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Check out Dracula At Night for VS Code. I swear by it for every IDE possible. I'm honestly surprised it's only got around ~52k installs. I don't remember where I first found it, but I'm glad I did.

Appreciate the compliment! My favorite books are Candide, The Great Gatsby, and My Antonia. Dracula and Frankenstein are really good too.

I'm a huge fan of classic literature. It's a much different perspective of society and isn't necessarily written for ease-of-consumption.

The Count of Monte Cristo
Time Machine or Invisible Man
Frankenstein

One of my personal favorites which you won't be able to put down: Dracula

The Hobbit - Liked, classic.

How Ideas Spread - It was decent, I feel like it could be condensed into an infographic after the fact, and hold great value.

The Lean Startup - Excellent. Changed the way I do business.

A Game of Thrones: A Song of Ice and Fire, Book 1 - Great book, wonderful universe. Apparently Martin loves himself a good descriptions of clothes.

A Clash of Kings: A song of Ice and Fire, Book 2 - Great book.

Diary of a Wimpy Kid - Good book for a kid, pretty irritating kid though (the kid in the book, not mine).

The Andromeda Strain - Excellent!

Christ the Sum of All Spiritual Things - Great book! Very healthy view of a Christocentric theology.

Dracula - Sleeper hit of the year. This book was awesome.

Pippi Longstocking - Read this to my son, and we really enjoyed it.

The Secrets of Power Negotiating - Helped me out during the process of buying a house by understanding various negotiation gambits. Would recommend.

Scrum - Another book that changed the way I work. Would absolutely recommend it.

The Wizard of Oz - Much better than the movie.

The 4-Hour Workweek - .... It was "okay". I don't know. I'm still torn.

The Swiss Family Robinson - Awesome book, full of fun things to talk about with your kids.

The BFG - This was the start of the Roald Dahl stage for bedtime reading.. It's a great book, one of my favorite Dahl books.

Matilda - Reading this as an adult, it was not nearly as fun as when I was a kid, however my son loved it.

The Fantastic Mr. Fox - Fun and easy read for the kids.

Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Pretty decent book.

Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator - Terrible. Absolutely terrible.

"Alice's Adventures in Wonderland" - Lewis Carroll

"Through the Looking Glass and What Alice Found There" - Lewis Carroll

"Dracula" - Bram Stoker

"Frankenstein" - Mary Shelly

"On Education" - Bertrand Russell

"The Hitchhiker's Guide to The Galaxy" - Douglas Adams

"Animal Farm" - George Orwell

"1984" - George Orwell

"Lord of The Flies" - William Golding

"Brave New World" - Aldous Huxley

"Gulliver's Travels" - Jonathan Swift

"The Selfish Gene" - Richard Dawkins

Also, 1895 isn't that long ago. These aren't exactly writings from ancient Greece. Lets remember this was a couple years after Chicago's 1893 fair where a lot of what we consider modern was ushered in, albeit slowly. And in this period books like War and Peace and Dracula were published. I view this period pretty contemporaneous to modern American culture in many significant ways.

If you have access to a good library, it's a good place to try various types of books to see what you like. Ultimately, what you will be reading a few years later is hard to predict from what you start reading now. However, in the beginning, finding something that "hooks" you is the best bet because it gives you the experience of being absorbed in a book. These are the books with which I have introduced some people to the world of books:

- The Lord of The Rings

- The Hobbit

- Dracula

- The Little Prince

- Animal Farm

- Asterix and Obelix comicbooks

- Siddhartha

For the next time, I'm going to try "Necronmicon" (H. P. Lovecraft!)

(EDIT: Formatting and added "Siddhartha")

It's tangential, but I'm reading Dracula atm and Jonathan Harker mentions taking pictures with a Kodak. It was written in 1897.

Bukowski published his first novel at 51. He had written a couple of stories and poems before his 30s, but spend most of the next 1.5 decade drunk and not writing.

