Comments

1. Sean says

   June 20, 2012 at 10:22 am

   I recommend A Song of Ice and Fire (George R. R. Martin) for your list of fantasy series

   • AK says

     June 20, 2012 at 5:37 pm

     Already there.

     • ObaMahdi says

       June 6, 2014 at 7:29 am

       The Hitchiker’s Guide to The Galaxy by Douglas Adams
2. Glossy says

   June 20, 2012 at 6:27 pm

   This reminded me of all the oceans of books that I haven’t read and would like to read some day. If I wasn’t so lazy and didn’t have a 9 to 5 job…

   “So, books reviews are very useful. Both for personal development…”

   Very true. “How am I supposed to know what I think about a topic until I’ve tried writing about it?” – I don’t know who said that first, but it conforms to my experiences.

   Recommendations:

   I’d add Chekhov’s short stories to the Russian literature section. I’ve always liked them for the subtle humor, the lack of pretentiousness, the wisdom about human nature. Also on Russia, I’d add the great 19th century histories – Karamzin, Solovyov, Kliutchevsky. I read parts of the latter two many years ago and remember finding them fascinating.

   I don’t know if you’ve read Nietzsche’s “Geneaology of Morals”. I was very impressed. It changed my outlook on some things, plus the style was beautiful. The man could write. I still don’t know what to think about some of the things there. I may well re-read it some day, and I really should read his other stuff.

   English lit: my favorite author here is Kingsley Amis. I’ve read about a dozen of his novels, his memoires, a book of his book reviews, and it was all brilliant. His son’s stuff is to be avoided. “Lucky Jim” was K. Amis’s first and most commercially-successful book, and it’s a good place to start with him, though it’s neither better nor worse than most of the others. “One Fat Englishman” was pure genius.

   Evelyn Waugh’s early comic novels are some of my favorite books ever. I haven’t read his later stuff though, and I should.

   World history: I have a little book about the world’s demographic history by McEvedy and Jones which I love. Great graphs and maps, a thourough explanation of where they got their data and estimates, well-written.

   Books on how to succeed in business, how to be liked by people, game: I think that the people who are really, really good at that stuff act entirely on instinct. I don’t think they’ve processed any of these rules consciously. Can someone who lacks those instincts (and I do) profit from reading these rules? I’m skeptical. Roissy is great fun to read, and his portrait of the female psyche is true to life, but parts of his message sound like the MBA scam – they’re going to teach you how to be a good businessman. I have an extremely distant relative who did succeed in business decades ago, and the idea of him ever having opened a book on that topic or ever having taken a business class sounds preposterous to me. I CAN imagine him trying to fool others into thinking that he can teach them to become millionaires for a fee, however – that wouldn’t be out of character at all.
3. Natalie says

   June 20, 2012 at 6:54 pm

   Wow, this is quite a list. Thanks for posting. I’ll definitely have to check out that Metro 2033, as it looks fantastic.

   For books on writing, I’d recommend William Zinsser’s On Writing Well. I read it and I thought it was pretty useful.

   Are you still learning Chinese?
4. Mark Sleboda says

   June 20, 2012 at 6:55 pm

   SO much here. Take them one at a time in spurts. Scifi and Cyberpunk today
   Scifi you just NEED way more than ten.

   The Forever War by Joe Haldeman
   Ringworld – Larry Niven
   The Sparrow – Mary Doria Russell
   Greg Bear – anything really, say Eon, Forge of God, Moving Mars, or Queen of Angels
   The Mars Trilogy (Red Mars, Green Mars, Blue Mars, 2312) – Kim Stanley Robinson (a must)
   The Fall Revolution Series – Ken Mcleod
   The Uplift Series – David Brin
   Bruce Sterling – everything. Schismatrix would be my first choice, The Caryatids, The Artificial Kid
   Robert Heinlein – Stranger in a Strange Land, Starship Troopers, and the Moon is a Harsh Mistress
   The Culture Novels – Ian M Banks
   Philip K Dick – take your pick
   2001 – Arthur C. Clarke

