Recommend me some books which capture the pure joy of reading

[aneeshm]

For a long time now, I've been reading books that make me think. The problem is that now I've fallen into a habit of analysing even the simplest books that I read to the nth degree, without letting myself relax.

So I need to take a sabbatical, and withdraw myself from analysis for a while, and relax the mind and ease the burden of thought, because the constant intense thinking is getting intolerable, and is giving me headaches and making it difficult for me to fall asleep.

So I'm asking the people here to recommend books which are not deep, or philosophical, or multi-layered, or anything like that. I want books which will simple help me to feel, without thought or analysis getting in the way. I don't want books with some political or moral message, just something which is designed to make the reader feel something, either for the characters or for something else.

For instance, when I was younger, Richmal Crompton's William series used to do it for me. Now, Terry Pratchett helps me relax, but even that is not something you read just like that, there is always some message behind it, something to think about.

Recommend something which I can read for the pure joy of reading, and for no other reason in the world.

[Asmodean]

Well, I don't know what genres you like, but I have always found that Asimov's Foundation trilogy is a joy to read. It's Sci-Fi though, so not to everyone's liking

Asmodean

[aneeshm]

Originally posted by Asmodean
Well, I don't know what genres you like, but I have always found that Asimov's Foundation trilogy is a joy to read. It's Sci-Fi though, so not to everyone's liking

Asmodean

Thanks. I know. I've read it multiple times. But I'm looking for something new, now.

[Barnabas]

Maybe "100 years of Solitude" ?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One_hundred_years_of_solitude

Probably the second best novel in spanish after El Quixote, and Clinton´s favorite book. It is said the english translation is as good as the spanish original.


Or something like

"Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea" I remember liking it a lot, and it is easier to read.

[Thoth]

Have you read David Weber's "Honor Harrington" series? It's some first rate military sci-fi without too much thinking required.

[Bugs ****ing Bunny]

"Riddley Walker"- Russell Hoban.

I rate this as my favourite book. It's set thousands of years after a devastating nuclear war, with the stone-age people of England attempting to make sense of their history through battered myths and revelations. It's told in a degenerate pseudo-English, and is completely spellbinding.


"If on a winter's night a traveller..."- Italo Calvino.

A post-modern masterpiece about you, the reader, attempting to read "If on a winter's night a traveller..." by Italo Calvino. It's all about the joy of reading fiction, and you get the girl in the end.


"The pillars of the earth"- Ken Follett.

A historical fiction about the building of a cathedral. It's a pot-boiler, but a really good one that's hugely readable. It'll also teach you loads about architecture.

[Ecthy]

The pillars of the earth is a piece of bull kaka.

[ZEE]

OMFG i am reading that right now!
pieceâ„¢

[Jon Miller]

Originally posted by Thoth
Have you read David Weber's "Honor Harrington" series? It's some first rate military sci-fi without too much thinking required.

In fact, if you do much thinking you will no longer enjoy it.

JM

[SlowwHand]

Lonesome Dove

[Nostromo]

"The Stars My Destination" by Alfred Bester. I just finished reading it. A good summer read. A SF retelling of Dumas' Count of Monte Cristo. But I don't think you'll approve of Bester's democratic sensibilities

The Stars My Destination is, in one sense, a science-fiction adaption of Alexandre Dumas' The Count of Monte Cristo. It is the study of a man completely lacking in imagination or ambition, Gulliver Foyle. Fate transforms "Gully" Foyle in an instant; shipwrecked in space, then abandoned by a passing luxury liner, Foyle becomes a monomaniacal and sophisticated monster bent upon revenge. Wearing many masks, learning many skills, this "worthless" man pursues his goals relentlessly; no price is too high to pay.

The Stars My Destination anticipated many of the staples of the later cyberpunk movement—the megacorporations as powerful as the governments, a dark overall vision of the future, the cybernetic enhancement of the body. To this it added the standard "one weird idea" of science fiction—that human beings could learn to teleport, or "jaunte" from point to point, with various personal limitations but one overall absolute limit: no one can jaunte through outer space. On the surface of a planet, the jaunte rules supreme; off it, mankind is still restricted to machinery.

The protagonist, Gully Foyle, is introduced as "He was one hundred and seventy days dying and not yet dead..." Foyle is a cipher, a man with potential but no motivation, who is suddenly marooned in space. Even this is not enough to galvanize him beyond trying to find air and food on the wreck. But all changes when an apparent rescue ship deliberately passes him by, stirring him irrevocably out of his passivity.

The scenario of the shipwrecked man ignored by passing ships came from a National Geographic Magazine story that Bester had read from World War II: A shipwrecked sailor had survived four months on a raft in the Pacific, and ships had passed him without picking him up, due to their captains' fears that the raft was a decoy to lure them into torpedo range of Japanese submarines. (Source: An account by Bester in My Affair with Science Fiction, in Hell's Cartographers ed. by Harry Harrison and Brian Aldiss, 1975)

"Berlin Noir" by Philip Kerr. A pretty good detective/thriller set in Berlin, during the Nazi period.

Now published in one paperback volume, these three mysteries are exciting and insightful looks at life inside Nazi Germany -- richer and more readable than most histories of the period. We first meet ex-policeman Bernie Gunther in 1936, in March Violets (a term of derision which original Nazis used to describe late converts.) The Olympic Games are about to start; some of Bernie's Jewish friends are beginning to realize that they should have left while they could; and Gunther himself has been hired to look into two murders that reach high into the Nazi Party. In The Pale Criminal, it's 1938, and Gunther has been blackmailed into rejoining the police by Heydrich himself. And in A German Requiem, the saddest and most disturbing of the three books, it's 1947 as Gunther stumbles across a nightmare landscape that conceals even more death than he imagines.

[Eli]

Space Operas are great for that.

I recommend Peter Hamilton's Pandora's Star and it's sequel Judas Unchained. Two engrossing books with lots of pages to keep you busy for many days.

You also can't go wrong with The Boat of a Million Years by Poul Anderson. Manages to neatly combine Historical and Science Fiction.

[VetLegion]

Re: Recommend me some books which capture the pure joy of reading

Originally posted by aneeshm
For a long time now, I've been reading books that make me think. The problem is that now I've fallen into a habit of analysing even the simplest books that I read to the nth degree, without letting myself relax.

Sounds awful.

And reminds me of:

http://www.theonion.com/content/node/27794

[Elok]

I know many books that capture the pure joy of reading...then tie it up, torture it, gang-rape it and kill it. My joy of reading escaped them before the final step, but it's no longer "pure." I am sad.

[aneeshm]

Re: Re: Recommend me some books which capture the pure joy of reading

Originally posted by VetLegion


Sounds awful.

And reminds me of:
http://www.theonion.com/content/node/27794

I just read the link, and damn, that's scary, because I've caught myself doing that, and it's getting worse.