I read a lot of fantasy when I was younger but gradually fell out of love with the genre. It started to feel really trope heavy and I got tired of everything feeling like it needed to be a 3-5+ novel epic series that was so enamored with its own world-building it felt more like a history lesson. Perhaps my choices on reading material were to blame, but still. I moved onto sci-fi and fiction for a good while.
I’ve been trying to rekindle my passion for it with one off “weird” fiction. Standalone stories that are just interested in doing weird stuff, whatever that may entail. It’s not well-defined and if anyone has any recommendations I’d be happy to hear them but so far some of my best discovies,
- The West Passage, Jared Pechaček. A palace the size of a city ruled over by giant, eldritch ladies and mired in ancient bureaucracies is threatened by a forgotten prophecy. I like it because it doesn’t overexplain its world, it just throws a bunch of interesting events and scenery at you while gesturing at the architecture of the world that holds it up, leading you to speculate on the mystery of it all.
- The Starving Saints, Caitlin Starling. Claustrophobic, horrifying, vaguely sapphic. It follows the storylines of a knight, a nun, and a peasant girl trapped in a castle under siege. As supplies diminish and things are looking grim, their saints miraculously appear to save them but not all is at it appears etc. etc. Just a good read, I liked this one a lot
- Currently reading: Mad Sisters of Esi, Tashan Mehta. This one got off to a bit of an uneven start but it’s an interesting mashup of myth and sci-fi where the universe is referred to as the black sea, planets are islands, and spaceship may be literally ships with sails. Not done with it yet, but enjoying it as it has strong characters and a good emotional core.
I’m currently reading Equal Rites by Terry Pratchett … fantasy, but not like any other.
It’s a nice palette clenser in between all the lesbian smut I usually read :-)
I’m up to “Thud!” and getting a bit sad I’m almost at the end of the series.
Terry Pratchett is a classic of course. I was making my way through publication order, but can’t remember where I stopped at this point.
As for the lesbian smut, definitely give The Starving Saints a look. Not spicy, but more the painful aching, if that’s your thing.
When you say painful aching … do you mean “lustful longing” or “having trouble sitting down without wincing”?
Hah, lustful longing.
Cool, sounds like I could read it when it’s quiet at work then - I’ll add it to the list :-)
I’m up to Wyrd Sisters!
I have that on my to-read list … my wife has read them all, and then chosen which ones she thinks I’ll enjoy :-)
Check out the Bas-Lag novels by China Miéville. Lots of strange and interesting creatures and cultures in those books. Each of them is standalone but they take place in the same world.
Oh yes! I’ve read Perdido Street Station and The Scar and greatly enjoyed them. I should get back to checking out more of his stuff, I know Iron Council is also in that setting but I’m not sure of much else. I tried Un Lun Dun back in the day and while it was fun, it was a little too YA for me.
Favourites include Patrick O’Brian’s Aubrey/Maturin series, Hilary Mantel’s Wolf Hall trilogy, Susanna Clarke’s Jonathon Strange and Mr Norrell, Robin Hobb’s Realm of the Elderlings series, Ursula K Le Guin’s Hainish cycle.
Currently reading Le Guins Dispossessed.
Dispossessed is among one of my favorite books. You’re in for a really interesting time. I feel like it’s one of the few rare fiction books which manages to show non capitalistic systems quite well. I really love it! Plus Le Guin was apparently based as hell, too
I have read it before but a very long time ago and I think a lot of the societal points passed me by at that younger age. I’m definitely enjoying re-reading it with a more mature eye.
I always came down on the Hornblower side. Have you read that series? How do they compare?
Hornblower is OK. I enjoy some of it but O’Brian has a knack for humour and tragedy thats mostly absent in the Hornblower series.
I’ve been on a scifi binge. MurderBot on audio is worth your time. After Atlas was quite good, stands out from the rest. Timothy Zahn’s Icarus series was fun.
As for fantasy it’s been a slog. We need better search parameters. It took the book people forever to separate scifi and fantasy, but there’s still work to do. Paranormal romance is there for some reason and clutters up Libby’s ability to search. That, and it feels like there’s a glut of books involving either the fae or dragons right now, and little else, not unlike the vampire thing 2 decades ago.
The Expanse by James S.A Corey is also worth your time. Currently reading The Faith of Beasts by the same author, part 2 of The Captive’s War. Enjoying it so far.
I’ve read the expanse twice, it’s always on the lists so I didn’t bother mentioning it. Not so keen on the last book, but that’s a tough landing.
Favourites include Lord of the Rings, Patrick O’Brian’s Aubrey & Maturin series, Cormac McCarthy’s The Road and Robert Shea & Robert Anton Wilson’s Illuminatus! trilogy.
Currently reading Bleak House.
A.glass of wine with you Sir!
currently listening to the 4th book in the children of time series
i love these books
I got back into reading through Dungeon Crawler Carl and now that I’m finished with that, I started to read The Colour of Magic because the discworld novels where recommended to me. Though I find as a non native english speaker the writing a little bit more challenging than DCC.
DCC is so damn fun to read! Discworld is a great read, too!
Just randomly found DCC. I’m about 65% some truth the first one, it’s hilarious.
