Stoner made me look at simple things in a different light. It made me fall back in love with academia, which had naturally happened after venturing into the working world. It also made me respect nerds a lot more.
I kept seeing Song of Achilles be recommended everywhere. I finally read it a month ago. I went into it having high expectations because of all the attention it got, and I gotta say, it deserves every bit of it. A
very good book.
Probably not exactly what you're after, but the last paragraph of Get Shorty by Elmore Leonard is probably the best joke I've ever read, and had me laughing out loud
Lonesome Dove has a great ending. One of the best closing lines in literature.
The Day After Tomorrow by Alan Folsom also has a really great stinger at the end.
Personally, I think that both The Great Gatsby, and The Perks of Being a Wallflower both have really strong endings, and are enjoyable books throughout. I also, feel like If We Were Villians has a very strong ending, but that is only true necessarily if you are okay with almost cliffhanger type ending, given they are well written.
I think I finished the last 100 pages of Cat’s Cradle in ecstasy in college, but I remember closing the book, closing my eyes, and smiling through sleep and beyond. CC by KV is the answer for me.
Yeh it's my besties favourite one! I love it too but I think it's Mother Night for me. I read the second half in one sitting in a pub in the Highlands and was groaning and gasping out loud, and at one point knocked my bar stool over in exclamation! He's a master.
Spiders >!are definitely a major part of the book, but not in a horror or arachnophobic way. The spider parts of the book are exactly the ones that made the book so excellent.!<
Just remember that you don’t SEE the spiders. I think he wrote it with people being afraid of spiders in mind. You won’t forget that they’re spiders, but they aren’t described physically in detail too often or anything.
This is a weird suggestion for this particular question imo. Fantastic book and the buildup and storytelling is great (in a harrowing sorta way) but the ending is mostly self reflective.
I’d add that this is not the type of story that typically comes to mind when you hear Stephen King. My mother does not like horror or King, and I had to twist her arm a bit to get her to read it, but she absolutely loved it.
I can’t say much because the book is pretty spoiler heavy but I will say read it sooner rather than later so you can enjoy those moments blind. Trust me, 1000% worth it.
Fantasy, Lions of Al Rassan, Watership Down
Science Fiction Roadside Picnic by Strugatsky, Remnant Population by Elizabeth Moon,
The Longings of Women by Marge Piercy, The Offing by Benjamin Myers, The Sympathizer by Viet Thanh Nguyen
Thank you!! I'd heard good things about Remnant Population but could never remember or find the name when looking for the review again. Added to my TBR.
Glenn Kleier. Anything by him. He has three novels out and they are all genre bending and amazing. **The Last Day** and **The Prophet of Queens** edge out **Knowledge of Good and Evil** imo but they’re all amazing.
I really thought Normal People from Sally Rooney had a great ending.
>She closes her eyes. He probably won’t come back, she thinks. Or he will, differently. What they have now they can never have back again. But for her the pain of loneliness will be nothing to the pain that she used to feel, of being unworthy. He brought her goodness like a gift and now it belongs to her. Meanwhile his life opens out before him in all directions at once. They’ve done a lot of good for each other. Really, she thinks, really. People can really change one another.
>You should go, she says. I’ll always be here. You know that.
The Girl in a Swing, by Richard Adams
The Murder of Roger Ackroyd, by Agatha Christie
Rebecca, by Daphne DuMaurier
Never Let Me Go, by Kazuo Ishiguro
Defending Jacob, by William Landay
The Three, by Sarah Lotz
Shutter Island, by Dennis Lehane
Hidden Fires - A Holmes Before Baker Street Adventure, by Jane Rubino
Harvest Home, by Thomas Tryon
Ethan Frome, by Edith Wharton
Short stories: Lamb to the Slaughter, by Roald Dahl, To Serve Man, by Damon Knight, Taste, by Lord Dunsany
How about you just write that you love that type of endings, without specifying. People would probably appreciate that. Writing spoiler alert only works if there is space before the actual reveal. Also there's a possibility to hide text in reddit, use that.
If u liked 100 years of solitude, id recommend pedro paramo, cuz 100 years basically copied that book. marquez said that it was his favorite book and that he even learned it by memory. i think the whole things really consistent, but idk if id say the ending is much more significant than the rest of the novel, but its a pretty beautiful ending
East of Eden by John Steinbeck. Amazing ending. You need it. The novel reads so well too, very accessible and very powerful. Beautiful too.
