Best surrealism literary criticism books according to redditors

We found 25 Reddit comments discussing the best surrealism literary criticism books. We ranked the 5 resulting products by number of redditors who mentioned them. Here are the top 20.

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Top Reddit comments about Surrealist Literary Criticism:

u/brandonmat · 8 pointsr/books

Kafka on the Shore by Haruki Murakami

u/Strindberg · 4 pointsr/books
u/heymister · 3 pointsr/AskReddit

I'm gonna forego all the other threads about good books and best books because, on reddit, the list always seems to be the same. Not knocking it, as I've contributed to it, and because I agree with most of the choices I find each time. But I'm going to list a few books I read in the past ten years of so that don't fit the reddit norm, and because they struck a chord with me.

  1. Trout Fishing in America -- Richard Brautigan.

    A great drunk writer.

  2. At Home with Jamie -- Jamie Oliver.

    I've been working to cook from scratch, and this book has helped me understand the beauty and satisfaction to be had in working all day to create one meal.

  3. Understanding by Design -- Grant Wiggins and Jay McTighe

    As a teacher, this has been instrumental to my work. Learning how we learn and learning how to teach others to learn is succinctly broken down into necessary parts.

  4. World War Z -- Max Brooks

    By far the best book I've read in ten years.

  5. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time -- Mark Haddon

    Just plain, good storytelling, and with a narrator who'll question your capacity to understand other narrators.
u/dropbearphobia · 3 pointsr/AskReddit

Don't know what you like to read so I'm going to go a few ways, but these are good ''stuck in bed'' books. By Author (because thats how i like to read):


Haruki Murakami:

u/mrsimmons · 3 pointsr/books

Kafka on the Shore, Murakami.

Edit: Or, if you're in the mood for some awesome but super-depressing short stories, you can always check out the Kolyma Tales by Varlam Shalamov.

Kafka on the Shore: http://www.amazon.com/Kafka-Shore-Haruki-Murakami/dp/1400079276/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1289933997&sr=8-1

Kolyma Tales: http://www.amazon.com/Kolyma-Tales-Classic-20th-Century-Penguin/dp/0140186956/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1289934035&sr=1-1

u/binx85 · 3 pointsr/bookclub

Definitley Wind-Up Bird Chronicles by Haruki Murakami. Its about a dude who's wife leaves him and he has to find her. There is even a talking cat and some dream state scenes. some of it is a retelling of different histories and it has a lot of branching narratives. Kafka On The Shore is another great one by Murakami.

For Vonnegut,you're likely looking for Sirens of Titan, a retelling of Jonah and the Whale through an Alice and Wonderland lens. It's got a character who is very much representative of the Cheshire Cat. He has three different phases. His early books are the best. After (or even during) Breakfast of Champions he start writing a little more autobiographically (Slapstick is about his late sister and Hocus Pocus is about his brief tenure at Rollins college) and it's not as poignant (I don't think). And then later with stuff like Galapagos, he goes back to more philosophical lit, but it doesn't pack the same punch as his first phase.

Finally, House of Leaves is an amazing haunted house book that dramatically alters how you read a book. His other work is good too, but I haven't given any of it enough attention.

Edit: If you want to get meta, check out Lost in the Funhouse by John Barth or If On a Winter's Night a Traveler... by Italo Calvino.

u/admorobo · 2 pointsr/suggestmeabook

I would recommend the work of Haruki Murakami. Some of his work has elements of speculative fiction, surrealism, and metaphysics but it is also very grounded with real emotional weight. That, and his prose is sparklingly clear and filled with empathy and wonder. A good entry point is his novel Kafka On The Shore.

u/AyronHalcyon · 1 pointr/russian
u/Taure · 1 pointr/TimeManagement

Class - this means me teaching class, not going to class.

Planning - lesson planning for the aforementioned class.

Exercise - a quick 7 minute intensive calisthenics workout.

Wild card - no particular scheduled activity, but the time is reserved for "purple pursuits" - that is, creative or academic projects (which are my priority).

Mathematics - working my way through Engineering Mathematics by K.A. Stroud.

Spanish vocab - I have a book with different pages divided up by category (e.g. body, directions, dimensions). During vocab sessions I work on a single category, adding new words to the page, testing myself on old words, and making example sentences.

Spanish verbs - basically conjugation practice. I have a game (which I made myself) in which I select a verb (infinitive), tense and subject at random and have to conjugate it correctly, then say the English translation. Repeat.

Spanish reading - Reading through Spanish short stories in books like these.

Spanish listening - generally watching clips on YouTube in Spanish.

At some point in the near future I'm going to incorporate physics too (Following this book by Knight). That will probably go into the "Wild Card" spots, and Sunday afternoon will transform from "Relax" into "Wild Card".

I've had to make a few changes from when I first wrote it. The two big ones were: (1) I had originally massively underestimated travel time and food preparation time and (2) I had not counted on my own psychological quirks. Originally I had scheduled lesson planning to happen after pursing my own activities and just before class (reducing the redundancy of having to review the plan before class), but it turns out I don't work that way. To be able to focus on an activity I need to know that my lesson planning is out of the way.

The original also had a lot less redundancy (no "wild card" slots to allow me to catch up on missed activities) and an emptier weekend. I found out that the weekend, when scheduled as 100% "relax" made me feel a bit shitty. I need to feel like I've done something productive every day, even weekends. I ended up using the weekend to catch up on my overly-packed working week, so I lessened the intensity of the weekdays but made my weekend more productive.

u/anticipatedanxiety · 1 pointr/AskReddit

I recently finished Kafka on The Shore- its one of the best books I've read in a while.

