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The Three Body Problem series by Cixin Liu is devestatingly good. It’s a vast, prescient science fiction series that’ll make you feel existential dread toward physics. It’s great.
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The Children of Time series by Adrian Tchaikovsky is another fantastic science fiction series. The most compelling first person view into truly alien minds I’ve read.
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Everything Terry Pratchett ever wrote is worth reading.
I am currently reading the Three Body Problem series and I can only agree. I finished the first book in two days, it is an extremely creative and well-crafted story.
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The Archive of Alternate Endings by Lindsey Drager is my absolute favorite.
honorable mentions:
- Slumberland by Pauly Beatty
- A Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole
- Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut
- Kafka on the Shore by Haruki Murakami
- The Thought Gang by Tibor Fischer
- The Things They Carried by Tim O’Brien
- The Cider House Rules by John Irving
Right now only these come to my mind:
- The Three Body Problem trilogy by Liu Cixin - I am on part two and can’t stop reading, it is already joining my favourite books, whole-heartedly recommended. They are sci-fi books. :)
- “Rumo” and “The 13 1⁄2 Lives of Captain Bluebear” by Walter Moers (read in German but available in English), wonderful fantasy books, extremely creative and well written.
A chain of voices - Andre Brink
Cosmos - Carl Sagan
The name of the rose - Umberto Eco (so much better than the movie)
A prayer for Owen Meany - John Irving
I used to read a lot when I was younger. Now I’m down to max two books per year. I miss it.
Lord of the Rings just about saved my life in high school. Possession by A.S. Byatt. Foucault’s Pendulum by Umberto Eco. Oryx and Crake by Margaret Atwood, though I’ve yet to read the sequels. Atonement by Ian McEwan. Just about anything by Geoff Ryman, Ali Smith, José Saramago, or Sheri Holman.
Your taste seems like exactly the sort of thing I’d enjoy, do you have any specific suggestions for someone who absolutely loves Eco’s metafictional novels in particular and metafiction in general? (Aside from Possession, which I’ve never heard of but is going directly on my to-read list)
I recently read How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe by Charles Yu, which I really liked. It is science fictional, though, but maybe not…maybe more surreal. Jorge Luis Borges, Italo Calvino, David Markson. I started Dictionary of the Khazars by Milorad Pavić many years ago, got interrupted, and haven’t got back to it, but I definitely need to because it was so intriguing in form.
The Percy Jackson series is probably my favorite, still even as an adult. It’s my comfort book series.
Far too many to list but some of my favourites are -
The Belgariad series by David Eddings
The Magician series by Raymond E Feist
Captain Corelli’s Mandolin by Louis de Bernières
Pretty much anything written by Dan Abnett, Terry Pratchett and R.A. SalvatoreLove all of those with the exception of Bernieres, gonna need to check them out
Captain Corelli’s Mandolin surprised me. It’s such a bittersweet and emotional book. It hooked me right from the start.
Contact by Carl Sagan
The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy. It’s the first in a trilogy of six books. I haven’t read the last book but I would recommend reading 1 to 5.
The radio series and audiobooks are all worth a listen as well. There is a version narrated by Douglas Adams himself and another narrated by Stephen Fry and Martin Freeman. Both are great.
One of my favourite quotes from the Hitchhikers:
“You know,” said Arthur, “it’s at times like this, when I’m trapped in a Vogon airlock with a man from Betelgeuse, and about to die of asphyxiation in deep space that I really wish I’d listened to what my mother told me when I was young.” “Why, what did she tell you?” “I don’t know, I didn’t listen.”
I also love this quote from the fourth instalment of the series So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish:
The storm had now definitely abated, and what thunder there was now grumbled over more distant hills, like a man saying “And another thing…” twenty minutes after admitting he’s lost the argument.
The whole series is worth a read. You’re bound to laugh over and over reading them.
- the colour purple by Alice walker
- the seven husbands of Evelyn Hugo by Taylor Jenkins Reid
I’m a sucker for books that have the main character fight so hard for who they are and who they want to be. To see their transformation and growth into the people they stand proud as at the end of the day? 🥺
And yes the MCs are both queer!
(Feel free to drop a reply/pm to rec books like this!)
a few of importance to me:
One Hundred Years of Solitude
Guards! Guards!
Piranesi
The Scar
Off the top of my head:
- Enigma Variations Andre Aciman
- Ulysses James Joyce
- The Little Prince Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
- Catch-22 Joseph Heller
- The Giver Lois Lowry
- Kafka on the Shore Haruki Murakami
- A Walk in the Woods Bill Bryson
I’ve been using The Little Prince in my language studies, because it’s a great book but simple, and I know it well. I can get through it no problem in French, but it’s still a little over my head in Vietnamese.
Yeah, I’ve had a lot of fun trying to read it in several different languages. The best is definitely French.
My french is not quite up to serious lit, but almost. The only thing I’ve read in french that was actually not available in english is some sci-fi by Stefan Wul. He wrote a bunch of books, but only a couple have been translated.
John Dies At the End series.
It is hilarious, dark, and gets a little nasty sometimes (not necessarily in a sexual way).
Jason Pargin used to be the cheif editor at Cracked, so that energy does pop in and out. What he is really great at is showing profound empathy despite the choas. He is not just a good writer, you can tell he is also a very good person.
Futuristic Violence and Fancy Suits is also awesome.
I love those series too! The sacred tradition of sharp social commentary + butt jokes lives on!
Yes! It is so good. He is like a funnier Chuck Palahniuk without the commitment to making his readers pass out or vomit with every chapter.
It is cosmic horror without the legacy of racism!
Lord of Light, Roger Zelazny. Brilliant, prescient, and genuinely a great work of literature all at once. The story of Rild, the telling of the metaphor about fire, so much else, it’s been all these years and I’m still quoting it.
Bridge of Birds, Barry Hughart. When my will to go on falters, this is one of the books I turn to for comfort. It’s beautifully written, it’s hilarious, and it just makes me feel better.
Callahan’s Crosstime Saloon, Spider Robinson. I genuinely have handed this book to a troubled young person and had them find a better understanding of the human condition between its covers. I didn’t expect that, I thought I was sharing a cool book with them that was something I’d found influenced how I am, but it happened. It’s kind of a big deal. It’s also actually a lot of fun to read, it’s just a collection of short science fiction stories set in a bar, right? …right?
Why I Left Harry’s All-Night Hamburgers, Lawrence Watt-Evans; Watt-Evans is largely a moderately obscure (as far as I can tell) fantasy author. I love the rest of his work because it’s much more human than a lot of fantasy, with people who are bumbling and desperately trying to handle bizarre problems they’re ill-equipped for and sometimes making their problems worse than they dreamed and also there are wizards. (I also like some of his worldbuilding choices, but let’s get on with this). This one short story (that won a Hugo and stuff), though, lives rent-free in my head forever; it’s got a simple point, which is that the world we’re actually in has a lot of cool stuff, go enjoy it, but it makes it in a very fun way and, well, okay, enough, I love it.
Calvin and Hobbes. All of it. Bill Watterson is a visionary genius.
I can go on, I haven’t mentioned Douglas Adams or Sandman or Transmetropolitan or fnord or ten thousand other things, but I have other things to do and should content myself with finite length.
I love Bridge of Birds… It’s a phenomenal book, I’m so glad to see another fan.
