# Which books would you describe as "brilliant"? **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [January 9, 2006, 4:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/which-books-would-you-describe-as-brilliant/339164 "2006-01-09T16:02:48Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Paul\_in\_Qatar](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/ccd318/32.png) [@Paul\_in\_Qatar](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Paul_in_Qatar)\ **Post date:** [January 9, 2006, 6:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/which-books-would-you-describe-as-brilliant/339164/21 "2006-01-09T18:43:20Z")
For good old miserable sea story it is hard to beat _The Cruel Sea._ For excitement, I am very impressed by all the Hornblower books without exception. ---
**Author:** ![Ghanima](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/9e8a1a/32.png) [@Ghanima](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ghanima)\ **Post date:** [January 9, 2006, 6:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/which-books-would-you-describe-as-brilliant/339164/22 "2006-01-09T18:45:02Z")
> [@koeeoaddi](#): > > **A Soldier of the Great War** by Mark Helprin was brilliant, hypnotic, lyrical, brutal and funny. Time to read it again. A wonderful book. Mark Helprin isn’t so much an author as he is an artist with words. Good Omens was great, too. And I also loved “Till We Have Faces.” I’m going to have to bookmark this thread. ---
**Author:** ![The\_Blonde\_Bomber](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/ec9cab/32.png) [@The\_Blonde\_Bomber](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Blonde_Bomber)\ **Post date:** [January 9, 2006, 6:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/which-books-would-you-describe-as-brilliant/339164/23 "2006-01-09T18:51:41Z")
I’ll nominate “ **Gone With The Wind** ”. I remember reading it and after every paragraph I would say to myself “I could never write anything so descriptive, ever.” If you’ve seen the movie, and never read the book, I encourage you to do so. Not only is it different, but Mitchell paints such a vivid picture of the pre and post war south that no history book has ever matched for me. ---
**Author:** ![MrDibble](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mrdibble/32/114_2.png) [@MrDibble](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MrDibble)\ **Post date:** [January 9, 2006, 7:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/which-books-would-you-describe-as-brilliant/339164/24 "2006-01-09T19:42:30Z")
Moore’s “_Watchmen_” takes it for recent-ish, and I agree with “_Good Omens_” I have a soft spot for Sartre’s _Nausea_ and Tolkien’s “_The Lord of the Rings_” and Shakespeare’s “_Midsummer Night’s Dream_” never fails to move me, staged or read. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [January 9, 2006, 8:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/which-books-would-you-describe-as-brilliant/339164/25 "2006-01-09T20:32:50Z")
_The Adventures of Doctor Eszterhazy,_ a collection of short stories by the late and lamented Avram Davidson, set in the 19th Century, in the mythical southeastern European state, the Triune Monarchy of Scythia-Pannonia-Transbalkania (modeled, clearly, on the Austro-Hungarian Empire). The hero is Dr. Engelbert Eszterhazy, a brilliant and largely autodidact polymath of the minor nobility – urbane, broad-minded, gentle, philosophical yet practical, endlessly resourceful. He works (when he is working at all, and not alone studying) as a kind of detective, but unlike Sherlock Holmes he has no fear that his mind is like an attic, of limited storage capacity; he studies **everything.** Even magic. (Many of the stories include supernatural elements.) > **[Adventures of Doctor Eszterhazy: Davidson, Avram: 9780913896280: Amazon.com:...](https://www.amazon.com/Adventures-Doctor-Eszterhazy-Avram-Davidson/dp/0913896284)** > > Adventures of Doctor Eszterhazy \[Davidson, Avram\] on Amazon.com. \*FREE\* shipping on qualifying offers. Adventures of Doctor Eszterhazy [http://www.avramdavidson.org/](http://www.avramdavidson.org/) From “Writ in Water, or the Gingerbread Man”: > [@](#): > > The Scotch had not conquered the English nor had the English conquered the Scotch in order for one sovereign to become King of England and King of Scotland and – eventually – King of the United Kingdom of Great Britain. What had brought it about was, firstly, the Scottish marriage of King Henry’s sister, and, secondly, the not-marriage of King Henry’s daughter: _The Queen of Scots hath a bonny babe and I am but a barren stock._ Neither had any wars at last united Scythia or Pannonia; the Pannonians at a certain point historical had no Crown-Prince? Well, neither had they any Salic Law; the then-Crown-Prince of Scythia was wedded to the then-Crown-Princess of Pannonia; both being tactful enough to die before their conjoint-grandchild, said grandchild became Sovereign of both Scythia and Pannonia – and what school-child anywhere did not know that the people of Scythia were (principally) Goths and that the people of Pannonia were (principally) Avars? What an occasion for the erasure of frontiers, the unification of armies, the abolition of customs and octrois! There were, however, also all those lesser, minor territories, of