I’m going through the Discworld series for the first time right now. I’m going in chronological order but when I finish I’ll probably go through them again eventually but I think I’ll do series instead in bunches. I’m already looking forward to rereading the Watch series back to back.
On my third pass right now. Skipped a couple of the first novels, but I love the original order. Got feels for all the series, but I like the perfect way he kept them mixed up.
"Oh shit! Another witches book!"
"Back to the Watch! NICE!"
"Rincewind? Hell with it, those are all funny as hell."
Yeah there are like 40 of them but you can split them up in to series. If you liked The Truth you’ll probably like the Watch series starting with Guards! Guards! and following Sam Vines and the other Watchmen.
I'm super worried they're not gonna do rocky well. I think the appropriate thing would be to use subtitles, however I doubt normal people would be into that
Don't ask me silly questions, I won't play silly games
I'm just a simple choo-choo train, and I'll always be the same
I only want to race along, beneath the bright blue sky
And be a happy choo-choo train, until the day I die
Yeah, I think so, but I think it was also slated for 2024, and possibly even 2023! It'll come, and I'd rather he takes his time to get it right, but still, very impatient! 😁
Yeah, it was at least slated for 2024 at some point. I finished the second one early last year, and as December rolled closer I realized that wasn’t going to happen. Same thing happened to a few others I’m waiting for I believe. Alecto and white wing, dark star. I think Alecto is tentative for this year but I have no idea on white wing, dark star
I love the locked tomb books (Gideon, harrow, Nona the ninth, with Alecto the upcoming one). A cheeky description would be lesbian necromancers in spaaaace. I really really like the dark star trilogy as well, but that is harder for me to throw out recommendations for, it can be brutal. A lot of gory violence, and a fair share of sexual violence as well. Black leopard, red wolf and moon witch, spider king each have separate narrators with their own distinct histories, but then their stories intertwine around the same mission and its consequences, and their tales are relayed to an inquisitor who is interrogating them. They are both unreliable narrators and they HATE each other, but there may be more to it. White wing, dark star will be the last one, with a third narrator, and will be more horror focused I believe
I'm on my 13th or so read of Blindsight. Think I've unpacked it all, finally. I feel like a fruitcake having read it and *Echopraxia" so many times, but damn they're deep.
Not a fan of all of Watt's novels, but those two feel like he packed something to think about into nearly every single sentence. Easy read if you want to go fast, or, take your time and dig in. Never read a novel(s) that could go both ways.
Fuck me. Just talking about it is getting me hype for another run.
Blindsight:
"I brought her flowers one dusky Tuesday evening when the light was perfect. I pointed out the irony of that romantic old tradition— the severed genitalia of another species, offered as a precopulatory bribe—and then I recited my story just as we were about to fuck.
To this day, I still don't know what went wrong.”
Echopraxia:
“Fifty thousand years ago there were these three guys spread out across the plain and they each heard something rustling in the grass. The first one thought it was a tiger, and he ran like hell, and it was a tiger but the guy got away. The second one thought the rustling was a tiger and he ran like hell, but it was only the wind and his friends all laughed at him for being such a chickenshit. But the third guy thought it was only the wind, so he shrugged it off and the tiger had him for dinner. And the same thing happened a million times across ten thousand generations - and after a while everyone was seeing tigers in the grass even when there were`t any tigers, because even chickenshits have more kids than corpses do. And from those humble beginnings we learn to see faces in the clouds and portents in the stars, to see agency in randomness, because natural selection favours the paranoid. Even here in the 21st century we can make people more honest just by scribbling a pair of eyes on the wall with a Sharpie. Even now we are wired to believe that unseen things are watching us.”
The Chronicles of Master Li and Number Ten Ox, by Barry Hughart
Any and all of The Culture novels
The Hobbit, and TLotR trilogy. Used to read them every summer, for about twenty years.
Armor, by John Steakley. Sadly, the only sci-fi novel he ever wrote, and one of only two books he ever authored, IIRC.
The Jean le Flambeur trilogy by Hannu Rajaniemi, which is on my list to read again this year.
A Wizard of Earthsea trilogy, which I'm about to read again as soon as my wife finished them.
The Chronicles of Narnia, which I used to read frequently when younger. I'm almost afraid to pick them up again now, for fear that they won't be as good (for an adult) as I remember.
Love the culture series! Communism..... In space!!! Though I'd say to anyone who hasn't read them yet to skip the first and come back to it. It's a great novel, but it smells like the 80's. Was my first read in the series and it turned me off to the rest of them until years later when I have the series another chance
IMHO, post-scarcity is really the only way communism works. And it's not true communism in the Culture; people still own things - artifacts, art, themselves. And it's also not communism in the Marxist sense, where the workers own the means of production, because there isn't a working class and production is largely automated. It's some sort of post-Communism thing we don't have a name for. Or, maybe we do, and I just don't know it?
You're right; AFAICR, the economy is only ever depicted from a human perspective. Either in contrast to external cultures, or just describing daily life. Your Guinea Pig example is quite apt: humans in The Culture really are just pampered pets; or, maybe more like working dogs, although ship remotes could probably do all the stuff Contact agents do.
Have you ever read The Golden Oecumene trilogy, by Wright? The last chapter, in particular, is what I'm thinking of.
John Steakley was a full time ghost writer so he wrote a lot of other books but not under his name.
He was working on a draft of Armor 2 when he died. I think I still have a copy of his first draft of chapter 1 somewhere. It's to bad it will probably never be finished or published.
I have that on my shelf, but have only read the first chapter or so, I think, just couldn't get into it. Bought on a whim, partly because of how huge it was!
