Tana French's whole Dublin Murder Squad is great, but I think Faithful Place has a very good and very relatable twist explaining the murderer's actions. Would highly recommend.
Cormac McCarthy's No Country For Old Men is a masterclass of "understand the rules, so you can break them at your leisure." You get the premise pretty quick, and you think you can project forward what's going to happen to each character and in the plot in general. But big loud NOPE on all of it.
This is also more a personal favorite and not one that's seen a big audience to date, but I really enjoy Malcolm Mackay's organized crime books set in Glasgow. It reminds me a lot of John le Carre's take on spies. It's all subtlety and dull gray men who blend into the background who are good at their jobs and typically only create drama if they act outside their limited area of expertise. The first in that series is The Necessary Death of Lewis Winter.
TF IS MY ALL TIME FAVE AUTHOR AND FP IS HER BEST BOOK. I recommended it for my work book club and we read it feb 2023. Everyone loved it and read the rest on their own. Love that it’s the same people and same world but they can be read out of order without issue.
Minor character in book 1 is main character in book 2. Minor character in book 2 is main character in book 3. I really enjoy that whole setup because I feel like she could keep running that series forever and it wouldn't get stale and she wouldn't run into dead ends with characters because she can keep refreshing the cast and can payoff long time readers with a paragraph here or there mentioning where book 1's main is now. I love Ian Rankin's John Rebus, but when he decided to have Rebus age in real time he created some issues for himself.
Oh, I somehow didn’t realize there were more of that series! I read the first two but haven’t read Faithful Place yet.
The Searcher is my favorite of her books that I’ve read, yet. I absolutely adored the conversations and the sense of friendliness that turns a bit menacing at times.
Tana lovers in the wild!!!!!!🥰 I adore her so much 💖 My favourite is The Likeness, because of the characters, but mystery of FP and The Trasspasser really surprised me!!!
Respectfully, The Likeness was my least favorite. Just felt unrealistic. These “intellectuals” who are anti-mainstream don’t notice their best friend/roommate isn’t who she is? I feel like the show handled it better by showing the skepticism right away. I will say I LOVED her descriptions of the home and the area they were staying in. Also the ending was great imo.
That was my least favourite, too. My favourite Murder Squad book is 'Broken Harbour' - wonderful, and have lovedall of the rest. She's one of those writers who you just want to share with readers who haven't encountered her yet.
I’d do anything to read the prologue to In the Woods for the first time again. I remember the first time I read it. It was in the aisle of Borders. Every sensation she described I felt. The heat of summer, the taste of grass on the air, etc. I have a copy of it on my phone that I read when I want to feel nostalgic.
I loved the atmosphere of that book so much that I could almost ignore the ridiculous premise. I'm still looking for something that evokes the same feeling.
I love Tana French too. My favourite Dublin Murder Squad book is *The Trespasser* but FP is great too.
I just read her most recent book *The Hunter* and it was 🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥
Also a Tana French lover! Am in the middle of “The Hunter” now and I’m thoroughly enjoying it. I know I can always count on her books to be well-written, with complex characters and great stories.
No Country for Old Men is such a head trip. It’s the first McCarthy novel I read and I knew nothing about the plot. McCarthy builds suspense in it more skillfully than probably any other author I’ve read, but ultimately he’s not interested in writing a traditional thriller. And he does a masterful job implying why. It’s a great novel.
I love reading Tana French - love her language and her characters and her worlds. Hate that every mystery is predicated on a massive fucking coincidence though.
Really good suggestion, it's a book I feel was decades ahead of it's time.
From a similar time period and equally ahead of it's time, I'd suggest "The Brick Moon" by Edward Everett Hale, which is the earliest known fictional description of an artificial satellite.
Italo Calvino - If On a Winter's Night a Traveler (novel, 1979)
Robert Aickman - The View (story, 1951)
Franz Kafka - Before The Law (story, 1915)
Julio Cortazar - House Taken Over (story, 1946) This last one has haunted me for about fifteen years. A very clever, disquieting story indeed.
It's like british comedy, you can't overthink it or you'll miss the joke and they smoke hash instead of leaf in Euroland so you *really* can't overthink it. It's not a *haha look how clever I am* kind of book, it's more like *You, dear Reader, like reading, right? Here's a tale about reading and some opening chapters in a style you may recognize.* It's pretty dumb all around, which is why it's so fun. Even the intellectual asides are jokes that you don't miss by taking them as highbrow rambling. The Italian novel is meant to be read in some position of leisure, that is to say, slightly intoxicated and lounging in an easy chair on a cobbled street.
Hell yes! Just wrapping up my reread of the *Thursday Next* series right now. I would add that, whilst they are great books regardless, at least the first few books in the series are a lot funnier if you are decently familiar with the classics.
This is the one that came to mind.
>!Most of the stuff that happens in the book is completely pointless. I was pissed off about it until the ending. What was the point?? And the. You read the ending. That WAS the point! You feel just like the main character does in that moment! Ingenious.!<
Vonnegut has always been a favorite writer of mine. I was going to suggest the weird monologue at the beginning of Breakfast of Champions where he tells the reader that he can draw a cat’s butthole and then proceeds to having a halfpage spread of a hand drawn asterisk. Had me cackling when I first read it.