Here's a site that might help you.

u/petiteuphony · 1 pointr/books

It's a tie between Brave New World and Kafka on the Shore for me.

u/steelpan · 1 pointr/CasualConversation

Read "Kafka on the shore" by Haruki Murakami!


It's about two characters you'll fall in love with who, at first, don't seem to have anything to do with each other. But towards the end of the book you'll see that the paths converge. One of the characters is a 15-year-old boy who goes on an adventure, and the other character is an older man who is adorably stupid and goes on another adventure. A lot of strange things happen in the book, such as fish falling from the sky and talking cats.

Be sure to update us on which books you have chosen!

u/harperrb · 1 pointr/booksuggestions

Well so much depends on everything. Some basic suggestions:.

Contemporary Science Fiction:
Ted Chaing, Stories of Your Life and Others his short stories are science fiction gems. https://www.amazon.com/Stories-Your-Life-Others-Chiang/dp/1101972122.

Classical: Vladimir Nabokov Short Stories, amazing prose. Though English was his second language he wrote a good number, especially the later half, in English, often challenging themes from dubious narrators.
https://www.amazon.com/Stories-Vladimir-Nabokov/dp/0679729976.

International Fiction: Haruki Murakami, Kafka on the Shore, reductionist, clean prose, with symbolic/metaphorical imagery that blends hard-boiled noir, Japanese animism, and surrealism. https://www.amazon.com/dp/1400079276/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_RxntybB7PYK93

Post Modern: Roberto Bolano, 2666: A Novel, perhaps the odd relative of Murakami in structure if not style. Sometimes rambling, though powerful prose with surrealist moments within graphic and "visceral" scenes. https://www.amazon.com/dp/0312429215/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_ZAntybTW2XXJX.

Deconstructionism: Mark Danieleski, House of Leaves, carefully crafted entangled adventure horror of a story, explained in the footnotes of an essay, edited by a tattoo artist, written by a blind man of a homemade video of a house gone awry. https://www.amazon.com/dp/0375703764/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_XMntyb3RT3RKQ

A start

u/BrutalJones · 1 pointr/booksuggestions

I just looked it up (I was in bed last night when I posted the previous message) and it seems Birthday Girl is in the Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman collection. So if you want more short fiction that's probably the best route to go.

If you're interested in jumping right into a novel, The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle is one of his most generally well received novels and a good place to start for some of the signature Murakami weirdness. Kafka on the Shore would be a great choice as well, and Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World is many Murakami readers' favorite novel of his, but I haven't read either of those yet so I'm more hesitant to recommend them.

I'd suggest reading the blurb of each and picking the story that sounds like it'd appeal to you most.

u/mx_hazelnut · 1 pointr/books

The books my high school friends and I desperately loved are usually the same books this subreddit as a whole desperately loves: American Gods, Ender's Game, Fight Club, and so on. My personal favorite was Kafka on the Shore. There are sexual themes, but nothing that shocked me as a 15 year old. Reddit's favorite book list might come in handy here too.

u/cloaca · 1 pointr/kindle

Pardon my ignorance, but could you tell me where this button is? My friend told me this as well, but I could not find it anywhere. Do I need to use the browser on my Kindle? Or does it have something to do with me not being in the US? (I am browsing Amazon.com)

for example

u/fuzzo · 1 pointr/books

if you like kafka, you'll like this

u/theshiba · 1 pointr/AskScienceDiscussion

Hi, throwing in my two cents that the best way to improve your reading/grammar and literary knowledge is to dive deep into anthologies and collections. Think of it as a sampling of the 'best of the best' and you are getting a taste of what is considered to be great. Also don't be afraid to pick up a piece of classic literature and think, "Good god, this was considered awesome?" That's ok. Some people don't like premodern literature. Some people LOVE it. Some people HATE it. Some people are all about cyberpunk angsty lit that's a product of our super modern society. Some love poetry...well, you get the picture. The beauty of an anthology is you can survey the goods -- and if you love something you read, odds are it's only a small selection taken from a much bigger book OR the writer is pretty prolific and if you like his style of writing, odds are you are going to LOVE the rest of his work.

Don't know where to begin? I recommend checking out some classics from overseas (which I use as a required book in my courses):

u/rcmurphy · 1 pointr/books

Red Sorghum by Mo Yan - brutal Marquez-esque magical realism during WWII-era China.

Captains of the Sands by Jorge Amado - a gang of children and adolescents run rampant on the streets of Bahia, Brazil.

Paprika by Yasutaka Tsutsui - a really odd novel involving machines that can invade people's dreams. Very weird and fun.

Tombstone by Yeng Jisheng - the most thorough and brutal account you'll ever read of the Chinese Famine of 1958-62. Much talk of cannibalism and insect-nutrition charts.

The Narrow Road to the Deep North by Matsuo Basho - it's both a collection of haiku by one of the medium's acknowledged masters and an idiosyncratic travel narrative of 1600s Japan.

Memories of My Melancholy Whores by Gabriel Garcia Marquez - a great first Marquez to recommend to people who don't yet want to take the One Hundred Years of Solitude plunge.

Norwegian Wood by Haruki Murakami - one of the few books I've read more than twice.

The Notebook, The Proof, and The Third Lie by Agota Kristof - a trilogy of short novels about distance and isolation in Europe during and after World War II. The three books form a narrative that contradicts itself, doubles back and retells events, and generally messes with your head until you're not sure what to believe.

Cosmicomics by Italo Calvino - my favorite of Calvino's works. This is a collection of short stories about and narrated by heavenly bodies, mathematical formulae, supreme beings. They're basically cosmic fairy tales.