Stats for nerds
1recommend
3mentions
3people
2018–2025years
33% recommend67% neutral
Mentions per year
What Hacker News says
- As for me —-
0: Jorge Luis Borges, Labyrinths
Anyone interested in information theory, intelligence (artificial or otherwise), many-worlds interpretations of quantum mechanics, metafiction, the nature of art, or even probabilistic sequence modeling should read Borges’ short stories. I couldn’t recommend it highly enough.
1: Hero With A Thousand Faces
A classic book collating world mythologies and psychoanalytical thought to investigate an individual’s core struggle for meaning and purpose. I find that it has informed my appreciation of literature, film, music. More importantly, it helped me understand how I want to live my life and from whence I now choose to derive my personal senses of direction and meaning.
2: Samuel Beckett, Malone Dies
An obtuse, rambling, depressing novel without a sense of momentum or even plot. The narrator or narrators are unreliable, prone to aporetics, and capricious. Beyond its stark exterior, the prose is, at times, achingly beautiful, the narrator is relatable in his uncertainty and frailty, and the dual struggle for meaning and accepting the absolute absence thereof is invigorating. It’s book two of a trilogy, but these postmodern novels are enjoyable on their own, and the rare, tenuous grasp on plot or direction makes reading them in sequence seem to be more a suggestion on how to experience them than a strict ordering.
I’ve also been reading The Double (Dostoevsky), but I haven’t progressed far enough to make an informed recommendation.
- It's definitely not the hardest "arthouse" novel (or whatever you call it), I found Gravity's Rainbow by Pynchon so much more harder, and Beckett's Three Novels (i.e. Molloy, Malone Dies, The Unnamable) was likely the most difficult text I attempted to read in my life. Even then, I think it's still pretty difficult for an average Western reader in 2020s, our literacy attention span and interest is very low. People should definitely attempt it though!
- Your description of Malone Dies reminds me of Notes From Underground by Dostoevsky. I found it hard to get into at first because the prose was different from most books I've read (might be the translation, but the Narrator is also crazy). After starting and restarting the book a few times to get into the flow, it definitely turned out to be one of my favorite books.
Also, for sci-fi I'd recommend Hyperion by Dan Simmons. This is the first in a trilogy but can be read and be satisfied with not reading the other two (although the second one, The Fall of Hyperion, is very good).
I read the first (Hyperion) one on a recommendation and I think the guy who recommended it to me was also read it based on a recommendation. It makes me wonder what the longest "recommendation streaks" are and what books they could be for.
