Someone on @bookstodon was asking for books of the year. I always struggle with this - remembering, but also, books may have had a profoud meaning for me that I have then absorbed into my understanding.
However, two I will highlight:
Flowers for Algernon.
The Opposite of Butterfly Hunting (currently reading). I will say more on this when I have finished it, but it is quite superb.
I have started reading "The Death and Life of Schneider Wrack". I think the opening descriptions are some of the best portayals of hell I have read. If you want some real, gruelling horror.
It is a little bit Moby Dick and Zombies. Told from the perspective of a Zombie. What better recommendation could you have.
So i have just finished reading At The Existentialist Cafe. It is a really good book covering existentialism and phenomenology and the various ideas around it.
If this is your sort of interest, then it is worth a read. It is the stories of half a dozen of the main philosophers of this, and their interactions, so you get something more than reading each of them.
@SteveClough@timgatewood@niten@betaquarii@bookstodon All of the above. Generally I think of “Literature” has unpleasant, a chore, or psychological torture. Jane Austin excepted, of course. But anything by the Bronte sisters and anything that intends to evoke their books is as pleasant as cleaning vomit IMO. 😄
@DarkMatterZine@SteveClough@niten@betaquarii@bookstodon What I referred to as Literature in earlier toots is more properly called literary fiction, which I tend to see as a genre of its own but the publishers seem to view as any fiction that is not in a genre. In their POV, it's genre or literary. IMHO this devalues the literary aspects of romance, horror, SFF, westerns, and other works that they relegate to the genre shelves. But, again, this is a marketing decision for them.