If you only read the pool scene, you didn't really get into the meat of the book. That said, if the content of the pool scene was a big turn-off for you, there will be several other scenes throughout the book that will also be big turn-offs.
Where he ruminates on the finger pointing-flicking being like the lights on construction barriers flashing? And he meets Eliza and rubs the foundation off his thumbs? I'd say that's where it kicks into gear, yeah.
Murderbot series is a mixed bag. Some of the books are great fun. Others read like filler to me. Wondering what you think about casting of Alexander Skarsgård in the upcoming tv series? Personally I think he’s way too old for the part.
I loved Enders Game, Enders Shadow and Speaker for the Dead. It had a great emotional importance to me. Especially Enders Shadow, it was one of the first books I read that properly described starvation. I went through a lot as a child, and Beans story of a starving, smart, small kid really resonated with me in the period after my own tribulation. I don't think Shadow has the same impact on people without some of my experiences, so I chose to use the main arc and I've always felt that Ender would rather be remembered as The Speaker more than anything else. Probably silly, but I'm fine with that. In short, I agree, Enders Game is the better book. Speaker is just the pay off.
Moby Dick has always infuriated and enthralled me. I read 5 pages, hate myself. Start reading again in 15 minutes because I can't get it out of my head.
It's been a really long time since I read Speaker, but I really liked it.
First, middle school me loved how different it was from Enders Game. It was a challenge, and it felt like the author was purposefully shedding the fans of the first novel with something less approachable.
Second, it hooked me in immediately with the mystery, and then really wrestled with what would anthropology with non-human cultures look like, and how could they go wrong? And how could that bridge be mended? In a way that middle school me could appreciate.
It seemed to complete Enders Game in the sense that in the first novel, he accidentally genocides a species based on a historic cultural misunderstanding between alien sentient races, and Speaker is his chance to learn from his experience and prevent it from happening again. I ate up that moral.
I may have rose-tinted glasses and only remember the good parts.
Also I remember liking Xenophobia (?) but even then I realized that even though the OCD descriptions were really interesting, there was something *off about making them all Asians with genetically-engineered disabilities to keep them from being too smart (I forget the exact plot, but that felt pretty icky even though I didn't understand why and still can't really explain it).
I liked Enders Shadow because Bean's background was eye-opening, but the other Shadow novels felt pretty weird in how they framed and simplified world politics.
Yeah, "Time Enough For Love" ended up on that list mostly because it's so different. That made an impression on me when I read it in high school, in the way of "Huh, I guess it's actually possible to write a book like this". It had a lot of interesting ideas but the narrative sprawls around pretty wildly.
Riftwar Saga basically takes Tolkien's Middle-earth setting and mixes it with our own world's Middle age cultures, plus magical stargates and an invasion from an another world. It's not a ripoff in any way, it carries it own story proudly but the similarities with names from Tolkien's works was a bit distracting at first. These were the first books I was able to read entirely in original English in my early teens.
Redoing storm light now, didn't love it the first time, but it was OK and I forgot most of the details when the 4th book dropped. It's not bad but I don't get why others are so crazy about it.
I plan to reread all Clive Barker novels a second time, at some point in my life. His prose is just so unique and has an effortless beauty about it that I've yet to find in another author.
Plot can only really draw you in once... when you already know what happens in a story it doesn't have the same pull it had the first time. But prose has a lasting appeal, one that can be revisited. The indescribable quality of the way that words can make you feel is unique to the relationship between reader and writer.
I should read that again, although I burned myself out in cyberpunk decades ago.
Rendezvous with Rama
Another classic to add to the re-read list! It's been years.
Foundation
Yeah. This one is the one I most sympathize with. I used to read the original trilogy every few years; I don't think any of the subsequent one(s?) were worth the first read. I need to read them again just to bleach the Apple abomination out of my mind.
The book is basically Tolkien+Disney, it is aimed at a kid audience but it tackles some heavy topics that adults will enjoy, its great because it tackles metaphysics a lot in ways that are interesting for all ages.
I’m reading malazan right now, and it’s giving off Black Company vibes. Different, but similarities. Apparently the author mentioned Black company as an influence
I re-read it a few times already, and even though written in the 50s it holds up quite well (except for the total absence of computers). Its a brilliant read. Edit: to clarify, I meant the societal trends he projected are quite fascinating. Also the transition to a post scarcity society. It's not very prophetic obviously. :)
Also, I keep meaning to make time to re-read some required reading books from HS: Where the Red Fern Grows, Call of the Wild, Flowers for Algernon. It's probably all going to be painfully YA, but I've thought about the stories often over my life, and they deserve a re-read.
The Practice Effect by David Brin. It's an isekai (it's not anime, but it's an isekai) where things get MORE useful when you use them, reversing entropy.
Sentenced to Prism. MC is sent on a mission to a world inhabited by silicate based life forms. Shenanigans ensue. Mildly autistic coded MC.
Resurrection Inc. The dead are resurrected as mindless zombie robots. Sometimes it goes wrong and the dead regain their memories. The MC does. Hijinks ensue.
edit - more
Mistborn Chronicles - an orphan gets super powers in a very messed up world. A group recruits her for a heist.
Loved Sentenced to Prism! I loved the plot of the Mistborn Chronicles, but I struggled a bit with the audiobook narrator. Maybe I should actually read them…
I read them and flew through them, despite being a slow reader. The second arc though (Wax and Wane) is one of my favorite series ever. It’s set in the same universe, just centuries in the future and is basically a western. They’re great fun to read. Would recommend.
It’s too bad the zombie tv universe is flooded at this point. I’m hoping in ten or twenty years we get a premium streaming channel anthology show based on the stories in this book. The movie they made from it had so little to do with the novel.