Favorite\ The 120 Days of Sodom /jk
Reading now\ The Silmarillion
The flowers of evil ( akunohana , Japanese) (manga) by Shuzo Oshimi
Picking up after having finished the above\ Les Fleurs du mal
My user name is the title of a book by my favourite author, Jonathan Carroll. He’s highly underrated but also a cult favourite. I couldn’t pick between his books.
Another favourite book is an old humour novel by the writer Patrick Dennis, whose most well known book was Auntie Mame. However the best of his books IMO was The Joyous Season, it was written in the 1950s and so some of the language in his books is a bit antique (like using Negro as a descriptor), but honestly there’s not a funnier book in my opinion, I reread it last month, and I realized that I still routinely say lines from it in my daily life.
Finally a great book is The Speed Queen by Stewart O’Nan, it’s dark and a tough topic to read about but it’s so captivating. All of his books are really worth reading. Last Night At The Lobster, Snow Angels, Ocean State, Wish You Were Here, Songs For The Missing, Evensong, The Names Of The Dead, The Good Wife, The Odds, Emily Alone, are my particular favorites, all pretty gritty.
Right now I’m reading Neocolonialism, the Last Stage of Imperialism by Kwame Nkrumah. It’s a really good expansion of Lenin’s work on Imperialism as a stage in capitalism. Nkrumah was coup’d one year after its publishing with support from the US.
As for favorites, I really love both Piranesi and Roadside Picnic! The former is just a really fun mystery with a good deal of whimsy, the latter is excellent sci-fi.
The Lies of Locke Lamora by Scott Lynch is one of my all time favorite fiction books and I’m re-listening to the audiobook right now.
How not to Die by Dr. Michael Gregor is one of my favourite non-fiction books, containing a great summary of our current scientific knowledge in nutritional science.
I do read new stuff, on occasion, but at the moment they are one and the same: the Lord of the Rings trilogy. I just picked it back up and I already noticed something new. At Bilbo’s 111th birthday party, Tolkien describes the dragon firework as passing “like an express train”, which struck me as an odd turn of phrase that I’d never noticed before.
I don’t read books much anymore. Combo of internet and my close vision getting worse. I like piers anthony a lot as a general story teller and wheel of time although I only read the books jordan wrote and did not finish off the series. Honestly though there are tons of authors with great books.
It’s funny that you mention Wheel of Time because I’m on the Sanderson books now and I feel like everyone’s personality changed due to his different writing style.
At first I didn’t think Robert Jordan was a particularly masterful writer (at least not like Tolkien), but by now I have an appreciation for how each of his characters has a different personality which came through clearly in not only the dialogue and the character’s actions but also the narration depending on whose perspective the chapter is told from.
But Sanderson though, it’s like whoever the chapter’s POV is from, it’s all narrated in the same writing style. It loses a lot of depth and just feels kinda flat.
The dialogue is more bland too, and suddenly everyone seems just mildly autistic. It doesn’t feel organic. And all their personalities are the same now. Like there’s not much distinguishing one person from another anymore.
I’m still gonna finish the series now because I’m emotionally invested in it and want to see how the story concludes. There are a lot of plot arcs that really started to come together in Book 11 to set the stage for Tarmon Gai’don. I can’t just put the series down. But my imagination needs to do a lot more work to keep the characters true to themselves.
There are still some chapters that I feel like Robert Jordan wrote before he died. Where suddenly the characters come to life again and the narration is told with more depth. Hopefully that lasts, cause those chapters are still nice.
But also, he left detailed notes of how to finish the story, and Sanderson interviewed his friends and family to better understand his intentions. So at least the plotlines will conclude true to the original author’s vision.
And then there’s the prequel which I’m looking forward to. That one was written by Jordan.
Reading through all of Dungeon Crawler Carl. Never read a litRPG before and I’m having a blast with it.
Right now, I am reading Neuromancer by William Gibson (physical book) and Children of Ruin by Adrian Tchaikovsky (e-book), as well as listening to Alexander Hamilton by Ron Chernow (audiobook).
I haven’t gotten far enough into Neuromancer to form an opinion yet, but I’m enjoying the other two books. Children of Ruin is the second book in a series about future humans trying to speed up evolution on distant planets and dealing with the consequences thousands of years later. Alexander Hamilton is a biography on the US founding father from childhood until his death. It has a lot of interesting facts I never knew.
I have a hard time picking just one favorite of anything, but I think my favorite book might be World War Z by Max Brooks or Annihilation by Jeff VanderMeer.
World War Z is a novel about a zombie apocalypse. It stands out from other books in the genre by having a frame narrative where a journalist is compiling a bunch of interviews with survivors telling their stories. Each chapter is its own short story with new characters from everywhere on the globe, and you get a lot of different perspectives this way. If you pick up the audiobook, each chapter is voiced by a different person, and there are some famous people lending their voices.
Annihilation is about a mysterious zone that appears in a remote wilderness. Things in the zone begin to act strangely and mutate into otherworldly objects. Over time, a government agency closes down the area and begins sending in expeditions to try to discover its secrets.
My favorite are the Kushiel trilogy, anything by Ian McDonald, almost anything by Adrian Tchaikovsky or Michael Carey. Though it’s difficult to pick.
Currently reading The Long Way to a Small Angry Planet by Becky Chambers.