   Cyberpunk
   Snow Crash – Neal Stephenson if you inlude nanopunk then The Diamond Age as well
   Bruce Sterling – nearly anything say Holy Fire, Islands in the Net, Heavy Weather (Sterling buries Gibson, hands down)
   Rudy Rucker – Ware Tetralogy
5. Mark Sleboda says

   June 20, 2012 at 6:57 pm

   Oh sci fi missed one

   David Wingrove – Chung Kuo (The whole world becomes the Middle Kingdom)
6. Mark Sleboda says

   June 20, 2012 at 7:00 pm

   Enders Game – orson Scott Card (sci fi again)
7. Jennifer Hor says

   June 20, 2012 at 11:02 pm

   Dear Anatoly,

   Would like to recommend “The Trial” by Franz Kafka for the existentialist section. Another book I just thought of now, written in 1937, about how an individual’s identity is influenced by history, time and circumstances is Witold Gombrowicz’s “Ferdydurke”: probably not strictly existentialist but close. Karel Capek’s “War with the Newts”, also written in the 1930s, is an excellent SF novel though not well known now.

   I’ve only read one cyberpunk novel and that was William Gibson and Bruce Sterling’s “The Difference Engine”. I’m amazed I still remember it at least ten years after reading it.

   @ Mark Sleboda: you should try reading J G Ballard, his short stories are the best.

   • Scowspi says

     June 20, 2012 at 11:07 pm

     Great recs, Jennifer! The Kafka of course is a world-famous classic, but Gombrowicz and Capek are also great writers. I think Capek’s greatest achievement is his philosophical (sometimes called “epistemological”) trilogy: the 3 novels “Hordubal,” “Meteor” and “An Ordinary Life.”

     Ballard is indeed a great short-story writer.

     • Jennifer Hor says

       June 21, 2012 at 11:37 am

       Scowspi,

       Another book you might find interesting is Stanislaw Ignacy Witkiewicz’s “Insatiability” which I read ages ago. This is incredibly long (over 1,000 pages I think) and very intense. Written in 1930, it takes place in a future world where China / Mongolia (the author didn’t distinguish between the two) conquers Eurasia and forces all conquered peoples to take Murti Bing tablets which turn them into mindless slaves. The main character is a young guy who is seduced by a much older woman who keeps him as her sex toy. The book is not well known outside Poland but English translations do exist.

       Witkiewicz was experimenting with a number of drugs (cocaine, morphine, peyote I think) at the time which explains the intense and delirious tone of the book.

       A great Czech classic (and a long book too) is Jaroslav Hasek’s “The Good Soldier Svejk” which I never tire of reading, funny and critical of Austro-Hungarian bureaucracy and military bungling. Is Svejk really as dumb as he appears or is he manipulating the people around him to get out of fighting and to have as good a time as he can?

       I’ve also read Gombrowicz’s “Cosmos” and “Pornografia” which he wrote in the 1950s while living in Argentina. Funny that two great writers, Jorge Luis Borges and Witold Gombrowicz, should have been living in the same city (Buenos Aires)far away from the major cultural centres of the world and must have known of each other yet their paths never seem to have crossed. Instead Borges was writing his famous short stories and collaborating with Adolfo Bioy Casares. I’ve read some of Casares’s own fiction and his sci-fi short story “The Invention of Morel” is a good read. There was another one he wrote about a pilot who, every time he flies his light plane, goes from one parallel universe to another and ends up alternating between two versions of Buenos Aires.

       The fact that so many Latin-American writers like Borges, Casares and Julio Cortazar were writing magic realism probably explains why 20th century Latin-American literature is weak on science fiction. Cortazar’s short story “The Axolotl” is about as close as he gets to sci-fi.

