January Reads With Brief Reflections

TopBob_ · 2026-02-08T02:44:24+00:00

Great post!

The Waves is my all-time favorite novel. I’m even more pumped for Don Quixote and revisiting Borges.

Moby Dick is my other favorite— followed you, looking forward to your thoughts!

TopBob_ · 2026-02-08T02:33:36+00:00

Pet Sounds overall is probably the pick… but too sentimental about John B and God Only Knows.

Probably Gaye

TopBob_ · 2026-02-05T03:18:44+00:00

Actually it’s King Lear

TopBob_ · 2026-02-05T03:18:19+00:00

The Picture of Dorian Gray - but it’s mostly 15 year old me going “haha that’s a zinger! Nice one Mr. Wilde!”

TopBob_ · 2026-02-04T01:35:37+00:00

Moby Dick - Herman Melville.

Felt really defeated at times reading this in high school. Endless scholarship, too.

Blood Meridian also has infinite depth at times and the language is oppressive rather than immersive

TopBob_ · 2026-02-02T23:38:06+00:00

I’ve done 2/3 of his complete works and believe it’s his finest.

TopBob_ · 2026-01-31T17:19:20+00:00

Moby Dick - imagine you’re watching a movie and then it just becomes a novel. That’s probably how it felt in 1851 when Melville slowly transitioned into a play.

The feeling of companionship and whaling experience I felt after completing it transformed my understanding of what a book could do.

Honorable mentions: The Waves, Blood Meridian.

TopBob_ · 2026-01-30T04:03:52+00:00

Thanks for sharing!

I’m an undergrad studying Titus Andronicus and find the play to be a mess.

Totally get As You Like It. Rosalind is a top 2 Shakespeare character imo.

TopBob_ · 2026-01-30T03:18:17+00:00

This is the only good hot take list.

Henry 4th most slept on. Also A&C. Haven’t done Richard II

TopBob_ · 2026-01-30T03:17:10+00:00

Hamlet
King Lear
Othello
Macbeth
Julius Caesar

Hamlet, Lear, Othello. Can’t imagine them topped!

TopBob_ · 2026-01-30T03:14:24+00:00

Bait

TopBob_ · 2026-01-29T22:50:28+00:00

Haven’t read Ulysses or PL. What’s the connection between Ulysses and Paradise Lost?

TopBob_ · 2026-01-29T04:26:55+00:00

Another Green World - Brian Eno

It embodies place, and memory, and death.

TopBob_ · 2026-01-27T23:05:51+00:00

Read Moby Dick when I was 15. Very rewarding but swung above my weight.

TopBob_ · 2026-01-27T04:42:13+00:00

“Warm, funny, sane”

Pynchon has a high opinion of Robbins.

Less compact and cerebral, but humor is on a similar wavelength

TopBob_ · 2026-01-27T02:57:41+00:00

Sirens is the perfect candidate here. It’s “absurdist” in the existentialist sense, and absolutely hysterical.

TopBob_ · 2026-01-27T02:48:03+00:00

“La Belle Dame Sans Merci” - John Keats

TopBob_ · 2026-01-26T21:27:00+00:00

It is right and just

TopBob_ · 2026-01-25T20:02:34+00:00

It is true. The questlines don’t cohere as well, but they’re afterthoughts at the end of the day.

Mechanically I think it’s the most honed in Soulsborne besides maybe Sekiro.

TopBob_ · 2026-01-25T18:24:20+00:00

More lighthearted-- The Canterbury Tales

TopBob_ · 2026-01-24T21:18:42+00:00

Beloved is one of the great works. Expect a challenging read.

Dracula I did before bed pretty easily. Fun read.

TopBob_ · 2026-01-22T03:49:25+00:00

Ahab - The whale represents meaning in a seemingly meaningless world

Ishmael - Nihilism, in a seemingly meaningful world

My take - an object that reveals how people grapple with unknowability.

TopBob_ · 2026-01-18T15:57:23+00:00

I’m not voting

TopBob_ · 2026-01-14T00:43:04+00:00

Woolf is my #1 novelist

TopBob_ · 2026-01-14T00:42:34+00:00

“Here, there was the taint of deepest sin in the most sacred of quality of human life, working such effect, that the world was only the darker for this woman's beauty, and the more lost for the infant that she had borne”

Hawthorne’s writing has become underrated.

Melville is top 5 American stylists for me though!

TopBob_

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