The Art of War in the Middle Ages. Just interminable.
There was another book, I can't recall the name of it unfortunately. It was about ethical non-monogamy but went into such blatantly STUPID territory that I classed it as "should not be set aside lightly, it should be thrown with great force."
One of the more stupid statements was about how gangbang porn is prevalent (multiple men, one woman), but the inverse doesn't exist. I was like "Fuck off, you aren't looking very hard then..."
Indeed. And what fascinates me the most is how well it holds up after so many years, there's no other book that's still so engaging for me, especially given I'm a very different person than I was 18 years ago.
Too many to count. Foundation trilogy, anything by Heinlein, Asimov, Arthur C. Clarke or various other classic sci fi writers, any Conan book or story, any Jeeves book or story, The Mote in God's Eye by Niven & Pournelle, Mary Lasswell's Mrs. Feeley books (pretty obscure), anything by HP Lovecraft...
I'm a big rereader in general, but occasionally a book will grab me so hard that I finish it & begin again right away. I've had two of those in the past year:
Synchronicity because I just put a book on hold at the library that I'm going to read again. It is called "Galileo's Dream" by Kim Stanley Robinson, and it's half historical fiction, half science fiction about: "what if future humans living on the Galilean moons of Jupiter discovered time travel and needed Galileo's help?"
I haven't read it because I'm afraid I won't like it as much as I do the movie. It happened with Jeeves & Wooster. I'd seen the series before I picked up the first book, and the Jeeves described in the book was so different from Stephen Fry - who was Jeeves, in my mind, that I just couldn't enjoy the books.
That's fair, I really enjoy my rereads. While I do remember the main story beats and characters across the series, there's just so much to remember! The depth of the world is easily on par with, if not surpassing, Tolkien's work.
The Diary of Edward the Hamster 1990–1990
its short so suitible for a quick reread & even for people who dont like books
its like a childbook in the amount of text but more for adults
138 Comments
gjoel@programming.dev · 22 pts · 1y
I have all discworld books, I would definitely reread most of them. I just reread The Hail Mary Project.
showmeyourkizinti@startrek.website · 4 pts · 1y
I’m going through the Discworld series for the first time right now. I’m going in chronological order but when I finish I’ll probably go through them again eventually but I think I’ll do series instead in bunches. I’m already looking forward to rereading the Watch series back to back.
shalafi@lemmy.world · 4 pts · 1y
On my third pass right now. Skipped a couple of the first novels, but I love the original order. Got feels for all the series, but I like the perfect way he kept them mixed up.
"Oh shit! Another witches book!"
"Back to the Watch! NICE!"
"Rincewind? Hell with it, those are all funny as hell."
sem@lemmy.blahaj.zone · 2 pts · 1y
I've just read the first one and the one about the printing press. There's a lot!
showmeyourkizinti@startrek.website · 2 pts · 1y
Yeah there are like 40 of them but you can split them up in to series. If you liked The Truth you’ll probably like the Watch series starting with Guards! Guards! and following Sam Vines and the other Watchmen.
shalafi@lemmy.world · 2 pts · 1y
Third run through Discworld in the past 2 years. My god, been trying to think how to explain to my best friend. I lack the words.
liverbe@lemmy.world · 20 pts · 1y
Project Hail Mary was amazing. Can't wait for the movie too.
lena@gregtech.eu · 9 pts · 1y
There will be a movie‽‽‽
Suck_on_my_Presence@lemmy.world · 5 pts · 1y
It's got Ryan Gosling cast as the main, I think?
SkaveRat@discuss.tchncs.de · 4 pts · 1y
Coming out next march
Story spoiler: ::: spoiler spoiler "No voice actor for rocky has not been announced" - A voice actor for... musical notes? :::
white_nrdy@programming.dev · 3 pts · 1y
I'm super worried they're not gonna do rocky well. I think the appropriate thing would be to use subtitles, however I doubt normal people would be into that
SkaveRat@discuss.tchncs.de · 3 pts · 1y
::: spoiler spoiler I hope they come up with something like the ship computer doing the translation, while rocky beeps and boops around :::
reddig33@lemmy.world · 1 pts · 1y
I’m glad you enjoyed it. I think I must be one if the few people on the planet who didn’t care for it.
GreenSofaBed@feddit.is · 1 pts · 1y
Same here, didn't vibe with the main character's constant complaining and whining
RangerJosey@lemmy.ml · 13 pts · 1y
The Dark Tower series. All of them
abbadon420@lemm.ee · 6 pts · 1y
Don't ask me silly questions, I won't play silly games I'm just a simple choo-choo train, and I'll always be the same I only want to race along, beneath the bright blue sky And be a happy choo-choo train, until the day I die
sxan@midwest.social · 4 pts · 1y
Yes. Another good series; some better than others - I personally liked the first the most - but I think they're all important pieces of the story.
Definitely on my "read again" list, although I only discovered and read them all a couple of years ago; maybe next year.
DontMakeMoreBabies@lemm.ee · 3 pts · 1y
That series was amazing and I'm still mad they tried to cram it all into a single movie.
abbadon420@lemm.ee · 2 pts · 1y
That was definitely pitchfork worthy. I haven't even seen it and I never will.
rikudou@lemmings.world · 3 pts · 1y
It got awkward when King decided to be a character in his own story. But aside from that I really enjoyed them.
chilldrivenspade@lemmy.world · 2 pts · 1y
urda@lebowski.social · 12 pts · 1y
quediuspayu@lemmy.dbzer0.com · 11 pts · 1y
Most of The Culture series
slazer2au@lemmy.world · 11 pts · 1y
Lord Of The Rings.