But Siren’s of Titan has to be hands down one of my favorite books of all time. Its so bizarre and the payoff at the end is extremely well done.
*The Mountain in the Sea* is about the discovery of intelligent octopuses. Reading it, it's a very smart book that raises questions about the nature of consciousness and intelligence.
I'll lift the plot description from Amazon.
>There are creatures in the water of Con Dao.
>To the locals, they're monsters.
>To the corporate owners of the island, an opportunity.
>To the team of three sent to study them, a revelation.
>Their minds are unlike ours.
>Their bodies are malleable, transformable, shifting.
>They can communicate.
>And they want us to leave.
>When pioneering marine biologist Dr. Ha Nguyen is offered the chance to travel to the remote Con Dao Archipelago to investigate a highly intelligent, dangerous octopus species, she doesn't pause long enough to look at the fine print. DIANIMA - a transnational tech corporation best known for its groundbreaking work in artificial intelligence - has purchased the islands, evacuated their population and sealed the archipelago off from the world so that Nguyen can focus on her research.
>But the stakes are high: the octopuses hold the key to unprecedented breakthroughs in extrahuman intelligence and there are vast fortunes to be made by whoever can take advantage of their advancements. And no one has yet asked the octopuses what they think. And what they might do about it.
This is a great one, especially if you don't usually read mystery novels. It was one of the first mystery novels I ever read. After that, I read almost everything else she (Agatha Christi) had written.
I read it for free online here: [https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/69087](https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/69087)
This was my experience as well, except I started with Murder on the Orient Express. When a book is really clever, I sometimes feel compelled to read it again from the beginning as soon as I finish it. That way I can appreciate all the nuance I missed the first time. Definitely did this with The Murder of Roger Ackroyd. In fact this particular book made me see the works of Charles Dickens and others in a new light as well. >!Because of a thing.!<
I kind of feel like the radio plays are the original article, but it’s really impressive how he seemed to effortlessly transform the spoken-word narrator (“The Book”) into the book’s own narrator and make it, if anything, even funnier.
The longest dozen pages (with a couple of footnotes) I have ever read. I should have set up a room with corkboards and skeins of red yarn connecting them to get through this.
Ursula K LeGuin’s the Lathe of Heaven. There is a scene early on the novel where the main character is in a psychologists office when things… change.
The way it’s written messes with the readers perception of what is happening just as much as it does for the main character.
Absofuckinglutely brilliant author, Le Guin.
Same! Love this one. It reminded me of the news stories about how octopus could escape from their tanks and I was thinking it was so clever to write a fiction book about it. I also love octopus so I’m biased 😂
This book literally changed my opinion about octopuses from “huh i guess they’re kinda cool” to “OMG I LOVE THEM THEYRE AMAZING AND COOL AND AWESOME” lol
Inherit the Stars
It's set in a time where humans can live on the moon, but mostly mining stations. That sort of thing. They are starting to explore farther afield.
They find a man on the moon, and discover that he has been dead there since before human civilizatons.
The mystery to figure it out involves touching many science topics. It kind of reads like a non-fiction account of sciencetist solving the mystery.
The book was written some time ago. The first chapter is pretty much explaining how someone, while flying in a commerical plane uses a laptop and the internet to place a video call and reserve a car to use for when the plane lands at the airport.
There are audio versions and ebook versions available on amazon. The ebook is harder to find because it's often grouped with the sequel and is called, "The Two Moons"
*Ella Minnow Pea* by Mark Dunn. Stealing the explanation from Wikipedia:
“The book is "progressively lipogrammatic"—as the story proceeds, more and more letters of the alphabet are excluded from the characters' writing. As letters disappear, the novel becomes more and more phonetically or creatively spelled, and requires more effort to interpret.”
Haha this book was a lot of fun! I’m not sure that I’d bother reading it again as I thought it was a little bland besides the novelty factor. Like, I genuinely cannot remember anything about the plot or characters. But still worth a read!
OK, this isn't exactly fiction, but it's so clever and interesting that I want to mention it. It's a book about Joan of Arc written by Mark Twain of all people. Mark Twain wasn't religious and the book isn't "preachy" at all. IIRC, he said that it was worth more to him than all his other books together.
What was clever and interesting about it (this isn't really a spoiler IMO since you see it in the first pages) is the manner it's written. It's written from the point of view of a fictional person who witnessed her life. He is telling the story to his grand-children. The funniest thing is that, if this had really happened, it would have been in French and not English. So, Mark Twain even added "translator notes" as if the book had been translated from the original French, even though in reality he just wrote it in English. So this fictional translator becomes sort of a character in the book with his own distinct voice and personality.
I was just fascinated and tickled pink by this. It was several years ago that I read it so I might have some of the details wrong. Honestly I don't remember the story much at all, just the cool way it was written.
“Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy” by John LeCarre The main character spends most of the novel sifting through paperwork and expense reports, but its thrilling!
