Book Recommendations?

Or Jack Vance, who pretty much single-handedly jumpstarted dozens of modern fantasy tropes, and even Dungeons and Dragons magic system.

NathanialG wrote:

The iPad is great for comics.

Everyone should check out The New Deadwardians comic series. It's a short run (6-8 issues) but well worth the time. Also recommending Locke and Key - miles better than the Netflix adaptation.

If you've never read "Transmetropolitan", now is the time. And the iPad Kindle version lets you zoom in on all the bizarre details, too.

NathanialG wrote:
Grenn wrote:

Should I read Wheel of Time? I like fantasy, both high and fun, but I've missed this series.

You aren't missing anything.

Seconded-ed

Michael wrote:
NathanialG wrote:
Grenn wrote:

Should I read Wheel of Time? I like fantasy, both high and fun, but I've missed this series.

You aren't missing anything.

Seconded-ed

Pulls braid

Finished Say Nothing a history of the Troubles in Northern Ireland in 2 days.
Good book.

I read all 7 of the available books of Star Kingdom series by Lindsay Buroker. All in the last month so I really enjoyed the series. Book 8 will be the end but it is not out yet. It is light space fantasy romp with fun main characters.

Book 1 wrote:

What if being a hero was encoded in your genes?

And nobody told you?

Casmir Dabrowski would laugh if someone asked him that. After all, he had to build a robot to protect himself from bullies when he was in school.

Fortunately, life is a little better these days. He’s an accomplished robotics engineer, a respected professor, and he almost never gets picked on in the lunchroom. But he’s positive heroics are for other people.

Until robot assassins stride onto campus and try to kill him.

Forced to flee the work he loves and the only home he’s ever known, Casmir catches the first ship into space, where he hopes to buy time to figure out who wants him dead and why. If he can’t, he’ll never be able to return home.

But he soon finds himself entangled with bounty hunters, mercenaries, and pirates, including the most feared criminal in the Star Kingdom: Captain Tenebris Rache.

Rache could snap his spine with one cybernetically enhanced finger, but he may be the only person with the answer Casmir desperately needs:

What in his genes is worth killing for?

Tanglebones wrote:
kazooka wrote:
Grenn wrote:

Should I read Wheel of Time? I like fantasy, both high and fun, but I've missed this series.

People remember it fondly because it was arguably the first of a new wave of fantasy that was breaking away from the Tolkein/Arthurian tradition and writing in a less mythic, more contemporary style. In retrospect, it's really flawed, and there are a lot of unheralded series that are doing a much better job of giving you a similar experience. With a few decades hindsight, most people only remember the things that were really annoying about it: the braid-tugging, the weird sexual politics, the inability of the author to keep his S&M interests out of his writing, etc.

[stares in New Wave fantasy of the 60s and 70s]

It was super popular, but not particularly ground breaking on that front. If you're looking for something that had a formative effect on the genre, you're better off reading Roger Zelazny or Michael Moorcock (or, you know, if you want to read something that's actually good)

I'm characterize it by the writing style, and while Zelazny and Moorcock were writing in a very different way, Jordan's writing felt a lot more natural and conversational than those two. And that's not better, to be clear, but I think it was a touch easier to relate to the characters. Zelazny and Moorcock are more predecessors to China Mieville than something like Game of Thrones, IMO (though they influenced the latter as well). In any case, hard agree that there are better more interesting books to dig into. If you really want something from that period in particular, Tad Williams Memory, Thorn, and Sorrow is a series that I remember very fondly, and it was written in the time before the 12-volume chronicle was an industry standard so it's a (relatively) quick read. Only three books!

Malor wrote:

Ohh, okay. I'd forgotten all that completely. I read that more as being about slavery than S&M.

I was a little tongue in cheek in that first paragraph, so I may be overstating it somewhat. I just remember getting the heavy impression that all the "bonding" and people in restraints were not strictly necessary to convey the plot or themes of the Wheel of Time.

I just remember the moment I realized that Jordan was most likely being paid by the word, and that was the beginning of my disillusionment.

Wink_and_the_Gun wrote:
Michael wrote:
NathanialG wrote:
Grenn wrote:

Should I read Wheel of Time? I like fantasy, both high and fun, but I've missed this series.

You aren't missing anything.

