FREE/BARGAIN — Fiction (everything else)

[Cactus Chef]

Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace is $2 in the US (Kobo, Amazon)

The 30th anniversary edition of the virtuosic, wickedly comic modern classic about the pursuit of happiness in America, with a new foreword by Michelle Zauner, author of the New York Times bestselling sensation Crying in H Mart.

“To my mind, there have been two great American novels in the past fifty years. Catch-22 is one; this is the other.” —Stephen King, Entertainment Weekly

Set in an addicts’ halfway house and a tennis academy, and featuring the most endearingly screwed-up family to come along in recent fiction, Infinite Jest explores essential questions about what entertainment is and why it has come to so dominate our lives; about how our desire for entertainment affects our need to connect with other people; and about what the pleasures we choose say about who we are.

Equal parts philosophical quest and screwball comedy, Infinite Jest bends every rule of fiction without sacrificing for a moment its own entertainment value. It is an exuberant, uniquely American exploration of the passions that make us human—and one of those rare books that renews the idea of what a novel can do.

“Uproarious ... Infinite Jest shows off Wallace as one of the big talents of his generation, a writer … who can seemingly do anything.” ―Michiko Kakutani, The New York Times

“The next step in fiction ... Edgy, accurate, and darkly witty ... Think Beckett, think Pynchon, think Gaddis. Think.” —Sven Birkerts, The Atlantic

One of Time magazine’s “100 Best Novels” (1923—2005)

[Cactus Chef]

The Greek Myths by Robert Graves is £1 in the UK (Kobo, Amazon)

The definitive and comprehensive edition of Robert Graves's classic retelling of the Greek myths

'Icarus disobeyed his father's instructions and began soaring towards the sun, rejoiced by the lift of his great sweeping wings. Presently, when Daedalus looked over his shoulder, he could no longer see Icarus; but scattered feathers floated on the waves below...'

These are the greatest stories ever told - the labours of Hercules, the voyage of the Argonauts, Theseus and the minotaur, Midas and his golden touch, the Trojan War and Odysseus's journey home - brought together into one epic and unforgettable story.

Ideal for the first time reader, it can be read as a single page-turning narrative, while full commentaries as well as a comprehensive index of names make it equally valuable for anyone seeking an authoritative and detailed account of the spectacular stories that make up the bedrock of Western literature.

The Greek Myths is a classic among classics, a treasure trove of extraordinary tales and a masterful work of literature in its own right.

It's not quite Edith Hamilton's Mythology, from my understanding. He frames the myths in the context of the cosmology he developed while writing The White Goddess and contains quite a bit of what Wikipedia might call "original research". But it's still interesting.

[Quoth]

Fiction rather than original research, but it will be interesting and entertaining.

[Cactus Chef]

Originally Posted by Quoth

Fiction rather than original research, but it will be interesting and entertaining.

He himself seems to have believed it to be true, at least. "Fiction" to me implies knowingly false. "Poor scholarship" seems more appropriate.

[salty-horse]

The Immortal King Rao by Vauhini Vara is $3 on Amazon.com (only)
Literary fiction with SF elements

Finalist for the 2023 Pulitzer Prize in Fiction
Nominated for the 2022 NBCC John Leonard Prize
Named a Best Book of the Year by NPR, Esquire, Vox, Philadelphia Inquirer, and Literary Hub
In an Indian village in the 1950s, a precocious child is born into a family of Dalit coconut farmers. King Rao will grow up to be the most accomplished tech CEO in the world and, eventually, the leader of a global, corporate-led government.

In a future in which the world is run by the Board of Corporations, King's daughter, Athena, reckons with his legacy—literally, for he has given her access to his memories, among other questionable gifts.

With climate change raging, Athena has come to believe that saving the planet and its Shareholders will require a radical act of communion—and so she sets out to tell the truth to the world's Shareholders, in entrancing sensory detail, about King's childhood on a South Indian coconut plantation; his migration to the U.S. to study engineering in a world transformed by globalization; his marriage to the ambitious artist with whom he changed the world; and, ultimately, his invention, under self-exile, of the most ambitious creation of his life—Athena herself.

The Immortal King Rao, written by a former Wall Street Journal technology reporter, is a resonant debut novel obliterating the boundaries between literary and speculative fiction, the historic and the dystopian, confronting how we arrived at the age of technological capitalism and where our actions might take us next.

[salty-horse]

Sixty Stories by Donald Barthelme is $4 in the US (Kobo, Amazon)
Covered on the podcast A Meal of Thorns

Sixty Stories brings together Barthelme’s most famous works and hidden gems—a dazzling, subversive collection where language bends, reality warps, and the absurd reigns supreme.

With these subversive, razor-sharp stories, Donald Barthelme dismantles the familiar and rearranges it into something dazzlingly strange. Sixty Stories is a literary fun house where language is bent, meaning is slippery, and the absurd is never far from the truth.

Here, the ordinary mutates into the uncanny—an enormous balloon hovers over the city, its purpose debated by those below; a classroom lesson spirals into something darker and more profound; two men locked in a Cold War bunker teeter on the edge of madness. Elsewhere, a friend struggles to coax the Phantom of the Opera out of his shadowy refuge, and an entire town is made up of nothing but churches.

Barthelme moves effortlessly between deadpan satire, dream logic, and moments of startling beauty, crafting stories that are as unsettling as they are irresistible. Whether you’re encountering his work for the first time or returning for another descent into his linguistic labyrinth, Sixty Stories is a testament to a writer who saw the world askew—and showed us how thrilling that could be.

[Hollow Man]

Two classics:

Les Misérables, Penguin Christine Donougher translation, is 99 cents. I am currently only seeing this translation on sale at Amazon:

Amazon

Catch-22, Simon & Schuster 50th Anniversary Edition, is $2.99:

Amazon
Kobo
B&N

[Hollow Man]

Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse-Five is on sale for $2.99 as well:

Amazon
Kobo
B&N

[Hollow Man]

Tender Is the Night by F. Scott Fitzgerald is $2.99:

Amazon
Kobo
B&N