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.
currently listening to the 4th book in the children of time series
i love these books
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!
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
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.
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.
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.
Jumping between 1984 and Inkspell when 1984 gets to bleak.
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.
The Trial - Franz Kafka The Handmaid’s Tale - Margaret Atwood Fight Club - Chuck Palahnuik Blood Meridian - Cormac McCarthy
Fight Club, yes!!
How do you rate Blood Meridian against The Road? The Road is easily in my top 5, but could not get into other McCarthy books. I might give Blood Meridian a try.
I prefer Blood Meridian but it must be said: it is not for everyone. BM is heavy on mood, imagery, description but has little in the way of plot. It’s a bit like reading someone’s dreams - undefined and bizarre but with the sense there is some important meaning or insight at its heart. I think the insight is men are bad by nature. He could be right.
I really like the description of blood meridian as reading someone’s dreams. I am curious how you get men are bad by nature out of it?
There are no “good” characters in the novel that I recall. The kid is really bad even though he is still just a kid. No one tries to guide him to the correct path. No one seems to care. Good doesn’t have a chance to exist in this novel because if it did it would immediately be destroyed by all the badness.
I think McCarthys view is men left to their own devices are bad. Law and order and civilisation are needed for good to exist. There is no real law and I dont remember God being mentioned much either except by the preacher at the start that the Judge has killed just because he can.
An interesting perspective on it thank you for writing it up for me. I haven’t read McCarthys other works so I don’t know the about his views. I do think that the book is highly critical of lawfuless and civilization. The kid goes out into the Mexican desert as a scalp hunter a pseudo legal profession and quickly the gang goes from killing indians to killing Mexicans to killing whomever. I think this shows how thin the veneer of civilization really is.
The kid is a kid and is easily mislead into a life of violence first by the army guy and later by the gang and the judge we never hear his inner monologue so we don’t really know how he feels about what he does. We do know that his heart contains some mercy for the victims of the gang the judge explicitly hunts him down for that mercy.
I see the book a critique/satire of the western genre. I agree it explores and questions the nature evil. But I don’t think it says much about how to tame it.
But didn’t the kid kill someone in a bar fight before he even meets the gang?
You are right I’d forgotten about that. He kills a bartender for slighting him if I recall correctly. Fair enough I suppose judging him as evil for that is a fair take.
The Border Trilogy is fantastic. The first two books are about young men discovering themselves in the west. Book three is a nice coda, bringing them together and closing some threads. Not nearly as violent or bloody as The Road or Blood Meridian.
No Country for Old Men is also fantastic. The movie was very faithful, the book is better but in a different way
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.
Among my favorites I remember: Gideon the ninth, slavery by another name, worst journey in the world, anything by Ted Chiang, blindsight/echopraxia
Recent reads: little bosses everywhere (excellent), no more tears (also excellent), get in trouble (I really like parts of it but it’s classic Kelly link, super weird and abrupt)
Gideon the Ninth baffled me
The books in that series all seemed to follow the same pattern of something weird, interesting and mysterious happening, having no idea what was going on, spending the whole book getting a slightly better picture of it only for something else totally incomprehensible to happen and the cycle started again. I wanted to like it but I got sick of the antics. Really interesting world though
Yeah it was interesting but honestly I just kind of found Gideon a bit too much on the cringy side of edgy… There was a lot to like but I found a lot of it very grating somehow.
this entire thread makes me sad, i guess there’s no accounting for taste.
I still enjoyed it, I’m just highlighting the bit I wasn’t as keen on. Its purely a subjective opinion on it, I’m not saying the books are objectively bad or anything. Its fine to like different things.
