Book Recommendations?

Surface Detail is great, as are The Player of Games and Excession. Surface Detail in particular tackles some very interesting moral questions.

I just finished Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World. I enjoyed the way Murakami writes, but I take some issue with the way the narrator talks about the under age girl. I was thinking about starting 1Q84, but it gives a bit of a pause since it seems to have a female narrator. Does Murakami write women any better in his later novels?

Robear wrote:

Surface Detail is great, as are The Player of Games and Excession. Surface Detail in particular tackles some very interesting moral questions.

I came across this Culture books reading order a while ago. I really do need to get started! I will Consider Phlebas, but may not actually read it this year.

Robear wrote:

Surface Detail is great, as are The Player of Games and Excession. Surface Detail in particular tackles some very interesting moral questions.

Oh I strongly disliked Excession. Talk about not having a satisfying end.

EverythingsTentative wrote:

Does Murakami write women any better in his later novels?

Not in my experience (I haven't read all that many others, however).

Andy Weir's latest book, Project Hail Mary is definitely a return to form after the disappointing Artemis. I really enjoyed it. It combines all the "kludge clever sciencey solutions to urgent problems" stuff from The Martian, with a really interesting First Contact thing.

That's good to hear. I bounced off Artemis within 100 pages both times I tried to read it. IIRC, something about the way he wrote the main character really bothered me.

Agreed - writing from the POV of a woman without appearing in r/menwritingwomen is something 95% of male authors find impossible (percentage possibly a bit low). Weir did not avoid the usual pitfalls.

I'm nearly done with Sarah Gailey's _The Echo Wife_, and I have never wanted to send the narrator to therapy more than I have the narrator of this book.

It's psychological thriller/horror with a scifi veneer, about a woman in clone research who discovers her husband has stolen her research and cloned/conditioned a more suitable wife for himself.

I found it a little slow to ramp up, but the way things keep ramping up keeps pulling you through. But boy, could that narrator benefit with some (any) empathy and self-reflection.

If I were to compare it to anything, I'd say it's Gone Girl meets Stepford Wives. Cautiously recommended if you like thrillers, but mind your sensitivity to emotional trauma/abuse.

I just finished Project Hail Mary, and thought it was excellent. It's very much in the same vein as The Martian, but it's different enough to make a fun read, and I thoroughly enjoyed the first contact aspects. I think it would be a lot harder to make it into a blockbuster movie, but I'd definitely be interested in seeing it if they did.

Ok guys, you win. Wishlisted.

Malor wrote:

I just finished Project Hail Mary, and thought it was excellent. It's very much in the same vein as The Martian, but it's different enough to make a fun read, and I thoroughly enjoyed the first contact aspects. I think it would be a lot harder to make it into a blockbuster movie, but I'd definitely be interested in seeing it if they did.

Which is funny, because I thought the movie was a vast improvement on the book. The opposite is almost always the case.

I enjoyed Princess Floralinda and the Forty-Flight Tower. Brought to you by the author og Gideon the Ninth.

When the witch built the forty-flight tower, she made very sure to do the whole thing properly. Each flight contains a dreadful monster, ranging from a diamond-scaled dragon to a pack of slavering goblins. Should a prince battle his way to the top, he will be rewarded with a golden sword—and the lovely Princess Floralinda.

But no prince has managed to conquer the first flight yet, let alone get to the fortieth.

In fact, the supply of fresh princes seems to have quite dried up.

And winter is closing in on Floralinda…

In the most confusing news of yesterday, Fortnite is getting a crossover with Brandon Sanderson's Mistborn. I don't play Fortnite, but it seems a really left field choice to me. It's good for Mistborn, but I can't see fans of the book playing Fortnite if it's just skins of Kelsier and Vin. If they had Mistborn powers that would be more interesting I guess. Dud is confused about what's in it for Fortnite.

DudleySmith wrote:

In the most confusing news of yesterday, Fortnite is getting a crossover with Brandon Sanderson's Mistborn. I don't play Fortnite, but it seems a really left field choice to me. It's good for Mistborn, but I can't see fans of the book playing Fortnite if it's just skins of Kelsier and Vin. If they had Mistborn powers that would be more interesting I guess. Dud is confused about what's in it for Fortnite.

From what I could glean from Reddit, Sanderson is friends with one of the Fortnite devs.

Math wrote:
DudleySmith wrote:

In the most confusing news of yesterday, Fortnite is getting a crossover with Brandon Sanderson's Mistborn. I don't play Fortnite, but it seems a really left field choice to me. It's good for Mistborn, but I can't see fans of the book playing Fortnite if it's just skins of Kelsier and Vin. If they had Mistborn powers that would be more interesting I guess. Dud is confused about what's in it for Fortnite.

From what I could glean from Reddit, Sanderson is friends with one of the Fortnite devs.

