Need to get back into reading. Usually read horror literature and Russian works. But regardless, tell me your favorites !
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.
The City and the Stars is one of my all time favorites.
I’ve read “Player of games” by Iain M. Banks so many times I broke it and had to buy a second copy.
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.
If you want to read forever, the Wandering Inn is a good series.
The Dispossessed by Ursula Le Guin.
Few other sci-fi books do as good a job of depicting how a gift/library economy could work like in practice. It’s quite a hopeful vision of where we can collectively go in the future.
Only ever met one other persons who had ever even heard of her but I have a particular love for the works of Jaqueline Carey. The Sundering duology is gorgeous moral greyness with epic fantasy scale and yet personal characterization. The Kushiel series (the parts I have read so far) is the intertwining of political thriller, historical fiction, magical realism, BDSM romance, and again, has both epic scale plot and personal characters. I recommend the Sundering to everyone and Kushiel’s Dart to anyone old enough their mother won’t come around and attack me for exposing their son/daughter to the sexual parts of the book. There are others but those ones always come to mind when I see/hear this question.
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.
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
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.
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
I used to read fiction mysteries as a teenager. In adult life I thought reading for leisure “wasn’t for me”. Tried some popular stuff (Davinci code, Harry Potter, etc) and hared it. Tried other universally recommended books like Catch 22 and Hitchhikers guide and couldn’t get through them and found them boring as sin. Thought this meant I just don’t like reading. Turns out non-fiction is my jam. So 2 of the best books for me have been:
Thinking Fast and Slow - Daniel Kahneman
Criminal: The Truth About Why People Do Bad Things - Tom Gash
Imajica by Clive Barker LA Confidential by James Ellroy
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 any updates on the last book? Big reason why I haven’t read it yet.
The Fifth Season (first book in the Broken Earth trilogy) by N.K. Jemisin. It’s fantasy but with pretty logical boundries on the supernatural elements. I love the writing, plot, character development, and world-building.
She does incredible world-building. All three books are wonderful!
