Infinite Jest. Takes about like 2 years to read though lol.
Neuromancer moves faster than some movies. Absolutely worth rereading
Clemens p suter’s two journeys series.
There are so many, but here are a few from the top of my head:
The Silmarillion, J.R.R. Tolkien.
The Lord of the Rings, J.R.R. Tolkien.
Time Enough For Love, Robert A. Heinlein.
Starship Troopers, Robert A. Heinlein.
Don Quijote, Miguel de Cervantes.
Divine Comedy, Dante Alighieri.
Dune, Frank Herbert.
Paradise Lost, John Milton.
Childhood’s End, Arthur C. Clarke.
The Riftwar Saga, Raymond E. Feist.
The bridge trilogy.
The philosophical strangler by Eric Flint, absolutely.
The bone comic book omnibus from Jeff smith Bone omnibus amazon link
The book is basically Tolkien+Disney, it is aimed at a kid audience but it tackles some heavy topics that adults will enjoy, its great because it tackles metaphysics a lot in ways that are interesting for all ages.
A few I’ve read at least twice and will definitely read again at some point:
- Catch 22
- Infinite Jest
- The Windup Bird Chronicle
- The Handmaid’s Tale
- Full 5 part Hitchhiker’s Guide trilogy
- His Dark Materials Trilogy (plus the Book of Dust series, if we ever get that last one!!)
- Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas
- Brave New World
- Slaughterhouse Five
Hitchhikers guide part 1 is worth it for the forward alone not to mention the book itself
Poo too weet
It’s 2025 and I’m reading Slaughterhouse Five again. So it goes.
Poo tee weet 👍
I believe the last book of dust is slated for this year unless I’m mistaken
Yeah, I think so, but I think it was also slated for 2024, and possibly even 2023! It’ll come, and I’d rather he takes his time to get it right, but still, very impatient! 😁
Yeah, it was at least slated for 2024 at some point. I finished the second one early last year, and as December rolled closer I realized that wasn’t going to happen. Same thing happened to a few others I’m waiting for I believe. Alecto and white wing, dark star. I think Alecto is tentative for this year but I have no idea on white wing, dark star
Just looked it up and someone on Reddit six days ago said BoD3 is finished and will hopefully be out this year! Woop!!
I’ve not heard of those others, will need to check them out 👍
I love the locked tomb books (Gideon, harrow, Nona the ninth, with Alecto the upcoming one). A cheeky description would be lesbian necromancers in spaaaace. I really really like the dark star trilogy as well, but that is harder for me to throw out recommendations for, it can be brutal. A lot of gory violence, and a fair share of sexual violence as well. Black leopard, red wolf and moon witch, spider king each have separate narrators with their own distinct histories, but then their stories intertwine around the same mission and its consequences, and their tales are relayed to an inquisitor who is interrogating them. They are both unreliable narrators and they HATE each other, but there may be more to it. White wing, dark star will be the last one, with a third narrator, and will be more horror focused I believe
Thank you for such detail, they sound really cool.
Also, “spaaaaace”! 😁
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance
by Robert M. Pirsig
Hitchhikers guide to the galaxy
I’m on my 13th or so read of Blindsight. Think I’ve unpacked it all, finally. I feel like a fruitcake having read it and *Echopraxia" so many times, but damn they’re deep.
Not a fan of all of Watt’s novels, but those two feel like he packed something to think about into nearly every single sentence. Easy read if you want to go fast, or, take your time and dig in. Never read a novel(s) that could go both ways.
Fuck me. Just talking about it is getting me hype for another run.
Blindsight:
"I brought her flowers one dusky Tuesday evening when the light was perfect. I pointed out the irony of that romantic old tradition— the severed genitalia of another species, offered as a precopulatory bribe—and then I recited my story just as we were about to fuck.
To this day, I still don’t know what went wrong.”
Echopraxia:
“Fifty thousand years ago there were these three guys spread out across the plain and they each heard something rustling in the grass. The first one thought it was a tiger, and he ran like hell, and it was a tiger but the guy got away. The second one thought the rustling was a tiger and he ran like hell, but it was only the wind and his friends all laughed at him for being such a chickenshit. But the third guy thought it was only the wind, so he shrugged it off and the tiger had him for dinner. And the same thing happened a million times across ten thousand generations - and after a while everyone was seeing tigers in the grass even when there were`t any tigers, because even chickenshits have more kids than corpses do. And from those humble beginnings we learn to see faces in the clouds and portents in the stars, to see agency in randomness, because natural selection favours the paranoid. Even here in the 21st century we can make people more honest just by scribbling a pair of eyes on the wall with a Sharpie. Even now we are wired to believe that unseen things are watching us.”