       • Scowspi says

         June 21, 2012 at 2:07 pm

         Yes, I’ve read “Insatiability” too. Like probably most non-Polish readers, I found out about it because it was analyzed in Milosz’s “The Captive Mind.” Witkiewicz was an incredible figure in general – primarily a playwright who pioneered the Theatre of the Absurd long before Beckett and Ionesco, but also a painter, philosopher and novelist. Unfortunately his work is very difficult to translate and highly Polish-specific, so it doesn’t transfer well to other cultures. Still, anyone interested in catastrophic visions of the future should read him.
       • Glossy says

         June 22, 2012 at 1:05 am

         I read Svejk as a kid in Russian translation and found it very funny. Years later, when I first encountered a description of the Alpine racial type, I though “that’s Svejk, isn’t it?” I’m sure I would have thought that even if there were no illustrations in that book – based on his personality he couldn’t have looked any other way.
8. Glossy says

   June 20, 2012 at 11:18 pm

   This has some relation to Big History and to HBD: “Human Accomplishment” by Charles Murray.
9. yalensis says

   June 21, 2012 at 10:38 am

   Victor Hugo, “Les Miserables” = greatest novel ever written in ANY European language. Forget about the Broadway musical, go back to THE BOOK.
   “Nibelungenlied” = greatest epic EVER. Structured like a medieval soap opera, with a few fantasy elements but mostly solid human psychology, and deeply rooted in Burgundian culture.
   Where is English-language literature: where is Shakespeare, Dickens, Melville? My personal favorite = “Billy Budd” (explores the nature of good and evil in humans).
   Victorian sci-fi: You could add “20,000 leagues under the sea” (Captain Nemo = suavest villain ever).
   For British high-class humorous lit, there is nobody superior to P.G. Wodehouse, any one of his stories will have you laughing your ass off.
   Top books on Russian civilization:
   “Slovo o pluku Igoreve”? Oh, okay, it’s untranslatable. Check.
   Greatest works of Russian literature: MOST of the ones you listed (“Gulag” – really??), plus Saltykov-Shchedrin “The Goloviov Family” = best dysfunctional family ever, and a good antidote to anybody who seeks to glamorize Russian rural life of the 19th century!

   • Brother Karamazov says

     June 24, 2012 at 1:48 am

     There should be some clarification of the selection criteria. E.g. “Slovo o polku Igoreve” is a milestone of Russian literature indeed, but primitive by today standards. So, what is the purpose of the list? Collect the milestones or a guide for today reading by lay people? If the former, the list should dive deep into the history and, I bet, was compiled a few times already. Otherwise, almost all story lines of milestones are rewritten in modern terms and language and are much easier to read with even deeper final effect for the reader.

     I am wondering if all literature story lines can be reduced to a very small set of scenarios. E.g. type “love triangle” 2M1F (2 men 1 woman) or 1M2F, subtype
     M->M (man kills another man), or M->F, etc. For example, 2M1F(M->F) for “Idiot” by Dostoevskii. Then, the list can include the best representative of every scenario. This is the rationale I would favour most.

     Cannot but do agree about Gulag – neither novel nor history. If Solzhenitsin is to make it to the list, it should be “One day of life of Ivan Denisovich”. On the other hand, why not Sholohov’s “Destiny of a Man”?
10. Gregor says

    June 21, 2012 at 11:37 am

    Hi Anatoly

    Been a long time… but some quick recommends:

    Dystopia
    A Clockwork Orange

    Post-Apocalypse
    I’d wreck and mend Ridley Walker

    Existentialist:
    The Blind Owl: Sadegh Hedayat
    My Work is Not Yet Done: Thomas Ligotti
    Pedro Paramo: Juan Rulfo

    Victorian Sci-Fi
    The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde
    Island of Dr Moreau

    Zombie:
    OK, it’s cheating a bit to call it a novel but Herbert West: Re-Animator

    Sci-Fi:
    The Fifth Head of Cerberus
    (Should be something by PKD, but he didn’t really have a magnum opus)

    Fantasy Series:
    Book of the New Sun, Gene Wolfe

    Western Civilisation:
    Prometheus Bound by Aeschylos
    The Orestia
    The Bacchae
    The Republic (agree or disagree with its ethos, it has been influential)
11. AM says

    June 21, 2012 at 1:17 pm

    To add to fantasy series – the Witcher (Wiedzmin) by Andrzej Sapkowski
    and Discworld by Terry Pratchett (a parody but it’s just too good to be left out).
    Battle Royale definitely a classic as ‘children killing each other’ goes (“What do they call The Hunger Games in France? Battle Royale with cheese” – in Battle Royal kids have exploding metal rings around their necks, if they rebel, they lose their heads).
12. craigjameswilly says

    June 21, 2012 at 7:43 pm

    This really makes me wish I read more. I’ve a nice pile of books I really need to go through.
    You could have a “best psychology books” list. On the social animal, evolutionary psychology, psychopaths, etc. It would probably have Predictably Irrational (not read it) and Mistakes Were Made (but not by me) (am reading).