Yea it is kind of puzzling still. Like I get that this is good for Mistborn and Sanderson, but it doesn't make a ton of sense from Epic's perspective. I can see it getting Fortnite fans into Mistborn, but I don't see Mistborn fans, even ones who are gamers, flocking to Fortnite if it wasn't something they were already into. Feels a little strange compared to some of the other crossovers they have done.

Read American Gods and liked reading it. Can't say it was good but I liked it. A big part of the is dream like going in and out of reality. I found that a little jarring at times but that is the book and the nature of the story.

Baron Of Hell wrote:

Read American Gods and liked reading it. Can't say it was good but I liked it. A big part of the is dream like going in and out of reality. I found that a little jarring at times but that is the book and the nature of the story.

It was good, but I think the sequel, Anansi Boys is actually much better

I think of myself as a big Neil Gaiman fan but I've never really loved anything he's done solo. To me all his truly great work is either collaborations (Good Omens, Neverwhere, any of his comics) or adaptations like the Stardust or Coraline movies. But his novels and short stories have always seemed flat, and not all that memorable. Or maybe he's just more storyteller than writer.

That said, I think I liked Anansi Boys best of his solo work that I've read.

Rykin wrote:
Math wrote:
DudleySmith wrote:

In the most confusing news of yesterday, Fortnite is getting a crossover with Brandon Sanderson's Mistborn. I don't play Fortnite, but it seems a really left field choice to me. It's good for Mistborn, but I can't see fans of the book playing Fortnite if it's just skins of Kelsier and Vin. If they had Mistborn powers that would be more interesting I guess. Dud is confused about what's in it for Fortnite.

From what I could glean from Reddit, Sanderson is friends with one of the Fortnite devs.

Yea it is kind of puzzling still. Like I get that this is good for Mistborn and Sanderson, but it doesn't make a ton of sense from Epic's perspective. I can see it getting Fortnite fans into Mistborn, but I don't see Mistborn fans, even ones who are gamers, flocking to Fortnite if it wasn't something they were already into. Feels a little strange compared to some of the other crossovers they have done.

As of March of last year, Sanderson said he was writing the screenplay for Mistborn movie. But if it's not in production, surely that isn't it.

fenomas wrote:

I think of myself as a big Neil Gaiman fan but I've never really loved anything he's done solo. To me all his truly great work is either collaborations (Good Omens, Neverwhere, any of his comics) or adaptations like the Stardust or Coraline movies. But his novels and short stories have always seemed flat, and not all that memorable. Or maybe he's just more storyteller than writer.

That said, I think I liked Anansi Boys best of his solo work that I've read.

Good, because when I get the scratch, I'm reading it in this version.

I quickly read through American Gods via the very well illustrated graphic novel. It was hard for me to buy the overall premise, but I'm sure I'll read it again in more detail.

::mind blown:: I had no idea Neverwhere was first a TV series. And has been adapted into every other form but opera and oratorio. Wow.

Natus wrote:

::mind blown:: I had no idea Neverwhere was first a TV series. And has been adapted into every other form but opera and oratorio. Wow.

Yeah! Similar to how the HHGttG books were adaptations of the original radio programs.

My recollection of Neverwhere the show is that it was very fun story-wise, but a little bit hard to watch just by virtue of being ancient broadcast TV. It's decades since I read it but I remember the book as being one of Gaiman's best, but since it's an adaptation of a collaboration I don't feel that it contradicts my Gaiman Hypothesis

fenomas wrote:
Natus wrote:

::mind blown:: I had no idea Neverwhere was first a TV series. And has been adapted into every other form but opera and oratorio. Wow.

Yeah! Similar to how the HHGttG books were adaptations of the original radio programs.

It's early and the caffeine hasn't hit yet. Can you help?

fenomas wrote:

My recollection of Neverwhere the show is that it was very fun story-wise, but a little bit hard to watch just by virtue of being ancient broadcast TV. It's decades since I read it but I remember the book as being one of Gaiman's best, but since it's an adaptation of a collaboration I don't feel that it contradicts my Gaiman Hypothesis :D

I just watched a few episodes on YouTube. Almost unwatchable now, but the acting isn't bad at all. Ye gods, but Gaiman does love his deus ex machinae. I like Neverwhere, but I don't quite understand why it's been adapted so many times. Maybe because it's like a post-modern mystery play in some ways? Or a Jacobean revenge tragedy?

Natus wrote:
fenomas wrote:
Natus wrote:

::mind blown:: I had no idea Neverwhere was first a TV series. And has been adapted into every other form but opera and oratorio. Wow.

Yeah! Similar to how the HHGttG books were adaptations of the original radio programs.

It's early and the caffeine hasn't hit yet. Can you help?

Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy which I am currently reading for the first time.

Rykin wrote:
Natus wrote:
fenomas wrote:
Natus wrote:

::mind blown:: I had no idea Neverwhere was first a TV series. And has been adapted into every other form but opera and oratorio. Wow.