He Who Fights With Monsters.
Thrawn.
The Hunt For Red October.
The Cardinal of the Kremlin.
So many I will give another listen to.
Lizardking13@lemmy.world · 2 pts · 1y
Just because this is the first post that I see that mentions LoTR, I'll throw in
The Silmarillion
Children of Hurin
Beren and Luthien (personal favorite)
The Fall of Gondolin (incomplete, but incredible)
These are all Tolkien works and I could read them over and over.
sanguinepar@lemmy.world · 10 pts · 1y
A few I've read at least twice and will definitely read again at some point:
inb4_FoundTheVegan@lemmy.world · 6 pts · 1y
It's 2025 and I'm reading Slaughterhouse Five again. So it goes.
sanguinepar@lemmy.world · 4 pts · 1y
Poo tee weet 👍
bluegreenwookie@bookwormstory.social · 5 pts · 1y
Hitchhikers guide part 1 is worth it for the forward alone not to mention the book itself
sbf@feddit.org · 2 pts · 1y
Poo too weet
Ioughttamow@fedia.io · 2 pts · 1y
I believe the last book of dust is slated for this year unless I’m mistaken
sanguinepar@lemmy.world · 3 pts · 1y
Yeah, I think so, but I think it was also slated for 2024, and possibly even 2023! It'll come, and I'd rather he takes his time to get it right, but still, very impatient! 😁
Ioughttamow@fedia.io · 2 pts · 1y
Yeah, it was at least slated for 2024 at some point. I finished the second one early last year, and as December rolled closer I realized that wasn’t going to happen. Same thing happened to a few others I’m waiting for I believe. Alecto and white wing, dark star. I think Alecto is tentative for this year but I have no idea on white wing, dark star
sanguinepar@lemmy.world · 3 pts · 1y
Just looked it up and someone on Reddit six days ago said BoD3 is finished and will hopefully be out this year! Woop!!
I've not heard of those others, will need to check them out 👍
Ioughttamow@fedia.io · 3 pts · 1y
I love the locked tomb books (Gideon, harrow, Nona the ninth, with Alecto the upcoming one). A cheeky description would be lesbian necromancers in spaaaace. I really really like the dark star trilogy as well, but that is harder for me to throw out recommendations for, it can be brutal. A lot of gory violence, and a fair share of sexual violence as well. Black leopard, red wolf and moon witch, spider king each have separate narrators with their own distinct histories, but then their stories intertwine around the same mission and its consequences, and their tales are relayed to an inquisitor who is interrogating them. They are both unreliable narrators and they HATE each other, but there may be more to it. White wing, dark star will be the last one, with a third narrator, and will be more horror focused I believe
sanguinepar@lemmy.world · 2 pts · 1y
Thank you for such detail, they sound really cool.
Also, "spaaaaace"! 😁
shalafi@lemmy.world · 10 pts · 1y
I'm on my 13th or so read of Blindsight. Think I've unpacked it all, finally. I feel like a fruitcake having read it and *Echopraxia" so many times, but damn they're deep.
Not a fan of all of Watt's novels, but those two feel like he packed something to think about into nearly every single sentence. Easy read if you want to go fast, or, take your time and dig in. Never read a novel(s) that could go both ways.
Fuck me. Just talking about it is getting me hype for another run.
Blindsight:
"I brought her flowers one dusky Tuesday evening when the light was perfect. I pointed out the irony of that romantic old tradition— the severed genitalia of another species, offered as a precopulatory bribe—and then I recited my story just as we were about to fuck.
To this day, I still don't know what went wrong.”
Echopraxia:
“Fifty thousand years ago there were these three guys spread out across the plain and they each heard something rustling in the grass. The first one thought it was a tiger, and he ran like hell, and it was a tiger but the guy got away. The second one thought the rustling was a tiger and he ran like hell, but it was only the wind and his friends all laughed at him for being such a chickenshit. But the third guy thought it was only the wind, so he shrugged it off and the tiger had him for dinner. And the same thing happened a million times across ten thousand generations - and after a while everyone was seeing tigers in the grass even when there were`t any tigers, because even chickenshits have more kids than corpses do. And from those humble beginnings we learn to see faces in the clouds and portents in the stars, to see agency in randomness, because natural selection favours the paranoid. Even here in the 21st century we can make people more honest just by scribbling a pair of eyes on the wall with a Sharpie. Even now we are wired to believe that unseen things are watching us.”
RyanUrq1328@programming.dev · 10 pts · 1y
A Long Way to a Small Angry Planet - Becky Chambers
quediuspayu@lemmy.dbzer0.com · 2 pts · 1y
I loved that one.
MrDrProfJimmy@lemm.ee · 9 pts · 1y
Neuromancer moves faster than some movies. Absolutely worth rereading
sxan@midwest.social · 9 pts · 1y
Several that others have already mentioned, and:
MintyFresh@lemmy.world · 2 pts · 1y
Love the culture series! Communism..... In space!!! Though I'd say to anyone who hasn't read them yet to skip the first and come back to it. It's a great novel, but it smells like the 80's. Was my first read in the series and it turned me off to the rest of them until years later when I have the series another chance
sxan@midwest.social · 4 pts · 1y
IMHO, post-scarcity is really the only way communism works. And it's not true communism in the Culture; people still own things - artifacts, art, themselves. And it's also not communism in the Marxist sense, where the workers own the means of production, because there isn't a working class and production is largely automated. It's some sort of post-Communism thing we don't have a name for. Or, maybe we do, and I just don't know it?
sem@lemmy.blahaj.zone · 1 pts · 1y
I've only read one post-scarcity novel and that's Down And Out in the Magic Kingdom by Cory Doctorow. I think it's his first novel.
sxan@midwest.social · 2 pts · 1y
I've heard of it, and I like Doctorow, but haven't read it. I'll put it in the list.
