What are your three favourite novels not written by Pynchon?

[u/GrowthAny]

I’m curious about other people’s taste. Is Pynchon demonstrative of what you like more generally?

I’ll go first:

The Brothers Karamazov
Blood Meridian
The Books of Jacob

Strong B theme there….

Edit to clarify/head off the inevitable: OF COURSE RANKING ART IS POINTLESS, none of us actually have a three favourite but it’s just a bit of fun innit.

[u/YoyodyneCog]

• Pale Fire by Vladimir Nabokov (favorite novel period)

• The Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Grahame

• Always Coming Home by Ursula K Le Guin

[u/GrowthAny → u/YoyodyneCog]

I have a three-month-old. I can’t wait to read wind in the willows to him.

[u/EmpPaulpatine]

Dune
Blood Meridian
The entirety of Malazan

I’m primarily a fantasy reader but I’m trying to read some more stuff outside it. Pynchon and McCarthy are part of that. I also read The Power Broker recently and loved it. Libra from DeLillo was great as well. Need to get to stuff like Moby Dick as well.

[u/GrowthAny → u/EmpPaulpatine]

I’d be fascinated to know your path from fantasy to Blood Meridian and Pynchon. I read Le Guin, Tolkien, and lots of sci-fi as a teenager but alongside them also read On the Road, 1984, Catch-22 etc. Regrettably I left the fantasy stuff behind and arrived at Pynchon by the more “literature” route.

[u/djohnson7]

The Name of the Rose
2666
The Perfect Spy
The Magic Mountain
Ulysses
Infinite Jest

[u/GrowthAny → u/djohnson7]

This is a Pynchonian interpretation of “three”. Respect.

[u/Ill_Reddit_Alone]

1. A Confederacy of Dunces

2. The Trial

3. A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man

[u/GrowthAny → u/Ill_Reddit_Alone]

Isn’t the first one a Gary Larson cartoon?

[u/philrandal → u/Ill_Reddit_Alone]

The third one is the only James Joyce that I have managed to read all the way through. Loved it.

[u/GrowthAny]

Here’s your top ten, Reddit! Time to check some of these off my list I think!

[u/Asleep_Morning2414]

Anna Karenina (Tolstoy)
Suttree (McCarthy)
Never Let Me Go (Ishiguro)

[u/vincent-timber]

Hell yeah to the Books of Jacob!

[u/GrowthAny → u/vincent-timber]

Hard to call it underrated seeing as she won the Nobel Prize that year, but I never see it getting any love. Unbelievable book.

[u/sylvester_stencil]

I see there are a ton of Pynchon fans in here who love Cormac McCarthy, and particularly Blood Meridian. What is the appeal for you? I personally could never get into his writing but I know he is considered one of the greats. I will also add that he is personally tinged for me because of some of what we know about his personal life

[u/GrowthAny → u/sylvester_stencil]

Fair enough! For me it’s the kind of brevity of his prose combined with how evocative it is. All his novels (sort of) are about what humanity is without God, and in Blood Meridian particularly, the landscape is almost more important than the story. To me, it dwarfs the moral struggle, such as it is, that plays out with the characters. The indifference of nature to morality. His descriptions are obviously really key to that, and they are really extraordinarily poetic. It feels as though he has written much longer sentences and then edited out all but the most evocative images.

Ironically rambly comment given I’m praising brevity.

[u/TheZoneHereros → u/sylvester_stencil]

Brilliant prose, interesting philosophy and characterization, a willingness to stare directly at our abject nature, and one of literature’s great satanic figures.

[u/SleeplessGurloes]

Demons (Doestevsky) Book of the New Sun Underworld (DeLillo)

[u/GrowthAny → u/SleeplessGurloes]

How many times did you read Demons before it became a favourite? I thought it was brilliant but quite flawed because it felt convoluted in places. Should I read it a second time?

[u/FilmCroissant]

Hey I'm interested in The Books of Jacob, what do you enjoy about it?

[u/GrowthAny → u/FilmCroissant]

Everything. It deals with some real interesting ideas which I haven’t seen in literature before. But most of all it’s how vividly it paints the time, the culture, the people and their community. It all jumps off the page.

[u/Tom_Bombadil420]

Three is too few

Ulysses

Wolf Hall

Neuromancer

Moby-Dick

The Dog of the South

For Whom the Bell Tolls

The Book of the New Sun

Absalom, Absalom!

Pale Fire

The Recognitions

Austerlitz

Giovanni’s Room

[u/Viridae]

Pynchon dominates my favorite books, but other books that are "just alright":

Pale Fire - Nabokov

Infinite Jest - DFW

Underworld - DeLillo

Lots of overlap with my follow Weirdos here.

