books

Annihilation by Jeff Vandermeer (2014): Annihilation is a one-of-a-kind novel packed with a horror often understated: the simple unknown of nature. A mind-bending nature contorted around the fingers of some influence; nature made alien.

Satantango by László Krasznahorkai (1985): Satantango is brilliantly conceived; a cacophony of vignettes ordered into a dance-like rhythm and symmetry. Truly a timeless work of art with an extremely memorable cast of characters, each more heinous than the last.

Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell by Susanna Clarke (2004): A captivating, sprawling, fantastical tale that will immediately suck you into the world. The worldbuilding is so deep and nuanced that you forget that it is a fiction book. Clarke uses the familiar 19th century style and language in homage to Dickens and Austen, adding to the sense of nostalgia elicited when reading the chronicles of Strange and Norrell which beckon it to be a classic.

The Fortunate Fall by Cameron Reed (1996): Are you your memories? your emotions? your connections to other people? If you had no control over these things would you still be human?

Made with an intricate internal logic, The Fortunate Fall may appear impenetrable but once that one key is put in the keyhole, and you finish the novel and reread the beginning, it unravels and the puzzle solves itself, forcing you to answer questions about yourself that have long gone uninterrogated. This book fundamentally changed something in me that no other book has been able to do.

Also, it's lesbian sci fi.

The Melancholy of Resistance by László Krasznahorkai (1989): Presence, existence, and order are mere interstitial reliefs from absence, nonexistence, and chaos.

When caught in a social fervor (later named a revolution), one can either retreat, engage, or man the helm, and this fervor, this revolution, is not a pure deviation from the banal state of chaos but a retreat into a modicum of order by attacking the chaos with more chaos. The order that arises is not from the roots of the fervor but the one who commandeers it.

This is a slow, grinding read that elicits a sense of deterioration as everything slowly falls apart, just as it has.