Hacker News Reader

Impossible to pick one... best I can do is five-ish, all fiction:

The Odyssey; David Copperfield; Moby-Dick; Anna Karenina; Borges' short stories, in particular Ficciones & The Aleph

Do you have any comments on how to best absorb Ficciones? I read it recently and struggled through the whole book, needless to say, I don't comprehend why many hold that book on such a high pedestal.

Borges is not really an amazing writer, literary-wise. His works are popular because they are essentially mental puzzles in short story form. In this way, he's very similar to most sci-fi writers, which is why both Borges and sci-fi tend to be liked by mathematically-inclined people. These works are praised for their ideas, not their forms.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com