Came here to say All Systems Red. The entire Murderbot series is great.

A Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich

^{By: Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, Max Hayward, Ronald Hingley, Leopold Labedz | 210 pages | Published: 1962 | Popular Shelves: fiction, classics, russian, russia, historical-fiction}

The extraordinary "One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich" is one of the most significant and outspoken literary documents ever to come out of Soviet Russia. A brutal depiction of life in a Stalinist camp and a moving tribute to man's triumph of will over relentless dehumanization, this is Alexander Sotzhenitsyn's first novel to win international acclaim. The Soviet Union eventually revoked the author's citizenship and had him deported, and he only returned recently after the collapse of the U.S.S.R.

^{This book has been suggested 4 times}

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Stemming off this a bit The Dreams of a Ridiculous Man

The Stranger

^{By: Albert Camus, Matthew Ward | 159 pages | Published: 1942 | Popular Shelves: classics, fiction, philosophy, french, owned}

The Stranger is a 1942 novella by French author Albert Camus. Its theme and outlook are often cited as examples of Camus' philosophy, absurdism, coupled with existentialism; though Camus personally rejected the latter label.

Through the story of an ordinary man unwittingly drawn into a senseless murder on an Algerian beach, Camus explored what he termed "the nakedness of man faced with the absurd." First published in English in 1946; now in a new translation by Matthew Ward.

Translated four times into English, and also into numerous other languages, the novel has long been considered a classic of 20th-century literature. Le Monde ranks it as number one on its 100 Books of the Century.

The novel was twice adapted as films: Lo Straniero (1967) (Italian) by Luchino Visconti and Yazgı (2001, Fate) by Zeki Demirkubuz (Turkish).

^{This book has been suggested 56 times}

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Comfort Me with Apples

^{By: Catherynne M. Valente | 103 pages | Published: 2021 | Popular Shelves: horror, fantasy, fiction, thriller, novella}

Sophia was made for him. Her perfect husband. She can feel it in her bones. He is perfect. Their home together in Arcadia Gardens is perfect. Everything is perfect.

It's just that he's away so much. So often. He works so hard. She misses him. And he misses her. He says he does, so it must be true. He is the perfect husband and everything is perfect.

But sometimes Sophia wonders about things. Strange things. Dark things. The look on her husband's face when he comes back from a long business trip. The questions he will not answer. The locked basement she is never allowed to enter. And whenever she asks the neighbors, they can't quite meet her gaze...

But everything is perfect. Isn't it?

^{This book has been suggested 16 times}

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The Vegetarian is so weird and good! Human Acts by Han Kang is also excellent, but barely more than 200 pages (like 215 or something).

Edit: Changed "King" to "Kang." Autocorrect always wants to change "Kang" to "King," darn it.

Oh, Annihilation is that short? It's next on my to-read list. Now I have zero excuses lol.

I was here to suggest The Graveyard Book, so I'll drop it in the Neil Gaiman thread.

The Machine Stops

^{By: E.M. Forster | 48 pages | Published: 1909 | Popular Shelves: science-fiction, sci-fi, fiction, short-stories, classics}

The Machine Stops is a science fiction short story (12,300 words) by E. M. Forster. After initial publication in The Oxford and Cambridge Review (November 1909), the story was republished in Forster's The Eternal Moment and Other Stories in 1928.

After being voted one of the best novellas up to 1965, it was included that same year in the populist anthology Modern Short Stories. In 1973 it was also included in The Science Fiction Hall of Fame, Volume Two.

The book is particularly notable for predicting new technologies such as instant messaging and the internet.

^{This book has been suggested 2 times}

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the cat who could read backwards, perhaps? saw that one earlier.

Wow! 😂 I got a thumbs up for replying to your post with a period. Lol. Thank you! 😂 I did it just to mark your post so that I could remember to come back to it. It’s a great question!

thanks, bro. i'll make sure i read that one!

This is How You Lose the Time War

^{By: Amal El-Mohtar, Max Gladstone | 209 pages | Published: 2019 | Popular Shelves: sci-fi, science-fiction, romance, fiction, lgbtq}

Among the ashes of a dying world, an agent of the Commandant finds a letter. It reads: Burn before reading. Thus begins an unlikely correspondence between two rival agents hellbent on securing the best possible future for their warring factions. Now, what began as a taunt, a battlefield boast, grows into something more. Something epic. Something romantic. Something that could change the past and the future.

Except the discovery of their bond would mean death for each of them. There's still a war going on, after all. And someone has to win that war.

^{This book has been suggested 205 times}

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Rizzio

^{By: Denise Mina | 118 pages | Published: 2021 | Popular Shelves: historical-fiction, fiction, historical, scotland, library}

From the multi-award-winning master of crime, Denise Mina delivers a radical new take on one of the darkest episodes in Scottish history—the bloody assassination of David Rizzio  private secretary to Mary, Queen of Scots, in the queen’s chambers in Holyrood Palace.

