Hello, folks! This is my first post here (and in the great, wide, still-confusing world of Lemmy). So stoked to find a new book community!
To answer the question, mine is “The Future of Nostalgia” by Svetlana Boym. I stumbled upon this book when I read a quote from it in a different book and I immediately went to track down a copy. A truly happy accident.
The most fascinating thing about this book was how universal it felt. Here was someone writing about post-Soviet Russia in the nineties, yet it felt strangely familiar. The commercialization of nostalgia, the unchecked rewriting of history, and the rose-tinted delusion of “The Golden Age”; it felt like she was talking about my own country. I’m a Lebanese expat, so nostalgia is a big part of my life and my relationship with my country (which is very much a love/hate relationshit), and this book completely redefined my understanding of nostalgia, nationality and collective identity, heritage, and even food. It helped me understand the survivor’s guilt, the PTSD, the resentment, and the stubborn fondness. It’s been so long since a book scooped out my soul and shook off the dust like this.
So, yeah. What’s the last book that made you go, “Holy shit, I think that just rewired my brain”?
(An older one for sure…)
“Salt: A World History” because by page 33 I’d learned more about history than I’d learned in high school. Not to mention salt!
The book is amazingly well-written in a very engaging style. The pages just flew by! I highly recommend it to anyone that’s curious about humanity’s relation to this essential-for-life mineral.
That sounds absolutely fascinating! I love hyper-specific nonfiction like that. I once read a book about the history of coffee and I learned so much more than I expected.
Then you’ll enjoy that book! What was the coffee one called? I love coffee…
Definitely adding it to my vacation stack. The coffee one was “Coffee A Global History” by Jonathan Harris (or Morris? I can’t recall which). But it was really interesting and not very long. Short and sweet.
Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Wall Kimmerer.
The book felt like a constant epiphany. I wanted to rekindle my relationship with nature and it helped me understand land stewardship in a way that I wasn’t able to grasp. The author connects nature and science so well that nature’s magic doesnt get lost in the scientific rigour. It also doesn’t shame the reader for their past or background, and was thoughtful and optimistic. The audio book is also read by the author which is great.
Great book!
1Q84 by Haruki Murakami. I’m a huge Murakami fan, but this is my first time reading this one. I’m at around page 1000, and I wish it was even longer! I still have 200 pages to go but still, I was instantly immersed, it’s the kind of world where you just dive deeper and deeper, the characters are mysterious yet endearing, and there is a lot of dialogue to puzzle over. The phrases the characters used are cryptic, and lend themselves to a lot of analysis and commentary. I also enjoy the journey through Tokyo, the nods to classical music, to different books, it is such a well created, incredibly detailed universe, truly fascinating.
World War Z. I read it because a friend recommended it, but I did not expect to like it since I don’t like zombie media and I assumed the author was only famous since they were Mel Brooks’ son. But it ended up being an amazing book with tons of insight into the human condition. It also really hit the nail on the head with some predictions over how society would react to a pandemic and it kind of came true with how people tackled COVID. From things like a snake oil salesman selling a fake cure, to politicians prioritizing the economy over informing people about the zombies.
We Are Legion (We Are Bob) by Dennis E Taylor. I’d never before thought that an immortal digital consciousness who can’t stop quoting/referencing 20th century nerd culture and spends decades out in space could be such an entertaining character, or have real, human, compelling stories and worries. The rest of the Bobiverse series isn’t half bad either. The audiobook is particularly well performed.
I loved this book! Such a fun read. Plus living in the South with kudzu EVERYWHERE, I was delighted it finally found a purpose besides choking all other plant life to death.
Oh neat! Being from the UK, I’d never heard of it before. Is it true what Riker said, about the unfortunate gastrointestinal consequences to consuming kudzu?
Well the only edible form I’ve heard of is kudzu jelly. There’s some at a small local shop in my town, though it’s dusty and I don’t know and never heard of anyone actually trying it. It’s draped over all the trees and bushes for miles and miles and miles in summer. In the 1800s Victorian era, people thought it looked fancy and planted it in their gardens. But alas. It’s a botanical terrorist and soon took over the world.
The Bobiverse sounds so fun xD
It really is. It’s silly, hopeful, fun.
I’m working through the Books of Babel series by Josiah Bancroft. The first book, Senlin Ascends, just clicked immediately and I finished it by the end of the week. Picked up the rest in the series and have been plowing through them. It’s a fantasy fiction, kinda steampunk-ish, alternate history kinda deal. But very well written and the characters are engaging.
