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AsklemmyNeed to get back into reading. Usually read horror literature and Russian works. But regardless, tell me your favorites !
Arundhati Roy's The Ministry of Utmost Happiness is about the horrors (and occassionally the beauty) of being an outcast in modern-day Delhi. Another of Roy's works is The Briefing, a short story in the form of a speech given by a guerilla leader to their followers as they are about to attack a fortress in the Alps.
Anything by Emma St John Mandel. I started with The Singers Gun, but probably enjoyed Station Eleven most. It was made into a series by HBO - I'm in "the book was better" camp. The Glass Hotel is also good, and Sea of Tranquility. A quirk is that various characters pop up or are referenced in different novels.
China Mieville is another writer I like a lot. I read most of his steampunk novels - Perdido Street Station and The Scar stand out. But my favourite was Embassytown, which is basically about language.
The City and the Stars is one of my all time favorites.
I've read "Player of games" by Iain M. Banks so many times I broke it and had to buy a second copy.
Definitely a Discworld book, but hard to narrow down which exact one.
Night Watch should take it, but to get the most you have to read the 4 or 5 books before it in the guards series. It works on its own, but a lot of the flavour will go over your head.
After that is a toss-up between Reaper Man and Small Gods.
Reaper Man - Death "loses his job" and becomes mortal for a few weeks and becomes a farmhand.
Small Gods - A God comes down to Earth to stomp around and inspire fear, but the church no longer believes in him anymore, just the power structure within the church, so he doesn't actually have any power and ends up stuck as a Turtle, only able to talk to the one guy who believes in him.
The Dispossessed by Ursula Le Guin.
Few other sci-fi books do as good a job of depicting how a gift/library economy could work like in practice. It's quite a hopeful vision of where we can collectively go in the future.
If you want to read forever, the Wandering Inn is a good series.
Only ever met one other persons who had ever even heard of her but I have a particular love for the works of Jaqueline Carey. The Sundering duology is gorgeous moral greyness with epic fantasy scale and yet personal characterization. The Kushiel series (the parts I have read so far) is the intertwining of political thriller, historical fiction, magical realism, BDSM romance, and again, has both epic scale plot and personal characters. I recommend the Sundering to everyone and Kushiel's Dart to anyone old enough their mother won't come around and attack me for exposing their son/daughter to the sexual parts of the book. There are others but those ones always come to mind when I see/hear this question.
I love all of the books in Brandon Sanderson's Cosmere universe and it's definitely my number 1. Mistborn, Stormlight Archive, Warbreaker, Elantris, all of them. I think it's worth looking into reading order. It doesn't matter too much in the earlier books, but there are some references that add to the experience. In the latest books, there are things that need to be understood from other books for it all to make sense, particularly between Mistborn and Stormlight.
Other series I really enjoy:
- Robin Hobb: Realm of the Elderlings anthology.
- Jim Butcher: The Dresden Files.
- Brian Mcclellan: Powder Mage series.
- Joe Abercrombie: The First Law series.
- James Islington: The Licanius trilogy.
- Robert Jordan: The Wheel of Time. This is what got me into Sanderson since he finished the series
Unfinished series:
- Scott Lynch: Gentleman Bastards.
- Patrick Rothfuss: The King Killer Chronicles
I've been reading his work.
Mistborn, Warbreaker and some short novellas in between. Now I'm halfway into The Way of Kings and loving it. Saving your comment for possible future reference!
I love Sanderson's writing style. The way he builds up the characters and environment is unparalleled imo. That and the vastness and variability of his magic systems really keeps everything fresh. There are a couple non Cosmere or at least not intertwined novels that are great too. During the pandemic he wrote 4 books in one year. Absolutely insane. Yumi and the Nightmare painter was maybe my favorite of them, but I'd recommend all of them.
I'm gone through his YA work with Janci Patterson, and it's good, but too juvenile for me.
The other authors and books I listed I was chasing Sanderson like work. None of them are quite there but I know that hes praised at least the powder mage series.
Another one I forgot to like was Brent Weeks: Lightbringer Saga. I want to say Brent was a student of Brandon's. The magic system feels like something he would write, but the writing isn't quite as mature. It was still a good series and worth a read.
Fiction: The Lord of the Rings, it's a basic answer but it's just so good.
Non-Fiction: The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte
I had taken a pretty long break from reading for leisure. I read Lord of the Rings in high school and was convinced I’d never find something that enjoyable ever again.
Then I read Dune and it really got me back into reading again. I also tackled the Mistborn trilogy and then the Stormlight Archive shortly after. There are also some other books by this same author that I picked up, such as Warbreaker.
Then I read the first 3 of the Red Rising books (I am waiting for the author to finish the series before I continue).