    Is Tim Ferris that good? It seems to me he is tapping into the very American get-rich-quick/big-teeth-self-help market. Doesn’t necessarily mean it’s bad but makes me suspicious.

    I would recommend Aron’s Progress and Disillusion for modern political economy. It’s a great, encyclopedic introduction to industrial/rational modernity and what it means concretely in human societies.

    I would definitely not have Clash of Civs appear twice. It’s useful as a reference of elite thought. While I think civilizations are important and can’t be ignored, his book was more an attempt to replace one cartoonish caricature of the world (Cold War clash-of-ideologies) with another (clash-of-civs), backed up not by argument, but laundry lists of one-religion-on-another-religion violence (conveniently ignoring all violence within a religion…).

    On modern political economy, I’ve long been fond of the Italian school of elitists (on the limits of democracy and the inevitability of elite rule) and in particular Gaetano Mosca. His The Ruling Class is a great antidote to various idealist utopianisms. Also probably something by C. Wright Mills (e.g. The Power Elite, which I haven’t read).

    On history (either big or modern political economy), there should be Eric Hobsbawm’s Age of Extremes (or in fact the whole Age of series since the revolutions).

    Definitely should have The Hobbit under one of the fantasy headings.

    Mishima! Most (e.g. Temple of the Golden Pavillion and Confessions of Mask) would probably fall under “existentialist”. I haven’t read his other works.

    For Sci Fi I really recommend The Ice People (La Nuit des temps) by René Barjavel, about the discovery and self-destruction of a long-dead hypermodern civilization. In the dystopian genre, also by Barjavel, there is Ashes, Ashes (Ravage), a WW2-era novel taking place in the year 2000 (funny) and what would happen if all electricity just stopped… Has quasi-pétainist reactionary overtones.

    If you need another book on power, I recommend having a look at Charles de Gaulle’s The Edge of the Sword on leadership. It was one of Nixon’s favorites.
13. Jennifer Hor says

    June 21, 2012 at 10:42 pm

    Anyone who is interested in what the UK might be like in a few years’ time (?) ought to read Richard Jefferies’s novel “After London; or Wild England” which was published in 1885, a couple of years before he died from tuberculosis. It may be out of print but it’s not a very long novel and you can read it at this website: http://www.readbookonline.net/title/40289/. Jefferies was a nature writer by profession so much of the novel has lovely descriptions of a green and, um, maybe not very sceptred isle … until the hero reaches London (or whatever passes for it).

    I’ve read Yukio Mishima’s “The Sailor who fell from grace with the sea” which could be considered existentialist in that the main character is torn between a safe life he yearns for and his former life as a sailor which gave him freedom and which he will no longer have if he chooses the safe option. Also if Anatoly decides to make a list of Top 5 Books about children killing ADULTS, this novel would definitely go into the pile as would also J G Ballard’s “Running Wild”. I haven’t read John Marsden’s “Tomorrow, when the War began” or the four sequels that follow it; it’s about a bunch of teenagers who form a guerrilla group when Australia is invaded by a foreign power so they probably take down the odd enemy adult soldier or two.
14. Albertosaurus says

    June 22, 2012 at 4:52 pm

    Ugh! What a terrible top five books.

    The bell Curve is good but it’s arguably it is only a popularization for the general public. Better to read Jensen or Rushton.

    I haven’t read “The Game” but I have commented on Sailer’s blog about it (unfavorably) for years. My problem is that it seems to overly impress men who have had very little real sexual experience. Bar pick ups are a tiny fraction of the totality of the places where one meets women. Men who like this book are losers- and Betas.

    I have written several long detailed reviews of The Black Swan and his earlier book on Amazon. Taleeb is a miserable dweeb. A smart but misguided fool.