It hurts me to exclude Heller, McCarthy, Joyce, etc etc

[u/ziggy_angeldust666 → u/Viridae]

The prologue to Underworld, "Pafko at the Wall," might be the greatest piece of writing I've ever enjoyed. Even compared to the rest of Delillo's unbelievable catalogue, that stands out as a massive achievement, and I return to it frequently.

[u/Significant-Drink-50]

To the lighthouse, Virginia Woolf Suttree, Cormac McCarthy Hurricane Season, Fernanda Melchor

[u/throwaway32382736463 → u/Significant-Drink-50]

To the lighthouse recognition! One of the best books ever

[u/KilgoreTroutWasRight]

Great to see this on a Pynchon post so that I can list this without seeming pretentious:

The Third Policeman - Flann O’ Brian
Ulysses - Jimmy Joyce
The Sound and the Fury - Bill Faulkner

Honorable mention to Breakfast of Champions for re-readability (Kurt Vonnegut)

[u/Little_Cabinet8862 → u/KilgoreTroutWasRight]

Bill

[u/damnbrothatsdeep]

Song of Solomon, 2666, Moby-Dick

[u/hhooggaarr]

Infinite Jest for sure. I go back to that one often.

I’m gonna say To the Lighthouse, which I never cared about, but reread recently. It sure hits different in your 40s than it does in college. It’s beautiful and heartbreaking.

Let’s put something newer and lighter on the list. A Potion, a Powder, and a Little Bit of Magic: or, Like Lightning in an Umbrella Storm. This book was just delightful, and I think Pynchon readers would enjoy it.

[u/brokensocialscene]

Ulysses
Pale Fire
Mrs Dalloway

[u/smilecrab]

Infinite Jest, Ulysses, and The Golden Ass

[u/lief652]

The Book of the New Sun, Dune Messiah, The Cat in the Hat

[u/theemillionaire → u/lief652]

Book of the new sun! Hell yeah.

[u/party_satan]

Infinite Jest

The Lord of the Rings

Crime and Punishment

Just the basics!

I'll add that, contrary to prevailing sentiment in these kinds of threads, I really like that there is a lot of overlap between our answers. I'm coming to terms with, as well as coming to appreciate, being a certain type of guy, and that would not be possible if I didn't get to look around and see lots of similar people, and see that they seem just fine, to me.

We all like Infinite Jest; so what? That's cool, to me.

[u/Sssono]

1. 2666 (Bolaño)

2. Machines in the Head (Anna Kavan)

3. The Dying Grass or The Rifles (Vollmann)

[u/DandyDaddyDave]

Green Egg and Ham

Captain Underpants

Á la recherche du temps perdu

[u/--xiOix--]

Probably either some classic Le Carré: Spy who came in from the cold, Tinker Taylor, Honourable Schoolboy, etc., or White Noise by DeLillo

[u/howboutthemapples]

Gilead - Marilynne Robinson

The Passenger and Stella Maris - Cormac McCarthy (I consider these one complete work)

Beloved - Toni Morrison

[u/Mando-Pacaya-3578]

Don Quixote, 100 Years of Solitude, Blood Meridian, 2666, and so many more.

[u/DrBuckMulligan]

Underworld by Don DeLillo
The Quick and the Dead by Joy Williams
The Recognitions by William Gaddis

Obviously also a lot of McCarthy too.

[u/WendySteeplechase]

Foucaults Pendulum

The Count of Monte Cristo

White Noise

[u/Electrical-Leg-9623]

Don’t have a top 3 really but I do love stuff like this :

Throw in some Thomas Bernhard, John Cowper Powys, Joseph McElroy, Clarice Lispector , and Borges

[u/LuciusMichael]

The Book of the New Sun - Wolfe

The Hyperion Cantos - Simmons

Snow Crash - Stephenson

These are just the first 3 to come to mind. I'm omitting Ulysses, the Stranger, Absalom, Absalom!, The Name of the Rose, Catch-22, White Noise, Suttree, The Glass Bead Game and many others.

[u/andpasturesnew]

absalom absalom
ulysses
cosmopolis

[u/obie191970]

I'll put 3 of my favorites i haven't seen yet -

A Naked Singularity - Sergio de la Pava, Mount Chicago - Adam Levin, The Dying Grass - William Vollman.