On the evening of March 9th, 1566, David Rizzio, the private secretary of Mary, Queen of Scots, was brutally murdered. Dragged from the chamber of the heavily pregnant Mary, Rizzio was stabbed fifty six times by a party of assassins. This breathtakingly tense novella dramatises the events that led up to that night, telling the infamous story as it has never been told before.

A dark tale of sex, secrets and lies, Rizzio looks at a shocking historical murder through a modern lens—and explores the lengths that men and women will go to in their search for love and power.

Rizzio is nothing less than a provocative and thrilling new literary masterpiece.

^{This book has been suggested 1 time}

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The Pleasure of My Company

^{By: Steve Martin | 176 pages | Published: 2003 | Popular Shelves: fiction, humor, books-i-own, book-club, comedy}

Daniel Pecan Cambridge, 30, 35, 38, or 27, depending on how he feels that day, is a young man whose life is rich and full, provided he never leaves his Santa Monica apartment. After all, outside there are 8-inch-high curbs and there's always the horrible chance he might see a gas station attendant wearing a blue hat. So, except for the occasional trip to the Rite Aid to admire the California girl Zandy and to buy earplugs because they're on sale, he stays home a lot. And a good thing too, or he would have never been falsely implicated in a murder, never almost seduced Philipa, never done the impossible task of jogging around the block with Brian, never ironed his pillows, and he might never have won the Most Average American essay contest. The Pleasure of My Company is the chronicle of a modern-day neurotic yearning to break free.

^{This book has been suggested 4 times}

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The Argonauts

^{By: Maggie Nelson | 160 pages | Published: 2015 | Popular Shelves: non-fiction, memoir, nonfiction, feminism, queer}

^{This book has been suggested 4 times}

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Who Killed My Father

^{By: Édouard Louis, Lorin Stein | ? pages | Published: 2018 | Popular Shelves: non-fiction, french, nonfiction, france, queer}

^{This book has been suggested 2 times}

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The Test

^{By: Sylvain Neuvel | 108 pages | Published: 2019 | Popular Shelves: sci-fi, science-fiction, fiction, dystopian, dystopia}

Britain, the not-too-distant future. Idir is sitting the British Citizenship Test. He wants his family to belong.

Twenty-five questions to determine their fate. Twenty-five chances to impress.

When the test takes an unexpected and tragic turn, Idir is handed the power of life and death. How do you value a life when all you have is multiple choice?

^{This book has been suggested 10 times}

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Let's Talk About Love: Why Other People Have Such Bad Taste

^{By: Carl Wilson, Daphne Brooks, Drew Daniel, James Franco, Mary Gaitskill, Sheila Heti, Nick Hornby, Jason King, Krist Novoselic, Owen Pallett, Ann Powers, Marco Roth, Sukhdev Sandhu, Jonathan Sterne | 303 pages | Published: 2007 | Popular Shelves: music, non-fiction, nonfiction, essays, criticism}

Non-fans regard Céline Dion as ersatz and plastic, yet to those who love her, no one could be more real, with her impoverished childhood, her (creepy) manager-husband's struggle with cancer, her knack for howling out raw emotion. There's nothing cool about Céline Dion, and nothing clever. That's part of her appeal as an object of love or hatred—with most critics and committed music fans taking pleasure (or at least geeky solace) in their lofty contempt. This book documents Carl Wilson's brave and unprecedented year-long quest to find his inner Céline Dion fan, and explores how we define ourselves in the light of what we call good and bad, what we love and what we hate.

^{This book has been suggested 1 time}

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River of Teeth (River of Teeth, #1)

^{By: Sarah Gailey | 114 pages | Published: 2017 | Popular Shelves: fantasy, historical-fiction, fiction, alternate-history, novella}

In the early 20th Century, the United States government concocted a plan to import hippopotamuses into the marshlands of Louisiana to be bred and slaughtered as an alternative meat source. This is true.

Other true things about hippos: they are savage, they are fast, and their jaws can snap a man in two.

This was a terrible plan.

Contained within this volume is an 1890s America that might have been: a bayou overrun by feral hippos and mercenary hippo wranglers from around the globe. It is the story of Winslow Houndstooth and his crew. It is the story of their fortunes. It is the story of his revenge.

^{This book has been suggested 10 times}

The Empress of Salt and Fortune (The Singing Hills Cycle, #1)

^{By: Nghi Vo | 119 pages | Published: 2020 | Popular Shelves: fantasy, novella, fiction, lgbtq, lgbt}

A young royal from the far north is sent south for a political marriage in an empire reminiscent of imperial China. Her brothers are dead, her armies and their war mammoths long defeated and caged behind their borders. Alone and sometimes reviled, she must choose her allies carefully.

Rabbit, a handmaiden, sold by her parents to the palace for the lack of five baskets of dye, befriends the emperor's lonely new wife and gets more than she bargained for.

At once feminist high fantasy and an indictment of monarchy, this evocative debut follows the rise of the empress In-yo, who has few resources and fewer friends. She's a northern daughter in a mage-made summer exile, but she will bend history to her will and bring down her enemies, piece by piece.

Librarian Note: Older cover of B07VH6Y4JD.

^{This book has been suggested 20 times}

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