ThisIsAManWhoKnowsHowToGling@lemmy.dbzer0.com · 1 pts · 1y
sxan@midwest.social · 2 pts · 1y
You're right; AFAICR, the economy is only ever depicted from a human perspective. Either in contrast to external cultures, or just describing daily life. Your Guinea Pig example is quite apt: humans in The Culture really are just pampered pets; or, maybe more like working dogs, although ship remotes could probably do all the stuff Contact agents do.
Have you ever read The Golden Oecumene trilogy, by Wright? The last chapter, in particular, is what I'm thinking of.
Hugin@lemmy.world · 1 pts · 1y
John Steakley was a full time ghost writer so he wrote a lot of other books but not under his name.
He was working on a draft of Armor 2 when he died. I think I still have a copy of his first draft of chapter 1 somewhere. It's to bad it will probably never be finished or published.
sxan@midwest.social · 2 pts · 1y
I've heard that, about that first chapter. He, and Iain Banks, are two writers I'm particularly sorry about having had their times cut short.
Nemo@slrpnk.net · 8 pts · 1y
Adam Levin's The Instructions
Ecclesiastes
Philip K. Dick's Galactic Pot-Healer — actually most Dick outside of A Scanner Darkly
Neal Stephenson's... well, anything, but especially Zodiac, Anthem, and Diamond Age
Brian Daley's Requiem for a Ruler of Worlds
Margaret Atwood's The Year of the Flood and The Blind Assassin
Anything by Ursula LeGuin, ever
Hugh McLeod's Ignore Everybody
Lloyd Alexander's Prydain series
Douglas Adam's Hitchhiker's Trilogy
sanguinepar@lemmy.world · 3 pts · 1y
I have that on my shelf, but have only read the first chapter or so, I think, just couldn't get into it. Bought on a whim, partly because of how huge it was!
I take it it's worth another shot?
Nemo@slrpnk.net · 2 pts · 1y
If you only read the pool scene, you didn't really get into the meat of the book. That said, if the content of the pool scene was a big turn-off for you, there will be several other scenes throughout the book that will also be big turn-offs.
sanguinepar@lemmy.world · 2 pts · 1y
At the very start you mean? That was fine, not bothered by that.
I started reading it again today (and found my old bookmark!) and apparently I got a fair bit further than that.
Today I read as far as Gurion being in the office after fighting, and I was quite enjoying it, so maybe it'll stick this time 😁
Nemo@slrpnk.net · 2 pts · 1y
Where he ruminates on the finger pointing-flicking being like the lights on construction barriers flashing? And he meets Eliza and rubs the foundation off his thumbs? I'd say that's where it kicks into gear, yeah.
sanguinepar@lemmy.world · 3 pts · 1y
Damn, you really do know this book!
Yeah, the construction barriers bit - not got to Eliza yet (or at least not this time round).
BeMoreCareful@lemmy.world · 8 pts · 1y
The Murderbot diaries.
This is also an awesome thread. I see a lot of books I love and a lot that I'm interested in.
shalafi@lemmy.world · 3 pts · 1y
The Bobiverse recommendations seem to go hand in hand with Murderbot. Read both series back to back, didn't know what I was missing.
BeMoreCareful@lemmy.world · 1 pts · 1y
I hadn't heard of the bobiverse before. I look forward to checking those out. It sounds like a neat premise.
reddig33@lemmy.world · 1 pts · 1y
Murderbot series is a mixed bag. Some of the books are great fun. Others read like filler to me. Wondering what you think about casting of Alexander Skarsgård in the upcoming tv series? Personally I think he’s way too old for the part.
zonnewin@feddit.nl · 1 pts · 1y
While I enjoyed the first book, and might pick up the others, I wasn't as impressed, and wouldn't put it on any reread shortlist. What did I miss?
LaoisheFu@lemmy.world · 8 pts · 1y
Hitchhikers guide to the galaxy
TheTimeKnife@lemmy.world · 7 pts · 1y
Speaker for the Dead
Eisenhorn
Count of Monte Cristo
The Emperor of All Maladies
Moby Dick
Lords of Silence
All Honorable Men: History of the war in Lebanon
Adams and Victor's Principles of Neurology
The Biology of Cancer (Weinberg)
Japan to 1600
History of Medieval Russia (Martin)
The Baltic: A History
On War (Clausewitz)
The Back Channel
Timbuktu (Villiers)
Sorry if this is too many, just looked at my book app for ones I keep reading.
Edit: Fuck it, I'm having fun. Here are a few more I remembered while roasting a bowl.
Dune
Amulet of Samarkand
Venice (Madden)
The Golden Compass
First and Only (Abnett) - read the first omnibus
Harrisons Manual of Medicine 18th ed
Gomorrah (Saviano)
The Gunpowder Age (Tonio)
The Money Illusion (Sumner)
sxan@midwest.social · 3 pts · 1y
Interesting! I enjoyed it much less than Ender's Game, but they were such different books it doesn't surprise me that someone else would prefer it.
Right‽ Such an amazing read. It does take a bit to get into the cadence, I find, but so worth it.
TheTimeKnife@lemmy.world · 5 pts · 1y
I loved Enders Game, Enders Shadow and Speaker for the Dead. It had a great emotional importance to me. Especially Enders Shadow, it was one of the first books I read that properly described starvation. I went through a lot as a child, and Beans story of a starving, smart, small kid really resonated with me in the period after my own tribulation. I don't think Shadow has the same impact on people without some of my experiences, so I chose to use the main arc and I've always felt that Ender would rather be remembered as The Speaker more than anything else. Probably silly, but I'm fine with that. In short, I agree, Enders Game is the better book. Speaker is just the pay off.
