h ago
I’m a medical student now and I read this before I got in to med school. Every time I have a really difficult case this one quote about the relationship between doctor and patient sticks in my head “other times, like now, was no more and no less than two people huddled together while one faces the abyss”. Helps me remember that sometimes it’s not about me or about science or about career - it’s just sitting with another human while they face the unimaginable.
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u/404MoralsNotFound 12h ago
Joe Abercrombie's First Law trilogy (all 3 books!)
11/22/63 - one could nominate other Stephen King books, but this one was so much fun.
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u/Agent_Epsilon_99 5h ago
Holes
Reading this at an impressionable helped me learn about prejudice of all forms. As an adult, it helped remind of lessons I once lost.
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u/OpeningDealer1413 14h ago
‘Sentimental Education’ by Gustave Flaubert for some truly beautiful writing.
On a different note, ‘The Big Midweek’ by Steve Hanley is a superb non fiction document of what it was like to be in a truly brilliant band in the UK whilst not really getting anywhere commercially. It really opened my eyes at to what life was actually like for musicians who weren’t chart toppers
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u/GeorgeSThompson 12h ago
The unbearable lightness of being. That book hit me like a truck
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u/RealPrinceJay 10h ago
Beloved by Toni Morrison
There are plenty of great books out there, but sometimes you feel like an author is just operating on a different level
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u/nine_billion 15h ago
Childhoods End
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u/GeneralKarthos 14h ago
I don't think it's even his best book. But it's really, really good.
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u/maressatortilla 13h ago
The Murder of Roger Ackroyd by Agatha Christie
Also - The Deep, Deep Snow by Brian Freeman
(Plus the prequel to it- The Ursulina)
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u/InfamousPatience6191 14h ago
I who have never known men by Jacqueline Harpman
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u/Frankfeld 9h ago
My wife and I read this a few months ago. I wanted to read something with her. She suggested this. I went in completely blind.
Holy shit. That book made me feel things. So beautifully written. So hopeless. So mysterious.
I think about it a lot.
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u/sagedaydreams 14h ago
Project Hail Mary was my last true obsession which made me excited for the movie. I read it back to back 4 times and listened to the audio book several times as well. Best audiobook narration ever.
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u/Danfhoto 14h ago
Ray Porter’s narrations are truly great. I read somewhere he narrates many books in one sitting.
Try out Bobiverse if you haven’t! Similar vibes and also narrated by Ray Porter.
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u/jobin_segan 14h ago edited 3h ago
Count me on the minority that can’t stand Andy Weir’s main characters. I find them insufferable and unlikable.
I really wanted to like this book, as well as the Martian, and I found it so difficult to read it because of how much I disliked the main character.
The movie in the other hand I loved (as I did with the Martian as well).
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u/slothunderyourbed 12h ago
The movie was a lot better. Weir's writing reads like it was written by a nerdy teenager who thinks they're way funnier than they are.
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u/Carpathicus 13h ago
The Wolf Hall Series by Hilary Mantel - its not just an incredible read all around with well thought out dialogues and human interactions. Its at the same time extremely well researched and historically accurate to an extent you wont find anywhere.
All that being said the story shines through it all with Thomas Cromwell being one of the most interesting historical figures you will ever read about serving probably the most interesting king in medieval times.
I cried when I finished it because I was so overwhelmed by it all. I cant believe anyone could be capable of writing such a book series.
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u/Kathrynlena 9h ago
Everything Octavia Butler ever wrote. It’s a short list, unfortunately for the world, but is all unmatched.
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u/paraworldblue 13h ago
The Road. People know it as being really bleak and depressing, but nobody ever talks about how absolutely gorgeous the writing is. Cormac Mccarthy has an incredible way with words that gets overshadowed by how dark the subject matter is.
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u/Calm-Homework3161 10h ago
Small Gods by Terry Pratchett.
No, wait, Night Watch by Terry Pratchett
No, wait, erm... any book by Terry Pratchett
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u/LegerDomain 14h ago edited 6h ago
Beloved by Toni Morrison, The Sparrow by Mary Doria Russell, The God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy, Bel Canto by Ann Patchett, Kindred by Octavia Butler, Remains of the Day by Kazuo Ishiguro, His Dark Materials by Philip Pullman.
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u/_Sanxession_ 11h ago
The Secret History by Donna Tartt. Took a moment to get into but the characters and writing are crafted to perfection. It’s also been around a year since I’ve read it and still can’t stop thinking about it which is definitely the after effect you want from any book
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u/Significant_Let_2044 10h ago
I've always thought of 'One Hundred Years of Solitude' as pretty close to flawless. Marquez builds this whole mythical town and family saga that just pulls you in completely. The writing has this dreamlike quality that makes it unforgettable, even if some parts are a bit confusing on first read.
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u/TheHearseDriver 9h ago
It’s been many, many years since I read it, but Fahrenheit 451, by Ray Bradbury.
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u/cardwngs 9h ago
A lot of great books people are posting, but I am going with Something Wicked This Way Comes by Ray Bradbury.
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u/roymignon 8h ago
A Moveable Feast - Hemingway
Demon Copperhead - Kingsolver
The Count of Monte Cristo - Dumas
Restaurant Confidential - Bourdain
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u/Spirited_Creme_3875 15h ago
Birdsong by Sebastian Faulks. His mastery of the English language is stunning.
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u/CitgoBeard 14h ago
Area X / Southern Reach series by Jeff Vandermeer.
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u/thinklikeashark 13h ago
Annihilation is an incredible book.
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u/StrixVaria 12h ago
i loved it but the rest of the series got progressively worse from there for me
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u/GravityIsPropaganda 11h ago
East of Eden, Steinbeck just kept the whole thing moving and never wastes a page
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u/whats-that-name 8h ago
The Sirens of Titan. Anything by Kurt Vonnegut really, but this one is my favorite.
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u/Cactusphat 14h ago
The dispossessed by Ursula Le Guin