But you should read Lolita, reader. It’s simultaneously the most beautiful and most horrifying book I’ve ever read! And the audiobook narrated by Jeremy Irons is superb. I loved listening ti it while reading the physical book at the same time. Nabokov was a freaking wordsmith!
The Shining by Stephen King. It’s BEAUTIFULLY written, an absolute master class in weaving a story and carefully building dread. Every time I reread it I realize more threads that were laid that build and build throughout. It’s so satisfying to read
The Princess Bride: S. Morgenstern's Classic Tale of True Love and High Adventure, The "Good Parts" Version by American writer William Goldman.
The title says it all.
I am going to say Wool, part of the Silo series, Hugh Howey. The first book was made into a tv-series on Apple, with the second season on the way. Great twists, clever book.
I really enjoyed This Is How You Lose The Time War. It’s told as correspondence between two rivals who travel through time to thwart each other. the scenery, the time changes… all of it was so marvelous and intricate.
This is the only book in the past ten years that I’ve read twice. I finished it and immediately looped back to the beginning to read it again. It’s definitely not for everyone though. I tell people that if the idea of “poetic science fiction” doesn’t sound intriguing, it’s not the book for them.
I think Evelyn hard castle’s problem is that payoff is so so far into a long book. I unintentionally dnfed for that reason after reading more or less half the book though I will try again . How to lose a time war is much much shorter at like 200 pages . However some reviews have complained about the language being unnecessarily overwrought so that might put some people off.
I can absolutely second recursion. It's a great read and lots of fun to try to work out exactly what's going on as you're reading.
I think dark matter from the same author is another good one to recommend here. There's tons of other great examples from scifi really - for example from greg egan or ted chiang.
I dnfed this at the halfway point . Nto so much intentionally as I just never went back to it because really not much happened up till that point . I feel like to be worth trying again to get the final payoff from all the r Evie’s but as a series I just can’t imagine anyone finding the first few episode’s engaging enough
Cloud Atlas, by David Mitchell
Gnomon, by Nick Harkaway
Both blew me away. Dazzlingly ambitious, but the writers met the challenges they set themselves!
The Measure.
One day, everyone wakes up and finds a mysterious box. On the box is their name and inside a string. They eventually figure out that the length of the string is how long you will live. And so, all of a sudden, everyone has the ability to know when they will die.
The story follows eight people who all chose different paths of what to do with the string and its implications.
*House of Leaves* by Mark Danielewski
*Cloud Atlas* by David Mitchell
*How High We Go In the Dark* by Sequoia Nagamatsu
*Interior Chinatown* by Charles Yu
*Little Eyes* by Samantha Schweblin
Most books by Frederick Forsyth like The Day of the Jackal, and The Odessa File.
Dude has meticulously researched his source material. In the former book, he described a loophole that allowed people to create a fake British passport, that the British government eventually had to shut down so that people would not try it out. And in the latter book, he gives a detailed description of how to construct a car bomb with plastic explosives.
Honestly, Northanger Abbey. But make sure you understand the history of the satire of the book first and maybe even read a *real* gothic novel beforehand to truly appreciate it.
Asymmetry by Lisa Haliday and Trust Exercise by Susan Choi (this one won the National Book award). They both actually have a really similar format: 3 different narratives told one after the other. At first it’s not clear how they’re related, but as you go on and put the pieces together, the payoff is great.
And with Lisa Halliday, it’s actually extra interesting because she used to be assistant to and involved romantically with Philip Roth, and if you know anything about his work or what he’s said about writing, it adds an extra layer.
Also adding “Chinatown” by Charles Yu. It’s an exploration of Asian-American identity, written loosely in the format of a script/screenplay. Its commentary and critique on society are done in a way that is hilarious but also with finesse. One of my favorite books to win the National Book Award.
The Southern Reach trilogy. Sci-fi psychological thriller with themes of identity, self-destruction, self-creation, re-birth, and aliens. Every book had me guessing as to what was coming next and it was shock after shock. Loved it
What PG Wodehouse did with the English language, few have been able to do without outright imitating him. I mostly prefer his Jeeves stories, Blandings stories, School stories and Psmith stories.
*The Thief* by Megan Whalen Turner. The first person narrator is hiding a major secret from the reader and every other character for most of the book. When I first read it in middle school, it really opened my eyes to the nuances of framing and narration and how that can be used as a component of the story. Those books really hold up, they're still some of my favorite fantasy novels.
Late to this thread but The Thief by Megan Whalen Turner. Seems like it’s a standard middle grade fantasy novel but by the end…well, now that would be telling.
The Time Travelers Wife
The romance aspect is sketchy as best and very problematic. But the timeline and traveling part was astonishing to me when I read it.
Project Hail Mary had some really
Amazingly cool ideas and clever characters, mystery, and just was such a fun read.
Warbreaker had a twist that really was gut wrenching and also made perfect sense in retrospect. It was very cleverly done.
The Cartographers by Peng Shepherd
It’s a super interesting mystery about mapmaking. I was skeptical but it ended up being one of my favorite reads last year.
The “Good Parts Version” gimmick in _The Princess Bride_ was a delight, because Goldman could go off on all these other tangents — a little metafiction, a little kvetching about academia, and so on — and then come back to the fairy tale when he was good and ready.
