Notes from Underground
A bitter, hyper-conscious man retreats from society to wrestle with free will, spite, and the stubborn irrationality of human nature.
Topics
fiction 
12 posts
Novels and stories, read for pleasure rather than for work.
The Alchemist
Santiago, a shepherd boy, journeys towards the pyramids chasing a dream and learns what actually matters in life.
The Day of the Triffids
Frightening and entirely plausible. Real people shaken out of the civilization they knew into a world dominated by triffids.
Fahrenheit 451
Ray Bradbury's dystopia about a fireman whose job is burning books, until a chance encounter makes him question all of it.
Momo
Momo is a modern fairytale that shows the fight between good and evil in our contemporary society, focusing on the lack of time to care for other people.
Jonathan Livingston Seagull
A fable in novella form about a seagull who is trying to learn about life and flight, and a homily about self-perfection.
The Catcher in the Rye
The novel is a deeper reflection of Salinger's own youth, his complicated relationship with growing up and the generational trauma affected by World War II.
Lord of the Flies
A group of British boys stranded on an uninhabited island try to govern themselves. It ends in disaster.
Animal Farm
Orwell's political allegory about a farmyard rebellion that descends into tyranny, exposing how power corrupts even the most idealistic revolutions.
The call of Cthulhu
Lovecraft's foundational cosmic horror tale about the discovery of an ancient underwater entity whose awakening threatens all of humanity and sanity itself.
The metamorphosis
Kafka's novella on alienation and identity. Gregor Samsa wakes as an insect and faces his family's revulsion.
1984
One of Britain's most popular novels, George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four is set in a society terrorised by a totalitarian ideology propagated by The Party.