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Best First Person Fiction Pieces Ever

FloraRead

FloraRead

Location
Somewhere in South America
Pronouns
She/Her
Greetings! It be me, Los, here with the first request I've had for this forum.

So what are the best god-danged marvelous, memorable, enjoyable pieces of first person writing that you have ever come across?

I'm asking, because most of the things that I enjoy are in third person as everyone knows, while there are limited third-person narratives, the way one goes about reading, writing, and even dissecting these pieces of media greatly vary between these points of view.

So! What would you consider to be the best pieces of first person literature that you have read, ever?
 
I've always liked the short story Letter to a Phoenix by Fredric Brown. It's written as a letter to an un-named recipient by an ancient near-immortal over 180,000 years old, about how humanity is the only immortal organism in the universe because of all intelligent races, only it is insane enough to destroy itself and rebuild from nothing.

But the human race will last. Everywhere and forever, for it will never be sane and only insanity is divine. Only the mad destroy themselves and all they have wrought.

And only the phoenix lives forever.
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Best ever? I have a hard time judging that.

Best recently? I'm quite fond of the book Pretty Things by Janelle Brown, a twisty story told from alternating perspectives of a con artist and her would-be mark. In particular, one thing I found impressive with regards to how Brown used first-person POV was how seductive the con artist's viewpoint was, how easy it was for me to be taken in by the narrative she was selling (including to herself).
 
As far as recent works go I was pretty impressed with how A Practical Guide To Evil used its first person narration, how it manages to creates a very likeable and compelling POV character that unlike a lot of other post-worm anti-heroines is both an unambiguously bad person and, structurally, the antagonist to the actual good guys, at least for the first four books.
 
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My favorite off the top of my head ... probably A Night in the Lonesome October, by Roger Zelazny. It's a fun little Dog-and-his-Boy-Save-the-World story, with something of an ensemble cast. (Part of me wants to say the Chronicles of Amber as well, but I'm pretty sure that's mostly the nostalgia talking, as I haven't actually sat down and read them in close to twenty years.)
 
The Chronicles of Amber series is one of my favorites.

Another I was reminded of just now is the Gandalara Cycle by Randall Garrett & Viki Ann Heydron. A series that starts when a man wakes up in a not-quite-human body in the "Walled World" of Gandalara, and has to figure out how and why while staying alive. And for that matter figuring out where Gandalara is. "Full of swordplay and giant cats", as one reviewer put it.
 
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