#If you can't read Russian I am actually quite specific with the translation of Crime and Punishment haha There's a concept

[longagoitwastuesday]

you seem to have a wide taste in books !! what are some books that you would recommend ??

Hmmm I wonder. I have the feeling I just read the same couple of books over and over, and at times only different iterations of the same story, like in that line by Borges ("the various intonations of a few metaphors").

I find recommending books without knowing anything at all about the person asking rather difficult. What I'd suggest to one may differ greatly from what I'd recommend to someone else. I'll give a list of some of my favourite books that I think are enjoyable in general:

— Thoughts by Pascal

— Cain: a mystery by Lord Byron

— The Iliad by Homer

— Crime and Punishment by Dostoievsky

— Othello by Shakespeare

— Pedro Páramo by Juan Rulfo

— Cyrano de Bergerac by Edmond Rostand

— The fragments of the Presocratics

— La Regenta by Leopoldo Alas, Clarín

— Tractatus Logico-philosophicus by Wittgenstein

— East of Eden by John Steinbeck

— Vita nova by Dante

— Contributions to the Founding of the Theory of Transfinite Numbers by Georg Cantor

— Caligula by Albert Camus

— North and South by Elizabeth Gaskell

— Peter Pan by J. M. Barrie

— Some essays by Russell. I personally love Mysticism and Logic

— Metamorphoses by Ovid

Poetry is perhaps harder to recommend because at times it translates horribly, but in general I love Baudelaire, Rimbaud, Lorca, Juan Ramón Jiménez, Rilke, Byron, Quevedo, Góngora, Lope de Vega, Horace, Catullus, Ovid, Tennyson, Maiakovsky, Garcilaso de la Vega, Oliverio Girondo, Vicente Huidobro, Emily Brontë, T. S. Eliot, Luis Cernuda and Edgar Allan Poe, to name a few.

#I talk too much #I wanted to say The tragic sense of life by Unamuno and Philosophy and Poetry by María Zambrano #but I thought maybe they'd be hard to find in translation. They're both approachable texts of philosophy beautifully written though #Unamuno's essay Vida de Don Quijote y Sancho (translated as Our Lord Don Quixote in English according to Wikipedia?) is also beautiful #I adore Schopenhauer and Nietzsche but I'm not sure I'd recommend them to anyone. Probably you can't go wrong with Kierkegaard though #I know what some of these books look like (like Wittgenstein's Tractatus or Cantor's Foundations) #but I swear they're approachable without specific academic background. The last line of Wittgenstein's Tractatus is one of my favourite #lines ever in the history of anything‚ philosophy or literature‚ but to be as hitting as it is you need to reach it at the end of the book #I think despite what it looks like both Cantor and especially Wittgenstein have an aesthetic intent in their writing #Wittgenstein in particular reminds me of Kierkegaard and Rilke and also of Unamuno and Zambrano. And of course Schopenhauer et al. #The Tractatus is very similar in my opinion to Huidobro's Altazor which is just amazing but I don't know how it would translate #These books I like in form and not just in content (although form is content like I think happens in Wittgenstein's Tractatus) #so when possible I'd read them in their original languages.I myself can't read German and know but very little of Russian and Ancient Greek #and a bit of Latin so I must be missing a lot of those. Nonetheless they're great in what I can get through translation #Perhaps you'd have the chance of enjoying them in full #If you can't read Russian I am actually quite specific with the translation of Crime and Punishment haha There's a concept #Razumikhin develops through the book at several points and often translators aren't consister with the word which makes the readers lose #the view of this development. And I happen to think the development works alongside the narrative of Svidrigailov #and also with what happens towards the end with Porfiry and Raskolnikov so I think it's important #In English there are several translations that maintain the coherence such as the one by Pevear and Volokhonsky #(the only one I can remember right now but I could check the rest). Garnett's translation is everywhere but that one doesn't do it #Hmmm Pedro Páramo in English takes some liberties and La Regenta isn't as funny which is what happens with Wuthering Heights #and The three musketeers in translation even when the translations are more accurate #I haven't recommended Wuthering Heights because I take you've read it but that's my favourite book #And I haven't recommended Pandora Hearts because that's a manga and you asked for books but it does some very interesting things #that I think are in line with many of the books listed here (as I said‚ I basically like the same few things retold over and over haha) #There are many books I am itching to recommend but that I can't do freely without some knowledge of the person asking #Like Steinbeck's arthurian novel or idk Gone with the wind #I hope this list is enjoyable enough. I'm not sure if I've been able to avoid being too partial #I suppose one has to bear the conditions of their existence and can't ever entirely get rid of themselves haha