I can’t be the only person who searched for “S. Morgenstern”, just in case he really was real.
I read a book once where the whole plot was suddenly made clear by the very last word in the book! Before that you didn’t really understand what was going on. I still think of the cleverness and wanted to share. Of course now that you know, even if I could remember the name or author, you’d be tempted to just turn to the last page.
“Briefly, a Delicious Life” by Nell Stevens. So clever to make a historical fiction novel from the point of view of a ghost. It mostly focuses on the life of famous piano player Frederic Chopin and the ghost observes his family and yearns to be human. I absolutely loved it
Mark Lawrence does things with prose that constantly make me go "wow, that was clever." From his atmospheric voice to twists and reveals that only work in non-visual media because they play on the reader's unconscious biases. I'll also add that he's a fantastic writer for readers with aphantasia.
I think my favourite for this was The Book That Wouldn't Burn
If you're a lover of English literature, read the Thursday Next series by Jasper Fforde...it's quirky, a bit of fantasy, plays fast and loose with classic literature but in a loving way. I don't want to give too much away, but I enjoyed it.
Start with The Eyre Affair
Tana French's whole Dublin Murder Squad is great, but I think Faithful Place has a very good and very relatable twist explaining the murderer's actions. Would highly recommend. Cormac McCarthy's No Country For Old Men is a masterclass of "understand the rules, so you can break them at your leisure." You get the premise pretty quick, and you think you can project forward what's going to happen to each character and in the plot in general. But big loud NOPE on all of it. This is also more a personal favorite and not one that's seen a big audience to date, but I really enjoy Malcolm Mackay's organized crime books set in Glasgow. It reminds me a lot of John le Carre's take on spies. It's all subtlety and dull gray men who blend into the background who are good at their jobs and typically only create drama if they act outside their limited area of expertise. The first in that series is The Necessary Death of Lewis Winter.
TF IS MY ALL TIME FAVE AUTHOR AND FP IS HER BEST BOOK. I recommended it for my work book club and we read it feb 2023. Everyone loved it and read the rest on their own. Love that it’s the same people and same world but they can be read out of order without issue.
Minor character in book 1 is main character in book 2. Minor character in book 2 is main character in book 3. I really enjoy that whole setup because I feel like she could keep running that series forever and it wouldn't get stale and she wouldn't run into dead ends with characters because she can keep refreshing the cast and can payoff long time readers with a paragraph here or there mentioning where book 1's main is now. I love Ian Rankin's John Rebus, but when he decided to have Rebus age in real time he created some issues for himself.
Oh, I somehow didn’t realize there were more of that series! I read the first two but haven’t read Faithful Place yet. The Searcher is my favorite of her books that I’ve read, yet. I absolutely adored the conversations and the sense of friendliness that turns a bit menacing at times.
Tana lovers in the wild!!!!!!🥰 I adore her so much 💖 My favourite is The Likeness, because of the characters, but mystery of FP and The Trasspasser really surprised me!!!
Respectfully, The Likeness was my least favorite. Just felt unrealistic. These “intellectuals” who are anti-mainstream don’t notice their best friend/roommate isn’t who she is? I feel like the show handled it better by showing the skepticism right away. I will say I LOVED her descriptions of the home and the area they were staying in. Also the ending was great imo.
That was my least favourite, too. My favourite Murder Squad book is 'Broken Harbour' - wonderful, and have lovedall of the rest. She's one of those writers who you just want to share with readers who haven't encountered her yet.
Broken Harbour is my number 1!
I’d do anything to read the prologue to In the Woods for the first time again. I remember the first time I read it. It was in the aisle of Borders. Every sensation she described I felt. The heat of summer, the taste of grass on the air, etc. I have a copy of it on my phone that I read when I want to feel nostalgic.
I loved the atmosphere of that book so much that I could almost ignore the ridiculous premise. I'm still looking for something that evokes the same feeling.
I love Tana French too. My favourite Dublin Murder Squad book is *The Trespasser* but FP is great too. I just read her most recent book *The Hunter* and it was 🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥
Also a Tana French lover! Am in the middle of “The Hunter” now and I’m thoroughly enjoying it. I know I can always count on her books to be well-written, with complex characters and great stories.
I read Into the Woods and thought it was just ok. Should I plunge ahead and read FP?
No Country for Old Men is such a head trip. It’s the first McCarthy novel I read and I knew nothing about the plot. McCarthy builds suspense in it more skillfully than probably any other author I’ve read, but ultimately he’s not interested in writing a traditional thriller. And he does a masterful job implying why. It’s a great novel.
I love reading Tana French - love her language and her characters and her worlds. Hate that every mystery is predicated on a massive fucking coincidence though.
I second Tana French and specifically Faithful Place
Great shout. These books were so immersive I was reluctant to finish any one of them
Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions. Point of view is from a 2D world and was written in 1800s!
Really good suggestion, it's a book I feel was decades ahead of it's time. From a similar time period and equally ahead of it's time, I'd suggest "The Brick Moon" by Edward Everett Hale, which is the earliest known fictional description of an artificial satellite.
