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I've been trying to go to the library and read more but I'm out of ideas for what to read next. Help plz.

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[-] JoeByeThen@hexbear.net 10 points 2 months ago

I recently read my way through all Becky Chamber's works and then The Murderbot Diaries. They were quite enjoyable and I very much recommend them.

[-] FourteenEyes@hexbear.net 5 points 2 months ago
[-] JoeByeThen@hexbear.net 5 points 2 months ago

I started The Wayfarer series on your rec! stalin-heart

[-] ashinadash@hexbear.net 4 points 2 months ago

The Monk and Robot books fuck hard.

[-] buckykat@hexbear.net 9 points 2 months ago

The Player of Games, by Iain M. Banks

[-] JoeByeThen@hexbear.net 6 points 2 months ago

Oh, yeah. Whole Culture series. stalin-approval

[-] buckykat@hexbear.net 6 points 2 months ago

Absolutely. My favorites are Surface Detail and Excession, but I think Player of Games is the best entry point to the series.

[-] Smeagolicious@hexbear.net 5 points 2 months ago

I was gonna recommend the Culture! kitty-cri

uhhh, the Expanse series is cool too. not as based commie but it's fun if kinda depressing scifi

[-] buckykat@hexbear.net 4 points 2 months ago

Plenty of Culture books to recommend, what's your favorite?

[-] carpoftruth@hexbear.net 5 points 2 months ago

Excession is my favourite but it's not a good one to start with in my opinion.

Consider phlebas is a pretty straightforward one. It's got a normal timeline and does a good job of introducing the culture and their history.

Don't sleep on his non culture SciFi story the algebraist either, it's excellent.

[-] buckykat@hexbear.net 3 points 2 months ago

If I had read Consider Phlebas first I probably would not have read the rest of the Culture series, I really strongly dislike it. After reading other Culture books, it does have some interesting stuff about the Idiran war, but it's so atypical, and the main character so fundamentally unlikable, that it makes the worst possible introduction to the series.

[-] Smeagolicious@hexbear.net 5 points 2 months ago

Player of Games is good! I started with Consider Phlebas which I quite enjoyed but Use of Weapons stuck out to me when I was first reading them!

spoilerI may have had to read it twice to keep the intersecting plots straight but that's my own ADHD more than anything

[-] buckykat@hexbear.net 3 points 2 months ago

A lot of Culture books hit better on the second read

[-] panned_cakes@hexbear.net 2 points 2 months ago

Consider Phlebas is skippable tbqh but it definitely exists

[-] copandballtorture@hexbear.net 7 points 2 months ago

It's been a long time since I was it, but A Confederacy of Dunces was a fun read

[-] carpoftruth@hexbear.net 3 points 2 months ago

Excellent recommendation. Ignatius is a true poster invented by the author before posting was invented.

Another similar book from 100 years earlier is A Rebours by JK Huysmans. It's about a fail child aristocratic son who retreats from the real world into the realm of aesthetics. It's absolutely jammed with esoteric references to the art and artists of the time, but if you can look past the references you won't get, I guarantee that any hexbear poster will recognize the ancestors of the modern spoiled lib.

[-] NewLeaf@hexbear.net 6 points 2 months ago

You can't go wrong with Discworld if you're into fantasy/satire.

[-] buckykat@hexbear.net 5 points 2 months ago
[-] iridaniotter@hexbear.net 5 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

If you like soft scifi then I recommend the Imperial Radch trilogy. Featuring:

  • Protagonist with a very interesting backstory (it's the point of like half of the first book so I won't spoil)
  • A post-gender (?) empire
  • A dictator with a networked consciousness so she can be present everywhere
  • Default she/her pronouns
  • The one true throuple (I ship it!)
  • A kind of boring middle book
  • Body and brain horror?
  • WEIRD aliens! (although you only see them through their proxies)
  • Good old aristocracy in space
  • Like almost no one is white
  • Set thousands of years in the future

edit: everyone is recommending scifi lol

[-] buckykat@hexbear.net 4 points 2 months ago

That's because scifi is the best genre

[-] ashinadash@hexbear.net 3 points 2 months ago

How dare you say something so controversial yet so true rage-cry

[-] buckykat@hexbear.net 3 points 2 months ago

"yeah I'm gonna read a book about just like a guy who lives in an apartment in New York and is sad or some shit"

statements dreamed up by the utterly deranged

[-] GayTuckerCarlson@hexbear.net 4 points 2 months ago

Philip K Dick if you are into sci fi

[-] Sons_of_Ferrix@hexbear.net 4 points 2 months ago

I've already read a decent amount of Dick. And Vonnegut. Most classic alt-sci-fi really.

[-] carpoftruth@hexbear.net 4 points 2 months ago

Octavia butler is very good.

A fun historical fiction series is Colleen McCullough's masters of Rome series. I enjoyed that one for the balance of great man theory (which makes it an actual story) with a more class based understanding of the late Republic. It's well researched. It's pretty horny at times.

[-] ashinadash@hexbear.net 4 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

The Outside by Ada Hoffmann, which is a cool horror tinged space opera about eldritch physics horror, cybernetic angel cops, mutual aid and organising kel-bliss

alsoIt has lesbians & many other queers in it. Of course it does, I'd never let you down baby lea-finger-guns

[-] coeliacmccarthy@hexbear.net 3 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

cormac mccarthy

thomas ligotti

a third one, i forget

[-] MusicOwl@hexbear.net 3 points 2 months ago

The Dispossessed by Ursual Le Guin is lovely and a perennial favorite of mine. black-bloc

[-] anarchoilluminati@hexbear.net 2 points 2 months ago

Hunger by Knut Hamson.

Hamson was a fascist, Nazi sympathizer to be clear but still a great book on poverty and idealistic, self-destructive pride.

Niels Lyhne by Jens Peter Jacobsen.

A very interesting proto-existentialist, late-Romantic novel about a disillusioned young man and some of his relationships.

[-] darkmode@hexbear.net 2 points 2 months ago

Anything of general note written by David Foster Wallace. He wrote a lot so you may be able to find a dud

[-] QueerCommie@hexbear.net 2 points 2 months ago
[-] TraschcanOfIdeology@hexbear.net 2 points 2 months ago

I just finished breakfast of Champions in like 4 days. Such a good read.

[-] duderium@hexbear.net 2 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

Been reading Memed My Hawk by Yashar Kemal for awhile now. Solid novel about a Turkish kid who becomes a bandit. Politically excellent. The first few pages are a little slow so don’t let them stop you.

Since I got my first full-time job in years I had this uncontrollable urge to read Michael Crichton’s Sphere. Don’t judge me too harshly. It’s kind of shitty and awesome at the same time? Like it’s almost just an outline for a movie script but it’s still keeping my interest as I’m dying of boredom at work. As a writer I can’t help being impressed by how Crichton throws a twist at you like every five pages for hundreds of pages. A high school friend of mine was obsessed with him.

[-] chauncey@hexbear.net 1 points 2 months ago

The third policeman

this post was submitted on 02 May 2024
18 points (100.0% liked)

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