Moby Dick has always infuriated and enthralled me. I read 5 pages, hate myself. Start reading again in 15 minutes because I can't get it out of my head.
sxan@midwest.social · 2 pts · 1y
I liked Ender's Shadow much more than Speaker for the Dead, which felt preachy to me. I just didn't click with it.
Both Game and Shadow are great books, and excellent choices.
sem@lemmy.blahaj.zone · 2 pts · 1y
It's been a really long time since I read Speaker, but I really liked it.
First, middle school me loved how different it was from Enders Game. It was a challenge, and it felt like the author was purposefully shedding the fans of the first novel with something less approachable.
Second, it hooked me in immediately with the mystery, and then really wrestled with what would anthropology with non-human cultures look like, and how could they go wrong? And how could that bridge be mended? In a way that middle school me could appreciate.
It seemed to complete Enders Game in the sense that in the first novel, he accidentally genocides a species based on a historic cultural misunderstanding between alien sentient races, and Speaker is his chance to learn from his experience and prevent it from happening again. I ate up that moral.
I may have rose-tinted glasses and only remember the good parts.
Also I remember liking Xenophobia (?) but even then I realized that even though the OCD descriptions were really interesting, there was something *off about making them all Asians with genetically-engineered disabilities to keep them from being too smart (I forget the exact plot, but that felt pretty icky even though I didn't understand why and still can't really explain it).
I liked Enders Shadow because Bean's background was eye-opening, but the other Shadow novels felt pretty weird in how they framed and simplified world politics.
BowserBasher@lemmy.world · 7 pts · 1y
Just done a reread of these and would gladly reread again.
The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy (all 5 books in the series)
They are short enough that you could easily read all of them in a couple months at a steady pace.
sxan@midwest.social · 2 pts · 1y
That's a good series, too. Another set of books I used to re-read every few years, but got out of the habit.
aido@lemmy.world · 6 pts · 1y
I've read Terry Pratchett's Night Watch three times, currently reading The Color of Magic for the first time and then I'm going to re-read Mort
I've read Ellen Raskin's The Westing Game three times, but that was for school. Pretty good children's mystery book, though
Xaphanos@lemmy.world · 6 pts · 1y
The Dispossessed
Left Hand of Darkness
sxan@midwest.social · 5 pts · 1y
Yeah. Ursula Le Guin always surprises me; when I re-read her books, they're often better than I remember.
Hermit_Lailoken@lemmy.world · 6 pts · 1y
The Sandman Slim series
https://www.goodreads.com/series/46424-sandman-slim
And
The Dresden Files series
https://www.goodreads.com/search?q=The+Dresden+Files+series
bluegreenwookie@bookwormstory.social · 2 pts · 1y
Dresden files are so good! Dead beat is my favorite
Hermit_Lailoken@lemmy.world · 3 pts · 1y
I want another Dresden Files show. That would be great.
sem@lemmy.blahaj.zone · 3 pts · 1y
Is that the magical hard-boiled detective? I forget the name but I liked that one.
bluegreenwookie@bookwormstory.social · 1 pts · 1y
Yes thats it
Ioughttamow@fedia.io · 6 pts · 1y
I’m not a big rereader, but at some point I’d like to read through the expanse and the locked tomb again
Lorindol@sopuli.xyz · 6 pts · 1y
There are so many, but here are a few from the top of my head:
The Silmarillion, J.R.R. Tolkien.
The Lord of the Rings, J.R.R. Tolkien.
Time Enough For Love, Robert A. Heinlein.
Starship Troopers, Robert A. Heinlein.
Don Quijote, Miguel de Cervantes.
Divine Comedy, Dante Alighieri.
Dune, Frank Herbert.
Paradise Lost, John Milton.
Childhood's End, Arthur C. Clarke.
The Riftwar Saga, Raymond E. Feist.
InverseParallax@lemmy.world · 2 pts · 1y
Most of those hold up.
Time enough for love did not imho.
Need to look at rift war.
Lorindol@sopuli.xyz · 3 pts · 1y
Yeah, "Time Enough For Love" ended up on that list mostly because it's so different. That made an impression on me when I read it in high school, in the way of "Huh, I guess it's actually possible to write a book like this". It had a lot of interesting ideas but the narrative sprawls around pretty wildly.
Riftwar Saga basically takes Tolkien's Middle-earth setting and mixes it with our own world's Middle age cultures, plus magical stargates and an invasion from an another world. It's not a ripoff in any way, it carries it own story proudly but the similarities with names from Tolkien's works was a bit distracting at first. These were the first books I was able to read entirely in original English in my early teens.
InverseParallax@lemmy.world · 1 pts · 1y
Will have to give it a shot.
Redoing storm light now, didn't love it the first time, but it was OK and I forgot most of the details when the 4th book dropped. It's not bad but I don't get why others are so crazy about it.
ObtuseDoorFrame@lemm.ee · 6 pts · 1y
I plan to reread all Clive Barker novels a second time, at some point in my life. His prose is just so unique and has an effortless beauty about it that I've yet to find in another author.
Plot can only really draw you in once... when you already know what happens in a story it doesn't have the same pull it had the first time. But prose has a lasting appeal, one that can be revisited. The indescribable quality of the way that words can make you feel is unique to the relationship between reader and writer.
Ioughttamow@fedia.io · 3 pts · 1y
So you didn’t let Mr B go?
