- The Gospel According to Jesus Christ (1991) - Jose Saramago

- The War of the End of the World (1981) - Mario Vargas Llosa

Favourites among the books I’ve read lately.

Other than that, there are plenty to enjoy some serious fiction from authors such as:

- Homer (watching Troy is way too far from the book)

- Thomas Mann - The Magic Mountain is top pick among his works

- Robert Musil - The Man Without Qualities I think is one of the finest pieces of literature

- Albert Camus - pick any of his works, but the shortest is considered to be the finest - The Stranger (~ 80-100 pages)

- Herman Melville - Moby Dick was a wonderful journey I enjoyed thoroughly

- Leo Tolstoy - War and Peace is a book that will raise the bar for fiction, I couldn’t start a new one for a month after finishing it, tried but I was still living in the book. I remember taking a vacation at work to finish the book, couldn’t put it down. Was working as a Java dev at The Ministry of Internal Affairs, must have been 20 or 21 yrs old.

- Dostoevsky - bot reading any of the big five is a missed opportunity: The Demons (one of the finest political fiction work), Brothers Karamazov (Will drain you from emotions), Crime and Punishment, The Idiot, Notes from Underground

- Oh, Cervantes - Don Quixote was the book took me 2 years and some more life experience when it started to tick in my mind the depth, importance of the book, perhaps it was 24 or 25.

- And so on, it will be useless to list them all, and many will slip from my mind :)

One important realization an decision I made at the age 18 was that I had to ask around, listen to people who know world literature inside out and follow their suggestions. The reason? At first I wanted to read everything, but pretty quickly that started to sound like a dumb idea which ignored reality and life longevity. Next decision was to read finest of the written works. And the strategy worked.

Books or authors I didn’t enjoy much?

- Gabriel Garcia Marquez, 100 Years of Solitude - finished it this month and the story felt like the one I’ve already experienced before, emotions I’ve had. If I had read it 8-10 years ago, I would have been dazzled l, but at the age of 29, not much.

- Kafka - The Tower was an awful translation, I felt that, which isn’t authors fault. The next book went smoothly but nothing groundbreaking.

- Ishiguro - mediocre

- Turgenev - mediocre, again

- Calvino - despite my love and respect towards a very good friend, his suggestion didn’t work for me, the book felt like - the author knows too well what’s he’s writing and that’s not a good thing. At first author writes and then he reads it as a reader just to find out what he has written. Calvino and many many more know what they’re writing and hence the mediocrity.
- etc.

My next friend will be Ulysses, dragged it a bit too long and finally 2022 is a good year to read it.

Software engineering takes awful a lot of time and energy that it leaves a narrow path to reading something other than technical books and documentation, but the path exists and with discipline we can still enjoy finest pieces of philosophy and literature.

P.S. Many of the printed products are marketed and sold as “books”, but book is a title ought to be earned.