The Golden Notebook
The story of the inner and outer life of Anna, a young writer, single mother and member of the Communist Party, struggling with crises both in her domestic and political life, this book was hailed as a landmark by the Women's Movement.
Stats for nerds
3recommend
3mentions
3people
2023–2026years
100% recommend
Mentions per year
What Hacker News says
- It’s hard to know what anyone considers the “usual greats”. Doris Lessing won the Nobel Prize for literature, but she doesn’t seem to make it into the “average” person’s greats list, possibly because her use of language is very much not grade 5. Try The Golden Notebook, The Summer Before the Dark, The Grass Is Singing, The Good Terrorist, The Fifth Child, or the series that starts with Shikasta.
E.L. Doctorow is another such example. Try The Book of Daniel, Ragtime, Billy Bathgate, Loon Lake.
In the scifi genre (aside from the Shikasta series already mentioned), M. John Harrison is worth a look. He’s got a long bibliography but Light might be a good starting point.
Umberto Eco: The Name of the Rose, Foucault’s Pendulum.
Some of Ursula Le Guin’s more serious books might fit the bill, like The Dispossessed or The Left Hand of Darkness.
Someone already mentioned Mervyn Peake, he definitely fits this category.
- The best two books I read in the last year-ish are "The Golden Notebook" (novel by Doris Lessing) and "The Soul of a New Machine" by Tracy Kidder.
Best tech book has been "Designing Data-Intensive Applications".
Wow, finally some fiction that isn't science fiction and something written by a woman. Excellent choice! I highly recommend her other works."The Golden Notebook" (novel by Doris Lessing)What blew me away the most about Golden Notebook: It was published in 1962 -- 60 years ago! The ideas about feminism that the two lead women characters discuss are way ahead of their time.
Also by Ms. Lessing, I recommend "The Grass Is Singing". She really knows how transport you inside the minds of her characters. The lead character's struggle to adapt to difficult farm life in a colony is real.
