Great Books you've probably never heard of or read

Quote: Pacomartin

It's over a half century old now, but one of the greatest books


A book I have never forgotten (written in the 1950's)

Quote: Face

OK, it's not a "hidden gem", probably everyone but me has heard of it before. But I finally found a copy of "Big, Two-Hearted River" and it's one of those things that will stay with me forever.

Indeed, it is awesome

Quote: Evenbob

Dhalgren. Go ahead, read it, take a trip to
Bellona. You will never forget it. Delany's
best work, it's taught in college. I read it
four times in the 70's and 80's and never
gotten it out of my head.

Quote: scotty71

This one is now on my list too, thanks...my kindle is going to start smoking soon!!

Quote: scotty71

Lately I've been reading more history and non fiction looking for ways to better understand the world and in particular human nature. Most of the fiction I have read most people would be familiar with or are considered classics. I very much enjoy(ed) anything Hemingway, Fitzgerald, Arthur Miller, Eugene O'Niel, Sarte.
Plays and short stories are lots of fun, Flannery O'conner is great.
I think I read most of Steven Kings stuff up until 1995, Clancey too. Those are always page turners. I'll put up the Stand as a great read for anyone going on a loooong train ride.

I've never read much if any science fiction so I think I am going to read the Asimov works Chronologically as suggested... that seems like fun.

Quote:

“In 1960,” he writes, “I was given a transorbital, or ‘ice pick’ lobotomy. My stepmother arranged it. My father agreed to it. Dr. Walter Freeman, the father of the American lobotomy, told me he was going to do some ‘tests.’ It took ten minutes and cost two hundred dollars.” Fellow doctors called Freeman’s technique barbaric: an ice pick—like instrument was inserted about three inches into each eye socket and twirled to sever connections from the frontal lobe to the rest of the brain. The procedure was intended to help curb a variety of psychoses by muting emotional responses, but sometimes it irreversibly reduced patients to a childlike state or (in 15% of the operations Freeman performed) killed them outright. Dully’s ten-minute “test” did neither, but in some ways it had a far crueler result, since it didn’t end the unruly behavior that had set his stepmother against him to begin with.

“I spent the next forty years in and out of insane asylums, jails, and halfway houses,” he tells us. “I was homeless, alcoholic, and drug-addicted. I was lost.” From all accounts, there was no excuse for the lobotomy. Dully had never been “crazy,” and his (not very) bad behavior sounds like the typical acting-up of a child in desperate need of affection. His stepmother responded with unrelenting abuse and neglect, his father allowed her to demonize his son and never admitted his complicity in the lobotomy; Freeman capitalized on their monumental dysfunction. It’s a tale of epic horror, and while Dully’s courage in telling it inspires awe, readers are left to speculate about what drove supposedly responsible adults to such unconscionable acts.

A profoundly disturbing survivor’s tale."
—Kirkus

Quote: Mosca

Flannery O'Connor is one of my favorite authors. It isn't common for a master of one form (the short story) to excel at another (the novel), but she did it twice, with Wise Blood and The Violent Bear it Away.

Here is my first recommendation: read My Lobotomy, by Howard Dully.

Quote: TheCesspit

Iain Banks' 'Complicity'. The best of novels, or 'Use of Weapons' the best of his science fiction (often found written under the name Iain M Banks).

Quote: scotty71

putting them on my list, thanks.