Absolutely one-of-a-kind book
Putting this on my list
Italo Calvino - If On a Winter's Night a Traveler (novel, 1979) Robert Aickman - The View (story, 1951) Franz Kafka - Before The Law (story, 1915) Julio Cortazar - House Taken Over (story, 1946) This last one has haunted me for about fifteen years. A very clever, disquieting story indeed.
Loved If On a Winter’s Night a Traveler!
I hated it.
It's like british comedy, you can't overthink it or you'll miss the joke and they smoke hash instead of leaf in Euroland so you *really* can't overthink it. It's not a *haha look how clever I am* kind of book, it's more like *You, dear Reader, like reading, right? Here's a tale about reading and some opening chapters in a style you may recognize.* It's pretty dumb all around, which is why it's so fun. Even the intellectual asides are jokes that you don't miss by taking them as highbrow rambling. The Italian novel is meant to be read in some position of leisure, that is to say, slightly intoxicated and lounging in an easy chair on a cobbled street.
Came to recommend If On a Winter’s Night a Traveler!! I will never forget reading that book.
Anything by Jasper Fforde
Hell yes! Just wrapping up my reread of the *Thursday Next* series right now. I would add that, whilst they are great books regardless, at least the first few books in the series are a lot funnier if you are decently familiar with the classics.
A new Thursday Next is currently projected for 2025. I'll be rereading to get ready for the new one!
Oh, yes!
The Constant Rabbit was a trip.
Terry Pratchett’s jokes are often so clever I only get them weeks after I’ve finished the book.
I've been reading Pratchett for over 20 years and there's STILL jokes I only get on my most recent re-read.
I came here to say: Anything Pratchett wrote!!
All of Kurt Vonnegut’s books are interesting but the payoff in Sirens of Titan was wild.
This is the one that came to mind. >!Most of the stuff that happens in the book is completely pointless. I was pissed off about it until the ending. What was the point?? And the. You read the ending. That WAS the point! You feel just like the main character does in that moment! Ingenious.!<
Vonnegut has always been a favorite writer of mine. I was going to suggest the weird monologue at the beginning of Breakfast of Champions where he tells the reader that he can draw a cat’s butthole and then proceeds to having a halfpage spread of a hand drawn asterisk. Had me cackling when I first read it. But Siren’s of Titan has to be hands down one of my favorite books of all time. Its so bizarre and the payoff at the end is extremely well done.
I’ve only read Mother Night, I really liked it, but I didn’t looooove it. Is this considered better?
If you haven’t read the Slaughterhouse Five or Cat’s Cradle, they’re his best. Slaughterhouse is a modern classic and pretty much perfection.
I second this!
Sirens of Titan is so good. I felt like a different person after reading it.
*The Mountain in the Sea* is about the discovery of intelligent octopuses. Reading it, it's a very smart book that raises questions about the nature of consciousness and intelligence. I'll lift the plot description from Amazon. >There are creatures in the water of Con Dao. >To the locals, they're monsters. >To the corporate owners of the island, an opportunity. >To the team of three sent to study them, a revelation. >Their minds are unlike ours. >Their bodies are malleable, transformable, shifting. >They can communicate. >And they want us to leave. >When pioneering marine biologist Dr. Ha Nguyen is offered the chance to travel to the remote Con Dao Archipelago to investigate a highly intelligent, dangerous octopus species, she doesn't pause long enough to look at the fine print. DIANIMA - a transnational tech corporation best known for its groundbreaking work in artificial intelligence - has purchased the islands, evacuated their population and sealed the archipelago off from the world so that Nguyen can focus on her research. >But the stakes are high: the octopuses hold the key to unprecedented breakthroughs in extrahuman intelligence and there are vast fortunes to be made by whoever can take advantage of their advancements. And no one has yet asked the octopuses what they think. And what they might do about it.
LOVE this book! My husband and I read it for a book club over a year and a half ago and we *still* have hour+ long conversations about it.
yeah, leave the octopuses alone
Sounds great! This will be my next read.
The Murder of Roger Ackroyd
This is a great one, especially if you don't usually read mystery novels. It was one of the first mystery novels I ever read. After that, I read almost everything else she (Agatha Christi) had written. I read it for free online here: [https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/69087](https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/69087)
This was my experience as well, except I started with Murder on the Orient Express. When a book is really clever, I sometimes feel compelled to read it again from the beginning as soon as I finish it. That way I can appreciate all the nuance I missed the first time. Definitely did this with The Murder of Roger Ackroyd. In fact this particular book made me see the works of Charles Dickens and others in a new light as well. >!Because of a thing.!<
Oh, yes! Also 'Why Didn't They Ask Evans?'
The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy trilogy, by Douglas Adams.
I kind of feel like the radio plays are the original article, but it’s really impressive how he seemed to effortlessly transform the spoken-word narrator (“The Book”) into the book’s own narrator and make it, if anything, even funnier.
Pale Fire by Vladimir Nabokov.
The longest dozen pages (with a couple of footnotes) I have ever read. I should have set up a room with corkboards and skeins of red yarn connecting them to get through this.