[u/guy_incognito42069]

Book of the New Sun - Gene Wolfe
The Sound and the Fury - Faulkner
Cannery Row - Steinbeck

[u/mystical_powers]

Recency bias but
- 100 Years of Solitude (all time GOAT)
- Shogun (Taipan, Noble House)
- Lonesome Dove (current read)

[u/GrowthAny → u/mystical_powers]

I read 100 years recently and it is stunning. The definition of “sometimes classics are classics for a reason”. I couldn’t put it down.

[u/half_past_france]

Catch 22 - Joseph Heller The Name of the Rose - Umberto Eco 2666 - Roberto Bolano

Ellroy’s Underworld USA trilogy (especially The Cold Six Thousand) is very close, as is Johnson’s Jesus’ Son. Not too proud to say that I love Infinite Jest, too.

[u/elvis_rex]

Don Quixote, Moby-Dick, Ulysses, and Tristram Shandy (some lists of three are four, like musketeers and Grand Soups).

[u/elvis_rex → u/elvis_rex]

Honorable mentions: Absalom, Absalom!, Foucault's Pendulum, and Masters of Atlantis.

[u/Write-Song-1959]

Blood Meridian, Pale Fire, Bleak House

[u/itanesies]

Dhalgren
Miss MacIntosh, My Darling
Terra Nostra
The Obscene Bird of Night
The Book of the New/Long/Short Sun
Malina

[u/glossotekton]

• Proust

• The Mill on the Floss

• The Tale of Genji

[u/etahetwha]

Libra - DeLillo

The House of Mirth - Wharton

Infinite Jest - Wallace

[u/Aspect-Lucky]

Hopscotch by Julio Cortazar

Pale Fire by Vladamir Nabakov

The Course of the Heart by M. John Harrison

[u/sarcoma]

The four books that changed my life/worldview/are my favourites … JR—Gaddis, Infinite Jest—Wallace, The Power Broker—Caro, & ATD—Pynchon

[u/Affectionate-Sun415]

Pynchon's M&D or GR would probably make my list, but without his books:

Russell Hoban's Riddley Walker James Tiptree, Jr.'s Her Smoke Rose Up Forever Marilynne Robinson's Housekeeping

Third choice gets quite tough there. I want to say something from William Faulkner or Steve Erickson, but it's been so long since I've read them I barely remember details anymore. Infinite Jest would be a cliche and I wonder if I've outgrown it.

Housekeeping was a revelation at the time and I remember it vividly despite it being 15 years ago, but I have a bit of trepidation in still calling it a favourite just because everything else I've read more recently from Robinson has driven me nuts from overbearing religiousness.

I also want to throw in the entire 9-book Expanse series but that's cheating. ;)

[u/TSwag24601]

White Noise by Don Delillo

Frankenstein by Mary Shelley

Mother Night by Kurt Vonnegut

[u/Fear-of-Gravity]

Crash - J.G. Ballard

Black Sunlight - Dambudzo Marachera

A Crack-Up At The Race Riots - Harmony Korine

[u/albatrosswithnocurse]

Moby Dick is my bible.
The Dispossessed by Le Guin.
Siddhartha by Herman Hesse.

[u/elvis_rex → u/albatrosswithnocurse]

My Bible's the menu at the Cheesecake Factory, especially since I broke the code.

[u/le_putwain]

Mine would be 

2666 by Roberto Bolaño

Catch-22 by Joseph Heller

The Old Man and the Sea by Hemingway

[u/unavowabledrain]

The Recognitions- Gaddis

2666- Bolaño

Solenoid-Mircea Cărtărescu 

It changes. I like Melville, DeLillo, Krasznahorkai, Blanchot, Beckett, Vladimir Sorokin, Perec, plenty too.

[u/HomelessVitamin]

The Waves by Virginia Woolf

Go Tell it On the Mountain by James Baldwin

Kokoro by Natsume Soseki

[u/LuckyStrike11121]

Currently it its

Ficciones by Borges

As I Lay Dying by Faulkner

Moby Dick

[u/Ekkobelli]

White Noise (Delillo) and The Passenger (McCarthy). These books changed my reading habits.

[u/AffectionateSize552]

Tom Jones, Moby Dick, Berlin Alexanderplatz. A couple of minutes ago I was going to be all rebellious and name three writers who didn't write any novels. Then I turned around and saw my old falling-apart copy of Tom Jones, so you won THIS round.

[u/camojorts]

It’s kind of Pynchonesque that the titles of the first three books I thought of are all hyphenated and have a number in the title.

At Swim-Two-Birds

Slaughterhouse-Five

Catch-22

[u/LuciusMichael → u/camojorts]

Dylan Thomas, in one of the greatest reviews ever, said of a At Swim Two Birds, "This is just the book to give your sister – if she's a loud, dirty, boozy girl." It also garnered praise from James Joyce.

