Dec 02, 2024
I hate my job. I hate working. Any recommendations for fiction to console me? Posted from work.
Not "work" related, really, but Knausgaard is deeply consoling in that you'll and feel like an aloof Scandinavian man the whole way through My Struggle. He writes very well about mundanity. Reading him can be a very enjoyable (or at least, a meaningful) experience, one that makes a coffee or cigarette break filled with profound self-indulgence for the smaller things. I find his writing totally transportive. Olivia Manning's Balkan Trilogy isn't work related either but it's long and rewarding and it was nice to disappear into for a while.
Perfect Tense by Michael Bracewell and Amphibian by Christine Neuwirth are two very different but excellent short novels about the dreadfulness of office life. If you do manual work, The Restraint of Beasts by Magnus Mills is your book.
Someone in the discord recently recommended Letters to a young poet, and it's phenomenal for periods like this.
anna1 year ago
My sympathies. The Employees by Olga Ravn instantly came to mind. I'm not sure if it'll make it any better though. :(
77qqqqqqqqqq1 year ago
Thank you, this is a great suggestion. Even if bleak it'll be comforting or maybe vindicating (which I guess can also be comforting).
Would fiction about bureaucracy make it better or worse? Kafka's The Castle and The Trial DFW's The Pale King and The Broom of the System Heller's Catch-22 and Something Happenned Hašek's The Good Soldier Schweik Melville's Bartleby, the Scrivener Gogol's Dead Souls Ishiguro's The Unconsoled Lewis's The Screwtape Letters Dickens's Bleak House
77qqqqqqqqqq1 year ago
Some books very close to me are in this list, so really looking forward to the ones I haven't read. Thank you.
spuh1 year ago
I listened to The Pale King at work (GS-11) and have been shilling it hard to some of the coworkers I get along with
Horrorstor by Grady Hendrix maybe?