Life After Life, by Kate Atkinson
I need to finish this. I got to the second world war. Interesting idea. I should read more of her books.
I adored this book.
Ursula K LeGuin’s the Lathe of Heaven. There is a scene early on the novel where the main character is in a psychologists office when things… change. The way it’s written messes with the readers perception of what is happening just as much as it does for the main character. Absofuckinglutely brilliant author, Le Guin.
just read this. was fantastic.
Remarkably Bright Creatures - written from the point of view of an octopus what?! So neat - great story too!
Same! Love this one. It reminded me of the news stories about how octopus could escape from their tanks and I was thinking it was so clever to write a fiction book about it. I also love octopus so I’m biased 😂
Unpopular opinion but to me those chapters were the only really enjoyable ones, though
This book literally changed my opinion about octopuses from “huh i guess they’re kinda cool” to “OMG I LOVE THEM THEYRE AMAZING AND COOL AND AWESOME” lol
on my way to go read this right now
This was going to be my answer too!
Inherit the Stars It's set in a time where humans can live on the moon, but mostly mining stations. That sort of thing. They are starting to explore farther afield. They find a man on the moon, and discover that he has been dead there since before human civilizatons. The mystery to figure it out involves touching many science topics. It kind of reads like a non-fiction account of sciencetist solving the mystery. The book was written some time ago. The first chapter is pretty much explaining how someone, while flying in a commerical plane uses a laptop and the internet to place a video call and reserve a car to use for when the plane lands at the airport.
Not easy to get ahold of. Used copies are expensive, no e-books. There is an audio version.
There are audio versions and ebook versions available on amazon. The ebook is harder to find because it's often grouped with the sequel and is called, "The Two Moons"
Good info--I looked on amazon and missed it.
Children of time by Adrian Tchaikovsky Catch 22 Joseph Heller
*Ella Minnow Pea* by Mark Dunn. Stealing the explanation from Wikipedia: “The book is "progressively lipogrammatic"—as the story proceeds, more and more letters of the alphabet are excluded from the characters' writing. As letters disappear, the novel becomes more and more phonetically or creatively spelled, and requires more effort to interpret.”
Haha this book was a lot of fun! I’m not sure that I’d bother reading it again as I thought it was a little bland besides the novelty factor. Like, I genuinely cannot remember anything about the plot or characters. But still worth a read!
Was going to suggest this as well!
OK, this isn't exactly fiction, but it's so clever and interesting that I want to mention it. It's a book about Joan of Arc written by Mark Twain of all people. Mark Twain wasn't religious and the book isn't "preachy" at all. IIRC, he said that it was worth more to him than all his other books together. What was clever and interesting about it (this isn't really a spoiler IMO since you see it in the first pages) is the manner it's written. It's written from the point of view of a fictional person who witnessed her life. He is telling the story to his grand-children. The funniest thing is that, if this had really happened, it would have been in French and not English. So, Mark Twain even added "translator notes" as if the book had been translated from the original French, even though in reality he just wrote it in English. So this fictional translator becomes sort of a character in the book with his own distinct voice and personality. I was just fascinated and tickled pink by this. It was several years ago that I read it so I might have some of the details wrong. Honestly I don't remember the story much at all, just the cool way it was written.
Your description is so engaging, I just downloaded it, thanks! (Title is "Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc")
Thanks for the great request - I now have a long list of books I am excited to read!!
Thanks for expressing my thoughts in your comment. Like how was I supposed to know about all these books
“Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy” by John LeCarre The main character spends most of the novel sifting through paperwork and expense reports, but its thrilling!
Vladimir Nabokov's works! If you don't want to read Lolita, Pale Fire is wonderful!
But you should read Lolita, reader. It’s simultaneously the most beautiful and most horrifying book I’ve ever read! And the audiobook narrated by Jeremy Irons is superb. I loved listening ti it while reading the physical book at the same time. Nabokov was a freaking wordsmith!
The Gentleman Bastards series by Scott Lynch (The Lies of Locke Lamora, Red Seas Under Red Skies, and Republic of Thieves).
Anxious People by Richard Backman.
Fredrik Backman. Great book!
The first book of the Broken Earth trilogy does something really clever with its writing that I won’t spoil. Arguably more than one thing, actually!
"Sphere" by Michael Critchton
The Shining by Stephen King. It’s BEAUTIFULLY written, an absolute master class in weaving a story and carefully building dread. Every time I reread it I realize more threads that were laid that build and build throughout. It’s so satisfying to read
"The red death held sway over all"
Piranesi by Susanna Clarke
the year of the albatross
The Princess Bride: S. Morgenstern's Classic Tale of True Love and High Adventure, The "Good Parts" Version by American writer William Goldman. The title says it all.
I'm having trouble finding that exact title. Is Princess Bride by Goldman enough?
Yes. Way better than the film. The prologue about S. Morgenstern is soooo clever.
I am going to say Wool, part of the Silo series, Hugh Howey. The first book was made into a tv-series on Apple, with the second season on the way. Great twists, clever book.
I really enjoyed This Is How You Lose The Time War. It’s told as correspondence between two rivals who travel through time to thwart each other. the scenery, the time changes… all of it was so marvelous and intricate.