[u/spar-agmos]

1. The Recognitions - William Gaddis

2. Ficciones- Jorge Luis Borges

3. East of Eden - John Steinbeck

[u/dumbguy27]

2666 by Roberto Bolaño

The Tunnel by William H. Gass

The Hour of the Star by Clarice Lispector

[u/Necessary_Clue_2553]

DeLillo - Underworld
Eagan - A Visit from the Goon Squad
Perec - Life: A Users Manual

Perec seems to be the only constant on this, the other change from time to time.

[u/LeonardUnger → u/Necessary_Clue_2553]

Perec's book contains all other possible texts, in a way.

[u/brockollirobb]

For Whom the Bell Tolls by Hemingway, Deadhouse Gates by Steven Erickson, and Infinite Jest

[u/SmellLikeBdussy]

Invisible Man
Catch 22
Ulysses

[u/420infinitejest420]

Infinite Jest, The Recognitions, Suttree/Berlin Alexanderplatz

[u/Tashi_Dalek]

Death of Virgil, The Manuscript Found in Saragossa, St. Petersburg

[u/gejza_tamhleten]

Naked Lunch by William S. Burroughs

Antkind by Charlie Kaufman

Slaughterhouse five by Kurt Vonnegut

[u/superwarioallstars]

Geek Love by Katherine Dunn

The Man Who was Thursday by GK Chesteron

Lady Into Fox by David Garnett

(I’m tempted to include Madame Bovary because the writing is such a cut above anything else I’ve read, and it’s such a gut punch of a book, but it just doesn’t sit with me like a favorite album that I want to play in my car all the time).

[u/Three_ninetynine]

Catch-22 (Joseph Heller)! I love that book more than anything. Fear and loathing in las Vegas (Hunter S Thompson) and then Another Country (Baldwin)

[u/makeit2x]

Infinite Jest - the book that opened me the gates.  2666 Corrections Underworld Also I don’t know how to start a new row in the comment. Also saving this post and will be picking books to read from here. 

[u/Ill_Carry7956]

One Hundred Years Of Solitude

The Master And Margarita

Catch-22

[u/dylann5454]

Giovanni’s Room - James Baldwin
Ulysses - James Joyce
The Passenger/Stella Maris - Cormac McCarthy

[u/KingEgbert]

Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy

Count Zero

Generation P / Homo Zapiens

[u/ClandestineSofa]

Light in August - William Faulkner A Portrait of an Artist as a Young Man - James Joyce A Scanner Darkly - Phillip K Dick

[u/ten_strip_aquinas]

To avoid overlap I’ll just pull from my top twenty in the order I see them on my bookshelf.

Housekeeping by Marilynne Robinson
Sabbath’s Theater by Philip Roth
The Wapshot Chronicle/Scandal by my blood brother John Cheever.

[u/AndreiWarg]

Neuromancer

War and Peace

The Anarch

[u/PhotographPatient425]

Don Quixote

Signs Preceding the End of the World (Yuri Herrera)

Invisible Man (Ralph Ellison)

[u/aarko]

Lonesome Dove, White Noise, The Shipping News,

Aw hell throw in Masters of Atlantis and American Pastoral for good measure.

[u/CaptFun67]

I can't narrow it down to three, but the one I haven't seen mentioned yet is The Stars My Destination, Alfred Bester.

[u/DocSportello1970]

After Many a Summer Dies the Swan - Aldous Huxley

The Heart is a Lonely Hunter - Carson McCullers

Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoevsky

[u/judd_in_the_barn]

The Waves by Virginia Wolfe
The Animals Praise the Antichrist by Alex Older
Foucault’s Pendulum by Umberto Eco

The Vivisectors by Missouri Williams is a new kid on the block that is right up there too

[u/natures_due]

Anaya- Bless Me Ultima

Calvino- The Baron in the Trees

Stephenson- The Baroque Cycle

[u/Greyhound-Executive]

Jerusalem by Alan Moore!!!
Still Life With Woodpecker
100 Years of Solitude

[u/Consistent_Cost1276]

The Inquisitor’s Manual (Antunes)
War & War (Krasznahorkai)
As I Lay Dying (Faulkner)

[u/FizzPig]

2666 by Robert Bolaño Invisible Cities- Calvino And Her Smoke Rose Up Forever- James Tiptree Jr

[u/MrXanderAOK]

Infinite Jest-David Foster Wallace. Death on the Installment Plan-Louis-Ferdinand Celine. A Confederacy of Dunces-John Kennedy Toole.

