Recommend me a cool book!

[Halo 2]

I get bored at work so I read books.

 

Recently I read this and it was awesome.

The story is told through the main characters daily log entries.

 

 

Anyone know of anything similar?

Or anything honestly I'm open to any suggestions.

[Merus]

I keep looking at your username and thinking of suggesting Neal Stevenson because his books end abruptly too. (If this joke interests you for real, try Cryptonomicon or maybe The Diamond Age. But his stuff does require a bit of a run-up.)

 

As for actual suggestions for stuff told from found sources, I'm afraid I can't remember a lot off the top of my head.

[Ben X]

Dracula.

[sucks2Bme]

Not sure if I know something similar, but here are some Books I would recommend:

 

for some heavy reading : 

House of Leaves by Mark Z. Danielewski

Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace

Cryptonomicon by Neal Stephenson

 

Less Heavy:

The Wind Up Girl by Paolo Bacigalupi

Super Sad True Love Story by Gary Shteyngart

 

Light Reads:

Bite Me by Christopher Moore

Dresden Files Books by Jim Butcher

Culture books by Ian M Banks

 

thats what i got off the top of my head. I tend to read a lot too, so hit me up if you want more suggestions! 

 

and from the style of the book you described above (havent read it), look for a short story called Flowers to Algernon. Similar style i think. But its a very well known short story, so I think you know it  

[Halo 2]

Thanks a bunch I'll check these out!

[Trip Hazard]

The Culture books are amazing. I've been working through them from the start, in the wrong order because I'm a dummy, but I reckon they improve as you go along, with "Use of Weapons" being my fave (so far)

[juv3nal]

I already mentioned this in the books, books, books thread, but if you're at all interested in something super gimmicky, I'm a fan of S. or The Ship of Theseus.

 

http://www.neontommy.com/news/2013/11/book-review-s

 

It's packed with 2(possibly more) interlocutors writing in different ink/style in the marginalia, a ton of postcards/newspaper clippings, even a codewheel.

 

 

 

Kinda like the bastard child of A. S. Byatt's Possession, House of Leaves, and Nick Bantock's Griffin and Sabine stuff?

 

[namman siggins]

Annihilation

Terra Nostra

Dhalgren

Seiobo There Below

Ghosts

Crystal Eaters

Carpenter Gothic

Cosmicomics

Duplex

Unclean Job for Women and Girls

Woman of the Dunes

A Guide to Being Born

The Flaming Alphabet

Roadside Picnic

[Ride Rise Roar]

Perhaps you should have a look at the genre of epistolary novels. Some famous British examples are the creepy books Clarissa and Pamela by Samuel Richardson. Some more modern examples would be Foe by Coetzee and Herzog by Below.

[Count_Zero_Interrupt]

I second Vosslerlarry's recommendation of Jeff Vandermeer's "Annhihilation". Some extremely excellent psychological horror. Although I don't know if "horror" is the right word. 

 

The term "Lovecraftian" gets applied to a lot of things, usually questionably, but that's a book that I think actually captures the essence of Lovecraft. It's dealing with utterly alien, unknowable forces encroaching on our world, and what happens to the people who come in contact with this thing that seems impossible to understand via the laws of our science and reality. 

 

It's the first book in the Southern Reach trilogy. Unfortunately, the second book - "Authority" - is nowhere near as good (in my opinion). The third just came out. But I think Annihilation stands well on it's own, anyway. 

[osmosisch]

Vandermeer's writing is amazingly alien. His Ambergris stuff gives me chills.

[Mangela Lansbury]

Jeff Vandermeer calls his genre the New Weird. I don't really like the classification but I like a lot of the people who say they're in it, so...

[Nappi]

I couldn't get into Annihilation at all for some reason.

 

Weird science fiction novel I really enjoyed: Ubik by Philip K. Dick.

[namman siggins]

I'm a big fan of weird and new weird; it's very versatile and flexible genre that contains so many different ideas and thought it can overwhelm a reader.

I recommend reading Ligotti's interview on weird fiction review. In it he talks about the weird and how it works but through a horror filter.

The Vandermeer's did a weird fiction anthology that's worth checking out; they also have a imprint in which they translate and publish weird fiction writers from different Scandinavian countries.

[namman siggins]

I second Vosslerlarry's recommendation of Jeff Vandermeer's "Annhihilation". Some extremely excellent psychological horror. Although I don't know if "horror" is the right word. 

 

The term "Lovecraftian" gets applied to a lot of things, usually questionably, but that's a book that I think actually captures the essence of Lovecraft. It's dealing with utterly alien, unknowable forces encroaching on our world, and what happens to the people who come in contact with this thing that seems impossible to understand via the laws of our science and reality. 

