1984
question
Need book recommendations!
Emily
Dec 12, 2018 09:54AM
What are some underrated books that really get you to think? For example, I am thinking books like 1984, We, and A Clockwork Orange. I need something else to read that will give me strange vibes but also give me something to ponder. It doesn't necessarily have to be set in a dystopian society, it can be like in We Have Always Lived in the Castle.
Brave New World is a good one, I'm still thinking about it weeks after I've finished it!
deleted member
Jan 03, 2019 04:02AM
1 vote
The Lathe of Heaven by Ursula K. Le Guin.
Everyone usually picks Left Hand of Darkness - and that's still an excellent book - but Lathe of Heaven dispenses with the alien worlds to better focus on this one, where one man's dreams can shape reality. The conflict stems not from any external threat but from the hubris to think one can reshape the world according to some benign design. Every "improvement" just creates more trouble because of all the interlocking variables people don't often see.
Everyone usually picks Left Hand of Darkness - and that's still an excellent book - but Lathe of Heaven dispenses with the alien worlds to better focus on this one, where one man's dreams can shape reality. The conflict stems not from any external threat but from the hubris to think one can reshape the world according to some benign design. Every "improvement" just creates more trouble because of all the interlocking variables people don't often see.
Brave New World
Fahrenheit 451
Never Let Me Go
Animal Farm
Beloved
Fahrenheit 451
Never Let Me Go
Animal Farm
Beloved
1. The Peculiar Life of a Lonely Postman by Denis Thériault
2. Grief is the Thing with Feathers by Max Porter
3. Second Variety by Philip K Dick
2. Grief is the Thing with Feathers by Max Porter
3. Second Variety by Philip K Dick
The Wrath of Isis - an alternate history novel. In the future, the descendents of man create a machine that can travel through time. Its mission is to record the past for historians of the future, but somtimes things go wrong. The machine transports two individuals back to see Constantine. Constantine mistakes them for gods, and fearful of their wrath, decides to abandon his plans to promote Christianity as the state religion of Rome. Upon returning to the present, the time traveler discover no one in their world has ever heard of Jeusus Christ. An indepth look into what we believe, and why we believe it.
The Clothes They Stood Up In will definitely give you the weird vibes :-)
Brave New World, Aldous Huxley
A Canticle for Leibowitz, Walter Miller
Riddley Walker, Russel Hoban
The Stars My Destination, Alfred Bester
The Man in the High Castle, Philip K. Dick
A Canticle for Leibowitz, Walter Miller
Riddley Walker, Russel Hoban
The Stars My Destination, Alfred Bester
The Man in the High Castle, Philip K. Dick
Heaven and Hell, by Aldous Huxley will direct your thinking towards his visions. Island, by A.H. also, many parallels can be drawn to this 'modern day fable'. You might like Jennifer Government, by Max Barry. Near future, dystopian society, a strange (world) vibe but simple vibe.
I can really recommend The Stone Gods by Jeanette Winterson! It's a novel I've come back to repeatedly over the years and always manages to provoke deep contemplation about how repetition dominates our lives, how our nature and weaknesses as humans cause us to make the same mistakes over and over throughout time, both as a species and individually. It's a sci-fi novel that does critique society (parts of it are set in a dystopian-esque landscape) but it's also filled with hope and love. I think you'd really like it!
Dec 31, 2018 05:20PM