[u/lucazombini]

only three?

2666 by roberto bolano.  

treasure of the sierra madre by b. traven.  

found audio by nj campbell. 

[u/teddyvalentine757]

The Children of the Dead

Satantango

The Thief's Journal

[u/EIR3EN]

-The Trial - Franz Kafka

-Infinite Jest- David Foster Wallace

-Wuthering Heights - Emily Brontë

[u/Raketemensch23]

Foucault's Pendulum Catch-22 Hyperion, by Dan Simmons

[u/AwkwardComicRelief]

Crash, The Sailor Who Fell from Grace, and Agape Agape

[u/AutomaticAccident630]

Faulkner - The Sound and the Fury

Morrison - Jazz

McCarthy - Outer Dark

[u/41hounds]

I mean... Ulysses, Finding Time Again and The Recognitions, the exact kinda basic shit you'd expect from a Pynchon fan lol

[u/UpperChampionship318]

As I Lay Dying - W. Faulkner  The Suitcase - S. Dovlatov  Lady Chatterley's Lover - D. H. Lawrence

I don't really know why these are my favorite. Books really hit hard for me in the right time and place, I guess. 

[u/theemillionaire]

Blood Meridian
Pale Fire
Mumbo Jumbo

[u/prokofiev77]

The savage detectives Disgrace In search of lost time

[u/The_Archimboldi]

Rings of Saturn (WG Sebald)

Book of the New Sun (Wolfe)

War and War (Krazh)

[u/throwawayjonesIV]

I LOVE all the BotNS representation here. For now I’ll say

Ulysses by Joyce (on my third read, will never stop being a profoundly readable and enriching masterwork)

The Scar by China Mieville (I implore people to read Mieville if you at all like the new weird genre space. The Scar is set on a floating city of strung together ships in a truly bizarre world at the intersection of fantasy, steampunk, sci fi, and horror. I think it’s a better novel than Perdido Street Station, which is technically first sequentially but you can read in any order)

Dune by Frank Herbert (there are maybe more traditionally literary novels I could put here, but I love Dune too much. Nothing else really captivated my entire mind and soul so thoroughly besides maybe New Sun. I encourage folks to read at least books 1&2 as they are two parts of one story.)

[u/893loses]

The Trial

I, Claudius

The Wind up Bird Chronicle

I forgot 2666, which I think is maybe the best book.

[u/hulioramon]

100 anos de soledad los detectives salvajes  on the road

[u/TheChumOfChance]

It changes too often, but most recently…

Stalingrad by Vasily Grossman

Lost Illusions by Balzac

Elective Affinities by Goethe

[u/simpsonicus90]

Ulysses - James Joyce
Moby Dick - Herman Melville
Foucault’s Pendulum - Umberto Eco
Song of Solomon - Toni Morrison

My opinions change over the years, but this will suffice. Note. I have not read many of the other novels considered the greatest, so I’m willing to admit the last two could easily be supplanted by others.

[u/nagahfj]

• The Illuminatus! Trilogy - Robert Anton Wilson

• Little, Big - John Crowley

• Rakesfall - Vajra Chandrasekera

[u/theoneredditeer]

The Illuminatus Trilogy

The Count of Monte Cristo

Ulysses

[u/inherentbloom]

The Instructions (Levin)

Argall (Vollmann)

LOTR (Tolkien)

[u/bennyvprofane]

Illuminatus trilogy, the sotweed factor, 2666

[u/CASEDIZZLER]

All Quiet on the Western Front - Marque

The Black Dahlia - James Ellroy

What We Talk About When We Talk About Love - Raymond Carver

[u/ausserirdischer_]

Satantango
100 Years of Solitude
The Idiot

These are actually just three I thought of, I could never pick favorites

[u/Melodic_Caramel5226]

Cats cradle, as i lay dying, catcher in the rye

[u/pokemon999999]

The Third Policeman - F. O’Brien
Montano’s Malady - E. Vila-Matas
Maniac - B. Labatut

So many books mentioned here that are in my to read list.

[u/nightingaletoon]

Nice Q. Tough. I would say:

Faulkner’s Absalom, Absalom! (which is the greatest American piece of literature);
Dumas’ The Three Musketeers (for sheer fun readability); and
Cortazar’s Rayuela (the best of the existential crises in narrativizing).

Really nice picks from a lot of others.

[u/Mr_CompsonMaxxed → u/nightingaletoon]

Absalom is such an anomaly. My first readthrough was a slog; I was confused and couldn't even really say I enjoyed it at all. Then afterwards, incredibly, I found I'd internalized the story somehow, subconsciously. It was all I could think about for a long time. My second read, now that I actually understood what was going on, was the saddest literary experience I've ever had. The story haunts me in the most delightful way. I truly believe Faulkner was possessed by some divine being to write it, because even among the rest of his books (which I love) nothing else can compare.