Several that others have already mentioned, and:
- The Golden Age Oecumene, by John C Wright
- The Chronicles of Master Li and Number Ten Ox, by Barry Hughart
- Any and all of The Culture novels
- The Hobbit, and TLotR trilogy. Used to read them every summer, for about twenty years.
- Armor, by John Steakley. Sadly, the only sci-fi novel he ever wrote, and one of only two books he ever authored, IIRC.
- The Jean le Flambeur trilogy by Hannu Rajaniemi, which is on my list to read again this year.
- A Wizard of Earthsea trilogy, which I’m about to read again as soon as my wife finished them.
- The Chronicles of Narnia, which I used to read frequently when younger. I’m almost afraid to pick them up again now, for fear that they won’t be as good (for an adult) as I remember.
Love the culture series! Communism… In space!!! Though I’d say to anyone who hasn’t read them yet to skip the first and come back to it. It’s a great novel, but it smells like the 80’s. Was my first read in the series and it turned me off to the rest of them until years later when I have the series another chance
IMHO, post-scarcity is really the only way communism works. And it’s not true communism in the Culture; people still own things - artifacts, art, themselves. And it’s also not communism in the Marxist sense, where the workers own the means of production, because there isn’t a working class and production is largely automated. It’s some sort of post-Communism thing we don’t have a name for. Or, maybe we do, and I just don’t know it?
Adam Levin’s The Instructions
Ecclesiastes
Philip K. Dick’s Galactic Pot-Healer — actually most Dick outside of A Scanner Darkly
Neal Stephenson’s… well, anything, but especially Zodiac, Anthem, and Diamond Age
Brian Daley’s Requiem for a Ruler of Worlds
Margaret Atwood’s The Year of the Flood and The Blind Assassin
Anything by Ursula LeGuin, ever
Hugh McLeod’s Ignore Everybody
Lloyd Alexander’s Prydain series
Douglas Adam’s Hitchhiker’s Trilogy
Adam Levin’s The Instructions
I have that on my shelf, but have only read the first chapter or so, I think, just couldn’t get into it. Bought on a whim, partly because of how huge it was!
I take it it’s worth another shot?
If you only read the pool scene, you didn’t really get into the meat of the book. That said, if the content of the pool scene was a big turn-off for you, there will be several other scenes throughout the book that will also be big turn-offs.
At the very start you mean? That was fine, not bothered by that.
I started reading it again today (and found my old bookmark!) and apparently I got a fair bit further than that.
Today I read as far as Gurion being in the office after fighting, and I was quite enjoying it, so maybe it’ll stick this time 😁
Where he ruminates on the finger pointing-flicking being like the lights on construction barriers flashing? And he meets Eliza and rubs the foundation off his thumbs? I’d say that’s where it kicks into gear, yeah.
Damn, you really do know this book!
Yeah, the construction barriers bit - not got to Eliza yet (or at least not this time round).
The Murderbot diaries.
This is also an awesome thread. I see a lot of books I love and a lot that I’m interested in.
While I enjoyed the first book, and might pick up the others, I wasn’t as impressed, and wouldn’t put it on any reread shortlist. What did I miss?
The Bobiverse recommendations seem to go hand in hand with Murderbot. Read both series back to back, didn’t know what I was missing.
I hadn’t heard of the bobiverse before. I look forward to checking those out. It sounds like a neat premise.
Project Hail Mary was amazing. Can’t wait for the movie too.
There will be a movie‽‽‽
Story spoiler:
spoiler
“No voice actor for rocky has not been announced” - A voice actor for… musical notes?
I’m super worried they’re not gonna do rocky well. I think the appropriate thing would be to use subtitles, however I doubt normal people would be into that
spoiler
I hope they come up with something like the ship computer doing the translation, while rocky beeps and boops around
It’s got Ryan Gosling cast as the main, I think?