Seconded-ed

Pulls braid

I'm sure this has been posted before in this thread, but anywho:
https://www.reddit.com/r/WoT/comment...

Robear wrote:

I just remember the moment I realized that Jordan was most likely being paid by the word, and that was the beginning of my disillusionment.

Meh, I always chalked it up to the fact that his editor was his wife. I think they would have both been better served to have a more neutral arbiter.

While I agree with the consensus, that there are much better reads as a whole series. As someone who was there before day one (I got an advanced reading copy at my first part-time job in a bookstore,) I'm still glad to have read the series and am hopeful for the Amazon series.

Changing gears, has anyone read Emily St John Mandel's new book?

Just finished Network Effect....latest Murderbot book. I loved it. And yes, the books really DO need to be read in order. Thanks for the advice and recommendations!

MathGoddess wrote:

Just finished Network Effect....latest Murderbot book. I loved it. And yes, the books really DO need to be read in order. Thanks for the advice and recommendations!

I'm on the third novella now, and I'm definitely going to spring for Network Effect when I'm done with the fourth!

Tanglebones wrote:
MathGoddess wrote:

Just finished Network Effect....latest Murderbot book. I loved it. And yes, the books really DO need to be read in order. Thanks for the advice and recommendations!

I'm on the third novella now, and I'm definitely going to spring for Network Effect when I'm done with the fourth!

I just did this. I hadn’t read the last two novellas until last week. Something about the cost set me off, and I just never got around to checking them out from the library. I grabbed them when Tor distributed them for free and ripped through them. So snarky!

In the end I was convinced to buy Network Effect after seeing the quality of the novellas. So, kudos to Tor and their marketing...it really did help push me over the edge to paying for the new novel.

I was pleasantly surprised to find Network Effect sitting on my kindle the other night, but I had just recently started (and am loving) A Memory Called Empire, so Murderbot is going to have to wait for a week or so.

Pfft....why read only one book at a time?
I just finished Wife of the Gods by Kwei Quartey. Police procedural set in Ghana. Really enjoyed it.

(Started High Rise by JG Ballard this week. It’s weird. I also needed to take a break from the class warfare going on in it. A bit too on the nose for me right now.)

(Well, phooey....A Memory Called Empire looks neat but my library doesn’t have it as an ebook. And I do try not to real multiple books in the same genre at the same time, so I can see why you’d wait on Murderbot. I’d be interested in hearing what you think of Memory when you finish it.)

MathGoddess wrote:

(Started High Rise by JG Ballard this week. It’s weird. I also needed to take a break from the class warfare going on in it. A bit too on the nose for me right now.)

Oh oh, that's one you can cheat and watch the movie instead. The teacher won't know. Perfect Crime!

The movie is on the faithful side, and I think pretty good. Hiddleston and Irons deliver, and the visual style lands somewhere between now and contemporaneous with the book coming out in I assume the seventies? Like they did pre production forty years ago, then stayed in development hell until a few years ago, and didn't bother starting over.

Personally, I'm off alcohol and Ballard until the Lockdown is over.

MathGoddess wrote:

(Well, phooey....A Memory Called Empire looks neat but my library doesn’t have it as an ebook. And I do try not to real multiple books in the same genre at the same time, so I can see why you’d wait on Murderbot. I’d be interested in hearing what you think of Memory when you finish it.)

I read Memory back in November and it was the standout book of last year for me. Fantastic worldbuilding and a tremendously rich story and characters. Can't wait for the second book of the series.

I'm currently about a third of the way through Grady Hendrick's The Southern Book Club's Guide to Slaying Vampires and am loving it. Just the kind of escapism I need right now.

I’ve watched the movie already That’s why I started with it rather than Concrete Island or Crash. Book was 74 I think.
One of my goals for this year is to get through the recommended reading fora Great Course on science fiction. I’m also doing some from the mystery course too. I took a SF course way back in college and it was really disappointing. I haven’t read much sf in years, so now that I have more mental energy (not teaching), I’m really enjoying reading everything.

Man in the High Castle was just about the only SF book we read in the college course and it was pretty fun to reread it last year as I was collecting the books. Jules Verne has not grabbed me, but I really enjoy Arthur C Clarke. And it’s gotten me to finally read the Mars trilogy by Kim Stanley Robinson. My sister just got me his CA trilogy for my birthday. Not sure when I’ll pick it up, but she enjoyed it a lot.

