looking to expand my horizons. My last 2 books: the power of introverts and the subtle art of not giving a f*ck.
You must log in or register to comment.
I just got into Brandon Sandersons books and they are amazing fantasy books. Mistborn: The Final Empire is the best starting place
Not exactly a new book, but All Quiet on the Western Front was a fantastic read. It’s a grotesquely frank depiction of the unfortunate "Have Not"s fighting a meaningless war for the "Have"s in society, set in the german trenches of WW1.
From the same author, Erich Maria Remarque, “A night in Lisbon” is also very good.
We are legion we are Bob
If you are into fantasy, then I need to recommend you the books of Brandon Sanderson, especially the Stormlight Archive series. It’s so epic, nothing else comes close
I mean I’m a communist so YMMV, but I’m re-reading the Vietnamese textbook on Dialectical Materialism that Luna Oi translated. I’m re-reading it because I also have the second textbook she translated (on Historical Materialism) and I wanted to brush up before diving in to that one.
Luna Oi is a great comrade! She is doing so much for the cause!
Noice. I hope to get this sometime.
I’ve found it to be the most concise and straightforward (and yet thorough) primer on dialectical materialism that I’ve come across so far. In particular I liked how the book split dialectical materialism (the philosophy) from materialist dialectics (the tools of analysis).
I’m currently on book 5 of the Dungeon Crawler Carl series, I started book one In January.
The audiobooks are amazing, super-talented narrator who does a while host of voices.
Book 5 is my next read. I try and stagger them with other things to draw it out some and make sure I don’t burn out.
It’s all so good
New Scientist magazine, the paper version so that I can put it down, think about it, and come back a week later. I’m not a scientist, and not highly educated, but I’m curious about the world, and many of their articles are easy to read at my level.
Dungeon Crawler Carl. The premise is that aliens take over the world and immediately kill 99% of the population. The remaining 1% are forced to compete on an intergalactic reality TV show called Dungeon Crawler World.
The series is a scathing critique of modern capitalism, dressed up like a fart joke. If you liked The Good Place, you’ll likely enjoy DCC.
I’m on book three of the Bobiverse. I’m enjoying it. The nice thing is that they’re not super dense.
Yup. It does a good job of breaking up the action by having multiple parallel storylines going at the same time. This helps it avoid feeling like “all gas, no brakes” that many fiction authors tend to fall into.
And the “sci” in sci-fi is typically kept fairly light. Lots of authors (looking at you, Crichton) get bogged down in trying to explain all of the minutiae of how their science works. It’s like they’re afraid that if they fail to explain the science, their world-building will all fall apart. But this means they can be a slog to get through, because the author spends entire chapters explaining background features, instead of focusing on the action. The Bobiverse managed to avoid this, and only touches on the science side when it’s relevant.
Glurp glurp!
The only thing I am reading rn is Capital but I don’t think you came here for political theory so I will recommend The Hot Zone. It’s the last book I read and it’s about the discovery of Ebola, its investigations, and how it got to the US.
Currently reading about all the horrors of the CIA - finished The Jakarta Method and Washington Bullets, currently reading through Killing Hope, and next on my list is Operation Gladio.
Liberalism: A Counter History, by Domenico Losurdo. Mostly so far looking at how all the liberal revolutions and theorists ended up being at least lukewarm to slavery.
Recently my favourite genre have been “2019 lesbian sci-fi debut novels about an empire, starting a series”.
A Memory Called Empire is absolutely amazing. A very close second is Gideon the Ninth and its sequels.
thats such a specific genre haha. Have read the Traitor Baru Cormorant? Very slightly outside of your criteria but I’d recommend it
It isn’t a lot, but it’s weird that it happened twice.
I’ll throw your suggestion on The Pile. Looks promising.
There’s also Ancillary Justice which just barely misses the exact genre. Unfortunately I didn’t really enjoy the way it is written, though the story and universe is super interesting.
Yeah that makes sense, the writing style of Ancillary Justice is really unique.
have you ever read This is how you lose the time war? I’m considering reading that one next
Well, I didn’t really have a problem with the unique part, more that there’s a lot of stuff happening that feels like filler. It’s been a while, but as a I remember it there’s the ancilliary, the main character, on a journey, and that is interspersed with flashbacks. Those were really interesting. The rest was mostly her being put in very dangerous situations which we knew were dangerous because the book keeps telling you just how dangerous they are, but the way the character was built up it just didn’t work for me as something to build tension. Just a constant, yeah, she’s going it be a badass and overcome it. And she does. And it didn’t feel like it pushed the story forward, but rather allowed time to pass so there could be another interesting flashback.
The ending, when things started moving and the whole deal with multiple emperors was revealed was great, but the way to get there just wasn’t doing it for me.
There was a slight annoyance with the language gender thing, since my native Czech is a gendered language, so the whole thing wasn’t completely unfamiliar or surprising to me, and the way the book had to go out of its way to explain that this is what’s going on, since English is not gendered and the mistakes had to be pointed out. It felt a bit tortured and overstaying its welcome, but not a dealbreaker by any means.
Anyway, adding your suggestion to my Pile. Sounds like a more serious take on One Day All This Will Be Yours by Adrian Tchaikovsky, which ultimately annoyed me with its tone and unlikeable protagonist.
Lesbian sci-fi is on my radar … the best by far that I’ve read so far has been The Chronicles of Alsea series.
It’s just fantastic sci-fi, the lesbians are merely a bonus :-)
The blade itself is what I’m current reading (when not frantically trying to catchup on one piece)
Joe Abercrombe is great. His books only get better. I haven’t read his YA stuff but I’ve read all his other books and love, love, loved every one of them.
Solaris by Stanislaw Lem. Truly magnificent, just like the movie by Tarkovsky.
In parallel to that I went also down the rabbit hole about what cybernetics was and what happened to it.
I recently read (listened to the audiobook actually) Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel.
It’s about the life of Thomas Cromwell. The narration style is not for everyone, but it’s the best historical fiction story I’ve read.
The show is also excellent
