Need to get back into reading. Usually read horror literature and Russian works. But regardless, tell me your favorites !
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
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
Imajica by Clive Barker LA Confidential by James Ellroy
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 [email protected] for lots of chat and more recommendations
“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.
One Hundred Years Of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez, long read, but probably one of the best books written.
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)
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.
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.
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.
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)
Fiction: One Hundred Years of Solitude
Nonfiction: The Dawn of Everything: A New History of HumanityI’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.