“The Triumph of Broken Promises” by Fritz Bartel
It’s basically a retelling of the cold war that focuses on economic factors over individual actors. It makes the case that the cold war ended as a ‘race to break promises’, many countries needed to figure out ways to implement austerity at the time for economic reasons. It goes into the difficulties state socialism had implementing their version, perestroika, and relative ease of implementing neoliberalism in democratic capitalism. The book is very well sourced, so it gives insight into these conversations of people like Gorbachev, Thatcher, Honecker, Jaruzelski, Reagan, etc, and their advisors. The typical narrative I had learned before reading this placed emphasis on individual actors like Reagan or Gorbachev, but this economic view gives a story that feels much more comprehensive.
The Dark Tower, kept hearing it was good but I also knew Stephen King endings can be lack luster. Best ending to a series that I’ll ever read.
For me, it was Expedition to the Baobab Tree, by Wilma Stockenström.
The plot is anachronistic, spanning decades or centuries and across many nondescript but very real locations. The narrator is meant to exemplify the experiences of countless people who have endured the same legacy of slavery and abuse across time and space in human history.
The last section of the story deconstruct one’s desperation for meaning and self-identity in the face of absolute solitude. I’ve never read another book like it.
Contact by Carl Sagan. I bought it on a whim after a visit to Areciebo Observatory, having never seen the movie, and was completely blown away. One of those books that I definitely I wish I could reread it for the first time again.
Have you seen the movie? I am in the opposite situation having seen and loved the movie and am debating reading the book. I’d be interested to hear if it’s a significantly improved experience either way.
I love the concept and the story/characters regardless, I’m mostly just curious.
Negative. Rather I might’ve seen it when I was a kid, but it was so long ago I might as well not have. Either way, I’ve heard the book is leaps and bounds better, and it’s easily one of my favorites.
The Giver by Lois Lowry, but it only came after finishing it and reminiscing/discussing it with others, it really hit me that the ending is in reality an open one. Just like in Inception it’s basically up to you if you get a happy or sad ending.
Valuable Humans in Transit by qntm. I’m a fan of short-format sci-fi with big ideas and this one hit the sweet spot.
Well wow, your book experience here is incredibly profound! Mine doesn’t quite compare in intensity, but did rewire my brain a bit.
I am doing a re-read of Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness for a book club. I read this book years ago in college in a Gothic Lit class, reading it in the context of gothic genre traits: self vs other, familiar vs strange, civilization vs savage- and the inevitable dread accompanying the dissolution of the ‘vs’ and realization that civiliity is mere patina on monstrosity etc.
I still had my old college copy, but sadly it was filled with underlines and highlights (I can’t believe I was so terrible!) so I got a clean copy, a Norton Critical edition. Omg. The amount of extra material included was vast. Essays on the history of the Congo, on Imperialism, letters to Belgium’s King Leopold, notes from Conrad’s own journey as a Congo steamboat captain, critical essays on the book itself.
As ridiculous as it sounds, I had NO IDEA this book was a critique of Imperialism. None. Zero. Reading this in college I thought it was purely a fictional dark gothic fantasy. I didn’t know about the actual atrocities in the Congo and that Conrad had witnessed them first hand. I didn’t know public sentiment turned against King Leopold after this was published, because they too didn’t really understand what was happening there. I even read in one of the essays that American kids were being taught this book as a ‘journey to the center of self’ and devoid of any mention of imperialism. Yes, yes we were! That spoke directly to my experience.
All of this suddenly coming into focus felt both enlightening and awful. How was this taught without context?? And how am I only realizing this now? I’m still reading through the essays, grateful I found them before reading the novella again.
I can totally relate to this. We had to read it in school (American system school) and there was no mention of the historical context. When I had to read it again in college, it broke my brain and made me want to revisit so many books I’d read in the past in search of whatever deeper context I might have missed or wasn’t made aware of back in school. Same thing happened to me with Ulysses and Finnegans Wake after I reread them with added guides. Those rereads made me fall in love with James Joyce. Literature never ceases to amaze me with its ability to short-circuit our brains.
Yes! This experience has made me question a lot about what I think I ‘know’ and to really have an open mind towards new (to me) information.
All context, or lack of it, aside, the writing in Heart of Darkness is phenomenal. It’s prose poetically dense and I find myself lingering on each sentence to experience it fully.
I need to give Finnegan’s Wake a try! Years ago one of my friends composed a ‘sonic micro opera’ of Finnegan’s Wake. It was experimental theater in the extreme and made me curious to give it a read. Thanks for reminding me of this novel.
It’s like finally getting a good pair glasses after years of blurry vision and blindspots.
And holy shit, “sonic micro opera” of Finnegans Wake sounds bloody amazing.
As for the book, it’s one of my favorites. It’s both a mind trip and a literary feast. It’s playful and odd and musical and wild and confusing all at once. There’s also a couple recordings of Joyce reading excerpts of Finnegans Wake and Ulysses on ye olde youtubes, which are pretty interesting, because it’s like getting to hear Beethoven play the piano in person, through time. Plus, his accent is hella fun.