Yeah! Similar to how the HHGttG books were adaptations of the original radio programs.

It's early and the caffeine hasn't hit yet. Can you help?

Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy which I am currently reading for the first time.

Yup, sorry. Incidentally the Hitchhiker's Guide radio series absolutely stands up today. Mostly, except occasional bits. I like the radio shows more than the books if I'm honest, which is surprising in that I had loved the books for a decade or two before I knew there were radio shows!

I am reading A Declaration of the Rights of Magicians by H.G. Parry and good lord is it boring. The only reason I will finish it is because it's my book club book this month. The idea is it's an alternate history of the French revolution, the British movement to abolish the slave trade, and of slaves fighting for their freedom in Haiti, in a world where many people are magicians. It seemed intriguing enough and had a couple of author blurbs that piqued my curiosity (Alix Harrow had good things to say about it, and I have really enjoyed her semi-historical fantasy stories). But, woof. It is an incredibly dry history that occasionally shoehorns in some magic. Like, the French revolution sure was a wild time--and did you know Marie Antoinette was a fire mage? The author seems to take great care with portraying the characters sensitively--all these historical figures are generally shown as being very good and moral people, and when they do bad things it's suggested that actually an evil wizard made them do it (and honestly, if I knew more of the history of this era and these figures, I might be offended at that presentation too, I'm not sure how much bad stuff is being whitewashed here)--yet the whole inclusion of slave rebellions in the book seems terribly insensitive. It's introduced like "sure, we all know slavery was bad, but what if I also told you a wizard did it, wouldn't that make it even worse?" And then when enslaved people fight for their freedom, it's revealed that actually they were only able to do that because a rich white European gave them some magical help, and also even he was actually being manipulated by an evil wizard. I imagine it's possible introduce magic and fantasy into stories involving slavery without trivializing the reality of the situation or making it disrespectfully unserious, but, this author wasn't up to the task. But really, though, it's just so boring, endless political discussions that are like 85% imagined dialogue that is meticulously consistent with what the characters did in real life to the point of being incredibly stiff, with 15% of "yes, we must fight to end slavery/liberate France...and also let people do magic!"

For an unexpected comparison, the writing, especially the bad invented dialogue, reminds me of Blake Harris' Console Wars, which I know some people like a lot but I thought had absolutely terrible writing where the author took real history (from his interviews with the people involved, in this case) and created scenes and dreamed up dialogue to get across the facts he had learned in a way that I thought just did not work at all, where every exchange felt so utilitarian and false. Like, we know from history that X, Y, and Z happened around the same time, so to fictionalize it, the author has someone sit down and said "Hey did you hear about X?" and someone else interjects "interesting, because I just learned Y!" and they both spontaneously said to each other "that can only mean...Z!!!" I thought the writing was painfully wooden and phony in Console Wars and this book has the closest writing to that I've seen.

(I've always held special bitterness towards Console Wars because years ago, when I finished reading it and was disappointed in it, I tweeted to my ~100 followers something to the effect of "ugh, I just finished Console Wars and was so disappointed, I wanted to like it but the writing was f**king terrible", and I absolutely did not @ the author or link the book or anything, and yet Blake Harris must've name searched his book so he retweeted me to his thousands of followers asking them what they thought about my review, which seemed really crappy and vaguely menacing, and I had an awkward exchange with him about my feelings on the book where I was much more polite to him than I should've been--he was asking dumb stuff like "If you hated it so much, why'd you finish the whole thing?" and I tried to give him constructive answers and pointed out things I had liked about the book, which was way more than he deserved. I should've been meaner to him, but I was a bit panicked and felt bad for saying something mean even if it was only intended for the very few people who followed me. Screw that guy.)

mrlogical wrote:

"yes, we must fight to end slavery/liberate France...and also let people do magic!"

But did you try reading it Baby Cakes's voice?

Baron Of Hell wrote:

Read American Gods and liked reading it. Can't say it was good but I liked it. A big part of the is dream like going in and out of reality. I found that a little jarring at times but that is the book and the nature of the story.

American Gods is one of my favorites, it's not Neil Gaimen's best work but for some reason I'm drawn to it.

Shack70 wrote:
Baron Of Hell wrote:

Read American Gods and liked reading it. Can't say it was good but I liked it. A big part of the is dream like going in and out of reality. I found that a little jarring at times but that is the book and the nature of the story.

American Gods is one of my favorites, it's not Neil Gaimen's best work but for some reason I'm drawn to it.

I enjoyed it, but not as much as some of his others. I like Neverwhere the most.

I'm less of a fervent Gaiman fan than I once was, but I still love Neverwhere. Interesting to know that the series came first - I should track down the DVDs that are gathering dust in my house somewhere. I've been going through the audiobooks of his short story collections recently, and it's really cemented that to my mind, his stories are so much better when he's narrating them.