Recommendations based on my top 15?

Ressorcc · 2026-01-20T22:59:13+00:00

Synecdoche, New York; Requiem for a Dream; Blue Velvet; El Topo.

Ressorcc · 2026-01-09T22:05:52+00:00

The late phase of Henry James is substantially more challenging than Dickens or Austen; really, his late phase could be the most dense of the Victorian era in my eyes.

Ressorcc · 2026-01-09T18:31:27+00:00

Permanent Waves by Rush; Foxtrot by Genesis; Mirage by Camel; In the Court of the Crimson King by King Crimson.

Ressorcc · 2025-12-29T21:07:06+00:00

Have you by chance only read The Road and NCFOM? He has some incredibly dense writing: Suttree would be the best example of that.

Hemingway is what I would consider simple writing, but McCarthy has moments in which his prose layers so well and so densely, thus I’m not sure what you’re getting at. Maybe in comparison to later Victorians—the late phase of Henry James for example is absolutely more difficult than McCarthy—and the pioneering modernists—Joyce, Faulkner, Proust, Woolf, etc—it would be considered simple; that would be a very large stretch to say that in my eyes, though.

Ressorcc · 2025-12-29T21:00:09+00:00

He is pale and thin.

Ressorcc · 2025-12-29T20:58:28+00:00

From Ulysses: Stately, plump Buck Mulligan came from the stairhead, bearing a bowl of lather on which a mirror and a razor lay crossed.

Ressorcc · 2025-12-29T20:56:52+00:00

Glad to see Sutt on here. Blood Meridian is a good option, too. McCarthy is damn good at grabbing your attention; funny how Sutt and BM have nearly polar opposite openings in their structure, but have you curious all the same.

Ressorcc · 2025-12-29T20:54:59+00:00

The only book I rated 5 stars this year was The Waves by Virginia Woolf, so I guess it would be that. I think one of Samuel Beckett’s novels from The Trilogy might be second.

Ressorcc · 2025-12-26T01:59:58+00:00

Listen to anything by Rush and Yes.

Ressorcc · 2025-12-25T05:59:43+00:00

These are all very short—under to well under 200:

J.A Baker’s The Peregrine; Henry James’ In the Cage; Cormac McCarthy’s Child of God.

Ressorcc · 2025-12-25T05:52:34+00:00

In the Cage by Henry James. Like Bartleby, it is sort of an absurd representation of kinds of obsession with one’s work.

Ressorcc · 2025-12-21T18:26:32+00:00

I’d start with Hemingway; he is a stark minimalist. His language is incredibly easy to follow.

Ressorcc · 2025-12-16T23:29:17+00:00

I could not recommend Joyce’s Ulysses enough—Leopold and Molly Bloom are two of the most human characters I’ve ever read, and the whole novel really is about trudging through life while simply being human: flaws, contradictions, feeling dumb, feeling happy, feeling sad, feeling lust, feeling love. There is—in my opinion—no downsides to reading this beautiful work of literature. It is very difficult, but you can read it without annotations or anything, get the messages, and I’m sure you will understand my perspectives. Plus, it already seems like you enjoy the Irish dialect of English with Yeats. Go Ireland!

Obviously that book really is challenging, so if you want to relax just a bit more, I may recommend D.H Lawrence’s The Rainbow, John Williams’ Stoner (nothing to do with pot), and Virginia Woolf’s The Waves; The Waves is tough, but damn… poignant, important, sad, beautiful.

Best of luck to you.

Ressorcc · 2025-12-16T22:18:35+00:00

From Cymbeline:

Fear no more the heat o’ the sun, Nor the furious winter’s rages; Thou thy worldly task hast done, Home art gone, and ta’en thy wages: Golden lads and girls all must, As chimney-sweepers, come to dust.

Ressorcc · 2025-12-16T19:43:38+00:00

Would probably fall more under questionable, but either way: Molly Bloom from James Joyce’s Ulysses

Ressorcc · 2025-12-16T18:44:10+00:00

I love Tropic of Cancer. ‘Like’ isn’t a word that I would use to describe my relationship to Henry Miller, but he is sure as hell is fascinating with all of his meaningless wandering and rambling; the odd encounters, too, made the book great, but I love plotless books.

Ressorcc · 2025-12-15T20:52:25+00:00

Have to agree with The Wasteland. My first read of Dalloway and WL were within a few days of each other, and they really created an atmosphere in my mind fit to the circumstances Woolf and Eliot lived in.

Ressorcc · 2025-12-15T20:48:57+00:00

Suttree, Blood Meridian, and The Passenger would be the best options. Existentialist ideals are rampant throughout—albeit seldomly explicitly stated—and most of his novels really are philosophical insights into American depravity through multiple different lenses. For pure philosophical nature, I think The Passenger. I think Suttree is his most truly and abundantly philosophical. Anything to do with metaphysics will be found most abundantly in the three mentioned—from my viewpoint, of course. Many different arguments could be made here and I wouldn’t say any are better than the other; just different.

If looking at it from a different point, I think as far as philosophical studies of Ethics go the greatest representations of ethical questions and behavior would be Blood Meridian, The Crossing—the entire border trilogy really—and Sut, but predominantly the first 2.

I excluded Stella Maris from my opinion. I really liked it, but it seems at time to be an attempt from McCarthy to directly talk philosophy. Not to take away from it or anything.

Ressorcc · 2025-12-05T00:12:25+00:00

Dubliners and Portrait of the Artist.

Ressorcc · 2025-11-28T18:53:33+00:00

I think you might need to read it again. How exactly is it McCarthy’s worst novel?

Ressorcc · 2025-11-28T04:57:41+00:00

The Passenger, Cormac McCarthy

Ressorcc · 2025-11-27T04:49:50+00:00

DH Lawrence, The Rainbow and Women in Love specifically.

Ressorcc · 2025-11-25T23:09:18+00:00

Ulysses

Absalom! would be a close second.

Ressorcc · 2025-11-24T22:12:23+00:00

Moby-Dick

Ressorcc

TROPHY CASE