Readings
There are many which didn't make this list; mostly because recommendations have to be contextual by definition. As of its natural absence, here are some unconditional recommendations from my personal library; and there is a reason this list is unorganized and incomplete.Fiction - English
- By Gabo (Garcia Marquez)
- Love in the Time of Cholera
- Memories of My Melancholy Whores
- One Hundred Years of Solitude
- The Autumn of the Patriarch
- Of Love and Other Demons
- News of the Kidnapping
- No One Writes to the Colonel
- The General in His Labyrinth
- The Story of a Shipwreck
- Clandestine in Chile: The Adventures of Miguel Littín
- Strange Pilgrims: Twelve Stories
- Chronicles of a Death Foretold
- By Llosa
- The Feast of the Goat
- Who Killed Palomino Molero?
- The War of the End of the World
- By Cortazar
- Hopscotch
- Bestiario
- By Dostoyevsky
- The Brothers Karamazov
- Crime and Punishment
- The Idiot
- The Demons
- The Double
- The Gambler
- Notes from Underground
- By Camus
- The Stranger
- The Plague
- The Sea Close By
- The Myth of Sisyphus
- The Rebel
- A Happy Death
- Caligula and Cross Purposes
- The Fall
- Create Dangerously
- By Peter Handke
- A Sorrow Beyond Dreams
- The Left-Handed Woman
- By Kafka, Franz
- A Hunger Artist
- The Metamorphosis
- The Trial
- In the Penal Colony
- By Murakami
- Norwegian Woods
- Kafka on the Shore
- By Nabokov
- Lolita
- Pnin
- Ada, or Ardor: A Family Chronicle
- Signs and Symbols
- By Sartre
- Nausea
- Being and Nothingness
- No Exit
- By George R R Martin
- A Song of Ice and Fire (All)
- Fire and Blood
- By JRR Tolkien
- The Hobbit
- The Lord of the Rings (All)
- The Silmarillion
- By Cioran
- The Trouble With Being Born
- By Taleb
- The Black Swan
- The Skin in the Game
- Antifragile
- Fooled by Randomness
- By Neitzsche
- Thus Spoke Zarathustra
- Beyond Good and Evil
- On the Genealogy of Morals
- The Antichrist
- By Kundera
- The Unbearable Lightness of Being
- Identity
- By Umberto Eco
- The Name of the Rose
- By Turgenev, Ivan
- Fathers and Sons
- By Tarkovsky
- Sculpting in Time
- By Beckett
- Waiting for Godot
- Aapka Bunty by Mannu Bhandari
- By Premchand
- Godan
- Nirmala
- Karmabhoomi
- Guhaano ka Devta by Bharti
- Kashi ka Assi by Kashinath Singh
- Deepshikha and Mera Parivar by Mahavedi Verma
- By Manto
- Thanda Gosht
- Khol Do
- By Harivansh Rai Bachchan
- Madhushala
And might as well share few quotes, which I can seem to recall more often than anything else, in the hope, that it might resonate with you too.
- “Don’t be overwise; fling yourself straight into life, without deliberation; don’t be afraid - the flood will bear you to the bank and set you safe on your feet again.”
- “Fall in love with some activity, and do it! Nobody ever figures out what life is all about, and it doesn't matter. Explore the world. Nearly everything is really interesting if you go into it deeply enough. Work as hard and as much as you want to on the things you like to do the best. Don't think about what you want to be, but what you want to do. Keep up some kind of a minimum with other things so that society doesn't stop you from doing anything at all.”
- “Life continues, and some mornings, weary of the noise, discouraged by the prospect of the interminable work to keep after, sickened also by the madness of the world that leaps at you from the newspaper, finally convinced that I will not be equal to it and that I will disappoint everyone—all I want to do is sit down and wait for evening. This is what I feel like, and sometimes I yield to it.”
- “To pretend, I actually do the thing: I have therefore only pretended to pretend.”
- “I don’t run for trains.” Snub your destiny. I have taught myself to resist running to keep on schedule. This may seem a very small piece of advice, but it registered. In refusing to run to catch trains, I have felt the true value of elegance and aesthetics in behavior, a sense of being in control of my time, my schedule, and my life. Missing a train is only painful if you run after it! Likewise, not matching the idea of success others expect from you is only painful if that’s what you are seeking. You stand above the rat race and the pecking order, not outside of it, if you do so by choice.”
- “Hell is a collection of individuals who are spending the bulk of their time working on a task they don’t like and are not especially good at.”
- “If I had to write a book on morality, it would have a hundred pages and ninety-nine would be blank. On the last page I should write: "I recognize only one duty, and that is to love.”
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