Ask Lemmy

My favourite book when I was a teen was Bloodtide by Melvin Burgess. It an imagining of the Icelandic Volsunga Saga (so lots of Norse gods and myths) but set in post apocalyptic London controlled by ganglords.

I think my overall favourite it probably Shogun by James Clavell - people are probably more familiar with it now because of the recent TV series but the book is huge and goes into huge amounts of depth along with a gradual shift in focus and character as you migrate from being thrown into this alien society with strict but unclear rules to large scale political outmanoeuvres

Right now I'm reading Her Majesty's Royal Covern by Juno Dawson - about milennial witches operating in secret in modern society (think nature, earth, pagan witches, not the ones from the series that must not be named). Written by a trans woman with trans topics in the plot.

I also want to read a new series I only discovered a day or two ago called Custodians by Dan Alexander. I don't actually know a huge amount about it other than it is a detective mystery that involves magic and queer representation. I only mention it as, in a bizarre chain of events, I met and spoke to the author and the actors involved in the audiobook and tv pilot.

Currently I'm dipping my toes into romantasy, out of curiosity. My SO like to read that genre. So I'm reading the Fourth Wing series by Rebecca Yarros. I'm at 75% of the second book. All in all a good fantasy series, with quite some smut/horny jail material. In the second book a bit to much for my liking.

Don't know if mangas count, but I've caught up with Berserk a few months ago. Greate story and art, can't wait on the next volume thats coming out in a few months.

Currently reading Careless People by Sarah Wynn Williams, about her time at Facebook. Only 50 pages in, but pretty interesting so far. Started with Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, but it's just to hard to follow what is happening lol. And I've just ordered 1984.

My favorite is probably The Books of the North of The Black Company series. The rest are good too but the first 3 are great.

Currently I'm reading the bakemonogatari series just finished kizu. Only started because my friend sent me a screenshot of him listening to the audio book but then he gave up cause it's too complicated to listen to in the background.

The Lies of Locke Lamora by Scott Lynch is one of my all time favorite fiction books and I'm re-listening to the audiobook right now.

How not to Die by Dr. Michael Gregor is one of my favourite non-fiction books, containing a great summary of our current scientific knowledge in nutritional science.

Favorites: the book version of the blog Hyperbole and a Half by Allie Brosh and also The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald.
Currently reading Down and Out in Paris and London by George Orwell and the new Penguin Classics translation of Towazugatari/A Tale Unasked by Lady Nijo, translated by Meredith McKinney.

Re-reading the Sundering duology by Jaqueline Carey at the moment. I loved it years ago so I'm checking to see if it really was that good or if I was just young. It has held up fairly well. I highly recommend it for anyone who likes fantasy.

Currently reading Hell Followed with Us. It's YA, but a goddamn phenomenal read.

Jumping between 1984 and Inkspell when 1984 gets to bleak.

My favorite series is Dungeon Crawler Carl . Its so good. I have ALL of the physical books, the audio books (Jeff Hays is hilarious with his takes on the different characters).

My favorite book soap is The Wandering Inn . Its a free web serial and I find it VERY good. But it can have some lulls. I call it a "book soap" because if its size . I am a prolific reader and it took me YEARS to get though around 50% of the series. I have the ebooks, audio-books, and have enjoyed my forever book. The payoff is SO good. Tears of Liscor broke me. I had to take time off of reading for a while due to what felt like a bit of trauma.

When I was a kid, I loved the ring of fire series ( 1632 and such). I dont enjoy it as much, but the older books in the series I still enjoy re-reading from time to time.

Currently reading Murderland: Crime and Bloodlust in the Time of Serial Killers by Caroline Fraser

The thesis of the book is basically that environmental pollution, particularly lead, might be the thing that caused so many serial killers to pop up during the period of the late '60s to the late '70s. Only half way through it so far, and not quite convinced by the theory yet. Although it's indisputable that such pollution can damage brains to a severe degree, I'm just not sure how you get from "damaged" to "I'd better serial kill some women". Random violence and anger management issues, sure. But the highly specific and MO-driven criminality of serials killers seems like something else entirely. We'll see what evidence comes in later chapters!

currently listening to the 4th book in the children of time series

i love these books

I read a lot of fantasy when I was younger but gradually fell out of love with the genre. It started to feel really trope heavy and I got tired of everything feeling like it needed to be a 3-5+ novel epic series that was so enamored with its own world-building it felt more like a history lesson. Perhaps my choices on reading material were to blame, but still. I moved onto sci-fi and fiction for a good while.