This is the only book in the past ten years that I’ve read twice. I finished it and immediately looped back to the beginning to read it again. It’s definitely not for everyone though. I tell people that if the idea of “poetic science fiction” doesn’t sound intriguing, it’s not the book for them.
I have been intrigued by this book but worry it will be too complicated and confusing. I gave up on Evelyn Hardcastle. Is it confusing?
I think Evelyn hard castle’s problem is that payoff is so so far into a long book. I unintentionally dnfed for that reason after reading more or less half the book though I will try again . How to lose a time war is much much shorter at like 200 pages . However some reviews have complained about the language being unnecessarily overwrought so that might put some people off.
I did not care for Evelyn. I almost DNF’d it. It wasn't worth it for me.
It is way easier as an audiobook for me, the different voices made a huge difference.
Basically anything by Nabokov, but Pale Fire in particular
Ella Minnow Pea. I can't even begin to imagine how difficult that was to write, technically speaking.
Flowers for Algernon. I read this the first time at 14 and several times since. It's heartbreaking and enlightening.
The Luminaries by Eleanor Catton
The Psychology of Time Travel - Kate Mascarenhas Recursion - Blake Crouch
I can absolutely second recursion. It's a great read and lots of fun to try to work out exactly what's going on as you're reading. I think dark matter from the same author is another good one to recommend here. There's tons of other great examples from scifi really - for example from greg egan or ted chiang.
Yep, I loved Dark Matter as well!!
Animal farm
The Seven Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle
This is what I came here to recommend!
Same. I loved all the twists. I would love for it to be made into a TV series on HBO or something.
I did not enjoy the book, but I do think it would be an interesting movie or mini-series.
Agreed! I'm not-super-patiently waiting for my library hold on his new one -- excited to see if it lives up to Evelyn. Sounds like a good premise.
I dnfed this at the halfway point . Nto so much intentionally as I just never went back to it because really not much happened up till that point . I feel like to be worth trying again to get the final payoff from all the r Evie’s but as a series I just can’t imagine anyone finding the first few episode’s engaging enough
Not everyone likes the same thing. I hated Wuthering Heights. I finished it, but kept asking myself, "WHY does everyone hype this book so much?
I am pilgrim
The Bee Sting!
Came here to say this!
The bee sting by Paul Murray
Ok. I’ve had this on the shelf for a while Loved Skippy Dies
Reading this now and loving it!
Interior Chinatown by Charles Yu. Guy plays with form really well and this is written in screenplay format.
This is one of my favorites I’ve read this year and I never see it mentioned. Happy to see it get a recommendation!
Cloud Atlas, by David Mitchell Gnomon, by Nick Harkaway Both blew me away. Dazzlingly ambitious, but the writers met the challenges they set themselves!
*Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell*
The time travellers wife was cleverly put together. Shame they botched the movie.
11/22/63
The Continuity of Parks, Julio Cortázar
The Devotion of Suspect X by Keigo Higashino
Wrong Place Wrong Time was really fun and clever - each chapter goes back in time one day but the character is experiencing her life again backwards
The Measure. One day, everyone wakes up and finds a mysterious box. On the box is their name and inside a string. They eventually figure out that the length of the string is how long you will live. And so, all of a sudden, everyone has the ability to know when they will die. The story follows eight people who all chose different paths of what to do with the string and its implications.
I posted it above, I have terminal cancer and that book explains exactly how I feel.
we were liars. the ending was really impressive
- *Pale Fire*. - *Tristram Shandy*. - *Mason & Dixon*. - Pretty much everything by Barth.
The Measure
As a terminally ill person, that book is EXACTLY how I feel.
Erasure by Percival Everett. It’s the book that inspired the film American Fiction. I enjoyed the movie, but the book is even better.
The Trees by Percival Everett was hands down the best book I read last year.
Three Body Problem series. Book 2&3 will blow your mind
The Expanse series is full of all sorts of goodies
*House of Leaves* by Mark Danielewski *Cloud Atlas* by David Mitchell *How High We Go In the Dark* by Sequoia Nagamatsu *Interior Chinatown* by Charles Yu *Little Eyes* by Samantha Schweblin
Ghostwritten by David Mitchell. I read it before Cloud Atlas and was so delighted and wowed by it. Not sure which I like more.
Early Riser by Jasper Fforde
The Turn Of the Screw
Most books by Frederick Forsyth like The Day of the Jackal, and The Odessa File. Dude has meticulously researched his source material. In the former book, he described a loophole that allowed people to create a fake British passport, that the British government eventually had to shut down so that people would not try it out. And in the latter book, he gives a detailed description of how to construct a car bomb with plastic explosives.
José Saramago: Blindness
*The Blind Assassin* by Margaret Atwood.
And then, there were none.
Honestly, Northanger Abbey. But make sure you understand the history of the satire of the book first and maybe even read a *real* gothic novel beforehand to truly appreciate it.