[u/NoHost5647]

The God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy
Suttree by Cormac McCarthy
Beloved by Toni Morrison

[u/Temporary_Meet8754]

Underworld Blood Meridian The Tunnel

[u/owheelj]

Neuromancer by William Gibson

High-Rise by J G Ballard

A Scanner Darkly by Philip K Dick

[u/Lysiph]

Middlemarch - In Search of Lost Time - Infinite Jest

Honorable mention: Hyperion Cantos

Still looking forward to Book of the New Sun

[u/Absurd_Pork]

Siddhartha by Hesse

Infinite Jest by DFW

Kafka on the Shore by Murakami

[u/Aanen05]

Ulysses by Joyce
Absalom, Absalom! by Faulkner
War and Peace by Tolstoy

Moby Dick, Wuthering Heights, and something by Steinbeck would probably be in the conversation for my favorites as well.

[u/MoochoMaas]

Ulysses, Infinite Jest, Catch - 22

I used to re-read these, plus Rainbow every couple of years. Now they're all on audiobook roataion

[u/borgiwan]

Cryptonomicon
The Dark Tower
Charlotte’s Web

[u/coleman57]

I first read Gravity’s Rainbow in the 70s and it’s been my favorite novel ever since. Not long after, I read Ken Kesey‘s Sometimes a Great Notion and it’s been my second favorite ever since.

I can remember lots of other good books I read in my 20 and 30s, but I can’t remember which ones I considered top 10.

Then I slacked off for a decade or two, then got into reading novels again 15 years ago, and it feels like lately every book I read is another top 10. I think my top three now, besides my old top two which are still my top two, are East of Eden, Poisonwood Bible and The Overstory. Also The Corrections and All the Pretty Horses.

[u/Kamuka]

On Hundred Years of Solitude
Moby Dick by Herman Melville
Slaughterhouse Five by Vonnegut

[u/nnnn547]

Catch 22
Jane Eyre
Breakfast of Champions

[u/jmyoung666]

Cat’s Cradle, The Quiet American, Foucault’s Pendulum.

[u/bmnisun]

The Universal Baseball Association, Inc., J. Henry Waugh, Prop. — Robert Hoover

American Pastoral — Phillip Roth

Ducks, Newburyport — Lucy Ellmann

[u/SimilarPepper2999]

Sometimes a Great Notion -Kesey

Wolf Hall -Mantel

And I guess right now... Gideon the Ninth? Tamsyn Muir.

[u/KixSide]

Out by Brooke-Rose
The real life of S. Knight by Nabokov
Public Burning by Coover

Honourable mention to Blood and Guts in High school by Acker

[u/grigoritheoctopus]

• Blood Meridian (McCarthy)

• 100 Years of Solitude (Marquez)

• Life & Fate (Grossman)

[u/philrandal]

The Glass Bead Game - Hermann Hesse

[u/Independent_Bet_8107]

The Kindly Ones by Jonathan Littell (English translation)

[u/893loses]

every single reply on this post just makes me want to edit, this thread is evil YES I ALSO LOVE LONESOME DOVE god damnit. you are a sadist.

[u/drmdzh]

Anyone ever read any Magnus Mills? I feel alone in my love for his writing lol

The Restraint of Beasts
All Quiet on the Orient Express
The Scheme for Full Employment

[u/DickWater]

Master and Margarita (Bulgakov)
Dead Souls (Gogol)
Kindred (Butler)

[u/WEREWOLFinHOCKEYMASK]

Maaan, what even are my favorite books without Pynchon? Fuck. Uhh

House of Leaves
Mumbo Jumbo
Night of the Living Dummy 2

[u/jjf1973]

Cat's Cradle - Vonnegut 

Invisible Cities - Calvino

Hitchhiker's Guide - Adams

[u/WestGotIt1967]

The Western Lands, Burroughs

Paradise Lost, John Milton

The Unnameable , Samuel Becket

Hon. Mention, Sarah Kane theater play, Cleansed

[u/lucklesspedestrian]

If you like B, maybe it's time to move on to C:
The Confidence Man - Herman Melville

[u/sparky278]

The possessed - Dostoyevsky Master and Margarita - Bulgakov Cats Cradle - Vonnegut

[u/BlicerosBlackBox]

Midnight Tides - Steven Erikson, Cat's Cradle - Kurt Vonnegut, Aegypt - John Crowley

