Are there any books you recommend often?

For someone who reads much, I find I rarely or never recommend a book to anyone else. I think the way I read books and the sorts of pleasure I derive from them does not conform to the way other people read books, and I feel very uncertain that another person will like what I like. I just don't see my family, friends or acquaintances reading the same stuff I do. Ever.

Does this sound like you? Or do you freely recommend books to other people? Do you have one foolproof "go to" recommendation that never fails? Do you get discouraged if others don't mirror your own enthusiasm?

i've been recommending the kotkin book a lot lately and i've only gotten positive feedback from ppl who took my advice

my fil and my gi doc both loved it

worked in bookstores from the mid 90s to the mid 00s, a period in which we went from bridges of madison county and the celestine prophecy to the da vinci code

i wrote that richard russo's 'straight man' was the funniest book i'd ever read; it sold well and i got no complaints

i think infinite jest is fantastic but i've only ever recommended it to one person (who wasn't entirely on board)

dorothy dunnett's two series are the very best historical fiction series ever don't @ me

maira kalman's 'max in hollywood baby' was my go-to picture book because i love her and otherwise know nothing about kids picture books

'ender's game' was my go-to teenage sci-fi boy suggestion, though that was before i knew dude was a psycho asshole

About the only place i recommend books is round here. Nobody i know in the real world is interested in the sort of stuff i like.
When i worked in a bookshop, same era as mookieproof, i would sometimes order in stuff i loved. It was almost always still there on the shelf years after i left.

I always recommend Tim Weiner's books, especially Blank Check.
Kahneman's Thinking Fast and Slow.
Normal Accidents by Charles Perrow.
And John McPhee's Uncommon Carriers, both as a great collection generally and as a good introduction to McPhee (his geology stuff can be a bit stultifying imo).

I'm trying to think if there are any graphic novels I've recommended a lot to people, but nope.

i first started working in bookstores in alaska, so mcphee's 'coming into the country' was second only to the milepost

everyone rightfully scorned the 'into the wild' dude as an idiot

i only really recommend books to people here actually!

i hardly ever talk about books in real life.

i used to lend people books and i would never hear if they read them and they would never give them back. last time i did that was when i gave someone my copy of Pulphead to read and instead of asking for it back i just bought another copy. have no idea if they read it.

xp mookie: richard russo is my comfort food - i love straight man

i always end up recommending The Secret History but i think it's bcz i cant think of other books

i've also gone into that sci-fi black hole and 95% of everyone doesn't want to hear about that stuff.

Would recommend Ferrante in a 'believe the hype' way because I can't imagine anyone I would be recommending books to would not have heard of her.

i recommend the man who was thursday sometimes cuz it's short and trippy and people haven't heard of it unless they are big deus ex fans. other than that i mostly just tell people not to believe anyone who says a bad word about moby-dick. will still push dostoevsky's demons p hard in some company (like ilx) but iirc it didn't work out w aimless :(

iirc, I finished Demons, so it wasn't a failure. It was just not a rip-roaring success, due to my lack of affinity with Dostoevsky.

Masters of Atlantis by Charles Portis

Books I can remember recommending more than once: Doug Coupland Life After God, Murakami Haruki A Wild Sheep Chase, Iain Banks The Wasp Factory, Ramachandran and Blakeslee Phantoms in the Brain, DFW A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again.