Then Dungeon Crawler Carl, and am now working my way through Wheel of Time.
Some of this was fueled by me swapping out my time I spent on Reddit to reading books and a lot of it was just enjoying books once I actually picked them up again.
All this to say…
Try Dune! If it feels confusing at first, just keep reading.
Or you can go into a more YA/easy read of Mistborn. Which is basically medieval fantasy. Think French Revolution era but with magic.
My single favourite book is Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace.
Honourable mentions to:
- Catch-22 - Heller
- Slaughterhouse 5 - Vonnegut
- To the Lighthouse - Woolf
- One Hundred Years of Solitude - Garcia Marquez
- The Windup Bird Chronicle - Murakami
- Pride and Prejudice - Austin
- Burr - Vidal
- Brave New World - Huxley
- The Handmaid's Tale - Atwood
- Hitchhikercs Guide to the Galaxy - Adams
Currently reading, and enjoying, Half of a Yellow Sun, by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie 🙂
EDIT - also head over to !Books@lemmy.world for lots of chat and more recommendations
I used to read fiction mysteries as a teenager. In adult life I thought reading for leisure "wasn't for me". Tried some popular stuff (Davinci code, Harry Potter, etc) and hared it. Tried other universally recommended books like Catch 22 and Hitchhikers guide and couldn't get through them and found them boring as sin. Thought this meant I just don't like reading. Turns out non-fiction is my jam. So 2 of the best books for me have been:
Thinking Fast and Slow - Daniel Kahneman
Criminal: The Truth About Why People Do Bad Things - Tom Gash
Imajica by Clive Barker LA Confidential by James Ellroy
Name of the Wind by Patrick Rothfuss. It's a fuking work of art and I'm afraid I will never find something this good.
Has he put out any updates on the last book? Big reason why I haven't read it yet.
The Fifth Season (first book in the Broken Earth trilogy) by N.K. Jemisin. It's fantasy but with pretty logical boundries on the supernatural elements. I love the writing, plot, character development, and world-building.
She does incredible world-building. All three books are wonderful!
One Hundred Years Of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez, long read, but probably one of the best books written.
We read this in high school. Loved it. Have you read Midnight's Children (Salman Rushdie)? I enjoyed that for similar reasons
No, I'll check it out.
Catch-22 by Joseph Heller. It will make you laugh and cry... At the same time. A brilliant anti-war book.
It's very similar to Vonneguts, Slaughterhouse 5.
An excellent non-fiction book, that Catch-22. Required reading for anyone working in a corporation. Or anywhere really…
You have flies in your eyes
“Revelation Space” from Alastair Reynolds: a very solid hard science fiction space opera.
“Neuromancer” from William Gibson: the seminal cyberpunk novel where the sky above the port was the color of television, tuned to a dead channel.
“Destination: Void” from Frank Herbert: starts inside a space ship, a bit dark.
The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy and the ensuing (five-book) trilogy were my favorites as a child and I haven't felt the need to update that. If you enjoy absurd British humor with a side of sci-fi, it will be worth a read for you, too.
I felt the same way until I read Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency, also by Douglas Adams. I thought that and the sequel were even beter.
I freakin love the show. Fiona Dourif is amazing
- Ada, or Ardor, Nabokov.
- The Dispossessed, Le Guin.
- A Memory Called Empire and A Desolation Called Peace, Martine.
Freeking brilliant writing from Nabokov. His best work.
I read laughter in the dark first and I was hooked. Lolita I feel is just. Overrated. But I love how he’s a bad narrator and you can’t count on his words because his actions are horrific. He’s not reliable.
And ada novel, Nabokov included the name Flora on one minor character if I recall. It’s a throwback to another work he did. I think it was unfinished.
But wow! Never met someone who mentions that book ever. Even my librarian
Anything by Le Guin is soo good! Dispossessed is a particularly good one though. I read Lathe of Heaven earlier this year, and that was a fun ride.
Adelaida <3
My favorite book.
- The Southern Reach Trilogy
- House of Leaves
- Lord of the Rings
- Narconomics
- The Library At Mount Char
The Southern Reach trilogy isn’t given enough credit. Vander Meer does an amazing job explaining the unexplainable and his prose is pretty fucking beautiful, despite its modernity.
House of Leaves, which I’m in the middle of right now, is an all-consuming void and occupies my mind pretty much constantly. Which is cool, given the subject matter.
I've been trying to get so many people to read Southern Reach Trilogy. It's a fantastic slow burn that doesn't fill in too much and let's you think on it. I've actually gotten a friend to read House of Leaves before she's been willing to look at Southern Reach though. I have no idea what magic words I'm missing to sell it better.
