A Walled Garden.org

billy

@silly

wyze guy

Great Short Books

Does what it says on the tin, get it done in a day

  • Siddhartha - Herman Hesse

    Mental German dude finding inner peace via a fantasy India. Cannot recommend enough.

  • The Fall - Albert Camus

    Very good, but if you haven't read the stranger read that first.

  • Fear and Trembling - Soren Kierkegaard

    Beautiful, unique, mostly went over my head. Read the first few chapters about Abraham and Isaac. No where else have I encountered someone thinking so deeply about a short piece of text and drawing so much out of it.

  • The Stranger - Albert Camus

    A really niche, obscure one, from a nearly forgotten author. Well worth the read, probably shouldn't take its view on life to heart. Despite the associations its actually super fun.

  • Slaughterhouse 5 - Kurt Vonnegut Jr.

    Twisted Sci-fi tragicomedy.

  • A Farewell To Arms - Ernest Hemmingway

    "ahhhh where have they gone" Great book, bit longer than the others. Maybe a long weekend, not long afternoon.

  • The Gospel of Matthew - Eponoymous

    "How's the water?" said the old fish to the young fish. "What's water?"

  • Chess - Stefon Zweig

    Beautiful, tragic, about the great crime of the last century.

Great Long Books

Commitment

  • War & Peace - Leo Tolstoy

    You gotta commit, but it's worth it. Get through the first ~100 pages, where he's setting it all in motion, and you'll be rewarded with the greatest read of all time. It didn't get its reputation for nothing.

  • Wolf Hall, Bring up The Bodies & The Mirror and the Light - Hillary Mantel

    Do not start these if you have anything important that needs your attention in the next month or so.

  • A Place of Greater Safety - Hillary Mantel

    Her debut, probably not as good technically as the wolf hall trilogy, but I enjoyed it even more. Maybe more appealing because the characters are younger, living more intensely than Cromwell? Have re-read multiple times. Genuinely detracted from my studies, could not pull myself away from it.

The Seven Deadly Sins

  • The Picture of Dorian Grey - Oscar Wilde

    Pride - “A look of joy came into his eyes, as if he had recognised himself for the first time. He stood there motionless and in wonder… The sense of his own beauty came on him like a revelation”

  • Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky

    Greed - “Mere existence had always been too little for him; he had always wanted more. Perhaps it was just because of the strength of his desires that he had thought himself a man to whom more was permissible than to others. “

  • The Kreutzer Sonata - Leo Tolstoy

    Lust - “Our love was exhausted as soon as our desire was satisfied, and now we stood facing each other in our true relationship, which was of two completely alien and completely selfish individuals who only wanted to get the greatest amount of satisfaction out of each other”

  • Othello - William Shakespeare

    Envy - "But jealous souls will not be answered so. They are not ever jealous for the cause, But jealous for they’re jealous. It is a monster Begot upon itself, born on itself. "

  • Dracula - Bram Stoker

    Gluttony - “And you, their best beloved one, are now to me, flesh of my flesh; blood of my blood; kin of my kin; my bountiful wine-press for awhile”

  • The Ilyad - Homer

    Wrath - "“Rage - Goddess, sing the rage of Peleus’ son Achilles, murderous , doomed, that cost the Acheans countless losses, Hurling down to the house of Death so many sturdy souls, Great fighters’ souls, but made their bodies carrion, Feasts for the dogs and birds”

Underappreciated books by great Authors

I'm not saying you don't know these books, only that they are great, and don't get as much love as their more famous siblings.

  • The Gambler - Dostoyevsky

    Honestly don't know why this doesn't get much more attention.

  • The Fall - Camus

    "The most beautiful and least appreciated" of Camus novels, according to friend and rival Jean-Paul Sartre. I can't compete with praise like that.

  • Tender is the Night - F. Scott Fitzgerald

    His masterpiece. I really like the great gatsby, I love this.

“It's only going to get weirder. The level of contradiction is going to rise excruciatingly, even beyond the excruciating present levels of contradiction. So, I think it's just going to get weirder and weirder, and weirder, and finally it's going to be so weird that people are going to have to talk about how weird it is. And at that point novelty theory can come out of the woods, because eventually people are going to say, “What the hell is going on?” It's just too nuts, it's not enough to say it's nuts, you have to explain why it's so nuts. So, between now and 2012, the next 14 years, I look for: the invention of artificial life, the cloning of human beings, possible contact with extraterrestrials, possible human immortality, and at the same time, appalling acts of brutality, genocide, race baiting, homophobia, famine, starvation; because the systems which are in place to keep the world sane are utterly inadequate to the forces that have been unleashed. The collapse of the socialist world, the rise of the internet. These are changes so immense nobody could imagine them ever happening, and now that they have happened nobody even bothers to mention what a big deal it is. Ah, the fact that there is no such thing as the Soviet Union, people never talk about it anymore—but when I was a kid the notion that that would ever change was beyond conceiving. Ah, so the good news is, that as primates we are incredibly adaptable to change. Put us in the desert, we survive, put us the jungle, we survive, under Hitler we survive, under Nixon we survive. We can put up with about anything and it's a good thing because we are going to be tested to the limits. The breakdown of anything—and this is why the rightwing is so alarmed—because what they see going on is the breakdown of all tradition, all order, all sanctioned norms of behaviour. And they're quite right that it's happening, but they're quite wrong to conclude that it should be resisted or is somehow evil. The mushroom said to me once, it said: “This is what it's like when a species prepares to depart for the stars.” You don't depart for the stars under calm and orderly conditions; it's a fire in a madhouse, and that's what we have, the fire in the madhouse at the end of time. This is what it's like when a species prepares to move on to the next dimension. The entire destiny of all life on the planet is tied up in this; we are not acting for ourselves, or from ourselves; we happen to be the point species on a transformation that will affect every living organism on this planet at its conclusion."”

— Terrence McKenna

“Two things fill the heart with ever renewed and increasing awe and reverence, the more often and more steadily we meditate upon them: the starry firmament above and the moral law within"”

— Kant

“"But I will say no more about it. Words do not express thoughts very well. They always become a little different immediately they are expressed, a little distorted, a little foolish. And yet it also pleases me and seems right that what is of value and wisdom to one man seems nonsense to another"”

— Siddhartha - Hermann Hesse

“"On the Contrary"”

— Henrik Ibsen, His last words, said to his maid who insisted his health was improving.

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