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What books do you consider must reads? (beehaw.org)

submitted 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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So basically I was unschooled, and the amount of books I've read in my life is embarrassingly low. It was never emforced like in a school, and with my family's religious hangups, I never tried getting into new things because I never knew what would be deemed "offensive".

But I'm always interested when I hear people talk about both storycraft and also literary criticism, so I want to take an earnest stab at getting into books.

No real criteria, I don't know what I like so I can't tell you what I'm looking for, other than it needs to be in English or have an English translation. Just wanna know what y'all think would make good or important reading.

ETA holy shit thanks for all the suggestions! Definitely gonna make a list

ETA if I reply extremely late it's because it took me this long to get a library card in my new locale.

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[–] [email protected] 7 points 3 months ago

I don't mean to be replying to every post on this thread--I guess I love a lot of books--, but I'm going to have to recommend these in particular for people who don't usually read.

I had this friend in college who had never read a book of his own volition. He wasn't the sort of person who was proud of the fact, he just thought books were boring and had trouble getting through them. This horrified me, as somebody who had a collection of some 500 books or so at that point (almost all of them read). Anyway, he read Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy and then Catch-22, and he was hooked. He's been a reader ever since.