I'm young, I'm looking to understand more ways of looking at the world. What books do you recommend people to read that had profound impacts on your world outlook, character, or anything else like that. Future me says thank you.

Edit List (Books listed so far by Title):
"Accelerando" by Charles Stross
"A Clockwork Orange" by Anthony Burgess
"A People's History of the United States" by Howard Zinn
"A Short History of Nearly Everything" by Bill Bryson
"Bardo Thödol" by Padmasambhava
"Brave New World" by Huxley
"Book of the Dead" by ?
"Cain" by José Saramago
"Capital vol.1" by Karl Marx
"Code: The Hidden Language of Computer Hardware and Software" by Charles Petzold
"Collected Fictions" by Jorge Luis Borges
"Crime and Punishment" by Dostoyevsky
"Die Grundlage der Allgemeinen Relativitätstheorie" by Einstein
"Divine Comedy" by Dante
"Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?" by Philip K. Dick
"Don Quixote" by Cervantes
"Daughters of the Dragons" by William Andrews
"Ender's Game" by Orson Scott Card
"Ethics" by Spinoza
"Fables" by Aesop
"Fahrenheit 451" by Bradbury
"Faust" by Goethe
"Flowers for Algernon" By Daniel Keyes
"Fragile Things" by Neil Gaiman
"God and the State" by Mikhail Bakunin
"Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid" by Douglas R. Hofstadter
"Good Omens" by Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett
"Great Books" by David Denby
"Harry Potter" by J.K. Rowling
"Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy" by Douglas Adams
"History of Violence" By Édouard Louis
"Homo Deus" by Yuval Noah Harari
"How to Win Friends and Influence People" by Dale Carnegie
"Illiad" by Homer
"Ishmael" by Daniel Quinn
"Kafka on the Shore" by Haruki Murakami
"Le contrat social" by Rousseau
"Les fleurs du mal" by Baudelaire
"Leviathan" by Hobbes
"Maus" by Art Spiegelman
"Naked Economics" by Charles Wheelan
"Name of the Wind" by Patrick Rothfuss
"Neuromancer" by William Gibson
"Odyssey" Homer
"On the Origin of Species" by Darwin
"Paid Attention" by Faris Yakob
"Personality-Shaping Through Positive Disintegration Processes" by Kazimierz Dąbrowski
"Player Piano" by Vonnegut
"Poetics" by Aristotle
"Republic" by Plato
"Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind" by Yuval Noah Harari
"Shogun" by James Clavell
"Slaughterhouse-Five" by Kurt Vonnegut
"Tao Te Ching" by Lao Tzu
"Tales of Power" by Carlos Castaneda
"Theory and Reality: An Introduction to the Philosophy of Science" by Peter Godfrey-Smith
"The Ancestor's Tale" by Richard Dawkins
"The Bible" by :contentious_topic_here:
"The End of Eddy" By Édouard Louis
"The Goldfinch" by Donna Tartt
"The Handmaid's Tale" by Margaret Atwood
"The Lucifer Effect" by Philip Zimbardo
"The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind" by Julian Jaynes
"The Prince" by Machiavelli
"The Selfish Gene" by Richard Dawkins
"The Singularity Is Near" by Ray Kurzweill
"The Stranger" by Camus
"The Tao of Pooh" by Benjamin Hoff
"The Three-Body Problem Trilogy" by Cixin Liu
"Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus" by Wittgenstein
"Traité d'atheologie" by Onfray
"Treatise of the Three Imposters" by ?
"Where Mathematics Comes From" by Lakoff and Nunez
"Where I'm Calling From" by Raymond Carver
"1984" by George Orwell

I finally have the space to finish a project I've been working on which is a study with 3 bookcases. So far, my idea is to have 1 with books that will always be there, such as classic reads, or even an encyclopedia maybe?, or other reference material. Basically, a permanent bookcase whether or not I've read the material. The other two will be rotated in and out of stuff that I'm reading, have read recently or on my backlog before swapping or donating.

Anyways, what's in your "must have" bookcase? Reference, fiction/non-fiction, Calvin & Hobbes even! (Although that's more of a coffee table piece)

When talking with my therapist, the subject of writing is a constant. My obsessive approach to writing is a source of frustration.

I write well in my first language, and aspire to create short fiction . But I'm an over planner and way too critical of my own writing.

Anything longer than a single page is impossible for me because I'll obsess with editing and some misguided sense of "perfection", cutting paragraph after paragraph until I'm left with a decent micro story that you can read in two and a half minutes. Most of the time I don't even get this far.

So my question is, how can I force myself to be less self critical and obsessive, let things flow, and write longer stories? Are there any advices, books, courses, practices and exercises I can use?

I asked a similar question over in ~games and am interested to hear how ~books would respond to the same setup.