Burroughs published his first noval at 39. He had just written a few articles until then.

Walt Whitman first published a poetry book at 36.

Toni Morrison wrote her first novel at 39.

Bram Stoker wrote Dracula around 50. He worked as a public servant before, and wrote theatre reviews.

Anthony Burgess (of Clockwork Orange fame) first published at 39.

Raymond Chandler worked as a businessman (in the oil industry IIRC) and started writing novels at 51.

Wallace Stevens, celebrated poet, worked office jobs, and first published at 35, but his best work was done in his 50s. He went on to win the Pulitzer price at 75.

Beatrix Potter wrote her first book at 35.

Jules Verne, who went on to write tons of classics, started at 35.

Ian Flemming worked as a spy in Britain, and only started writing his books (James Bond) when he was 44.

In another genre, Martin Rev released his first album (with Suicide) at 39, Leonard Cohen started as a singer/songwriter at 33, and Vi Subversa (nee Frances Sokolov), started singing and performing as the vocalist of the influential Poison Girls punk band at the tender age of 44, and as a mother of two.

>Early means in your teens, early 20s. After that it is near impossible to master the unconscious mastery of the basics of whatever craft you choose.

That presupposes that you need to. Modern painters don't need to learn to learn to paint like Michalangelo to express themselves (and many don't know), modern musicians don't need to go into classical training or even know the scales (e.g. somebody like DJ Shadow and tons of others).

As for writing, it can be more about sensitivity to details and having an interesting story or viewpoint to express, than mastering some genre rules. One can learn most about writing from having read a lot (which is also what most writers advise young writers to do).

Kind of like how you don't need to study CS and study TAoCP to learn to program and write something useful. There are stories that picked up programming later in life and went on to write succesful apps and open source projects.

Until maybe 5 years ago, I would read almost anything. This is great for discovery, but sucks when you have to plow through an abysmal book. I remember vividly reading the sequel of Dracula by a descendant (and a handful of ghostwriter) of Bram Stocker. This was terrible, full of cliché, badly written...

So now I am actually planning what I am going to read next. There are lots of classic to chose from. Admittedly some are boring. Last year, I have really enjoyed Lord Jim, Nostromo and Heart of Darkness.

I always have a "to read next" list with 10-20 books in it.

72. Dracula – Bram Stoker

I don't mean to dismiss. I love genre fiction myself. All the works listed above in my post are things i've enjoyed and mulled over. Eventually though, I started getting curious about 'why' I enjoyed them so much. When I read Dracula, objectively a poorly-written novel by someone who's other works were hardly well-considered, why did I like it so much? What was it about this novel that made me enjoy it so much while others in my literature class thought it was terrible?

I agree that calling Ender's Game "porn" doesn't work, and it doesn't work because he's really arguing that it has pornographic elements in it, not that the entire work qualifies as "porn." I disagree with his central thesis but see some truth and value in the argument he's making. Ender's Game does and has provoked a lot of great discussion, in the original poster's POV though, those elements were drowned out by the more legalistic, fetishistic elements.

And I do draw a distinction between being provoked to thought and exploration vs. being provoked to feel warm and numb inside. We should dismiss neither, but recognize them for what they are. Sometimes you want and need to watch Raiders of the Lost Ark. Sometimes you reach for Trois Coleurs: Blue. Sometimes you build a new killer flash game to run on Kongregate. Sometimes you build a robotic arm. Both serve solid, tangible purposes, but I think its important to recognize what those are and how they're doing it.

Last point: Jurassic Park is a book I loved dearly as a kid and I'd place it in a similar boat, some elements that provoke discussion, some elements that are there to get the reader off. Both have a place.

I'm surprised the differences could have been kept out of mainstream literary research for so long. I read Dracula in my 11th grade english class. If it's taught in high school, you'd think there'd have been some sort of academic trading (foreign exchange, university collaborations, etc) between countries that noticed the differences. Sounds like they missed out on a chance to publish.