    In my experience only people who seldom read Science Fiction like Dune. It’s so unscientific. It is the kind of goofy soft headed fantasy that a woman might write.

    • AK says

      June 22, 2012 at 6:21 pm

      You’re thinking of books you’d recommend or not to the choir as opposed to men who have yet to take the red pill.

      That is all.

      On Dune, I didn’t like it either (though I literally lolled at “that a woman might write”; for a start, where are the relationship and love triangles?), but it appears in virtually every Top 5 sci-fi list. It is a classic that has almost the same status in sci-fi as LotR in fantasy. As such its inclusion is eminently justified for the purposes of getting a survey of the genre.
15. yalensis says

    June 23, 2012 at 12:30 pm

    Good children’s/young adult lit:
    I just finished reading Rosemary Sutcliff’s historical Trilogy about Roman-era Britain: “The Eagle of the Ninth”; “The Silver Branch”; and “The Lantern Bearers”. I highly recommend for Anglophiles as well as people who are into Roman stuff (lots of battle scenes, even a gladiator scene or two). Is denoted as “children’s lit”, but requires college-level English-language vocabulary comprehension.
16. Felix says

    June 24, 2012 at 9:31 pm

    Bookmarked this bitch!
17. Alexander Mercouris says

    June 26, 2012 at 9:40 pm

    Quite a fascinating range of books. I have only a few points to make or suggestions:

    1. On big history I would add either the Peloponesian War by Thucydides or perhaps the totally brilliant (if impossibly discursive) discussion of it by G.E.M de St. Croix “The Origins of the Peloponesian War”. Thucydides’s book is much more than just an account of a particular war. Rather it is an introduction to the study of international relations and arguably remains unsurpassed.

    2. I notice that you have omitted the Iliad and prefer the Odyssey and the Aeneid. An interesting choice.

    3. I notice that you have no section on religious/philosophic literature. Whilst I am not at all religious or philosophical in temperament I would add the following

    (1) the Bhagavad Gita
    (2) Plato’s Republic and the Laws
    (3) the Analects by Confucius
    (4) St. Paul’s Letter to the Romans
    (5) the Divine Comedy by Dante
    (6) All of Nietzsche’s later works (Thus Spake Zarathustra, Twilight of the Idols, the Antichrist, Beyond Good and Evil etc)
    (5) possibly more recently Wittgenstein’s Tractatus

    Presumably also works by Kant and Hegel though I must admit to having read nothing of either.

    4. On Russian books I would add The Idiot by Dostoevsky. Unless it is far better in Russian than it is in translation (which is quite possible) I would omit Doctor Zhivago and would add Tikhy Don and possibly Babel’s Red Cavalry.

    5. On existentialist works I would add The Trial, the Castle and Metamorphosis by Kafka (in the corrected versions, not those edited by Jozef Brod), the Eye by Georges Bataille, Nausee, Les Mouches and Huit Clos by Sartre and the 120 days of Sodom by de Sade. I should give advanced warning that some of these works (especially the ones by Bataille by de Sade) require a strong stomach.

    6. I would also try to find somewhere space for a number of books that I judge to be key works in western literature and which explain much about their respective societies. I would include amongst these (1) Manon, Madame Bovary and In search of Lost Time by Proust (2) Wuthering Heights, Middlemarch, Women in Love and Ulysses and (3) Huckleberry Finn and Moby Dick (4) The Leopard by Lampedusa. You have already mentioned Goethe’s Faust (both Parts 1 and 2).

    7. Lastly on economics, one of the best (and funniest) books is JK Galbraith’s The Great Crash.
18. Kiwiguy says

    June 29, 2012 at 3:44 am

    I haven’t read it, but Greg Clark’s ‘A Farewell to Alms’ might be a contender for the ‘big history’ list?

    “In my recent book, A Farewell to Alms: A Brief Economic History of the World I argue two things. First that all societies remained in a state I label the “Malthusian economy” up until the onset of the Industrial Revolution around 1800. In that state crucially the economic laws governing all human societies before 1800 were those that govern all animal societies. Second that was thus subject to natural selection throughout the Malthusian era, even after the arrival of settled agrarian societies with the Neolithic Revolution.