MathGoddess wrote:

Man in the High Castle was just about the only SF book we read in the college course and it was pretty fun to reread it last year as I was collecting the books. Jules Verne has not grabbed me, but I really enjoy Arthur C Clarke. And it’s gotten me to finally read the Mars trilogy by Kim Stanley Robinson. My sister just got me his CA trilogy for my birthday. Not sure when I’ll pick it up, but she enjoyed it a lot.

If you like Clarke, the next couple of authors I'd suggest checking out would be Hal Clement and Stephen Baxter. And maybe Olaf Stapledon.

I'm not surprised at Jules Verne not grabbing you. I would recommend Journey to the Center of the Earth as the best read from him. 20,000 Leagues is a bit slow. Mysterious Island is better but sorta a sequel.

Edit: By not surprised, I mean it's a problem with tons of the early pulp SF writers like him and Edgar Rice Burroughs. They created a lot of tropes that were iterated upon and made better or at least grander. Super creative but had problematic and basic plots.

tuffalobuffalo wrote:

Edit: By not surprised, I mean it's a problem with tons of the early pulp SF writers like him and Edgar Rice Burroughs. They created a lot of tropes that were iterated upon and made better or at least grander. Super creative but had problematic and basic plots.

Burroughs' Barsoom series, for instance, involves a lot of very repetitive battles. Of course, these stories were originally published as serials in pulp magazines and each novel would have been read across a span of months rather than days as we read them now.

Princess of Mars is on the to read list.
I started Last and First Men but it didn’t grab me. I’ll need to try it again. Also have Star Maker on list.
I really enjoyed Around the World in 80 Days but Journey to the Center of Earth and 20000 Leagues were slogs, even with better translations.
For Baxter, I have Evolution and Raft through Ring of Xeelee Sequence. Haven’t started them yet.

Clement isn’t on the list, but I have a few of his books. A friend left me his sf collection after his death so that added over 1000 books to my home library. Any suggestions of favorite books of his?

MathGoddess wrote:

Clement isn’t on the list, but I have a few of his books. A friend left me his sf collection after his death so that added over 1000 books to my home library. Any suggestions of favorite books of his?

Mission of Gravity is generally considered to be his masterpiece (expensive space probe is grounded on a planet with gravity far too high for humans to survive; centipede-like natives are persuaded to make an epic journey across their planet to help recover it, but the natives have an agenda of their own). I'm also fond of Iceworld (alien criminals are using a remote uncharted solar system as a base for drug smuggling; everyone thought the third planet was obviously far too cold for anything to live there, but it turns out there's life on Earth after all).

Gotta say, "The Mirror and the Light" is even better than I anticipated. I find myself lingering, putting off reading a section, just to make it last. I'll probably start the trilogy over when it's done (after a few sidetrack reads lol). Hillary Mantle really has written a trilogy that will last.

Robear wrote:

Gotta say, "The Mirror and the Light" is even better than I anticipated. I find myself lingering, putting off reading a section, just to make it last. I'll probably start the trilogy over when it's done (after a few sidetrack reads lol). Hillary Mantle really has written a trilogy that will last.

Absolute same. I'm nibbling at it like an exquisite delicacy.

Badferret wrote:

Changing gears, has anyone read Emily St John Mandel's new book?

My wife has and loved it and after just reading Station Eleven I'm excited to get to The Glass Hotel soon.

I'm plodding through the Murderbot series, just about finished book 3 and I'm warming to it a little more. It has me wanting to go back to the Bobiverse books though.

malking wrote:
Badferret wrote:

Changing gears, has anyone read Emily St John Mandel's new book?

My wife has and loved it and after just reading Station Eleven I'm excited to get to The Glass Hotel soon.

I'm plodding through the Murderbot series, just about finished book 3 and I'm warming to it a little more. It has me wanting to go back to the Bobiverse books though.

Hmmm. I downloaded the Murderbot series since the price was just a stream of Tor emails. I'm a little way into the first one and wildly unimpressed thus far. The writing seems like the sort of thing I would have written in high-school. Still, perhaps it will get better, so I'll stick with it for now.

I hope whatever career path you chose for yourself was as awesome as the best selling author that you passed up on.

Someone pass me the popcorn...