 

It's the first book in the Southern Reach trilogy. Unfortunately, the second book - "Authority" - is nowhere near as good (in my opinion). The third just came out. But I think Annihilation stands well on it's own, anyway. 

couple years ago Jeff Vandermeer did a post in Lovecraft and the need to move on: http://weirdfictionreview.com/2012/09/moving-past-lovecraft/

[Hume's Spork]

A book I absolutely love that I rarely hear mentioned is Silk, by Alessandro Baricco. It's very short and incredibly musical, romantic (lustful at times) and moving. I recommend reading it in one sitting, if you have the time, as the repeated motifs really ring true in a single burst of reading.

[namman siggins]

Some other books worth checking out:

 

The Bloody Chamber: and Other Stories by Angela Carter, Carter takes familiar fairy tales--Red Riding Hood, vampires, and the like--and twists them on the head by putting a feminist viewpoint and exploring male and female sexuality; awesome fucking book, I LOVE Carter.

Grendel by John Gardner, a heart wrenching and devastating existential novel which explores the monster Grendal from the Beowulf myth.

 

The Bees by Laline Paull, Flora 717 is a bee that is in the lowest caste possible:a sanitation worker. Flora is able to move up, but as she does, she discovers more and more sinister things about the hive and Queen

 

The Hearing Trumpet by Leonora Carrington, we follow 92-year-old Marian Leatherby who is given a hearing trumpet, but is soon put into an institution by her family. Within the institution she explores a surreal landscape: a bee fountain,  the Winking Abbess, and a gateway to the underworld are some of the things Leatherby comes across.

[aeolist]

Check out Blindsight by Peter Watts

[ruthkeith]

Not sure what exactly will fit into your 'cool book' category, but you can try some of the Stieg Larsson novels or Paulo Coelho creations. For lighter reads, try some graphic novels like Persepolis.

[Mawd]

Take a look at The Luminaries by Eleanor Catton. It's a brilliantly constructed novel spanning about a dozen of extremely realised characters as they uncover a murder mystery in a mining town in Victorian goldrush era New Zealand.

 

One of the neat gimmicks/techniques the writer uses is assigning every major character a zodiak star sign and constructing major plot arcs and character interactions around the zodiak calendar. It's more than just character interactions though there's quite a bit of hidden meaning within the symbols and certainly enough to fuel a one hour lecture on the subject which I regrettably missed.

 

Another beautiful thing about this book is that the characters frequently misunderstand/decieve each other and one of the great pleasures of the book is to watch the characters become swayed to and from their chosen courses based on the information they each have at hand. There's never just one viewpoint character although each chapter is told biased to one person's viewpoint specifically.

 

I think one of the most wonderful things about this book is that it's not really about the mystery. It's about being with the characters and seeing what they do. I think it's fair to say its like Twin Peaks in that even if its not that kind of Lynchian mystery.

 

Finally the best part of the book is that while it does such a wonderful job at establishing setting and mood and inner thoughts in the first sections of the book; the further you read the shorter the chapters get which is usually quite the opposite. In a way the book is constructed like a Jigsaw puzzle where one starts with the outer corners first and while you can guess where the image of the puzzle is coming together its only as you finally complete it that it attains meaning/completion. By the end some chapters are less than a page, because they don't have to tell you sprawling inner monologues about the characters you've already come to know; its in this final stage of the book that you discover just why several of the characters do what they do and what informed their relationships going into the beginning.

 

Seriously I'd call it a masterwork of fiction (the setting has also been heavily researched from news clippings, interviews, and the like.) and its fully deserving of last year's Man Booker Prize.

[Ladycattlebattle]

Hi guys I'm new to the forum. Just throwing this recommendation out there: House of Leaves by Mark Z. Danielewski. It's this weird experimental novel about this house that's one inch bigger on the inside than the outside. Except it's not really because it's from the framework of this dude writing footnotes in the manuscript for a review of the script of the movie based on the home videos this dude made about his house. Or it might just be about insanity. The format of the book deconstructs the further you read and gets pretty trippy. It's a fun ride if you're into weirdly formatted books and weird psychological pseudo mystical stuff. 

[feelthedarkness]

Ooh, I just want to say I totally agree with Moddus about how great The Luminaries is! Also, if it is your jam, the audiobook is a great performance.

[Valen]

i can advise you Mars trilogy by Kim Stanley Robinson
http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss_1?url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keywords=red+mars

also i agree with namman siggins, Roadside Picnic is a great book 
http://www.amazon.com/Roadside-Picnic-Rediscovered-Classics-Strugatsky/dp/1613743416/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1464012412&sr=8-1&keywords=roadside+picnic

[Ben X]

Halo2 hasn't been active for 2 years, so they may not see your recommendation!

[fledermaus]

"The Culture books are amazing. I've been working through them from the start,"

 

I just read books one and two!  Player of Games was really fun read.  Reminds me of the times when sci-fi was just a playground of ideas.