    The Darwinian struggle that shaped human nature did not end with the Neolithic Revolution but continued right up until the Industrial Revolution. But the arrival of settled agriculture and stable property rights set natural selection on a very different course. It created an accelerated period of evolution, rewarding with reproductive success a new repertoire of human behaviors – patience, self-control, passivity, and hard work – which consequently spread widely.

    And we see in England, from at least 1250, that the kind of people who succeeded in the economic system – who accumulated assets, got skills, got literacy – increased their representation in each generation. Through the long agrarian passage leading up to the Industrial Revolution man was becoming biologically more adapted to the modern economic world. Modern people are thus in part a creation of the market economies that emerged with the Neolithic Revolution. Just as people shaped economies, the pre-industrial economy shaped people. This has left the people of long settled agrarian societies substantially different now from our hunter gatherer ancestors, in terms of culture, and likely also in terms of biology.”

    http://infoproc.blogspot.co.nz/2010/07/social-darwinism-21st-century-edition.html

    http://www.econ.ucdavis.edu/faculty/gclark/a_farewell_to_alms.html
19. Kiwiguy says

    June 29, 2012 at 3:58 am

    I can think of a few other big history/hbd books. New York Times science writer Nicholas Wade’s “Before the Dawn: Before the Dawn: Recovering the Lost History of Our Ancestors” . Also, Cochran & Harpending’s ‘The 10,000 Year Explosion: How Civilization Accelerated Human Evolution’. Also, Michael Hart’s “Understanding Human History”. http://tinyurl.com/d5ztglo

    http://www.amazon.com/Before-Dawn-Recovering-History-Ancestors/dp/1594200793
20. KenM says

    July 5, 2012 at 12:53 pm

    Here’s a few books that I was suprised not to see mentioned somewhere, considering that the site was previously called Sublime Oblivion…

    The Rifter’s Trilogy, by Peter Watts
    (Starfish, Maelstrom, Behemoth)
    Possibly the darkest piece of SF since Stalker, this series touches on many of the issues explored in this blog. Brilliant ideas explored with a savage integrity, the Rifter’s Trilogy is not for the faint hearted.
    Would fall under either sci-fi or post-apocalyptic…

    Blindsided, by Peter Watts
    Exploration of the role of consciousness in intelligence through the medium of a first contact novel, Watts turns the genre on it’s head in this densely packed novel of ideas, & draws some startling conclusions (likely to be very challenging to any advocates of IQ as a measure of progress). Also has some fun with genres in it – Brilliant stuff.

    Watts, while a major author, allows his books to be downloaded via the creative commons license at http://www.rifters.com/real/shorts.htm
    He’s also a qualified scientist for those who like some real meat in their ideas (former marine biologist). See
    http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/assignment-impossible/2011/09/21/too-hard-for-science-fusing-brains/

    ————-

    FANTASY SERIES:

    Bas-Lag series, by China Miéville
    (Perdido Street Station, The Scar, Iron Council)
    Brilliant, multi-award winning fantasy series with major overlaps with steampunk (& pretty much every genre out there), this is both a major work of ideas & an enormously fun ride.
    Also overlaps many of the ideas explored in this blog.

    Miéville studied social anthropology before picking up both a Masters’ & PhD in International Relations from the London School of Economics. He’s also a Marxist, & ran on the ballot for the Socialist Workers Party (1.2% of the vote!). Very interesting character – see
    http://www.panmacmillan.com/author/chinamieville
    http://chinamieville.net/

    —

    Accelerando, by Charles Stross
    The ultimate novel (actually more of a set of interconnected stories) for many of themes explored here, this is an absolute rollercoaster ride of high-octane ideas that may burn the brain of the unwary. Be warned…

    Other great works by Stross –
    The Laundry Files series, consisting of The Atrocity Archives, The Jennifer Morgue, Down on the Farm, The Fuller Memorandum, Overtime, The Apocalypse Codex – Great stuff.

