Need to get back into reading. Usually read horror literature and Russian works. But regardless, tell me your favorites !
The City and the Stars is one of my all time favorites.
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.
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)
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
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.
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 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
I read both mistborn and a large part of the stormlight series, though the latter I never finished because books were still coming out at the time. The first Mistborn book is great and can in my opinion even be read standalone if you don’t want to commit to a whole series. I also just finished Yumi and the Nightmare painter which I found pretty good. I wished Sanderson would put out a second book to the Rithmatist
Gentleman Bastards and the First Law Series are two more series that I’ve had on my readlist for quite some time now. Kingkiller chronicles I remember also finding pretty good back when I read it, though I am a bit miffed that it still isn’t a finished series.
The Licaniud Trilogy is the one with the book “The will of the many”? If so that’s anothet series on my readlist. I am starting to think we have a pretty similar taste in books ;D
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.
Brandon Sanderson is a genius, and I read through the entire cosmere in a little over a year after not reading a whole lot for years.
As for reading order, it doesn’t matter quite as much as people sometimes say. There are two standalones that don’t really work as a starting point (Sunlit Man and Isles of the Emberdark), but the rest works great. You can even start with Stormlight Archive if the sheer size of the books doesn’t scare you off.
If you want to read forever, the Wandering Inn is a good series.
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.
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.
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.
In the guards series: The 5th elephant.
In the witches series: very hard to pick. Granny is my favourite.
I love all of the books except for the first two, he really hadn’t settled down as a writer yet.
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
The adventures of the Stainless Steel rat.
A classic: Lord of the Rings (& The Hobbit first) Other: Ariadne & The witch of Colchis
Catch 22, I read it like the bible.
fiction: the lord of the rings cycle and watership down
non-fiction: a paradise built in hell by rebecca solnit