Oh, also, if you enjoy House of Leaves you should check out Siderius Plug’s Immortality in Ninety-nine Endnotes I've heard good and similar things (though obviously much shorter and more hands on being a solo ttrpg). It's sitting on my stairs (where my books to read lay since wife filled our bookshelf) as my next "read".
Hmm, this slope is feeling slippery all of a sudden
The genre is ergodic literature. It's a very slippery slope. I'm just embracing it and sliding down headfirst
House of leaves was the first time I ever even considered a book could be like that. Kinda like watching Memento for the first time, or a Kubrick film or something. It's just on another level of crafting a narrative at every level.
I thought for sure it had to be one of a kind, but it makes sense there's a rabbit hole of a genre to go down and that it leads to solo ttrpg territory lol
The adventures of the Stainless Steel rat.
Project Hail Mary is my go to recommendation.
Came here to say this. Only book I’ve finished and immediately read again. The audiobook is even better.
Salman Rushdie writes great novels.
Since douglas adams was mentioned a few times, I also highly recommend anything by P.G. Wodehouse if british humor is something you want to get into...
I'm currently re-reading Jostein Gaarder with my kids, also a great read I think.
Galactic Pot-Healer by Philip K. Dick
floowed by
Anathem by Neal Stephenson
Ive been chasing the dragon trying to find another book that hits as good as Anathem. Beautiful, fun and philosophical beast!
I'm not an avid reader (anymore) and can't even tell you any favorites. But since you've mentioned liking horror and Russian authors: are you aware of Sergei Lukyanenko's Night Watch series?
I guess it's more fantasy than horror, and probably not like any of the Russian literature classics, but I just figured you might enjoy it.
Of all time, a single book that's not part of a series, I still gotta go with Stranger in a Strange Land (Heinlein), or Cat's Cradle (Vonnegut)
I've just starting getting into a bit of russian/eastern europe scifi. "We" by Yevgeny Zamyatin is incredible if you haven't read it. It is clearly the main inspiration for 1984, but just so much better. Then, just about any book by Stanislaw Lem is great. Solaris is probably the easiest to find and a pretty good more hard-ish sci-fi book, but I gotta recommend "Futurological Congress". It's hilarious! Reads like a Douglas Adams book, with an interesting idea at its core. So I think those are my most recent "favorite" books for the moment.
We is amazing! Read it recently, alongside Swastika Night, which is very different, but similarly dystopian.
I’ll check out swastika night! Thanks for the reco.
Another one you might like is Jack London Iron Heel. Yes, that Jack London. When we talked about white fang in school, we seemed to conveniently gloss over his very strong socialist leanings.
Iron heel has a fair amount of preaching in it, but the story is also a really good one. I’ve been recommending that one to folks (especially left leaning)
The Pale King by David Foster Wallace. Kind of a weird one because it’s technically incomplete, assembled by his longtime editor and his wife from materials going back to the 90s. I think it could’ve been his best work, even though I’ve always held that his nonfiction is superior.
Really enjoyed Pale King. IJ is my favourite book ever, and I also love his non fiction.
What did you think of The Broom of the System? I've started it twice and given up both times. I just cannot get into it at all.
Same. I made it about halfway through at the furthest. It kinda shows that it was an undergrad thesis project, and I think his own assessment that it seemed to be written by “a very smart fourteen-year-old” speaks to the roughness. I get it though — he’s chasing the sparks that we find developed later on. It’s funny how close this was written to Girl with Curious Hair, which is so much better.
As someone who loves Infinite Jest and enjoyed Brief Interviews, The Pale King didn’t do it for me.
Entirely fair! I think the posthumous assembly of the novel — leaving most storylines necessarily incomplete — made it more of a rough draft than anything. I’m just glad it got published, since I love any literature about bureaucracy. My favorite part of IJ is the footnotes/endnotes, if that says anything.
Two favorites that I reread several times in my teens/twenties/thirties that I was recently thinking about:
-
"Geek Love" by Katherine Dunn
-
"At the sign of the naked waiter" by Amy Herrick
Recently:
Plainsong - just the prettiest book out there
Anathem - cool sci-fi
Perdido Street Station - gritty sci-fi
Nostalgic:
Lord of the Rings
I, robot (light, good to get back into reading)
Brothers Karamazov (since you like Russians)
Have yet to finish brothers karamov and crime and punishment. He’s another great author. Fydor destoveiky (I butchered his name, my bad)
I would say Dune couple years ago. But given how this whole craze around the movies happen I'm not so sure anymore. Haven't seen them, scared doing so. I hated 80s Lynch one, because it felt retarded compared to the book and I don't want to feel this again.
