I’ve basically been ordered to pick up any fiction book and read, after a friend discovered I’ve not read anything but non-fiction for a decade.
The ones I’ve enjoyed in the past have been short, fantastical or sci-fi (think Aldous Huxley, Ian McEwan), but crucially with amazing first person descriptive prose - the kind where you’re immersed in the writing so much you’re almost there with the character.
I liked sci-fi as the world’s constraints weren’t always predictable. Hope that makes sense.
Any recommendations?
Edit: I’m going to up the ante and, as a way of motivating myself to get off my arse and actually read a proper story, promise to choose a book from the top comment, after, let’s say arbitrarily, Friday 2200 GMT.
Edit deux: Wow ok I don’t think I’ve ever had this many responses to anything I’ve posted before. You’ve given me what looks like a whole year of interesting suggestions, and importantly, good commentary around them. I’m honouring my promise to buy the top thing in just under 4 hours.
John Scalzi’s book are an easy read. Its a lightweight Sci fi though.
Old Man’s War, and Starter Villain are the two of his books I’ve read and enjoyed.
Something not by one of the more well known authors I could recommend are the Indranan War trilogy and Farian War trilogy, by K. B. Wagers
Also, The Frontiers Saga series by Ryk Brown is fantastic, and I think getting close to 40 books by now
I think so far the Vonnegut is the best recommendation for you. And not sci-fi but Catch-22 by Joseph Heller might also be a good fit. A lot of these suggestions are really good books, but not as pithy and gripping as I think you might be looking for. But more data is needed, any favorite movies?
Ooh difficult question.
The John Woo movie ‘Cypher’ was a great mind bender, I like stuff like Gattaca, Day After Tomorrow(?), anything that plays with time and reality.
Just as a general advice that has only occurred to me recently: if you don’t like a book, stop reading it and read another one. There are great books, and there are mediocre, and also you some might work better for you, and some worse. If you start with a book that you don’t like, and power through it anyway, you might be reluctant to try another one.
You’ve mentioned sci-fi, but didn’t mention Robert Sheckley. If you haven’t read any of his stories, drop everything and read Citizen in Space, for example.
If you’d rather go for something more modern, fun, but also a little sad, try The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time by Mark Haddon.
For something extremely entertaining, but also mysterious, try Everyone in My Family Has Killed Someone by Benjamin Stevenson.
If you’re into videogames and like drama, try Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin. That’s the best book I’ve read in the past 5 years.
Haven’t seen this one mentioned, but The Three-Body Problem by Liu Cixin might work. I don’t believe there’s a lot of first person, but it’s an interesting read.
IMO this is a wild recommendation to give to someone that doesn’t do a lot of reading.
That’s fair, I had thought op had mentioned they didn’t read fiction, not that they didn’t read at all. Maybe I missed some nuance in the comments, thanks for pointing it out if I did. For all I knew they could be reading Foucault. Enjoyable read regardless, I wouldn’t be discouraged.
Not really sci-fi, but shirt and very good: Fictions/Ficciones and Labyrinths by Jorge Luis Borges. Also, Invisible Cities by Italo Calvino.
Snow Crash by Neil Stephenson.
And then everything else by Neal Stephenson.
Diamond Age is a somewhat sequel. Seveneves is epic sci Fi on a grand scale.
Fall, Reamde, Termination Shock, and cryptonomicon are good near-present sci fi written in similar style. Very action packed with interesting characters.
Anathemos ambitious, takes work to read, but is worth it in the end.
The Baroque cycle is historical fiction that is framed around real scientists. It is very long and took me three tries to get started, but it was also worth reading.
Out of all of that, I’d argue Snow Crash is the most accessible, followed by the Baroque Cycle.
Cryptonomicon and Anathemos are more or less unreadable.
Cryptonomicon I had no problems with, read it thrice now. Anathem was tough, took effort to get 1/3 thru but then went by easily.
It was only after reading anathem that I felt I could do anything and started Quicksilver for the third time and actually finished it. After that the next two in the Baroque cycle were easy.
There’s a lot of good stuff here but I have to throw Andromeda Strain and World War Z into the pot.
@foofiepie continuing with sci-fi definitely check out the Monk & Robot series by Becky Chambers!
“A Psalm For the Wild Built” & “A Prayer For the Crown Shy”
Short & beautiful.Naive Super. Not sci-fi, but a quick enjoyable read. I’ve read it 4 times now. Its just a fantastic simple book to get back into reading fiction.
The book 1984 is a brutal version of Brave New World. Also Dune was pretty good for me.
East of Eden by John Steinbeck. If you only read one fiction book ever, you could do a lot worse.
It’s not Sci-fi. It is beautiful though, and complex and descriptive and puts you right there with the character arcs. Just a staggering work of genius I can’t recommend enough. I buy it for people I care about.
I don’t think anyone has recommended the Mars trilogy by Kim Stanley Robinson yet.
Daemon by Daniel Suarez. I read that as a young programmer and it’s still in my mind. Written before the whole AI hype.
The godfather. People always say the book was better. This is the case here
I made a comment somewhere else a few days ago so I’ll just copy paste.
Les Misérables is easily the best book I’ve ever read in my entire life. A few years ago I read a shorthened version of it and even then I was fascinated by it. I finished reading the full text two months ago and oh my fucking god this book is the best thing ever written.
I’m Turkish so I read the Turkish translation (will read the full text in English and French when I learn it) and on the back of it, it says something along these lines:
“… Les Misérables is the third and the most majestic collumn of the author’s novel trilogy that tells of the society…”
And I completely agree with that. This book is simply timeless. The characters, situations, unjustice, inequalities, all the suffering in it could be applied to any society. This book is real.
The messages that it sends are solutions to topics that seemingly anybody with a functioning brain should be capable of thinking and realizing. And yet, these solutions are ignored and refused because of greed, revenge, bloodlust and most important of all, ignorance.
The main character of the book, Jean Valjean is the embodiment of redemption. His entire arc teaches us how to treat criminals. Some countries today are taking these lessons and applying them. The lessons being; treat them as human, rehabilitate them. The result? They actually do heal and return to society as normal human beings.
And yet you see people against this practice. Those kinds of people are blinded by bloodlust and revenge. They are the same kind of people that were racist, sexist and much more back in the day. The arguments that these people bring don’t hold up either. The most common one I see (at least from my perspective) is this:
“You wouldn’t react this way if they hurt one of your loved ones!”
The fact that these people don’t know anything about me aside, this argument is pointless as it implies that I would be blind to fact and logic when I’m in pain. And while that is true, me being angry over an apple falling onto my head won’t make gravity any less real. In other words, so what?
The biggest victims of this mentality are pedofiles. Not the ones that do engage in action. But rather the ones that don’t harm anybody are aware of their issue. For instance, if a non-engaging pedo went to a therapist and told them of their issue, what would the therapist do? Call the police of course. And what would that do? Their life would be pretty screwed from that point forward. Assuming they are the non-engaging type, of course. I don’t believe this to be the correct attitude towards these kind of cases.
I would also like to dive into other topics that the book covers (and perhaps extend on this one) but it would be way too long for a comment. Thank you anyone reading this far. I would like to hear your opinions on the matter and discuss even!>>
