On mobile, too tired to write but… So many… But I honestly think Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy is as close to the perfect book as I can imagine (for me!). Also, Kafka for me is like the Final Boss, once you go through him, everything else pales in comparison

The Road by Cormac McCarthy

It’s cliche I suppose, but 1984 by Orwell. It’s actually a fucking great read beyond it’s thematic meaning. People are correct in saying A Brave New World was more prescient, but it’s not as good a book in my opinion.

Joe Abercrombie’s The First Law series, all six mainline books and even the side books are all fantastic.

It’s manga, but Berserk by Kentaro Miura. IYKYK

I read Frankenstein in my highschool literature class way back, loved it then and love it now. Shelly was a pioneer.

Lord of the Rings just about saved my life in high school. Possession by A.S. Byatt. Foucault’s Pendulum by Umberto Eco. Oryx and Crake by Margaret Atwood, though I’ve yet to read the sequels. Atonement by Ian McEwan. Just about anything by Geoff Ryman, Ali Smith, José Saramago, or Sheri Holman.

Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. I had no idea writing, even fiction, could be so ridiculous and non-traditional. It really shaped my imagination from a young age.

• One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
• Primeval and Other Times by Olga Tokarczuk
• The Archive of Alternate Endings by Lindsay Drager
• The Book of Nightmares by Galway Kinnell
• Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind: Informal Talks on Zen Meditation and Practice by Shunryu Suzuki
• The Shadow of the Wind by Carlos Ruiz Zafon
• Stories of Your Life and Others by Ted Chiang
• Lincoln in the Bardo by George Saunders
• Parable of the Sower by Octavia Butler

I’m probably gonna be an odd one out here with a cleaning book, but I really, really like K.C Davis’s “How to Keep House While Drowning” book about cleaning your house while mentally unwell and not considering yourself a moral failure for the state your house is in.

I think it’s the one that had the most amount of positive benefits to my life. It turns out having a positive influence in the form of a book that tries to encourage you take things one step at a time, a book that even admits it doesn’t know everything either—well, it’s more beneficial than my real life acquaintances and family who opted for the shame method.

My top 3, in order are:

1. The Lord of the Rings

2. Dune

3. The Count of Monte Cristo

a few of importance to me:

One Hundred Years of Solitude

Guards! Guards!

Piranesi

The Scar

I loved the His Dark Materials trilogy by Philip Pullman. Read it as a kid and every time I go back to reread my beat up copies it is a joy.

Small Gods by Terry Pratchett - which is interesting for me, because most of what I read is SciFi - but it’s such a fascinating, thought provoking, and entertaining read

• Philip K Dick - Galactic Pot-Healer
• Jose Donoso - The Obscene Bird of Night
• Alfred Kubin - The Other Side
• Ursula K Le Guin - The Lathe of Heaven
• Stanislaw Lem - Memoirs Found in a Bathtub
• Boris & Arkady Strugatsky - Roadside Picnic
• H G Wells - When The Sleeper Wakes
• Stefan Wul - Oms en Serie
• Yevgeny Zamyatin - We
• Jerzy Zulawski - On The Silver Globe

I also really love all the Moomin & Oz books.

So, for me, the cliche answer is Lord of the Rings. But another book that I’ve always really loved, is East by Edith Pattou. It’s a very simple fantasy story, but I read it when I was much younger and it’s always just felt very comfy and cozy whenever I read it.

I’m not a big reader these days but back in the 90’s I was. The ones that really stuck with me and have been reread once or twice.

Ghost Story by Peter Straub

Consider Phlebas by Iain M Banks

Only Forward by Michael Marshall Smith

Lord of Light, Roger Zelazny. Brilliant, prescient, and genuinely a great work of literature all at once. The story of Rild, the telling of the metaphor about fire, so much else, it’s been all these years and I’m still quoting it.

Bridge of Birds, Barry Hughart. When my will to go on falters, this is one of the books I turn to for comfort. It’s beautifully written, it’s hilarious, and it just makes me feel better.

Callahan’s Crosstime Saloon, Spider Robinson. I genuinely have handed this book to a troubled young person and had them find a better understanding of the human condition between its covers. I didn’t expect that, I thought I was sharing a cool book with them that was something I’d found influenced how I am, but it happened. It’s kind of a big deal. It’s also actually a lot of fun to read, it’s just a collection of short science fiction stories set in a bar, right? …right?

Why I Left Harry’s All-Night Hamburgers, Lawrence Watt-Evans; Watt-Evans is largely a moderately obscure (as far as I can tell) fantasy author. I love the rest of his work because it’s much more human than a lot of fantasy, with people who are bumbling and desperately trying to handle bizarre problems they’re ill-equipped for and sometimes making their problems worse than they dreamed and also there are wizards. (I also like some of his worldbuilding choices, but let’s get on with this). This one short story (that won a Hugo and stuff), though, lives rent-free in my head forever; it’s got a simple point, which is that the world we’re actually in has a lot of cool stuff, go enjoy it, but it makes it in a very fun way and, well, okay, enough, I love it.

Calvin and Hobbes. All of it. Bill Watterson is a visionary genius.

I can go on, I haven’t mentioned Douglas Adams or Sandman or Transmetropolitan or fnord or ten thousand other things, but I have other things to do and should content myself with finite length.

Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance can be a difficult read at times, but is honestly incredible.

If you like having things to ponder and think on, it’s unforgettable