Though, I am in ilp’s camp here, if the aliens for some reason read English, it is a bit of a sad move to offer up translations

But how much of the ‘classic’ U.S. canon have you read reprise?
If aliens had read nothing, I would suggest stuff like

On the Road - Jack Kerouac
The Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger
To Kill A Mockingbird - Harper Lee

But presumably you’ve read that stuff reprise??

only read the catcher in the rye. which, btw, i hate.

no i have not read most american classic canon because i am a pleb and basically didnt go to high school, too busy moving away with creeps

A Farewell to Arms by Hemingway

That’s definitely fair enough...I think we often hate “classics” from our own part of the world - I certainly do. I hate most NZ prose. You can give up after a chapter and at least you’ve given it a chance...I’ve done that on many occasions with supposedly amazing classics (like Ulysses, for example) because life is too short to read books I don’t like, and I’ve had to force myself to do it anyway, too many times, as part of my supposed education

Though one of these years I’m going to do what my Dad did, and sign up for a “read Ulysses in a year” email service and just truck on through it, because he said it was definitely worth it and we have similar tastes when it comes to “classics”

Some of my faves
The Color Purple - Alice Walker
A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry
Things Fall Apart - Chinua Achebe
The Kitchen God’s Wife - Amy Tan
The Picture of Dorian Grey - Oscar Wilde
The Road to Wigan Pier, also Animal Farm (didn’t get into 1984) - George Orwell

If you’ve never tried the genre before, my favourite murder mystery/procedural series is Jonathan Kellerman’s Alex Delaware books (he’s a psychologist turned crime writer so he creates quite satisfying villains), but I also really enjoyed PD James’ Adam Dalgliesh (lots of people find her writing really dated and naff but I like it).

mods pls ban vixnix


thank u

i'd rather eat my own ballsack than read Ulysses


for real

Yeah I found it very hard going

But I didn’t mind Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man and reprise said she was enjoying it

So maybe it would be good to Give Joyce a chance

I read Portrait! It took (whallah!) me two tries but I did it. And I'm happy I did. Obviously the dude had a megalothonal mind.

Hi alien, big fan

I recommend A Short History of Nearly Everything by Bill Bryson
(please take me with you)

Would you consider Portrait to be a fairly difficult read, guys? I mean it's not terribly hard but I can't tell if I'm stupid/rusty or this shit is complex. And his lack of fucking commas, good god. I know eventually he just says fuck punctuation completely but jesus

yes i have wanted to read this for a long time

Yeah, it was hard for me. That's why it took me two tries. I gave up at first because of his style. Isn't the first chapter just like impressions and shit from his childhood? Gave me a headache tbh.

his style is weird, it's not really third person but not quite first, i don't even know what you'd call it. it's third person, but then you go into the character's mind, but the character is not referring to himself in any way and also it's not like "he thought x"

edit: apparently it's this https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_indirect_speech