which the new Sovereign was Prince of one and Duke of another . . . in the Scythian Line of Descent . . . Grand Hetman here and Chief Boyar there . . . in the Pannonian Line of Descent . . . and so on . . . and so on . . . > > What to do about them, these not-quite-nations already becoming obsolete in an age where every political entity was felt to require a prime minister, a general staff, a set of postage stamps, a – What was done was perhaps cleverer than students of political science realized, for all these “Hegemonies,” as they were called, from Ritchli to Little Great Dombrovia to Hyperborea, and including Vlox-Majore and Vlox-Minore, were not absorbed by either Scythia or Pannonia, but were autonomously united to form _Transbalkania._ > > And now the cheese of Poposhki, the smoked sturgeon of the Romanou, the brined-pork and the brawn of the Slovatchko Alps, appeared . . . untaxed! . . . on the market-stalls of Bella – Avar-Ister – Apollograd – and everywhere else in the fourth-largest empire in Europe. (The Turks were only fifth. Served them right.) Also the wheat of Scythia, and the beef and mutton of the wide Pannonian plains. And, as Dr. Engelbert Eszterhazy composed this paean in his own mind and looked at the ever-thronging streets of what, once a walled town, was now a world capital (yes, it was a small world), he considered the role which he himself would play. Which he had intended he should play and had designed (and re-designed) his own life the better to play it. You can’t catch me, said – From “The Autogondola Invention”: > [@](#): > > Incomparably less large and vast than the Russian Empire, incomparably less powerful than the German Empire, incomparably less sophisticated than the Austro-Hungarian Empire – still Scythia-Pannonia-Transbalkania, its mere name a subject for risibility elsewhere, was his empire, his native land. It may not have functioned very well? so much the more was he pleased that it functioned at all. Its Secret Police was a joke? so much the more he too would enjoy the joke; no one laughed at the Secret Polices in the other empires. Its many languages rivaled Babel or Pentecost? let them: at least here no schoolboy was flogged for praying in whatsoever minor mother tongue. One empire had already, fairly recently, gone from the political map of Europe; and although the name of Bonaparte still rang like a tocsin here and there, it was uncertain that the Prince Imperial would himself ever ring it successfully. > > Day by day others asked, how fared their country’s wheat compared with Russian wheat, its butter with Danish butter, its timber with Carpathian timber, its tar with Baltic tar, its cloth with English cloth? Day by day the same spokes of the universal wheel flashed by: love, sorrow, terror, death, success, failure, hunger, joy, growth, decay, weakness, strength: the wheel turned and turned and turned: nothing stayed the same, no one bathed twice in the same flowing water for the water had flowed on and flowed away. _There is no star at the pole of the universe,_ young Dr. Eszterhazy recollected the ancient astronomer; and if there was and long had been but blankness in the comparable area of his own country, then might there not be a space and place for him? What he hoped for, others did not even think of; what others did not think, might he not think of? > > And after thinking, do? Just can’t get **enough** of Davidson’s prose! 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![Rubystreak](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/e5b9ba/32.png) [@Rubystreak](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Rubystreak)\ **Post date:** [January 9, 2006, 8:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/which-books-would-you-describe-as-brilliant/339164/26 "2006-01-09T20:33:17Z")
_As I Lay Dying_ by William Faulkner _Grendel_ by John Gardner _The Sparrow_ by Mary Doria Russell ---
**Author:** ![JKellyMap](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jkellymap/32/15880_2.png) [@JKellyMap](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JKellyMap)\ **Post date:** [January 9, 2006, 8:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/which-books-would-you-describe-as-brilliant/339164/27 "2006-01-09T20:41:43Z")
Thomas Pynchon, _Mason & Dixon_ Italo Calvino, _Invisible Cities_ John McWhorter, _The Power of Babel_ Leo Tolstoy, _Ana Karenina_ Jorge Luis Borges, _Labyrinths_ Stephen Jay Gould, _The Mismeasure of Man_ Annie Dillard, _Pilgrim at Tinker Creek_ Ram Dass, _Be Here Now_ Richard White, _The Middle Ground_ Douglas Hofstadter, _Godel, Escher, Bach: The Eternal Golden Braid_ That would be something like my Top Ten. Thanks to this thread, my Amazon Wish List just got a lot longer. ---
**Author:** ![Indygrrl](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/58f4c7/32.png) [@Indygrrl](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Indygrrl)\ **Post date:** [January 9, 2006, 8:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/which-books-would-you-describe-as-brilliant/339164/28 "2006-01-09T20:46:52Z")
Lord of the Barnyard: Killing the Fatted Calf and Arming the Aware in the Cornbelt–by Tristan Egolf. Just read it. You will thank me. ---