Here's the task: pretend you're a professor! You have to do the following:

• Choose a focus for your class on literature (with a snazzy title if you like)
• Choose the books that you, as a professor, will have your class dive into in order to convey key concepts
• Explain why each book you chose ties into your overarching exploration

Your class can have any focus, broad or specific: victorian literature, contemporary poetry, Shakespearean themes in non-Shakespearean works -- whatever you want! It can focus on any forms of literature and does not have to be explicitly limited to "books" if you want to look at some outside-of-the-box stuff (I once took a literature class where we read afternoon, a story, for example.)

After choosing your specific focus, choose what will be included on your syllabus as "required reading" and why you've chosen each item.

I'd put this series on hold, because of lack of activity. Now I'll give it another go, with French, one of the languages with huge amounts of influential literature.

So, without further ado, please share your favourite French books and authors!

This is the first post (a test post, to see if there is any interest) of a series of posts where we can share our favourite texts in foreign languages. I will try to include the large languages, and some small as well. You're welcome to request a language too. So, without further ado:

What are your favourite texts originally written in Italian?

The last thread was pretty dead, but thanks to a encouraging message I decided to give it another go.

This time: Portuguese. Brazilian, European and African Portuguese is welcome here (and of course other places as well =)! The only writer of Portuguese that I know by name is Paulo Coelho, so I look forwards to your recommendations.

So, without further ado:
What are your favourite texts originally written in Portuguese?

I am currently enjoying a very thought-provoking semester of American Literature. Prior to this class, I wouldn't have considered fiction as useful in my everyday life, as opposed to something like a self-help book. What I've found is exactly the opposite, and I have found novels such as Great Expectations to be even more influential than anything I've ever read.

So I ask you all, what is the greatest lesson you've learned from classical fiction?

I've never read Marcel Proust, and I know very little about his work. But every serious reader of literature I know absolutely gushes over him, but never seems to be able to explain what's good about it or what the books are even about.

The scarce pop-culture references I see to his work (like in "Little Miss Sunshine") seems to cast an affection for Proust as kind of a mark of being an unmoored and depressive romantic.

So is he worth reading? The full collection of "Remembrance of Things Past" is nearly $100, so that's not a trivial amount to invest. Is there a recommended/definitive translation or edition I should read? What should I keep in mind or be open to if I do try giving it a shot?

By that last question I mean like, I'd have hated "Catcher In the Rye" if I wasn't told ahead of time to approach it from the mindset of a 15 year old boy. Or I kind of hated 'Madame Bovary" but when explained to me that this was Flaubert's exercise in trying to make people see themselves in an adulteress, a generally reviled archetype, and this was groundbreaking for the time lets me at least appreciate it for accomplishing what it's set out to do. Are there any literary contexts like I this should have in my head before I delve in?

I've personally read The Silmarillion 3 times and have found comfort and connection with the book and its stories. Sure, the names are still intimidating and the geography confusing sometimes but all that is part of the enjoyment for me.

Is it possible to start an indie literary (web?)zine in this part of history? Do you have any tips on marketing, gaining submissions, the publishing itself, editing and other things involved in the making of a zine?

Your own experiences, speculations and links to articles are welcome!

Short link. Probably more to follow.

The Swedish Academy handed out two prizes this year, after they were forced to suspend the prize last year amid a metoo scandal which saw most of the Academy’s members either resign voluntarily or be forced to resign. There’s been a lot of speculation about how they were going to restore their reputation this year, and they spent a long portion of the press conference explaining their new process, whereas in past years they haven’t felt compelled to do so.

It was expected that at least one of the two prizes would go to a woman, with Margaret Atwood being one of the odds favorites (the bookmakers’ picks never win, so I don’t know whether we should put much stock in them, but they do reflect pre-award buzz). I’m not too familiar with either author, but it’s interesting that they chose Peter Handke. He’s one of Europe’s most controversial authors for his decades-long support of Serbia and Slobodan Milosevic’s actions during the Yugoslav Wars. He once compared Serbians to the Jews during WW2, visited Milosevic in prison when he was on trial for war crimes, and spoke at the man’s funeral. He’s also hailed as one of the greatest living German-language authors. It’s like the Academy decided to throw feminists a bone by awarding a woman the prize, but then couldn’t resist jumping headlong into controversy again right away.

I've recently realised I read a lot of American literature. I'd like to broaden my horizons so I'm wondering for fun if anyone out there can suggest an international (i.e non-US) counterpart for any of the following or just general non-US recommendations?

• Denis Johnson
• David Foster Wallace
• Flannery O'Conner
• Carson McCullers

This time I'm looking forward to some recommendations of books written in Arabic. It's a huge language, so I'm expecting some great suggestions!

Sidenote: I can highly recommend checking out #3 Portuguese. It wasn't the most commented post, but it had some good recommendations.

Last time we had some discussion whether it'd be best to discuss authors from different countries, or authors writing in different languages. I think it'd be best if the focus is on the language, but I won't get mad if you post Nabokov in the thread about Russian. So, without further ado:

What are your favourite texts originally written in Korean?