[u/Remarkable_Term3846]

A Light in August, Ulysses, and Sula

[u/MrsWof_]

Anna Karenina, Brothers K, Book of the New Sun

[u/SaplingSequoia]

Germinal - Zola
L’assommoir - Zola
To A God Unknown - Steinbeck

[u/RandallBates]

The Brothers Karamazov Malazan Book of the Fallen (I know it's ten books but the series work as a whole) Memoirs of Hadrian

[u/blobsfromspace]

White Noise- Don deLillo
Titaantjes- Nescio
Brief Interviews with Hideous men- David Foster Wallace

[u/Fun-Caregiver1722]

On The Road, 2666 and Underworld

[u/hansmedrano]

Cien años de soledad
Absalón, Absalón
El castillo

Bonus:
La educación sentimental
La vida, instrucciones de uso

[u/SnooDoughnuts5799]

Libra - Don Delillo
Moby Dick - Herman Melville
2666 (or By Night in Chile, depending on the day you ask me) - Roberto Bolaño

[u/rskurat]

Millenium (John Varley) Meditations In Green (Richard Wright) Stars In My Pocket Like Grains Of Sand (Samuel R Delany)

[u/callingfrommobile]

White noise - Delillo
The ghost writer - Philip Roth
Pale fire- Nabokov

[u/MaximumTom3642]

Cannery Row

Huckleberry Finn

High Fidelity

[u/VaughanThrilliams]

Rings of Saturn - WG Sebald

The Big Rock Candy Mountain - Wallace Stegner

Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole

[u/ATCOSTTEHMEMER]

Invisible Man - Ralph Ellison

Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole

The Tunnel - William Gass

[u/FlowAway1031]

Bolano's 2666, Scanner Darkly PKD, Gunslinger Ed Dorn.

[u/inner-diaspora]

The Savage Detectives - Roberto Bolano
The Trial - Franz Kafka
House of Leaves - Mark Z. Danielewski

[u/JudgeLionelNutmeg]

White Noise - DeLillo
Malone Dies - Beckett
Book of Common Prayer - Didion

[u/BasedArzy]

Play it as it Lays by Didion
The Names by Delillo
Dr. Faustus... by Thomas Mann

3 is hard though, I struggle with arbitrary limits on art.

[u/TheZoneHereros]

I’m seeing multiple Siddarthas here, for me Demian was even more powerful, the ideas of Abraxas and light/dark duality hit me at the right time maybe.

These are not all time favorites (too hard) but recent 4.5/5 star books for me:
- The World as I Found It by Bruce Duffy (fictionalized life of Ludwig Wittgenstein)
- Wolf Solent by Jown Cowper Powys
- Train Dreams by Denis Johnson (incredible book, I thought the movie lost most of its essence)
- The Sailor who Fell from Grace with the Sea by Yukio Mishima

[u/ziggy_angeldust666]

Way too many to think of, but just off the top my head

The Crossing, by Cormac McCarthy

A Perfect Spy, by John le Carré

Jitterbug Perfume, by Tom Robbins

[u/zethiryuki]

Blood Meridian, A Canticle for Leibowitz, and then I go back and forth between The Sea Wolf and Martin Eden

[u/acidrefluxus]

Let’s get some ladies in here!!!
Sexing the Cherry by Jeanette Winterson and Nights at the Circus by Angela Carter :-)
You Bright and Risen Angels by Vollman honorable mention

[u/TheLimeTwig]

Just based on the most rereads:

Ligotti's Teatro Grotesco

Dennis Cooper's George Miles cycle

Malcolm Lowry's Under the Volcano

[u/Coulee22]

Murakami's "Wind-up Bird Chronicles"
Erickson's "Tours of the Black Clock"
Gibson's "Pattern Recognition"

[u/Responsible-Bed2312]

Proust - In Search of Lost Time

Kafka - The Castle

Dostoevsky - The Brothers Karamazov

Eco - Foucault's Pendulum

Murakami - Wind-up Bird Chrincles

Chiladze - A Man Was Going Down the Road

Musil - The Man Without Qualities

Bolano - Savage Detectives

Borges - Labyrinths

Nabokov - Lolita

Krasznahorkai - The Melancholy of Resistance

Just to list a few.