**Author:** ![Cuckoorex](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/ad7895/32.png) [@Cuckoorex](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cuckoorex)\ **Post date:** [January 10, 2006, 12:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/which-books-would-you-describe-as-brilliant/339164/29 "2006-01-10T12:33:12Z")
_Galapagos_ and _The Breakfast of Champions_ and _Slaughterhouse 5_ by Kurt Vonnegut, jr The _Ishmael_ series by Daniel Quinn _The Lucifer Principle_ by Howard Bloom _Finding Darwin’s God_ by Kenneth Miller ---
**Author:** ![Fortean](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/96bed5/32.png) [@Fortean](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Fortean)\ **Post date:** [January 10, 2006, 1:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/which-books-would-you-describe-as-brilliant/339164/30 "2006-01-10T13:06:09Z")
Charles Palliser’s _The Quincunx_ for me, mostly because of the extraordinary plot, a madly intricate and twisty-turny story about a young boy trying to discover the secrets behind a certain will. I can’t say anything more about it without giving it away; it’s the kind of book where it’s dangerous to peep even a few pages ahead for fear of spoiling yourself. The first time I read it I found it so immersive that I almost forgot I was undergoing a major operation, and they practically had to rip it out of my hands to administer the anaesthetic. ---
**Author:** ![Larry\_Mudd](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/f14d63/32.png) [@Larry\_Mudd](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Larry_Mudd)\ **Post date:** [January 10, 2006, 1:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/which-books-would-you-describe-as-brilliant/339164/31 "2006-01-10T13:14:25Z")
> [@Biffy the Elephant Shrew](#): > > First and foremost, Joyce’s **Ulysses**. To my mind this is simply the greatest and most fascinating book ever written. > > Modern/pop culture works: Anthony Burgess, **A Clockwork Orange** ; John Brunner, **Stand on Zanzibar** ; Wilson & Shea’s **Illuminatus!** trilogy; Neil Gaiman’s **Sandman** series. > > I’ve always liked **The Crying of Lot 49** much better than **Gravity’s Rainbow**. Um… are you _me?_ That’s eerie. I append to that short list Peter Ackroyd’s _Hawksmoor_ and Lewis Carroll’s _Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland_, which should never be underestimated. For non-fiction, the above mentioned _Gödel, Escher, Bach_, and also _Semiotics and the Philosophy of Language_, by Umberto Eco. ---
**Author:** ![Larry\_Mudd](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/f14d63/32.png) [@Larry\_Mudd](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Larry_Mudd)\ **Post date:** [January 10, 2006, 1:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/which-books-would-you-describe-as-brilliant/339164/32 "2006-01-10T13:24:41Z")
I forgot an important one: [_The Jade Peony_](http://www.nytimes.com/books/97/08/10/reviews/970810.10gambont.html), by Wayson Choy. When I first bought this book I sat my ass down and read it straight through. I was emotionally wrecked when I put it down, only partly because I was physically exhausted after reading through the night. Since then I’ve given it away and replaced it twice. No profound intellect in it, but I don’t recall any other book having such an emotional impact on me. ---
**Author:** ![Mangetout](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mangetout/32/19_2.png) [@Mangetout](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mangetout)\ **Post date:** [January 10, 2006, 2:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/which-books-would-you-describe-as-brilliant/339164/33 "2006-01-10T14:20:51Z")
_Permutation City_ by Greg Egan - a very thoughtful exploration of what it actually means to exist as a person. I’ll echo the praises for _Good Omens_, _1984_ and _Brave New World_ I tried _Gravity’s Rainbow_ - tried really hard, but it just seemed like a stream of rambling incoherent doggerel and I gave up about one third of the way through; what am I missing? ---
**Author:** ![Man\_With\_a\_Cat](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/cab0a1/32.png) [@Man\_With\_a\_Cat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Man_With_a_Cat)\ **Post date:** [January 10, 2006, 2:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/which-books-would-you-describe-as-brilliant/339164/34 "2006-01-10T14:29:33Z")
[The Discoverers](http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0394726251/qid=1136903088/sr=8-1/ref=pd_bbs_1/002-5662860-6089647?n=507846&s=books&v=glance) By Daniel Boorstin. It’s the story of man’s learning about the world, himself and the universe. And [Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee](http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0805066691/qid=1136903302/sr=2-1/ref=pd_bbs_b_2_1/002-5662860-6089647?s=books&v=glance&n=283155) . The first book that made me cry. ---
**Author:** ![unwashed\_brain](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/a9adbd/32.png) [@unwashed\_brain](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/unwashed_brain)\ **Post date:** [January 10, 2006, 2:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/which-books-would-you-describe-as-brilliant/339164/35 "2006-01-10T14:56:01Z")
These are the three books that have had the deepest impact on me. **Illuminatus!** might be dismissed by some as hackery but if you read it at the right time in your life it can be a mind-blowing experience. **The Book of the New Sun** , by Gene Wolfe **The Illuminatus! Trilogy** , by Robert Shea and Robert Anton Wilson **Science and Sanity** , by Alfred Korzybski ---