ObtuseDoorFrame@lemm.ee · 2 pts · 1y
Fittingly enough, that was the first of his novels I read and will likely be the first one I reread.
Ioughttamow@fedia.io · 2 pts · 1y
Only one I’ve read so far. I intend to get to the rest, but I’m more of a sci-fi and fantasy junkie than horror, and there is so much to read
podperson@lemm.ee · 5 pts · 1y
Snow Crash Rendezvous with Rama Foundation (all of them) Moonwalking with Einstein (non function about memory champions)
sxan@midwest.social · 2 pts · 1y
I should read that again, although I burned myself out in cyberpunk decades ago.
Another classic to add to the re-read list! It's been years.
Yeah. This one is the one I most sympathize with. I used to read the original trilogy every few years; I don't think any of the subsequent one(s?) were worth the first read. I need to read them again just to bleach the Apple abomination out of my mind.
sem@lemmy.blahaj.zone · 1 pts · 1y
Have you ever read the Caves of Steel? I had never read it before until recently but it's really cool.
sxan@midwest.social · 2 pts · 1y
I haven't! At least, I don't remember reading it, but I just looked at the wiki Wikipedia entry and it looks good!
AllNewTypeFace@leminal.space · 5 pts · 1y
I should probably give The Illuminatus! Trilogy another read.
CM400@lemmy.world · 1 pts · 1y
I read it every couple of years. Such a good read.
sxan@midwest.social · 1 pts · 1y
OMG, that's going into this year's list! Thank you!
confuser@lemmy.zip · 5 pts · 1y
The bone comic book omnibus from Jeff smith Bone omnibus amazon link
The book is basically Tolkien+Disney, it is aimed at a kid audience but it tackles some heavy topics that adults will enjoy, its great because it tackles metaphysics a lot in ways that are interesting for all ages.
DontMakeMoreBabies@lemm.ee · 5 pts · 1y
Malazan Book of the Fallen.
wizrad@lemmy.ca · 3 pts · 1y
The black company had some good reread value, at least the first three! If you havnt read em, you absolutely should.
DontMakeMoreBabies@lemm.ee · 2 pts · 1y
Nice suggestion! I have read them, and they're really good, but I haven't found myself rereading that series like I have with Malazan!
Ioughttamow@fedia.io · 2 pts · 1y
I’m reading malazan right now, and it’s giving off Black Company vibes. Different, but similarities. Apparently the author mentioned Black company as an influence
LarryLurkman@lemm.ee · 1 pts · 1y
I'll check it out.
sxan@midwest.social · 5 pts · 1y
Nobody has yet mentioned A Gentleman in Moscow, so I will. It's fairly recent, but I know I'll read it again in a couple of years.
Quazatron@lemmy.world · 5 pts · 1y
Slaughterhouse 5 by Kurt Vonnegut Jr.
luckystarr@feddit.org · 4 pts · 1y
Childhood's End by Arthur C. Clarke
I re-read it a few times already, and even though written in the 50s it holds up quite well (except for the total absence of computers). Its a brilliant read. Edit: to clarify, I meant the societal trends he projected are quite fascinating. Also the transition to a post scarcity society. It's not very prophetic obviously. :)
sxan@midwest.social · 4 pts · 1y
Also, I keep meaning to make time to re-read some required reading books from HS: Where the Red Fern Grows, Call of the Wild, Flowers for Algernon. It's probably all going to be painfully YA, but I've thought about the stories often over my life, and they deserve a re-read.
GrayBackgroundMusic@lemm.ee · 4 pts · 1y
Books. Multiple.
The Practice Effect by David Brin. It's an isekai (it's not anime, but it's an isekai) where things get MORE useful when you use them, reversing entropy.
Sentenced to Prism. MC is sent on a mission to a world inhabited by silicate based life forms. Shenanigans ensue. Mildly autistic coded MC.
Resurrection Inc. The dead are resurrected as mindless zombie robots. Sometimes it goes wrong and the dead regain their memories. The MC does. Hijinks ensue.
edit - more
Mistborn Chronicles - an orphan gets super powers in a very messed up world. A group recruits her for a heist.
agingquickly@lemmy.world · 3 pts · 1y
Loved Sentenced to Prism! I loved the plot of the Mistborn Chronicles, but I struggled a bit with the audiobook narrator. Maybe I should actually read them…
RohanWillAnswer@discuss.tchncs.de · 2 pts · 1y
I read them and flew through them, despite being a slow reader. The second arc though (Wax and Wane) is one of my favorite series ever. It’s set in the same universe, just centuries in the future and is basically a western. They’re great fun to read. Would recommend.
RacerX@lemm.ee · 4 pts · 1y
World War Z has hit differently after major life stages: College, marriage, kids, global pandemic, etc.
reddig33@lemmy.world · 2 pts · 1y
It’s too bad the zombie tv universe is flooded at this point. I’m hoping in ten or twenty years we get a premium streaming channel anthology show based on the stories in this book. The movie they made from it had so little to do with the novel.
MrKurtz@lemm.ee · 4 pts · 1y
The Count of Montecristo.
chrisbit@leminal.space · 4 pts · 1y
'The Count of Monte Cristo' is one I look forward to reading every few years.
fekdifeyeno@lemmy.cafe · 4 pts · 1y
I am Legend - reading it again just now.
DonaldJMusk@lemmy.today · -6 pts · 1y
Great choice! I wish they would have followed it exactly for the movie
jordanlund@lemmy.world · 3 pts · 1y
Easier to say which books I WOULDN'T read again.
The Art of War in the Middle Ages. Just interminable.
There was another book, I can't recall the name of it unfortunately. It was about ethical non-monogamy but went into such blatantly STUPID territory that I classed it as "should not be set aside lightly, it should be thrown with great force."
