At the time he died, I'd been a fan of Douglas Adams for about 25 years. After he died, they released a collection of essays, works in progress, notes and such. In it, he described the amazement he had for his favorite author, who he described as having an amazing way with words. The guy that amazed me with "It flew in much the same way a brick doesn't." was amazed by someone else's way with words. So, I put down Salmon, walked to the nearest bookshop, and bought a couple of volumes by P.G. ( if I may call him that) Wodehouse and began a new era of fandom that rivals my adoration of dear old Doug.
this post was submitted on 21 Aug 2023
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What book would you suggest starting with?
I started with a random Jeeves book and was immediately hooked. This blogger put some thought into it: https://honoriaplum.wordpress.com/2014/08/10/getting-started-with-bertie-and-jeeves-a-chronological-challenge/?wref=tp
I would say Joy in the Morning has one of my favorite sentences in the English language, describing a fellow who is startled by an intruder while he's feeling a bit embarrassed.
I genuinely wanted to read this book, but it appeared to be a prank.
https://www.latimes.com/books/jacketcopy/la-et-jc-fake-self-help-books-20150318-story.html
I have never met anyone who has read Alastair Reynolds’ Revelation Space series. It’s one of my favourite sci-fi’s and I can’t even get someone I know to read it, everyone thinks it’s boring :)
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Momo by Michael Ende. He also wrote The Neverending Story. Where The Neverending Story is about imagination, Momo is about listening and time.
Wow. A friend of mine recently recommended that book to me. Interesting to find it mentioned here
After Man by Dougal Dixion.
It's a book about speculative biology. It hypothesizes that humanity will lead to the extinction of most of the animals we know. After that new animals will evolve to take their place. The book speculates that rabbits will take the place of deer, and that rats will evolve into dog like animals .
The best part about the book is that there are great illustrations.
To my knowledge it's not a very well known book, just because speculative biology is a very niche subject.
Have you ever checked out Alltomorrows by Nemo Ramjet? It's got some of the best illustrations and stories in the speculative evolution genre.
I am talking out of my butt here, but I read a related book, "Man After Man", by the same author, when I was a kid, and it stuck with me, so many years later when Amazon became a thing, I tried to find it and his other books. I wound up in a rabbit hole of Google that suggested that he does some of the art and was discredited for it? At least. I think I remember something like that. Man After Man was trippy though.
Edit: Googled a bit, can't find reference to this now. Maybe I'm wrong? It could happen, in theory.
Any translation of "The Divine Comedy" should be atleast interesting! Possibly the best feat of poetry of our time.
Back when I was an edgy teen, the saga of Darren Shan and the adjacent content of the Demonata were good as far as I can remember. I don't know if it will hold up for a more mature audience despite that being the demographic.
A Salty Piece of Land by Jimmy Buffett... No, seriously.
He has the reputation as "the patron saint of drunken uncle beach bums", but if you dig into his earlier catalogue, its rife with beautiful, lyrical storytelling songcraft. When you consider that, itss no suprise that he can write a decent book.
Riddley Walker by Russell Hoban.
Quoting from wikipedia:
The book is set “roughly two thousand years after a nuclear war has devastated civilization … [and] … is written in a stylistic, imaginary dialect based on and inspired by the dialect of Kent”
“The struggle with Riddley's language is what makes reading the book so absorbing, so completely possessing."
It takes a while for your brain to adjust, but once it does, you don’t even notice.
"Red Harvest" by Dashiell Hammett.
Almost 100 years old, and it is still one of the best things you'll ever read.
If the plot sounds familiar, it's because it's been stolen over and over and over.
A private detective is hired to investigate corruption in a small city. When the man who hire him is gunned down, the unnamed hero decides to set all the town's gangs at each others' throats to see what shakes out.
The Art Of Learning - Josh Waitzkin
If you saw the movie Searching For Bobby Fischer, you might remember the main character Josh Waitzkin. Based on a true story and book written by his father, the movie tells the story of Josh who becomes a world renowned chess champion at a young age.
IRL, Josh also goes on to compete internationally and excel in Tai Chi Push Hands. In his book, he talks about how he isn't inherently talented at either of these disciplines but that he's learned how to learn and that it can be applied to any interest.
I love that book! I try to read it once a year to keep the ideas lodged in my brain.
Pretty much most manhua/manhwa. There's sadly no manhua/manhwa community here.
Rymdväktaren ("The Space Guardian") and Nyaga, a duology by late Swedish author Peter Nilson. He was a prominent doctor of astronomy at the University of Uppsala, and a board member of the International Astronomical Union. But he also released many works of poetry.
The books are pretty fantastical and have a lot of speculative ideas but you can tell they are grounded in a solid understanding of physics and cosmology, with a big chunk of interesting philosophy thrown in. A lot of mind boggling stuff happens. For example the protagonists try to build a quantum computer that simulates the universe and end up creating an actual universe, which causes some weird effects on physical constants of our universe.
