Need to get back into reading. Usually read horror literature and Russian works. But regardless, tell me your favorites !
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.
Rothfuss said the book is already written but in a unpublishable state. Currently, it is said to be bloated and lacking structure but i think he underestimates how much his audience NEEDS this work.
Oh interesting, haha yeah I’ve seen all the comments across the web about the gap. It’s quite a wild wait, hopefully Rothfuss, himself, is okay.
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.
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)
Cool, hope you enjoy it, and thanks in return for the Jack London. Never read any of his, I don’t think, will give it a go when I get a chance 👍
I can’t help but be that annoying type of person who, when someone brings up 1984, has to immediately tell them about “We” and that Orwell was kind of cringe lol
The Silmarillion has endured since my early teens. I’ve read it closer to ten times in the past 20 years.
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.
I read Dune this year and it was so good. Just unbelievably smooth prose with lots of complexity. I was only able to read the first two without needing a break for something else though
Anna Karenina
Everyone needs to read it once in their lives. It’s the best love story ever written IMHO
Barring that, people read any Russian classic. Their literature just hits different. Say what you want about the government, but the people are so beautiful in their complexity.
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.
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.
TIL Station Eleven has a tv adaptation, thanks for making me aware!
It’s ok, but it monkeys around with the plot to an annoying degree.
The City and the Stars is one of my all time favorites.
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.
I can’t name a favorite but I’m reading an interesting one now which is Wittgensteins Tractatus Logico Philosophicus. You really have to think about what he’s trying to explain.
It was indeed interesting to read. I recommend following it up with his Philosophical Investigations, which completely breaks off from the Tractatus.
Thank you.
I really loved The Locked Tomb series, it’s brilliantly written and does a good job leaving you as confused as the characters while also being aimed perfectly at my demographic.
Huge fan of Ursula K. LeGuinn’s The Dispossessed and The Left Hand of Darkness. They’re great sci fi explorations of politics and gender
My wife and I are both fans of Brandon Sanderson’s work, very good for anyone interested in getting into fantasy (also popular for learning to read books in English).
When Women Were Dragons is a feminist fantasy novel that made me cry on behalf of the older women in my life and was just a really powerful book
I have more queer lit I can recommend, but it’s probably not going to be what I’d describe as my favorite.
For nonfiction The Dawn of Everything by David Graeber and David Wengrow is a fascinating book that left me feeling like we are capable of building a better society
- Ada, or Ardor, Nabokov.
- The Dispossessed, Le Guin.
- A Memory Called Empire and A Desolation Called Peace, Martine.
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.
She has some really wacky stuff too haha.
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
Nabokov is so full of references and clever jokes, he was a mad genius. I love Lolita too but it’s definitely not what I would recommend anyone read first.
Adelaida <3
My favorite book.
<3
A Memory called Empire is incredibly good! I feel Desolation doesn’t compare
I’ve read “Player of games” by Iain M. Banks so many times I broke it and had to buy a second copy.
That book is so good!
It is almost a perfectly written story, but weirdly I don’t think its actually the best Culture novel. I think the best is either “Look to Windward” or “Use of Weapons”.
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.
I love Sanderson, his books have great settings and magic systems, his female characters are well written, and he actually puts out books and finishes series