One of the more stupid statements was about how gangbang porn is prevalent (multiple men, one woman), but the inverse doesn't exist. I was like "Fuck off, you aren't looking very hard then..."
Edit My wife assures me it was "Sex at Dawn".
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sex_at_Dawn
TheMinions@lemmy.dbzer0.com · 3 pts · 1y
Considering I am currently rereading the Stormlight Archive - I’ll go with that.
rikudou@lemmings.world · 3 pts · 1y
Witcher, I've read it at least once every two/three years for the last 18 years and it's still entertaining.
nadram@lemmy.world · 3 pts · 1y
Planning my second read-through. What a work of art
rikudou@lemmings.world · 1 pts · 1y
Indeed. And what fascinates me the most is how well it holds up after so many years, there's no other book that's still so engaging for me, especially given I'm a very different person than I was 18 years ago.
Sapkowski's writing is awesome.
LovableSidekick@lemmy.world · 3 pts · 1y
Too many to count. Foundation trilogy, anything by Heinlein, Asimov, Arthur C. Clarke or various other classic sci fi writers, any Conan book or story, any Jeeves book or story, The Mote in God's Eye by Niven & Pournelle, Mary Lasswell's Mrs. Feeley books (pretty obscure), anything by HP Lovecraft...
DrainKikoLake@lemmy.ca · 3 pts · 1y
I'm a big rereader in general, but occasionally a book will grab me so hard that I finish it & begin again right away. I've had two of those in the past year:
floo@retrolemmy.com · 1 pts · 1y
wabafee@lemmy.world · 2 pts · 1y
Lockstep by Karl Schroeder Hard sci-fi about how a intergalactic empire being run without developing any faster than light technology.
sem@lemmy.blahaj.zone · 2 pts · 1y
Synchronicity because I just put a book on hold at the library that I'm going to read again. It is called "Galileo's Dream" by Kim Stanley Robinson, and it's half historical fiction, half science fiction about: "what if future humans living on the Galilean moons of Jupiter discovered time travel and needed Galileo's help?"
jenni007@lemm.ee · 2 pts · 1y
Wiz@midwest.social · 2 pts · 1y
Understanding Comics by Scott McCloud. A comic book about comic books, cartoons, sequential art, and art in general.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Understanding_Comics
StClinton@lemmings.world · 2 pts · 1y
A Clockwork Orange The Ware series by Rudy Rucker Heartstones by Ruth Rendell Coal by J. Jason Grant Neverwhere by Neil Gaiman
sxan@midwest.social · 2 pts · 1y
I haven't read it because I'm afraid I won't like it as much as I do the movie. It happened with Jeeves & Wooster. I'd seen the series before I picked up the first book, and the Jeeves described in the book was so different from Stephen Fry - who was Jeeves, in my mind, that I just couldn't enjoy the books.
CM400@lemmy.world · 3 pts · 1y
It is sufficiently different to piss you off at first, but it’s a really good read.
hperrin@lemmy.ca · 2 pts · 1y
The Martian. I’ve read it twice, and would love to read it again. It’s so good.
finalarbiter@lemmy.dbzer0.com · 2 pts · 1y
The Malazan Book of the Fallen saga is so long that I tend to forget most of the plot of the earlier books by the time I finish.
rollerbang@lemmy.world · 1 pts · 1y
But does that mean you'll gladly read through again? I'd rather take notes of notable events...
finalarbiter@lemmy.dbzer0.com · 1 pts · 1y
That's fair, I really enjoy my rereads. While I do remember the main story beats and characters across the series, there's just so much to remember! The depth of the world is easily on par with, if not surpassing, Tolkien's work.
Little8Lost@lemmy.world · 2 pts · 1y
The Diary of Edward the Hamster 1990–1990
its short so suitible for a quick reread & even for people who dont like books
its like a childbook in the amount of text but more for adults
FeelzGoodMan420@eviltoast.org · 2 pts · 1y
Infinite Jest. Takes about like 2 years to read though lol.
syklemil@discuss.tchncs.de · 2 pts · 1y
Kokoro.
Also have vague plans to reread Der Zauberberg
Likely also will reread V. and the Count of Monte Christo at some point.
Hossenfeffer@feddit.uk · 2 pts · 1y
There’s some good (and also some inexplicable to me) books here already so I won’t mention any of them.
I’ll choose P. G. Wodehouse. Although he’s more famous for Jeeves and Wooster I much prefer his Blandings stories. Such sublime, perfection.
His writing seems so effortlessly easy but others who have attempted to emulate it have all fallen ugly, leaden, clumsy and short of his comic genius.
JustRalph@lemmy.world · 1 pts · 1y
Nomad@infosec.pub · 1 pts · 1y
The bridge trilogy.
Drusas@fedia.io · 1 pts · 1y
Books that I have already read more than once:
The Stranger by Camus The Woman in the Dunes by Abe Kobo The Fisherman by John Langan
Magister@lemmy.world · 1 pts · 1y
The Golden Ass, I absolutely love this book
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Golden_Ass
Especially inside the story Tale of Cupid and Psyche
2ugly2live@lemmy.world · 1 pts · 1y
NOS4A2
Jg1@lemmy.zip · 1 pts · 1y
The philosophical strangler by Eric Flint, absolutely.
FarraigePlaisteach@lemmy.world · 1 pts · 1y
DonaldJMusk@lemmy.today · -6 pts · 1y
Shadow of the Torturer by Gene Wolfe (book 1 of Book of the New Sun)
capc8m@lemmy.world · -6 pts · 1y
Interstellar Age or any book from Jordan Peterson