I’m going to make an order from Amazon. Along with that I will buy just 1 or 2 fiction books. I have very little time to read. Which is one that I really should read?
My favorite books of those I have read are Catch-22 and Enders Game.
As a preemptive strike, I have read Hitchhiker’s Guide, The Princess Bride and LoTR.
The Circus of Dr. Lao, by Charles G. Finney. The story of a Chinese entrepreneur who arrives in a small town in Arizona with a circus featuring a medusa, a talking sea serpent, a roc, and other such magical beings. Takes a keen and sarcastic look at the attitude of the locals, but also contains a great deal of humor and witty dialogue. Highly recommend. It is also very short–about 100 pages–and thus should work well for someone who has very little time to read.
Alternate choice: The Man Who Was Thursday, by G. K. Chesterton. A spy novel mixed with a comedy mixed with a philosophical novel mixed with a mystery mixed with a book that’s impossible to describe.
A Short History of Nearly Everything, by Bill Bryson. Very entertaining and informative.
Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell.
Simply the best book of the new century.
City of Thieves, David Benioff. Short gripping WW2 story of a Jewish Russian kid who needs to find some eggs - behind German lines.
I’ll just tell you what jumped into my mind when I saw these titles—you can decide if any of them appeal to you enough to be the “one book.”
Catch-22 is associated in my mind with John Irving’s The World According to Garp because those were two books I read when I was a freshman in college looking to read some really enjoyable, non-genre, popular-but-literary novels. They don’t have a lot in common, besides being good reads, having broad and eccentric casts of characters, and having dark senses of humor. (And actually, A Prayer for Owen Meany turned out to be my favorite Irving novel, but Garp was my first.)
The other great dark comedy about WWII is Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse-Five (though my favorite Vonnegut is Cat’s Cradle).
Since you liked Ender’s Game, you might consider the award-winning (though different) sequel Speaker for the Dead, or the later companion novel Ender’s Shadow.
Added to my Amazon wish list.
Chesterton subtitled it “A Nightmare,” which is as good a classification as any. One of my favorite works of fiction (and out of copyright, so it can be downloaded free).
Agreed—but not fiction, which I think is what the OP was specifically looking for. (Some of Bryson’s other books, like A Walk in the Woods and The Life and Times of The Thunderbolt Kid, are great reads as well, and, being memoirs, read somewhat like fiction.)
Obvious choice: Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson. Has elements of Enders Game (plot to destroy the world as we know it - very different threat vs. Ender’s Game but fascinating) and a story told with a wry, sarcastic wit and a fascinating view of the world…
The Complete Short Stories Of John Collier, hundreds of the most comic and bizarre short stories you will ever read. You will undoubtedly already be familiar with some of them since many of them have been repeatedly anthologized and/or made into movies or tv shows.
Seconded with an enormous +1.
It’s absolutely, breathtakingly, stunningly clever - as well as entertaining and beautifully written, and appealing to lovers of many genres, especially sci fi.
(yanceylebeef, if you haven’t read it, his first novel Ghostwritten is similarly brilliant, and shares some of the same concepts and characters too.)
The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov.
A crazy, fun read. Very well written and full of ideas.
A while back I made a spur of the moment bookstore pickup that turned out to be a good read, so I am recommending:
Austin Grossman, Soon I Will Be Invincible.
It’s a superhero novel not set in any existing superhero universe. The story is told in first person mode, and switches between the supervillian and a new member of the team fighting him. The evil chapters are better, but it’s all good. The plot revolves around the mysterious disappearance of Coldfire, an enigmatic Superman type, and the prison break and subsequent resumption of nefarious activities by the evil Doctor Impossible. Very interesting and entertaining, especially for a first novel.
“Once you get past a certain threshold, everyone’s problems are the same: fortifying your island and hiding the heat signature from your fusion reactor.”
Thanks for the suggestions so far. They look really good. Will have to pick out a few instead of just one.
I enjoyed this book, too, as did my son.
It’s in the que, right after The Thousand Summers of Jacob Dezoet!
Gaddis, The Recognitions – one of the few very important American works of fiction written after WWII, and a pleasure. It’s long, so, read it in a handful of days or you’ll never finish it. I think he was only 32 or something when he wrote it – cat was an organized mofo.
You liked Ender’s Game and Catch-22. I suggest…
John Scalzi, Old Man’s War
In the future, you can be young again. All you have to do is give your life up on Earth forever, and ship out to fight to keep the colonies free. They’ll rebuild you. Stronger. Faster. Smarter, even. But what’s it like out there?
You have read Hitchhiker’s Guide and The Princess Bride. I suggest…
Good Omens, by Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett.
Those two names together should blow the mind of any reader. One writes the best humorous fantasy of the current era, and the other writes some of the best fantastical stories that verge on literature of the current era. It’s a stand alone book about Armageddon, the Antichrist, and an angel who did not so much fall as saunter vaguely downwards.
Hyperion by Dan Simmons
If the OP wants to go top drawer, he could try ‘The Savage Detectives’ by Roberto Bolano. Published late 90s but the English translation only came out a few years ago. It is a staggeringly good book, and looks like it may become a very influential one - it’s made a huge impact on Latin American lit.
Not a great book for reading on a restricted timetable, though. The prose is friendly, no problems here at all, but it’s got quite a dense structure. I didn’t really get going on it until I took it on holiday, when I couldn’t put it down.
Have you read Jonathan Frantzen’s essay on Gaddis - entitled Mr Difficult? He had huge respect for The Recognitions, as I recall, but compared reading it to being a mountaineer, entrenched on a difficult ascent, making slow, hard but steady progress.
I’ve not read it myself - I’ve read A frolic of his own, which was dazzling but not all that great of a book overall IMHO.
Since you stole my pick :p, I’ll suggest English Passengers (originally recommended on this board by Twickster) by Matthew Kneale. It’s not a nested story, like Cloud Atlas, but it has a similar feel and quality. Those two are the best books I’ve read in years.