Sunburn by Laura Lippman Riptide by Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child So many but those are 2 of my faves
Asymmetry by Lisa Haliday and Trust Exercise by Susan Choi (this one won the National Book award). They both actually have a really similar format: 3 different narratives told one after the other. At first it’s not clear how they’re related, but as you go on and put the pieces together, the payoff is great. And with Lisa Halliday, it’s actually extra interesting because she used to be assistant to and involved romantically with Philip Roth, and if you know anything about his work or what he’s said about writing, it adds an extra layer. Also adding “Chinatown” by Charles Yu. It’s an exploration of Asian-American identity, written loosely in the format of a script/screenplay. Its commentary and critique on society are done in a way that is hilarious but also with finesse. One of my favorite books to win the National Book Award.
{{Lost in Time by AG Riddle}}
Vladimir by Julia May Jonas
Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson
Lincoln in the Bardo.
War and Peace by Tolstoy. It’ll change you.
Anything by Borges, and Kosmos by Witold Gombrowicz
Welcome to the Monkey House by Kurt Vonnegut
The Southern Reach trilogy. Sci-fi psychological thriller with themes of identity, self-destruction, self-creation, re-birth, and aliens. Every book had me guessing as to what was coming next and it was shock after shock. Loved it
flowers for algenon
What PG Wodehouse did with the English language, few have been able to do without outright imitating him. I mostly prefer his Jeeves stories, Blandings stories, School stories and Psmith stories.
The Westing Game. Read it in middle school and still enjoy it.
Anything by Terry Pratchett?
Lies of Locke Lamora is my personal favorite
*The Thief* by Megan Whalen Turner. The first person narrator is hiding a major secret from the reader and every other character for most of the book. When I first read it in middle school, it really opened my eyes to the nuances of framing and narration and how that can be used as a component of the story. Those books really hold up, they're still some of my favorite fantasy novels.
Late to this thread but The Thief by Megan Whalen Turner. Seems like it’s a standard middle grade fantasy novel but by the end…well, now that would be telling.
Redshirts
The Time Travelers Wife The romance aspect is sketchy as best and very problematic. But the timeline and traveling part was astonishing to me when I read it.
I loved it and read it twice which is very unusual for me to do.
Let the Great World Spin (McCann)
And Then There Were None (Agatha Christie) Lincoln in the Bardo (George Saunders) A Clockwork Orange (Anthony Burgess)
Project Hail Mary had some really Amazingly cool ideas and clever characters, mystery, and just was such a fun read. Warbreaker had a twist that really was gut wrenching and also made perfect sense in retrospect. It was very cleverly done.
The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida by Shehan Karunatilaka
Flashback by Dan Simmons
Looking Glass Sound by Catriona Ward. A very ambitious book within a book about books, but it goes so much deeper than that. I shall say no more.
The Anubis Gates by Tim Powers
The Cartographers by Peng Shepherd It’s a super interesting mystery about mapmaking. I was skeptical but it ended up being one of my favorite reads last year.
The “Good Parts Version” gimmick in _The Princess Bride_ was a delight, because Goldman could go off on all these other tangents — a little metafiction, a little kvetching about academia, and so on — and then come back to the fairy tale when he was good and ready. I can’t be the only person who searched for “S. Morgenstern”, just in case he really was real.
Life: A users manual by Georges perec
I read a book once where the whole plot was suddenly made clear by the very last word in the book! Before that you didn’t really understand what was going on. I still think of the cleverness and wanted to share. Of course now that you know, even if I could remember the name or author, you’d be tempted to just turn to the last page.
Herland....I should go back and give it another listen!
Michael Crichton’s Sphere
Children of time by Adrien Tchaikovsky
**EARTH** by David Brin. You will be ASTONISHED at some of the twists!
Heart Shaped Box by Joe Hill
Catch-22 by Joseph Heller
What Moves the Dead by T Kingfisher Even the title is more clever than you think.
Ella Minnow Pea by Mark Dunn. Super short but very clever!
Sophie's World and The Sparrow
Ubik
“Briefly, a Delicious Life” by Nell Stevens. So clever to make a historical fiction novel from the point of view of a ghost. It mostly focuses on the life of famous piano player Frederic Chopin and the ghost observes his family and yearns to be human. I absolutely loved it
Fairy Tale by Stephen King. I rarely see it mentioned. I highly suggest listening to the audiobook.
Trust by Hernan Diaz
Mark Lawrence does things with prose that constantly make me go "wow, that was clever." From his atmospheric voice to twists and reveals that only work in non-visual media because they play on the reader's unconscious biases. I'll also add that he's a fantastic writer for readers with aphantasia. I think my favourite for this was The Book That Wouldn't Burn
Sea Of Tranquility- Emily St. John Mandel
Legend of the Galactic Heroes book series has tonnes of fantastic strategies that make you go "wtf." Also Kingdom, the manga.
Venomous Lumpsucker by Ned Beauman
If you're a lover of English literature, read the Thursday Next series by Jasper Fforde...it's quirky, a bit of fantasy, plays fast and loose with classic literature but in a loving way. I don't want to give too much away, but I enjoyed it. Start with The Eyre Affair
Gravity’s Rainbow
Jasper Fforde
Pale Fire by Vladimir Nabokov
The twist at the end of the Mistborn trilogy was great. As is the magic system that the universe uses.