Ask Lemmy

Anything by Terry Pratchett (look for one of the "where to start" guides). Funny, a bit ridiculous, but always super intelligent with lots of good social commentary.

Ursula Le Guin has lots of bangers. Slow burning sci-fi with deep atmosphere and social philosophy. Any of her Hainish books are good for that. Earthsea series is beautiful. The Birthday Of The World is my favourite short stories book.

Neuromancer by William Gibson if you're into cyberpunk.

UNSONG if you're keen on religion-themed absurd fantasy. It's amazing. Good Omens by Pratchett and Gaiman is also great on that front.

The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck. Fictional account of the dustbowl migration in the US. It will make you righteously angry, especially when you realise the same shit is still happening in other ways.

Hyperion Cantos. All 4 books are great, even if the 3rd and 4th are quite different. But it's a masterpiece. It's kind of like the LOTR for sci-fi if you ask me.

Basically most Terry Pratchett books really. Some will take more than a day, but it's like a mix of Lord of the Rings and Monty Python. Whimsical and silly with some good moments that make you think.

I know they're not everyone's cup of tea, but The Stormlight Archive books speak to me like no other books ever have. They're a huge time investment, but they're all about the journey, not the destination. 😉

Someone else already suggested it, but I would second Terry Pratchett. Even though most of the books are standalone, I recommend start with the Colour of Magic and follow publication order.

I have an ambitious offering i dont think anyone else will suggest.

ambitious but you also want something you can read a day at a time. Books are fairly small.

My favourite BIG STOMPY ROBOTS but in chronological order.

Battletech Novels.

Book descriptions

Short book that hit hard:

• Flowers for Algernon, Daniel Keyes
• Never let me go, Kazuro Ishiguro
• The last unicorn, Peter S. Beagle
• 1984, George Orwell
• Prince of Thieves, Chuck Hogan

Catch 22 Tom Jones Good Omens Double Whammy (Carl Hiassen)

Just read Terry Pratchett or Larry Niven. Also Lois McMaster Bujold is a writer that will make you laugh and often start look at the world around you differently.

For you, I'd suggest 'I, Robot,' by Isaac Asimov.

It's a short story collection with a bunch of logic puzzles. the writing is clear and easy to follow and the conundrums are engaging.

The Hitchhiker’s Guide, you likely won’t be able to finish each of the 5 books in the trilogy in a day but it’s something you can read a hundred times and find a new witty joke somewhere, much like all the Discworld novels.

The Expanse is another that you could burn through a book a day but wow it’s a hell of a story and worth taking your time on each character’s perspective, Outlander is also a good one for the same reasons but those are 1k pagers

Children of Time by Adrian Tchaikovsky. It and its sequel Children of Ruin both explore what it means to be a person and makes you feel empathy for “the other”, beings that get more and more alien as the story moves on. Compared to most of what others mention here it is rather new. But it will become a cult classic, I am certain of that.

The Martian by Andy Weir is a book you could finish in a day. I could recommend a ton of books that I can read in a day but not sure how long they take you. How pages do you read a day OP?

I have two fantastic recommendations that are pretty short reads.

Enders Game is fantastic Sci fi and quite cut throat. Great Story. Far better than the marginal movie that came out based on it.

The Martian. Sci fi, but more realistic and the author must have researched the hell out of things to put this book together. The movie they made was actually pretty good, but the book outshines it by leaps and bounds. The internal monolog of the main character is outstanding in the book and it just can't happen through the movie.

Pretty much anything in the "Known Space" series by Larry Niven (et al - there are works by some other authors in that space).

The Lathe of Heaven by LeGuin is pretty short, and great

When I was young, I read Diane Duane's The Young Wizards series, and I remember I loved it. Also Artemis Fowl, Sherlock Holmes, and The Inheritance series (C. Paolini). As an adult, I've read the LotR series which I highly recommend. Also, The Expanse series, 1984, Chronicles of Narnia.

Short enough to finish in a day...hmm that's tough. Maybe Screwtape Letters by C S Lewis? The Martian. Lots of short stories out there by Isaac Asimov!

murderbot series is fantastic, I love every single entry in the series so far, and they're not very long or unnecessarily complicated; you can finish one in a day or two easy.

The first entry is called "All systems red"

Others may have mentioned it (happy to see Terry Pratchett getting a lot of love), but would definitely recommend anything by Vonnegut! Love his writing style and his approaches to humor and world building. Slaughterhouse Five is a great one, as is Sirens of Titan.

Also, not certain how well they hold up, but I really enjoyed the Redwall series back in the day! I was much younger at the time, though.

The Culture by Ian M. Banks. It's a little difficult to approach, but an incredible exploration of Sci-Fi, humanity, AI, and life in general. Unlike a lot of other great Sci-Fi (like The Expanse, which I also highly recommend) it's gritty, but overall The Culture is a hopeful and optimistic take on the progress of humanity and technology.

The best books are The Player of Games, Look to Windward, and Excession.

Depending on how you're feeling, I think you can skip The State of the Art, Matter, and Inversions, though they're worth an eventual read. They're just less connected to the main Culture story.

It's a series that truly changed me and my perspective on life.

Fahrenheit 451, really awesome dystopia that predicted a lot of things in our modern era

I'm waist deep in The Dresden Files right now (just started Turn Coat, book 11 of like 20 and counting) and it very quickly became one of my favorite series I've ever read. Jim Butcher has woven a web of a story where every little detail is a foreshadow that often won't pay off until two books later, it's incredible.

Prior to this I read The Expanse and that one also comes highly recommended. It's one of the most believable space operas I've ever read. I also hear the TV show is good, no idea, never watched it.

Cradle! Or better, the cradle series. It's a sort of adventure story in a fantasy world.