Books that reminded you that you are, even after all this time,

>>9633184
Literally any Pynchon

>>9633184
English is not my native language so reading Ulysses, To The Lighthouse and some Shakespeare fucking got me.

>>9633184
>depressing
Wot? This book was funny as fuck.
>meet Mrs. Bundren
If you didn't at least smirk at that you're autistic.

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This, holy shit.

>>9634478
This. As I Lay Dying is some superb ass gallows humor

>decides to read Oliver Twist
>reads it very easly
>turns out it's an abridged version for kids
>finds the full version
>full version contains uncomprehensible footnotes and complicated philosophic monologues

>>9634478
there were a lot of funny parts. Even the abortion scene was funny. But overall I left the book feeling pretty bleak about the world. Was it supposed to be life affirming?

>>9636014
If say the moral of the story was "don't be a useless cunt like anse".

>>9633184
Gulag Archipelago. It fucked up any idea I had of hardship.

>>9636082
I chuckled a bit when he wrote about Dostoevsky having a walk in the park in Siberia

>>9633184
As I Lay Dying is one of the funniest books I've ever read. I went thinking it would be just depressing, but I kek'd heartily throughout (excepting, of courwe, Addie's monologue).

>>9633184
I don't know how to answer your first question, but the most depressing (and beautiful) book I've ever read was So Long, See You Tomorrow. I even found myself literally wincing in immense sadness, because passages in that tiny little book were massive blows to my soul. I could have wrung out my heart like a dirty mop with all the grief and crushing melancholy it left.

>>9633184
McElroy kicks my ass. I've read Cannonball and can more or less tell you what happened in it, but I'm 50 pages into Women and Men right now and the narrative is even more all over the place. It's a bizarre experience reading his books. He doesn't really relate a narrative through cause and effect. He just writes epic monologue after epic monologue, each full of references to events in the plot, and you get a clearer picture of their progression as you move through the work. It's fascinating, I have no idea how you would even begin to write such a thing.

>>9636324
Apparently he rewrites the beginning several times over before moving on. He talks about it in his bookworm interview. The interviewer, silverblatt, since he knows jm's process, will read the beginning several times over as well before moving on.

>>9636427
Yeah, so I've heard. The narrative style is all about recirculation, he frequently brings back events already described and provides greater detail. I just haven't got far enough in to actually see that in action on a larger scale.