My Struggle
by Karl Ove Knausgård · first published 2012
30% recommend68% neutral3% critical
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…novels. In my 20s I felt guilty and frivolous for reading fiction, but eventually I realized I could learn a lot more walking in a protagonist's shoes than I could reading self help etc. 'My Struggle' by knausgard. Lengthy but worth it, even if you only read book 1. On face it's just the angst of some middle class writer, but following him into the recesses of his own introspection is really something. The borderlands…
on “Ask HN: Which books have made you introspect?” ↗"My Struggle" series by Karl Ove Knausgård [1]. The whole series is 3600 pages in six books, and I read four of them this year. Why on earth am I reading ridiculously detailed reports on some Norwegian guy's personal life, I thought. His divorce,…
on “Ask HN: What's the best book you read in 2021?” ↗…with occasional to-the-point metaphors, lots of dialogues, then stream-of consciousness-sections and philosophical cross-references out of the blue, hundreds and hundres of pages with no chapters, etc. Knausgård sure knows how to keep a strong pace. It's somewhat a mashup of all sorts of things, and so is life, isn't it? In a way, it's like the Perl programming language, lol: often times impossible to read,…
on “Ask HN: What's the best book you read in 2021?” ↗The Bible. Harold Bloom's "Western Canon", Knausgaard's "Min Kamp", "The World According to Garp", Robertson Davies Deptford Triology, "Anna Karenina", "Consilience of Knowledge", "House of Leaves" "The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz" All these books messed…
on “Ask HN: What is the most influential not-technology book(s) you have ever read?” ↗…of the title. So to answers OPs question. Yes, I find the title strange (it is pretty controversial). But also, the title is descriptive and relevant (my opinion). Full disclosure: I am huge fan of Knausgård :)
on “Karl Ove Knausgaard’s ‘My Struggle: Book 4’” ↗…interesting to read since Cholera was written 20 years after Solitude and we can see how the author changed over time. Overall though, my absolute top tier books are East of Eden, Catch-22, and My Struggle (Knausgaard). 1000% read those. I like including these so if somebody reads this and likes these books as well, they can somewhat trust my other suggestions.
on “Ask HN: Favorite fiction books of 2018?” ↗Lawrence in Arabia by Scott Anderson A mathematician's apology by G.H Hardy My Struggle by Karl Ove Knausgaard Genghis Khan and the Making of the Modern World by Jack Weatherford Churchill: Walking with Destiny by Andrew Roberts Lenin: The Man, the Dictator, and the Master of Terror by Victor Sebestyen Hamilton…
on “Ask HN: Biographies recommendations – both Westerner and Non-westerner” ↗…of My Struggle is a good starting point. That series sounds intimidating -- six volumes averaging maybe 500 pages, written by a gloomy-looking Scandinavian, with an ominous and provocative title -- but Knausgaard is crazy readable. And the first book immediately gets to work showing you how, what, and why he writes.
on “For Men Who Hate Talking on the Phone, Games Keep Friendships Alive” ↗Have you read Knausgaard, by chance? Something about your writing evoked him for me in a good way. It's sort of off-topic, but reading his books in my early 20s was a huge revelation for me; something like "Oh, it actually doesn't…
on “Ask HN: How do you deal with professional envy?” ↗My struggle book 6 by Karl Ove Knausgaard. Good, though I think I preferred the earlier books. It's still very compelling, but a little too much Hitler in this one Underland: A Deep Time Journey by Robert Macfarlane. Poetic landscape history,…
on “Ask HN: What Are You Reading?” ↗Try Murakami, Knausgård and Ursula Le Guin. Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the end of the world is the most scifi Murakami. Wonderful stuff. Then read all his others. Knausgård 'My Struggle' is a very compelling personal story…
on “Ask HN: Best non-business books to read on vacation” ↗…of wealth/income - The Code Breaker by Walter Isaacson, a biography of Jennifer Doudna, the woman who founded CRISPR and won the Nobel prize. Great read, thrilling. - My Struggle book 1, by Karl Ove Knausgård. Haven't finished this yet, just started it a few days ago - about 300 pages in. Great, great novel, one of the best I've read in a while.
on “Ask HN: What's the best book you read in 2021?” ↗…twentieth century, whose effects on our intellectual culture are deep and pervasive - to be an incidental footnote when compared to Mr Beast. But cultural value isn't just a function of influence, clearly. Knausgaard's books are to many people, myself included, simply great works of art, and should be celebrated for that fact. They show a level of cultural excellence, ingenuity and craft that the average trending…
on “The Norway Model: How the Scandinavian country became a literary powerhouse” ↗…Hitler’s manifesto ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/My_Struggle )? I don't know if one in English normally refer to Hitler’s book as “My Struggle” or its original German name “Mein Kampf”, but at least in Mr. Knausgårds original Norwegian book name “Min Kamp” the reference is very clear.
on “Karl Ove Knausgaard’s ‘My Struggle: Book 4’” ↗…to manipulate the reader, and it doesn't seem to aim beyond high school English in complexity. It's workmanlike, unaffected, and personal. To me, it brings to mind John Williams (Stoner) and Karl Ove Knausgaard (who is admittedly a much more capable prose stylist). In his earlier works, the simplicity feels a bit... simple. But in hi later, more mature works, he doesn't shy away from going into detail about…
on “Japanese Writing After Murakami” ↗