The main theme is how information is encoded in physical events and whether it can be preserved past the end of our universe. It's been a long time since I read them but at the time I enjoyed them immensely. Unfortunately no English translation seems to be available.
The Last Ringbearer by Kirill Eskov. It is an amazing book, though some of it is lost in translation. If you are reading it in English, make sure to use the v2 version which fixes a lot of issues with the v1 version.
Money: The True Story of a Made-Up Thing. It's a very easy read all about how weird currency is. My only gripe is that Jacob Goldstein often leaves out too much detail of historical accounts in favor of keeping the book light and accessible.
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I have to mention Being Mortal by Atul Gawande, though it was popular when it was published so I bet a number of you Lemmings have read it.
It's a surgeon's first-person account of learning how to address and deal with death, both among his very sick patients and his aging family members.
Curse of the Reaper. It's like reading an 80s slasher flick. Nothing too amazing but still a good and fun read!
Oddities and Curiosities of Words and Literature by C C Bombaugh, one of my favourite reads, feels like it might be an obscure book.
Project Itoh Genocidal Organ. Modern Sci-fi book of post 9/11 world where a bunch of genocides take place in third world countries at an unprecedented pace. Also has something called alpha consumers who are people who research where every part of their food or product comes from (not part of the plot but thought it was cool). After playing Metal Gear Rising it has very similar themes
It looks like it got a movie adaptation, so looks like it's pretty popular. But sounds cool regardless!
I'm sure there are some people on here that might have read it, but I haven't met many, so my pick is the Ender's Game saga. There are currently 19 books and I've read at least 10 of them. It's a really easy read, as someone who struggles to get into more complicated writing styles. Some people might be so-so about it due to some of the author's personal beliefs, but I really adore the lore itself. It offers a ton of different flavors to future visions, alien relations, psychology, and humanity.
Just assume the series ends with Xenocide.
I hear this a lot... But I really enjoyed Children of the Mind. I'm guessing people mostly don't like it because it feels like it lines up too much with some LDS stuff.. but if you just ignore that, or are blissfully unaware as I was when I first read it, it can be great and thought provoking.
That's about when I checked out. I couldn't tell you exactly why anymore but it just felt like the series had lost track of itself at that point.
But as long as you enjoy it, that's mostly what matters, and for what it's worth I don't think people really have a beef with him over the Enders series. More like the ones where he tries to say society will collapse because The Gays
Red House by Sarah Messer
In her critically acclaimed, ingenious memoir, Sarah Messer explores America’s fascination with history, family, and Great Houses. Her Massachusetts childhood home had sheltered the Hatch family for 325 years when her parents bought it in 1965. The will of the house’s original owner, Walter Hatch—which stipulated Red House was to be passed down, “never to be sold or mortgaged from my children and grandchildren forever”—still hung in the living room. In Red House, Messer explores the strange and enriching consequences of growing up with another family’s birthright. Answering the riddle of when shelter becomes first a home and then an identity, Messer has created a classic exploration of heritage, community, and the role architecture plays in our national identity.
I recently found this book at a book store in Vermont while on a road trip and I've absolutely fallen in love with it.
Since no one doesn't seem to be meant literally, 13 1/2 Leben des Kapitän Blaubär (13 1/2 Lives of Captain Bluebear). It's a very humourous and arguably pretty absurd fantasy story, one of a handful of books I've actually read twice. Unfortunately I can't really say much about the English translation but if that's decent it should be very enjoyable to read.
Alles in Lot auf dem Boot?
The Wild Road by Gabriel King! It's like Watership Down but cats and written at the same level. Did you grow up enjoying the Warriors series? This book will blow your mind.
Jitterbug Perfume by Tom Robbins is so amazing that I gave it as a gift to multiple people. Go in blind if possible.
A lot of old, norwegian scifi fan on Lemmy? No? In that case I'm sure my favorite scifi book-series from my youth, Starship Alexandria, is very much unread by anyone here. I cant even find copies of it at libraries anymore. Yeah, I know thats a unfair suggestion since none of you can pick it up and read it anywhere anyway. The author had a bit of Isaac Asimov feeling to how he wrote scifi. So that series was my launch-point to more scifi books.
But for a more modern suggestion, anyone read A Cyberpunk Saga by Matthew A. Goodwin? It's not great books but not bad either. His writing improves with each book, imho. And it has a well-written ending. It isnt a forever continious or unfinished series. I never heard anyone recommend it. People just recommend the same top few cyberpunk genre books, like Neuromancer, Snow Crash, Wind-up Girl, etc. Never anything smaller. Was mostly because of Cyberpunk 2077 I found that book: I wanted something not too depressing but still cyberpunk where the focus was on a team and not a single protagonist, so I downloaded a cyberpunk short-story collection where his story caught my interest.
The Fionavar tapestry. Guy Gaverial Kay. Never had a writer influence my life more.
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