Apart from Dune, there are plenty more. Older works of Clarke or Asimov for example, or most of Strugacky brothers works I've read were amazing too.
Even Lynch hated that movie! 😁
I've never read the book, nor seen the modern adaptations, should really remedy that.
How does a movie craze ruin your favorite book, if you haven't even seen any of the movies? I wouldn't let it do that.
And even if you watched the movies - Which I wouldn't recommend. I only watched the first and wasn't too impressed, although I haven't even read the book either. - you could still love the book and just hold the opinion, that the movies weren't a great adaptation.
The first movie of the modern trilogy is mostly exposition and world building, and it does drag. The second movie builds off the foundation of the first in a glorious way; the stakes are felt and it is truly a cinematic masterpiece. Some of the shots in that film give me goosebumps just thinking about them.
I still love the book. But whenever I mention it, it's always something like "oh, it's the movie book, right?" or something like that. And no, that's not a reaction that makes me happy.
I've read the book decades before the movie happened and I loved it. I don't want to be tossed in the same bag with all these "I'm a huge Dune fan, it's the best movie ever" people. So I usually don't mention it.
Hah. Dune is the book I recommened. I read it just before the movie trailers were announced.
I never ended up bothering watching the movies funnily enough.
So many, but this one has always fascinated me.
Yooo is that where the names of all the Secret Life of XYZ things come from?
Pets, Walter Mitty, the American teenager, hell even the suite life of Zack and Cody?
Maybe it was already a general phrase before then?
Haha, no idea if there was ever an association between the two, possible but not likely lol.
Conceptually it's probably general enough to occur over and over independently, but what an odd throughline in the zeitgeist
This sounds really interesting. The Wikipedia page mentions that it's somewhat controversial. Could I ask how you interpret it?
It’s a fascinating book. I look at it with heavy skepticism but at the end I think there are some accusations that could be plausible and likely do occur, not so much for others. We now have seen evidence of certain fungal networks aiding root systems and establishing a level of very primitive communication, which also has its own critics as well Mycorrhizal network. So back to the book, i think some of the testing done in the 60s and 70s was more abstract art than evidence based science, but ultimately it does lead you to question whether the statements and findings could be true. Either way I found it a fascinating read, especially for someone that enjoys getting their hands dirty in the earth.
Technically not one book, but uhh... one/two book series: Mistborn by Brandon Sanderson.
The Children of the Dead by Elfriede Jelinek is my number one. Second place is a tie between Women and Men by Joseph McElroy and The Tunnel by William H. Gass.
Whoa haven't heard of any of these before, thanks for the fine literary recs.
Tough to answer but currently;
- The Words We Keep.
- The Book Thief.
- Before The Coffee Gets Cold.
- 1984
- The Midnight Library.
I put this in a comment below, but if you liked 1984 (I love dystopias!) it's worth reading "We" if you haven't. Orwell denies using this as inspiration, but We was clearly the precursor to 1984.
Man I did not like The Midnight Library at all!
I think the premise was solid though. And I enjoyed the first 60% or so.
::: spoiler Tap for spoiler Perhaps it was just a predictable ending, which is why I didn’t care for it. :::
Today, I would say Northanger Abbey by Jane Austen. I don't really do hard rankings, though. Tomorrow it might be Pride & Prejudice or Persuasion.
Either way, y'all, do yourselves a favour and at least try Jane Austen once. She's often put in a corner with corny romance novels but I mostly love them, because she's snarky as hell and her characterizations are astonishingly timeless. Sure, there is romance in the novels and I definitely enjoy it, but maybe the following quotes taken from some final chapters give you an indication of the general tone:
*** and *** were married, the bells rang and everybody smiled
The wedding was very much like other weddings, where the parties have no taste for finery or parade.
Who can be in doubt of what followed? When any two young people take it into their heads to marry, they are pretty sure by perseverance to carry their point, be they ever so poor, ever so imprudent or ever so little likely to be necessary to each other's ultimate comfort.
fiction: the lord of the rings cycle and watership down
non-fiction: a paradise built in hell by rebecca solnit
Fiction: One Hundred Years of Solitude
Nonfiction: The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity
I'm a big fan of Ken Follett's historical novels, and although I find the Century trilogy kinda jarring (it's very obvious the author is a social democrat who just doesn't like communism) his Kingsbridge series was absolutely awesome.
Kingsbridge is a fictional town in England, with the books in the series each following several characters throughout their life in a certain time period. First book was 1100s, then 1300s, 1500s, 1700s and a prequel around 998.
Also the first book was filmed into a series called Pillars of the Earth.
Maybe a bit atypical but my favorite book is probably Homo Faber by Max Frisch.