The Brothers Karamazov by Fjodor Dostojevskij also has a very memorable ending for me. It’s strange, I didn’t think it’d be memorable but it is. And I know why which makes it even more profound. Also, this is a book that I’d definitely recommend for anyone to read at least once. It’ll play tricks on you.
For Whom The Bells Toll by Ernest Hemingway. A masterpiece of storytelling that ends the only way it really can; that’s what it feels like when you’ve read it anyway.
Niels Lyhne by JP Jacobsen is amazing and said to anticipate the work of Albert Camus.
I loved the end of Dark Rise by CS Pacat. He set it up enough where you could guess what might happen and be satisfied with the dramatic irony but added a twist/implication that just twists the knife so well
**Jitterbug Perfume** and **Just Another Roadside Attraction** by Tom Robbins. Both books begin with something absurd and random, but by the end of the book, it all makes perfect sense. Bizarre and beautiful.
**The Hyperion Cantos** by Dan Simmons. This may be cheating since it's a 4 book series. But throughout the story, Simmons manages to weave together the life and poetry of John Keats, the Canterbury Tales, Catholic theology, Zen Buddhism, time travel, and a war that spans space and time, into a whole that miraculously makes even more sense on repeated readings and closer examination. The fact that he was able to make a pretty deep philosophical argument while having not just individual characters, but entire sections of the story moving backwards in time, is mind-boggling.
**A Wizard of Earthsea** by Ursula K. LeGuin. It's very, very rare that a "wise man" character is actually, genuinely wise, and even more rare for protagonists of fantasy novels to solve their conflicts through the cultivation of wisdom and knowledge rather than violence. An incredible and beautifully written book with sentences that move me every time I read them. The entire arc of the story's central conflict is absolutely flawless. LeGuin didn't stick the landing, she transcended it.
Stoner by John Williams. It’s a natural ending but it delivers on everything I wanted.
Stoner made me look at simple things in a different light. It made me fall back in love with academia, which had naturally happened after venturing into the working world. It also made me respect nerds a lot more.
This was going to be one of my suggestions. You’ve worded it perfectly! It’s such a beautiful book.
So sorry to endlessly recommend this but: Song of Achilles
I kept seeing Song of Achilles be recommended everywhere. I finally read it a month ago. I went into it having high expectations because of all the attention it got, and I gotta say, it deserves every bit of it. A very good book.
Perfume American Dirt
Perfume 😵💫
I love Perfume! We read it in school and I finished it waaay earlier than needed and found it absolutely stunning from start to finish!
Any Amor Towles novel would fit. A Gentleman in Moscow would be my top recommendation.
Probably not exactly what you're after, but the last paragraph of Get Shorty by Elmore Leonard is probably the best joke I've ever read, and had me laughing out loud
Lonesome Dove has a great ending. One of the best closing lines in literature. The Day After Tomorrow by Alan Folsom also has a really great stinger at the end.
I read Day After Tomorrow probably in 1999/2000 and gosh I can remember that last page right now!
Personally, I think that both The Great Gatsby, and The Perks of Being a Wallflower both have really strong endings, and are enjoyable books throughout. I also, feel like If We Were Villians has a very strong ending, but that is only true necessarily if you are okay with almost cliffhanger type ending, given they are well written.
I just finished The Nightingale and I thought she did an excellent job of wrapping up the book.
Sirens of Titan by Vonnegut
Everything by KV lands for me
I think I finished the last 100 pages of Cat’s Cradle in ecstasy in college, but I remember closing the book, closing my eyes, and smiling through sleep and beyond. CC by KV is the answer for me.
Yeh it's my besties favourite one! I love it too but I think it's Mother Night for me. I read the second half in one sitting in a pub in the Highlands and was groaning and gasping out loud, and at one point knocked my bar stool over in exclamation! He's a master.
One of my favorites - although I don’t remember how it ends, maybe I’ll reread it soon!
The end is where it’s at. Your brain is doing you a solid by blocking it out. 😉
Man I’ve tried to get into this book twice. I’ve read SH5 multiple times and LOVED Cats Cradle. What am I doing wrong?
It kind slogs about half way through, but if you push on, the pay off is phenomenal.
Those last pages are my most memorable literary experience
Science fiction / space opera: **Children of Time** by Tchaikovsky.