    Also pretty much anything by Stross will be of interest to many here.
    Stross is a tech savvy former programmer who came up in the early 80’s & has one of the more original minds out there..
    Many books made available to be downloaded by Stross via Creative Commons at his antipope site:
    http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/fiction/online-fiction-by-charles-stro.html
    OR: http://manybooks.net/authors/strossc.html

    —-

    For major sci-fi novels, Olaf Stapledon’s Star Maker or Odd John are 2 of the most important ever written, & justifiably so. Stapledon’s works can probably be described as the beginning of evolutionary philosophy explored through the medium & are of astonishing scale..
    Highly recommended.

    —-

    In fantasy series, Mervyn Peake’s Gormenghast trilogy (Titus Groan, Gormenghast, Titus Alone) are one of the most important works in fantasy, & one of the great works in any genre.
    Takes a bit of free headspace in order to sink into it, & actually had it sitting on my shelf unread for awhile, then one day I just picked it up & started to read – genuinely astonishing work.

    (Gene Wolfe’s The Book of the New Sun, already mentioned by Gregor, is the only series I’d put in the same class)

    • Scowspi says

      July 5, 2012 at 2:35 pm

      Agreed on Stapledon, but is there any reason you didn’t mention his “Last and First Men”? It seems to be his best-known work.
    • Jennifer Hor says

      July 5, 2012 at 10:35 pm

      Re China Mieville: I can recommend a short story anthology “Looking for Jake” which features a mix of horror, fantasy and sci-fi, and includes one original story that is part of the Bas-Lag universe. He also wrote a children’s novel “Un-Lundun” which is set in an alternative mirror version of London, one created by pollution.

      I only read “Iron Council” and found it interesting that in the territory where New Crobuzon is located, there’s an area of radiation similar to the Zone in Andrei Tarkovsky’s film “Stalker” where strange things that don’t conform to the laws of physics happen and can kill people.

      I find Mieville’s approach to writing fiction similar to Thomas Pynchon’s style and it’s possible Mieville might have been influenced by that writer. Both throw everything at you on nearly every page of writing. One difference is I find Mieville’s characters flat compared to Pynchon’s and so I prefer to read Mieville’s short stories, the format being better suited to his style.

      Since I mentioned Pynchon, I suggest people read “The Crying of Lot 49” first to get a feel for his style before they try reading his novels which are usually hundreds of pages long. “Gravity’s Rainbow” is his classic novel about the creation of German V-2 rockets and includes heavy doses of paranoia and (I think – it’s been ages since I read them both) a link to ” … Lot 49″ in the form of the von Thurn und Taxis family and its connection with postal services and couriers.
21. KenM says

    July 9, 2012 at 7:10 pm

    Actually quite like Mieville’s characters, & thought he comes up with some great ones.
    That said, he’s not really interested in the internal landscape to the extent of a real character writer like Pynchon – more on how they relate to their surrounds. Bit more of a landscape & idea’s man.

    Didn’t mention “Last and First Men” because I last read Stapledon over a decade ago, & the other 2 stuck in my mind, but you’re right, that is the one recognised as his masterwork (even though it does veer off in the last half into a kind of philisophical manifesto/exploration of the complete life of the universe, if I’m recalling correctly…)

    Anyone mentioned Spengler?
    Decline of the West is a pretty important work, & very influential on a lot of thinkers.
22. Vladimir says

    July 12, 2012 at 7:00 pm

    Dear Anatoly,
    I am a long time reader of your blog, from way back in 2008. It’s been a while, and you do not know me especially since I never posted any comments. I’ve found your perspectives and inferences to be very diverse and interesting. I do not mean to sound like an advertiser, but the sole reason that I am right now is to invite you to a forum called Iron March: http://ironmarch.org/
    I thought you should feel welcome, we are mostly young fascists and nationalists, but the perspective and diversity of views is very worldly. I will leave it to you to decide weather to join or not, but definitely look over the material, the discussions here you cannot find anywhere else (at least on the net.)
    As relevant to reading lists I recommend everyone skim through our reading archives. http://fascists.zxq.net/ I will post a more extensive list of materials that some may find interesting later, as for now here are a few complications of links and pdfs. All of these are very relevant.
    As a basic introduction to fascism and national socialism read 100 Questions by Oswald Mosley http://fascists.zxq.net/100.htm
    Here are the further links
    Stormchan study group http://stormchan.org/study/index.html Lots of useful pdfs from history and conspiracy to survivalist and bomb-making, social interaction and HP Lovecraft.
    Julius Evola Archive http://ironmarch.org/index.php?/topic/1039-julius-evola/page__fromsearch__1
    Oswald Spengler Archive http://ironmarch.org/index.php?/topic/645-oswald-spengler/
    Everything Hitler and National Socialism http://www.nazi.org.uk/
23. jsck says

