What is the green thing reading

October 11, 2019 10:14 AM

Not entirely sure if this is too broad of a question, but I've picked up some really good books that get mentioned here, like When things fall apart by Pema Chödrön and The gift of fear by Gavin de Becker that i probably wouldn't have come across them otherwise. what are books that you recommend or have seen recommended on the green that rock? I'm basically open to any genre. TIA!
posted by speakeasy to Grab Bag (13 answers total)

These lists by philosophistry are ten years old but I bet most of the recommendations still hold up (here is the MeFi Projects post about it).

There also this listing of popular books on Amazon that were linked from here (via).
posted by exogenous at 10:36 AM on October 11, 2019

One of the best non-fiction books I’ve ever read was recommended here on the green, and now I recommend it to everyone IRL: Nothing to Envy: Ordinary Lives of North Koreans, by Barbara Demick. Demick, a journalist, interviewed 100 North Korean defectors and the result is this book which focuses on the stories of six people who grew up in the totalitarian regime. It’s as gripping and engrossing as a novel, fascinating and moving.
posted by hurdy gurdy girl at 10:38 AM on October 11, 2019 [5 favorites]

I read the Becky Chambers Wayfarers series because people here kept recommending it.
posted by babelfish at 10:44 AM on October 11, 2019 [7 favorites]

My favorite books I've read this year:
Priestdaddy by Patricia Lockwood
Made for Love by Alissa Nutting
Tracks by Robin Davidson
Vacationland by John Hodgman
Stories of Your Life and Others / Exhalation by Ted Chiang
H is for Hawk by Helen MacDonald
The Feather Thief by Kirk Wallace Johnson
posted by GoldenEel at 10:51 AM on October 11, 2019 [3 favorites]

Come As You Are by Emily Nagoski
posted by carrioncomfort at 10:56 AM on October 11, 2019 [2 favorites]

Books I would recommend to anyone that have either been recommended to me here or that I have recommended here:

1. Lose Your Mother: A Journey Along the Atlantic Slave Route, by Saidiya Hartman. This is one of the most profound popular/accessible books I've ever read. I cannot recommend it too highly.

2. The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America's Great Migration, by Isabel Wilkerson. This book is very large, but I think you'll find that it's very readable. It took me a while but I read it steadily.

3. Secondhand Time: The Last of the Soviets

4. The Ministry of Nostalgia

5. In The Garden of Beasts

6. Monday Begins On Saturday
posted by Frowner at 11:09 AM on October 11, 2019 [1 favorite]

Old in Art School: A Memoir of Starting Over by Nell Painter was recommended here a few months ago. I had to read it with my iPad so I could look up all of the artists she wrote about.
posted by FencingGal at 11:30 AM on October 11, 2019 [1 favorite]

This is also outdated but ReadMe on the wiki used to exist for just this.
posted by jessamyn at 11:59 AM on October 11, 2019 [1 favorite]

Where are you located? If you’re in the US, read Sarah Smarsh - Heartland or anything by Willy Vlautin (his are mostly fiction). If you’re in Australia I think everyone should read Clive Hamilton - Silent Invasion.
posted by EatMyHat at 1:36 PM on October 11, 2019

Probably my favorite thing I read because I kept seeing it recommended here was Ann Leckie's Imperial Radch trilogy. (Ancillary Justice is the first one.)
posted by Redstart at 4:07 PM on October 11, 2019 [2 favorites]

“On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous” by Ocean Vuong is a new book I can't stop thinking about, and buying for everyone I know. Fiction, but very much captures modern day life for a young gay Vietnamese immigrant living in a small American city in the crisis that is end stage capitalism. It is beautifully written, and heart-wrenching.
posted by momochan at 8:44 AM on October 12, 2019

I went back through my favorites and found several more, so in no particular order, books that I have found through Metafilter and books that I have recommended on Metafilter:

The Enchanted April by Elizabeth Von Arnim

Lolly Willowes by Sylvia Townsend Warner

On a Sunbeam by Tillie Walden

Winter World and Summer World by Bernd Heinrich

The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake by Aimee Bender

The Nice and the Good by Iris Murdoch

The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern

Aria by Kozue Amano

The Summer Book by Tove Jansson

Smoke Gets in Your Eyes: And Other Lessons from the Crematory by Caitlin Doughty

Lab Girl by Hope Jahren

Welcome to the God Damn Ice Cube by Blair Braverman

The Sound of a Wild Snail Eating by Elisabeth Tova Bailey

Gathering Moss by Robin Wall Kimmerer
posted by carrioncomfort at 8:06 AM on October 14, 2019

Can I just recommend a book that I'm sure will be a chronic recommendation from me?

Walking With The Comrades by Arundhati Roy. A short read about India, modernization, the enormous forested part of India and the millions of adivasis who live there, the brutal efforts of the Indian state and multinational corporations to murder the adivasis or drive them off their land and the flawed but also much-lied-about Naxalite communist resistance.
posted by Frowner at 9:00 AM on October 14, 2019