**Author:** ![Nancarrow](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/c37758/32.png) [@Nancarrow](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nancarrow)\ **Post date:** [January 10, 2006, 3:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/which-books-would-you-describe-as-brilliant/339164/36 "2006-01-10T15:10:31Z")
Four books that were doors to new understandings of the world for me: 1. Alexander Solzhenitsyn, “The Gulag Archipelago” 2. Noam Chomsky, “On Power and Ideology” 3. and 4) Alexander and Ann Shulgin, “PiHKAL” and “TiHKAL” (“Phenethylamines I Have Known and Loved”, and “Tryptamines…”) And a book that didn’t exactly “new” me out, but rather provided the best summary of my basic worldview that I have yet seen… yes, it’s been mentioned already here, Carl Sagan’s “Demon-Haunted World” ---
**Author:** ![don\_t\_ask](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/e68b1a/32.png) [@don\_t\_ask](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/don_t_ask)\ **Post date:** [January 10, 2006, 3:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/which-books-would-you-describe-as-brilliant/339164/37 "2006-01-10T15:27:05Z")
I only realised a few years ago that _The Red Badge of Courage_ by Stephen Crane is some of the most gorgeous writing I have ever seen. I studied it in school and I guess it just went way over my head. You can read it [online](http://xroads.virginia.edu/~HYPER/CRANE/badge.html) and enjoy the continuation of this: \*The cold passed reluctantly from the earth, and the retiring fogs revealed an army stretched out on the hills, resting. As the landscape changed from brown to green, the army awakened, and began to tremble with eagerness at the noise of rumors. It cast its eyes upon the roads, which were growing from long troughs of liquid mud to proper thoroughfares. A river, amber-tinted in the shadow of its banks, purled at the army’s feet; and at night, when the stream had become of a sorrowful blackness, one could see across it the red, eyelike gleam of hostile camp-fires set in the low brows of distant hills. Once a certain tall soldier developed virtues and went resolutely to wash a shirt. He came flying back from a brook waving his garment bannerlike. He was swelled with a tale he had heard from a reliable friend, who had heard it from a truthful cavalryman, who had heard it from his trustworthy brother, one of the orderlies at division headquarters. He adopted the important air of a herald in red and gold. “We’re goin’ t’ move t’morrah–sure,” he said pompously to a group in the company street. “We’re goin’ ‘way up the river, cut across, an’ come around in behint 'em.”\* ---
**Author:** ![Snowboarder\_Bo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/snowboarder_bo/32/229_2.png) [@Snowboarder\_Bo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Snowboarder_Bo)\ **Post date:** [January 10, 2006, 3:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/which-books-would-you-describe-as-brilliant/339164/38 "2006-01-10T15:35:17Z")
[The Sand Pebbles](http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1557504466/qid=1136907121/sr=2-1/ref=pd_bbs_b_2_1/103-3329220-2711017?s=books&v=glance&n=283155) by Richard McKenna is an oft-overlooked masterpiece and a personal favorite of mine. I could list dozens (or even hundreds) of books here, but I’ll leave it at this one in the hope that someone else might become interested and find a copy. ---
**Author:** ![FriarTed](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/friarted/32/1052_2.png) [@FriarTed](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/FriarTed)\ **Post date:** [January 10, 2006, 3:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/which-books-would-you-describe-as-brilliant/339164/39 "2006-01-10T15:36:08Z")
Huxley’s BRAVE NEW WORLD- Si. Not sure I’d class Orwell’s 1984 as brilliant, but still double-plus good _G_ I have to name something by Ayn Rand. I love ATLAS but it’s not brilliant. Being able to say the basically same thing in much shorter space is brilliant. Thus- ANTHEM. Eco’s FOUCAULT’S PENDULUM - hell yeah! I don’t know if I see the ILLUMINATUS TRILOGY or COSMIC TRIGGER I as closer to brilliant, but I gotta give a nod to Robert Anton Wilson for throwing in the wildest most diverse stuff into an actual worldview- straddling brilliance & bullshit. ---
**Author:** ![FriarTed](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/friarted/32/1052_2.png) [@FriarTed](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/FriarTed)\ **Post date:** [January 10, 2006, 3:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/which-books-would-you-describe-as-brilliant/339164/40 "2006-01-10T15:42:41Z")
> [@Draelin](#): > > _ **The Alienist** _, by Caleb Carr. I can’t even give my reasons. It’s just _that_ good. One reason- Teddy Roosevelt! [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/which-books-would-you-describe-as-brilliant/339164.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/which-books-would-you-describe-as-brilliant/339164.md?page=3)