I've been trying to rekindle my passion for it with one off "weird" fiction. Standalone stories that are just interested in doing weird stuff, whatever that may entail. It's not well-defined and if anyone has any recommendations I'd be happy to hear them but so far some of my best discovies,

• The West Passage, Jared Pechaček. A palace the size of a city ruled over by giant, eldritch ladies and mired in ancient bureaucracies is threatened by a forgotten prophecy. I like it because it doesn't overexplain its world, it just throws a bunch of interesting events and scenery at you while gesturing at the architecture of the world that holds it up, leading you to speculate on the mystery of it all.
• The Starving Saints, Caitlin Starling. Claustrophobic, horrifying, vaguely sapphic. It follows the storylines of a knight, a nun, and a peasant girl trapped in a castle under siege. As supplies diminish and things are looking grim, their saints miraculously appear to save them but not all is at it appears etc. etc. Just a good read, I liked this one a lot
• Currently reading: Mad Sisters of Esi, Tashan Mehta. This one got off to a bit of an uneven start but it's an interesting mashup of myth and sci-fi where the universe is referred to as the black sea, planets are islands, and spaceship may be literally ships with sails. Not done with it yet, but enjoying it as it has strong characters and a good emotional core.

Favorite\
The 120 Days of Sodom /jk

The Silmarillion

Reading now\
The Silmarillion

The flowers of evil ( akunohana , Japanese) (manga) by Shuzo Oshimi

Picking up after having finished the above\
Les Fleurs du mal

Favourites include Lord of the Rings, Patrick O'Brian's Aubrey & Maturin series, Cormac McCarthy's The Road and Robert Shea & Robert Anton Wilson's Illuminatus! trilogy.

Currently reading Bleak House.

Among my favorites I remember: Gideon the ninth, slavery by another name, worst journey in the world, anything by Ted Chiang, blindsight/echopraxia

Recent reads: little bosses everywhere (excellent), no more tears (also excellent), get in trouble (I really like parts of it but it's classic Kelly link, super weird and abrupt)

Favourites include Patrick O'Brian's Aubrey/Maturin series, Hilary Mantel's Wolf Hall trilogy, Susanna Clarke's Jonathon Strange and Mr Norrell, Robin Hobb's Realm of the Elderlings series, Ursula K Le Guin's Hainish cycle.

Currently reading Le Guins Dispossessed.

My favorite are the Kushiel trilogy, anything by Ian McDonald, almost anything by Adrian Tchaikovsky or Michael Carey. Though it's difficult to pick.

Currently reading The Long Way to a Small Angry Planet by Becky Chambers.

I don't think I have a favourite. I have some that I liked enough as to read them more than once: The Lord of the Rings and The Silmarilion, some of the Culture novels.

Then there are long series that I enjoyed quite a bit: Colleen McCullough's Masters of Rome, JJ Benitez's Caballo de Troya series (if you ignore the author's insistence in that everything in the book is real and you take it as an adventures book or science fiction it is actually enjoyable), I'm liking so far McBride's detective Logan McRae series.

And I'm about to begin Mikel Santiago's La Chica del Lago

I’ve been on a scifi binge. MurderBot on audio is worth your time. After Atlas was quite good, stands out from the rest. Timothy Zahn’s Icarus series was fun.

As for fantasy it’s been a slog. We need better search parameters. It took the book people forever to separate scifi and fantasy, but there’s still work to do. Paranormal romance is there for some reason and clutters up Libby’s ability to search. That, and it feels like there’s a glut of books involving either the fae or dragons right now, and little else, not unlike the vampire thing 2 decades ago.

I'm currently between books, I think I'm gonna read The Terror next. But my absolute favourite is The count of Monte Cristo. I read it three times over the past 15 years. And I love Simon Singh's popular science bookThe Big Bang.

Right now I'm reading Neocolonialism, the Last Stage of Imperialism by Kwame Nkrumah. It's a really good expansion of Lenin's work on Imperialism as a stage in capitalism. Nkrumah was coup'd one year after its publishing with support from the US.

As for favorites, I really love both Piranesi and Roadside Picnic! The former is just a really fun mystery with a good deal of whimsy, the latter is excellent sci-fi.