Just finished some Kafka and Walden, what should I read next?

Question

I have also just finished reading the Journey East by Herman Hesse and the more modern, but still quite good, life of pi. I was thinking about Catch 22, Siddhartha, or the Satanic Verses as my next read, but does anyone have any suggestions for a guy who has greatly enjoyed the works listed above?

Answer 1

Sidharta is a fantastic book, should be first in your list. If you've enjoyed Kafka, i suggest Albert Camus, because he adored teh existentialism of Kafka, but he is considered to be one of the best existentialist writers. Try The Sorrows of Young Werther by Goethe; Hesse loved Goethe, and this book is wonderfu. I also suggest everything by Dostoevsky. His books are long, deep, but very.. just magnificent.

Answer 2

Frankly, I didn't like Siddharta, but Catch 22 is a very good choice!
+
Charles Brockden Brown - Wieland
Joseph Conrad - Heart of Darkness
Hermann Hesse - Demian (if you're younger than 20), The Glass Bead Game (if you're over 20)
Rainer Maria Rilke - The Notebooks of Malte Laurets Brigge
Marlen Haushofer - The Wall
Michel Tournier - The Ogre
Amin Maalouf - Balthasar's Odyssey
(Shirley Jackson - The Haunting of Hill House (more demanding than the film versions))

You might like to try:
Robert Musil - The Man Without Qualities
Joseph Roth - Spider's Web
Max Frisch - Homo Faber
James Joyce - Ulysses

Answer 3

Yes, you need to lighten up a bit. Too much of a certain mindset without some balance isn't a good idea. You obviously like
challenging books, though, but let me suggest that you read
something light and funny before heading back into the world
of eastern thought and nihilism.

You might have to look around for this book, but I suggest you read "The Lives and Times of Archie and Mehitabel". Archie is a vers libre free lance poet reincarnated as a cockroach. He types a newspaper column by bouncing headfirst on the keys.
Mehitabel is a cat who thinks she is the reincarnation of Cleopatra. They are friends, sort of, but Archie thinks it prudent to stay within the keyboard of the typewriter while she is around. It's hilarious. By Don Marquis.

Another book, deeper, more along your serious vein that I would recommend is "The Word", by James Michener, I think.
It's quite remarkable.

Answer 4

The Collected Poems of Layton Elliott

Answer 5

Love Siddartha

Answer 6

i think most of these folks are just suggesting all the "heavy" books they know.

kafka is taught as "existentialist" but he leads out to surrealism and fabulism. you might try:

italo calvino --- anything by him but "cosmicomics" might appeal to you a lot
jorge luis borges --- "ficciones"
donald bartheleme --- "60 stories" (but you don't have to read all 60!)
anything by ishmael reed
george saunders --- "pastoralia" a fairly recent book and a lot of fun
kelly link --- "magic for beginners" is a new book and she's fairly young

walden leads out really well to a lot of 19th century american fiction and poetry
to see some of his ideas in action, read (or re-read) louisa may alcott's "little women"
nathaniel hawthorne's "scarlet letter"
walt whitman's "leaves of grass", especially "song of myself"
willa cather's "my antonia" (not 19th century, but a good place to go)

"catch 22" is worth reading. other good war novels include:
"slaughterhouse five" by kurt vonnegut
"birdy" by william wharton
"the things they carried" by tim o'brien

if you've already read one hermann hesse book, you don't need to read another. they all tend the same way. try reading about buddhism directly (there are good intros by christmas humphreys.)

"satanic verses" is fun, but its significance lies more in the fact that it got rushdie fatwa-ed, than in its literary quality. you'd be better off reading "midnight's children", which is his one of his best books and a great read.

Answer 7

i agree - you need something a little lighter to allow your brain time to recover. catch 22 is completely chaotic. try some of these:

the catcher in the rye by j d salinger
the power of one by bryce courtnay
of mice and men by john steinbeck
for whom the bell tolls by ernest hemingway
the master and margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov

and if you REALLY want something heavy and meaningful, try some of these:
dead souls by nikolai gogol
fathers and sons by ivan turgenev
the brothers karamazov by Fyodor Dostoevsky

no one does heavy and meaningful like the russians .......

Answer 8

stufetta:

Bulgakov and Gogol are both Ukrainian, not Russian. They did write in Russian, obviously, since the Russian Empire and later the USSR supressed the Ukrainian language, forcing Ukrainian authors to abandon their native tongue in favour of Russian.

Answer 9

You might check out Aldous Huxley.

Answer 10

OK, now's the time to lighten up a little. Louis Lamour.