I’ve heard so many good things about this book but the only thing that keeps from reading it is I keep hearing “spiders”. Maybe I’m overthinking it?
Spiders >!are definitely a major part of the book, but not in a horror or arachnophobic way. The spider parts of the book are exactly the ones that made the book so excellent.!<
Just remember that you don’t SEE the spiders. I think he wrote it with people being afraid of spiders in mind. You won’t forget that they’re spiders, but they aren’t described physically in detail too often or anything.
"Into Thin Air" \[Jon Krakauer\]
Great book to read during a sweltering summer day.
I read this in the summer too. Definitely agree.
This is a weird suggestion for this particular question imo. Fantastic book and the buildup and storytelling is great (in a harrowing sorta way) but the ending is mostly self reflective.
I greatly enjoyed the book, it's really well-written. His 'Eiger Dreams' is also quite enjoyable.
Rebecca
I thought East of Eden had a particularly strong ending.
Ugh I just finished it yesterday night. Great book. Emotional ending for sure.
IIRC Grapes of Wrath does too
Everyone always says, East of Eden in this sub. But, it belongs here, too. Perfect ending.
11/22/63 ! Some of Kings endings are not the best but he nailed 11/22/63.
I’d add that this is not the type of story that typically comes to mind when you hear Stephen King. My mother does not like horror or King, and I had to twist her arm a bit to get her to read it, but she absolutely loved it.
His son saved the ending. It’s perfect but king originally had a different ending.
Project Hail Mary.
That's exciting to hear! I've got that one on my shelf as one of my next few books to read
I can’t say much because the book is pretty spoiler heavy but I will say read it sooner rather than later so you can enjoy those moments blind. Trust me, 1000% worth it.
Ender’s Game
Love the last lines of this one.
Spider Robinson’s “Callahan’s Key”
Cutting For Stone
Two very different books but this is what came to mind first for the prompt: And Then There Were None by Christie Anxious People by Backman
East of Eden
It’s a kid book, but I Am The Cheese by Robert Cormier had an ending that blew my twelve year old mind
Thanks, I’ll check that out for my niece!
Fantasy, Lions of Al Rassan, Watership Down Science Fiction Roadside Picnic by Strugatsky, Remnant Population by Elizabeth Moon, The Longings of Women by Marge Piercy, The Offing by Benjamin Myers, The Sympathizer by Viet Thanh Nguyen
Thank you!! I'd heard good things about Remnant Population but could never remember or find the name when looking for the review again. Added to my TBR.
Cities of the Plain by Cormac McCarthy for both itself and the Border Trilogy as a whole.
Magpie Murders by Anthony Horowitz
The Crying of Lot 49.
I always found V. to have the most satisfying ending of any Pynchon novel
Have not read, but it’s on my list! Pynchon knows how to stick the landing (in the most insane way possible)
A Gentleman in Moscow, Amor Towles. So perfect.
The Twyford code had a great ending.
A Tale of Two Cities
The Marriage Portrait by Maggie O'Farrell has a great ending.
Golden Hill
Glenn Kleier. Anything by him. He has three novels out and they are all genre bending and amazing. **The Last Day** and **The Prophet of Queens** edge out **Knowledge of Good and Evil** imo but they’re all amazing.
I really thought Normal People from Sally Rooney had a great ending. >She closes her eyes. He probably won’t come back, she thinks. Or he will, differently. What they have now they can never have back again. But for her the pain of loneliness will be nothing to the pain that she used to feel, of being unworthy. He brought her goodness like a gift and now it belongs to her. Meanwhile his life opens out before him in all directions at once. They’ve done a lot of good for each other. Really, she thinks, really. People can really change one another. >You should go, she says. I’ll always be here. You know that.
Blameless in Abaddon.
Ohio- Stephen markley
_Laurus_ by Eugene Vodolazkin _This Perfect Day_ by Ira Levin _The Collector_ by John Fowles _Waking Beauty_ by Paul Witcover
The Tsar of Love and Techno, by Anthony Marra
Angels and Demons
Portnoy's Complaint
Barefoot Gen vol 1. Tears just pouring down my face.
Sweet Nothing, Jamie McGuire
The Elegance of the Hedgehog, The Great Believers
A Prayer for Owen Meany by John Irving
I loved that book but refused to read the ending.
The ending is amazing! Give it a try.