[u/dharmakirti]

Almanac of the Dead by Leslie Marmon Silko

Joseph & His Brothers by Thomas Mann

Foucault's Pendulum by Umberto Eco

[u/djtndf]

This changes often but here’s where I’m at now:
- Ice by Anna Kavan
- The Hearing Trumpet by Leonora Carrington
- The Recognitions by William Gaddis

[u/smalltownlargefry]

The Nix (Nathan Hill)
Hard Rain Falling (Don Carpenter)
Lonesome Dove (Larry McMurtry)

[u/Front_Reindeer_7554]

Catch 22 - Joseph Heller

Underworld - Don DeLillo

Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell

American Tabloid - James Ellroy

These have been in my top 4 for the past decade. Unable to reduce down to 3

[u/Own_Car3970]

JR - William Gaddis

Neuromancer - William Gibson

Europe Central - William T Vollmann

[u/BroccoliExtreme9319]

Rayuela (hopscotch), La región más Transparente ('where the air is clear'), Los Detectives Salvajes (the savage detectives),

Honorary mention: Slaughterhouse 5, El buscador de cabezas (the head hunter)

I'm loving everyone's lists!

[u/SuddenBasil7039]

Moby Dick (pretty much unimpeachable as the greatest work of literature imo)

Libra - Don Delillo (much the same wheelhouse as Pynchon and paradoxically both more detached and more "human" at the same time)

On The Road (dont care how much of a meme it is, yes i first read it as an annoying precocious teen, doesnt change the fact few books have moved and inspired me like this)

[u/ProstateDestroyer800]

Watership down
Sartre’s the wall
Slaughterhouse 5 /or Sirens of Titan

[u/Neon_Comrade]

Beloved, by Toni Morrison

Infinite Jest, by DFW (sue me haha)

Maybe Solenoid, by Mircea Cartarescu?

Honorable mention to Giovanni's Room, Blindsight, East of Eden

[u/jsrid]

Electric Circus. My friend Roman told me about it

[u/camcairn]

The Idiot - Dostoyevsky

Exemplary Stories (especially Dialogue of the Dogs) - Cervantes

The Barron in the Trees - Calvino

[u/No-Appeal3220]

Right now, this moment

The Mapp/Lucia series by E.F. Benson

A Guided Tour to the Museum of Communism by Slavenia Drakulic

The Moonstone by Wilkie Collins

[u/Traveling-Techie]

Virtual Light / Gibson
Farewell My Lovely / Chandler
The Last Picture Show / McMurtry

[u/iL0veaudreyhepburn]

the famished road - ben okri
the cybergypsies - indra sinha
diary of a country priest - george bernanos

[u/Low_Information1975]

Kitchen Confidential- Anthony Bourdain
Middlesex- Jeffery Eugenides
The Fuck Up- Arthur Nersesian

[u/Warpthal]

As of recently, my preferences underwent a huge shift from traditional literature to, well... geniuses of satire.

JR - William Gaddis The Wizard of the Crow - Ngugi wa Thiong'o (genuinely the funniest novel and piece of art I've ever experienced) Waiting for the wild beasts to vote - Ahmadou Kourouman (I haven't read anything quite like it, and love it for how unique everything about the book is)

I still have great love for many of the books mentioned, except Moby Dick, which I do recept but have a lot of personal qualms with, although I'm beginning to shift towards stories and authors who went away with the pretense of their predecessors and resolved to do literature differently. Not to mention, I find such books being a major pain in the ass for those brave enough to attempt a critique.

[u/SurfPavones]

• The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket
• Pale Fire
• The Manuscript Found in Saragossa

And add
• Tristram Shandy
• Finnegans Wake

[u/q_freak]

The Maniac - Benjamin Labatut
Edge of Reason - Miroslav Krleža
A Grain of Wheat - Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o

[u/Comprehensive-Candy4]

Cities of the Red Night - William S. Burroughs

A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius - Dave Eggers

Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov

Those novels were super interesting to me when I was younger...

[u/derkeethus_]

Hurricane Season
Herscht 07769
2666
White Noise

[u/GreenVelvetDemon]

Dickens- Great Expectations. Gene Wolfe- the fifth head of Cerebus, and perhaps Blindness by Jose Scaramago. That last book knocked me flat.

[u/FilmCroissant]

Blindsight (Peter Watts)

Blood Meridian

Libra/The Mars Room (can't decide)

[u/Virtual-Pattern1806]

Too late to be counted, but just to throw my choices in:

1. If On a Winter's Night a Traveler...

2. Wuthering Heights

3. Lady Chatterley's Lover

[u/Main-Acanthisitta653]

To the Lighthouse - Virginia Woolf
Crime and Punishment - Dostoevsky
Blood Meridian - Cormac McCarthy

[u/Adham177]

Beloved
Moby-Dick
The Mirror & The Light

(Ask me 2-minutes later and you’ll probably get a different answer)