I started reading The Three-Body Problem - a science fiction novel written by the Chinese writer Liu Cixin. From the first sentences, from the first chapters, I understand that this is a masterpiece.

 

https://www.threebodytech.com/en/products/heavier7strings

 

A few pertinent of the times for your perusal...

1984, Animal Farm, both by George Orwell
Brave New World, The Doors Of Perception, both by Aldus Huxley
Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury...and...
To Kill A Mockingbird by Harper Lee

 

The Seat of the Soul - Gary Zukav

 

Stanislaw Lem. I prefer his funnier stuff, like Star Diaries and The Cyberiad, but his hard sci fi like Solaris and Invincible is great too. Originally written in Polish, but the English translations are masterful. And then you'll know where the name Trurl derives from...

 

Also this series. Hard to find but amazing. First book is best but all 3 are good.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bridge_of_Birds

 

Reading books can definitely improve your English while also enhancing your mind. Choose engaging fiction or non-fiction that makes you think, and even a few minutes a day can gradually boost both your language skills and your perspective.

 

I thought this was a troll thread? "Do you read books?"

It's like asking "Do you eat food?"

But OT: https://www.goodreads.com/list/show/137197.100_Books_to_Read_Before_You_Die_The_Ultimate_List

Though nowadays I mostly read non-fiction or Chomsky.

 

I recently read "Awakenings" by Oliver Sacks and now I kind of feel not like reading at all before digesting that one.

It's about people with Encephalitis Lethargica aka Sleeping Sickness, and a treatment that could bring them out of decades of passivity ("The disease attacks the brain, leaving some victims in a statue-like condition, speechless and motionless."). But it's not about miracle cures as such, because anything with power to restore life comes with negatives and it's about this young doctor's way of meeting with the patients in the middle and unlike then-medical style, involving the patients in their treatment and let them describe their condition in their own words, instead of purely relying on measurable markers.

It's a shocking and thought-provoking work. About life. About disease and sickness. About medicine.

And oh yeah, Big Black did a very cynical song about it, fittingly called L-Dopa.

(

Spoiler

)

From the liner notes of Songs About Fucking on that tune:

"Daisy went to sleep at 15 and woke up many years later. she, being perfectly sensible, decided she ought to die, since she had literally slept away her entire productive life. the medical profession had, in her absence, decided that all life must be preserved, regardless of worth to its owner, and prevented her from performing the only noble act she was capable of."

That sounds pretty grim, and while there are plenty of grim things in the book it's very life-affirming.

 

Last edited: Oct 20, 2025 at 8:59 PM

Yikes...

Do any of those who were touched by the disease report what they'd experienced during their "sleep" ?

 

Yeah, that quote in the end was from the liner notes of Big Black's "Songs About Fucking"... should've been clearer, but yeah, a very dark, cynical and nihilistic take.

But yes, there's a fair bit about their experiences in their words about when the disease has hold of them. It's very lucid and very difficult to comprehend at the same time... from the foreword:

That's already a very heavy statement, it implies that the people with Postencephalitic Parkinsons are lucid but stuck in their physical ailments and stuck thought patterns.

There's plenty, but this struck me as... unsettling yet poetic, from the experience of Gertie C.

 

Last edited: Oct 20, 2025 at 9:03 PM

"Watcha readin' for?"

 

Did you ever read A Canticle For Leibowitz by Walter Miller? It's pretty dystopian too.

Slaughterhouse Five by Kurt Vonnegut (firebombing of Dresden, etc)
Catch 22 by Joseph Heller
The Plague and The Stranger by Albert Camus
All Quiet on The Western Front by Erich Maria Remarque
American Kingpin: The Epic Hunt for the Criminal Mastermind Behind the Silk Road by Nick Bilton
Filthy Rich - James Patterson
The Art of Intrusion by William L Simon and Kevin Mitnick
Mr. Mercedes and 11/22/63 by Stephen King
The Hellfire Club by Jake Tapper
Disloyal by Michael Cohen
On Tyranny by Timothy Snyder

A little variety.

 

Bad Wisdom - Bill Drummond & Mark Manning
New York Trilogy - Paul Auster
Sing Backwards and Weep: A Memoir - Mark Lanegan
Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion - Robert B Cialdini
Slaughterhouse Five - Kurt Vonnegut
Pranks! - Re/Search
Geek Love - Katherine Dunn
Best of - Dorothy Parker
Steppenwolf - Hermann Hesse
Behind The Glass Vol 1 - Howard Massey
The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge - Rainer Maria Rilke
A Million Little Pieces - James Frey

 

Teatro Grottesco (Thomas Ligotti)

 

Improvement is something that happens from doing the same thing many times over because as humans, we get better with practice.

I always figured that in anything, nobody should ever make anything they do any more difficult than it needs to be. So mix it up, fiction, non-fiction, discovery, history, science fiction...so on and so forth. Find the authors who write plainly, find the ones who write verbosely, articulately and honestly, leave the slang and native slang, urban slang books until the very last and I mean the very last. I say this because if your intent is to also improve your English, reading urban based polluted English will not improve your English. It may even dumb you down. Also read International English wherever possible if you want proper English. Americans speak American. It is spelled and spoken very differently to proper English. It's not better or worse, it's just different and is American.

 

Let me add "Grande Sertão: Veredas" (Guimarães Rosa)
"Do Androids dream of electric sheep?" (Philip K. Dick)
Satantango (László Krasznahorkai)
The unbearable lightness of being (Milan Kundera)
Fahrenheit 451(Ray Bradbury)

 

Books, and music, are our best produce besides love and sex as humans. Try the old Classics, a 2000, 2500 year old book will challenge you. Doesn't matter from which Civilization. Reading opens your mind, grows your imagination, and kinds you heart. There's been already hundreds of recommendations, hope you are served well.

 

the Complete Art of War one of the most amazing books on strategy, not just about war but on everyday life, how to be successful in business and your personal life.