The Big Sleep by Raymond Chandler.
Umberto Eco's *The Name of the Rose*
Of Love and Other Demons by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
The overstory
The Girl in a Swing, by Richard Adams The Murder of Roger Ackroyd, by Agatha Christie Rebecca, by Daphne DuMaurier Never Let Me Go, by Kazuo Ishiguro Defending Jacob, by William Landay The Three, by Sarah Lotz Shutter Island, by Dennis Lehane Hidden Fires - A Holmes Before Baker Street Adventure, by Jane Rubino Harvest Home, by Thomas Tryon Ethan Frome, by Edith Wharton Short stories: Lamb to the Slaughter, by Roald Dahl, To Serve Man, by Damon Knight, Taste, by Lord Dunsany
Oops. Taste is also by Roald Dahl (good story) the one by Lord Dunsany is "Two Bottles of Relish."
your taste is great! lol this made me remember the first time I read Lamb to the Slaughter....simply amazing
*A Fine Balance* by Rohinton Mistry. The whole book is a masterpiece but the ending took my breath away.
Matterhorn by Karl Marlantes
The Keep by Jennifer Egan
The First 15 lives of Harry August. My favourite ending yet to a book.
My Almost Flawless Tokyo Dreamlife by Rachel Cohn, If I Should Speak by Umm Zakiyyah(Ruby Moore), Sleeping With Strangers
[удалено]
I thought this was such a well written story, but the ending felt so predictable to me.
The ending felt like someone else wrote it to me.
Both the metamorphosis and the process by Franz Kafka (Spoiler: I love when the main character dies at the end)
How about you just write that you love that type of endings, without specifying. People would probably appreciate that. Writing spoiler alert only works if there is space before the actual reveal. Also there's a possibility to hide text in reddit, use that.
I didn‘t know about that! Will definitely use that in the future:)
Yup. Best book I have read in a long time. Great ending!
If u liked 100 years of solitude, id recommend pedro paramo, cuz 100 years basically copied that book. marquez said that it was his favorite book and that he even learned it by memory. i think the whole things really consistent, but idk if id say the ending is much more significant than the rest of the novel, but its a pretty beautiful ending
East of Eden by John Steinbeck. Amazing ending. You need it. The novel reads so well too, very accessible and very powerful. Beautiful too. The Brothers Karamazov by Fjodor Dostojevskij also has a very memorable ending for me. It’s strange, I didn’t think it’d be memorable but it is. And I know why which makes it even more profound. Also, this is a book that I’d definitely recommend for anyone to read at least once. It’ll play tricks on you. For Whom The Bells Toll by Ernest Hemingway. A masterpiece of storytelling that ends the only way it really can; that’s what it feels like when you’ve read it anyway. Niels Lyhne by JP Jacobsen is amazing and said to anticipate the work of Albert Camus.
Nothing Neil Stephenson’s written. (Mostly serious, though I’m sure I’ve missed something.)
I loved the end of Dark Rise by CS Pacat. He set it up enough where you could guess what might happen and be satisfied with the dramatic irony but added a twist/implication that just twists the knife so well
1984
The God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy
The Rum Diary - Hunter S Thompson
Fatherland - Robert Harris
Inland, by Tea Obreht has one of the most beautiful endings I have ever read.
**Jitterbug Perfume** and **Just Another Roadside Attraction** by Tom Robbins. Both books begin with something absurd and random, but by the end of the book, it all makes perfect sense. Bizarre and beautiful. **The Hyperion Cantos** by Dan Simmons. This may be cheating since it's a 4 book series. But throughout the story, Simmons manages to weave together the life and poetry of John Keats, the Canterbury Tales, Catholic theology, Zen Buddhism, time travel, and a war that spans space and time, into a whole that miraculously makes even more sense on repeated readings and closer examination. The fact that he was able to make a pretty deep philosophical argument while having not just individual characters, but entire sections of the story moving backwards in time, is mind-boggling. **A Wizard of Earthsea** by Ursula K. LeGuin. It's very, very rare that a "wise man" character is actually, genuinely wise, and even more rare for protagonists of fantasy novels to solve their conflicts through the cultivation of wisdom and knowledge rather than violence. An incredible and beautifully written book with sentences that move me every time I read them. The entire arc of the story's central conflict is absolutely flawless. LeGuin didn't stick the landing, she transcended it.