    July 14, 2012 at 6:05 am

    Edward Lucas has a new book coming out about Russia.

    Dark Soldiers of the New Order

    The Soviet Union’s spies haven’t disappeared, they’re just wearing new clothes. An exclusive excerpt from Edward Lucas’s new book, Deception.

    http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2012/07/13/dark_soldiers_of_the_new_order
24. jsck says

    July 14, 2012 at 6:19 am

    What about Sibel Edmonds new book Classified Woman that has details of western support for Chechen terrorism among other things.

    http://www.classifiedwoman.com/

    http://www.amazon.com/Classified-Woman-The-Sibel-Edmonds-Story/dp/0615602223/ref=cm_cr_pr_product_top
25. Philip Owen says

    July 14, 2012 at 6:15 pm

    I am sure you meant to add Heinlein’s “Start Ship Troopers” but forgot.

    Brian Aldiss’s “Greybeard” is good post apocaplypse and then there are “Day of the Triffids”, “Lord of the Flies” or “On the Beach” (Nevil Shute – Australia after the bomb).

    Big History – Most big history’s are copied from Well’s “A Short History of the World” in some way or another. If he had a predeccessor I don’t know of it. Kim Stanley Robinson’s “The Year of Rice and Salt” is big history in novel form. It is based on Joseph Needham’s work on Chinese technology and other history of technology stuff. For dystopia’s you should read some John Brunner, a descendant of the Brunner in Brunner-Mond, a precusor of ICI (Imperial Chemical Industries). He was a researcher for the BBC programme Horizon in it’s heyday so his science is very good. “Stand on Zanzibar” was the big one but his shorter ones are less mainstream now the mainstream has shifted his way. “The Sheep look up” is good. They are all dark. L P Hartley’s facial justice is different take on a Brave New World.

    The big book that you are missing is “The Origin of Virtue” by Matt Ridley. It’s not popular in the US. He is so contrarian to the zeitgeist and challenging to the religous because his argument present good without god that most people don’t want to take him on board.

    IMNSHO Taleb’s “The Black Swan” is almost total rubbish, unless you have never studied any economics. The best insight was that the City of London recruits 10,000 new entrants a year, fires the below average and hey presto, the survivors of this random process become unsackable gurus after 6 or 7 years. Enter Bob Diamond.

    As an aspiring steampunk, I should read some China Mieville. I am in South Wales, potentially one of the most totally steam punk places on Earth. First – steel wheels on steel rails, steam trains, blast furnace steel, photographs (ok, a few weeks after the French), concrete buildings; domination of non ferrous metal production and Brunel’s steamships were built across the river in Bristol. Silicon Valley beware!
26. Philip Owen says

    July 14, 2012 at 6:18 pm

    ANd totally endorse Yalensis on Rosemary Sutcliffe.
27. Philip Owen says

    July 14, 2012 at 6:20 pm

    @ Mark – How did I forget Holy Fire!
28. Philip Owen says

    July 14, 2012 at 6:22 pm

    Lord of the Files is there. So try The Inheritors, also by Golding.
29. J. Bellido (@jbellidos) says

    July 18, 2012 at 9:35 pm

    Long time reader, first time poster.
    I’ve enjoyed the lists and discovered some interesting books, but on Modern Political Economy, you are missing a crucial book: The Shock Doctrine, by Naomi Klein.

    The Enigma of Capital, by David Harvey, is also very good.
30. Francis Begbie says

    September 2, 2012 at 12:48 pm

    For Economics, I recommend Debunking Economics by Steve Keen.