Adelaida <3

My favorite book.

Freeking brilliant writing from
Nabokov. His best work.

I read laughter in the dark first and I was hooked.
Lolita I feel is just. Overrated. But I love how he’s a bad narrator and you can’t count on his words because his actions are horrific. He’s not reliable.

And ada novel, Nabokov included the name Flora on one minor character if I recall. It’s a throwback to another work he did. I think it was unfinished.

But wow! Never met someone who mentions that book ever. Even my librarian

I used to read fiction mysteries as a teenager. In adult life I thought reading for leisure "wasn't for me". Tried some popular stuff (Davinci code, Harry Potter, etc) and hared it. Tried other universally recommended books like Catch 22 and Hitchhikers guide and couldn't get through them and found them boring as sin. Thought this meant I just don't like reading. Turns out non-fiction is my jam. So 2 of the best books for me have been:

Thinking Fast and Slow - Daniel Kahneman

Criminal: The Truth About Why People Do Bad Things - Tom Gash

Have yet to finish brothers karamov and crime and punishment. He’s another great author. Fydor destoveiky (I butchered his name, my bad)

The Fifth Season (first book in the Broken Earth trilogy) by N.K. Jemisin. It's fantasy but with pretty logical boundries on the supernatural elements. I love the writing, plot, character development, and world-building.

We read this in high school. Loved it.
Have you read Midnight's Children (Salman Rushdie)? I enjoyed that for similar reasons

Really enjoyed Pale King. IJ is my favourite book ever, and I also love his non fiction.

What did you think of The Broom of the System? I've started it twice and given up both times. I just cannot get into it at all.

My single favourite book is Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace.

Honourable mentions to:

• Catch-22 - Heller
• Slaughterhouse 5 - Vonnegut
• To the Lighthouse - Woolf
• One Hundred Years of Solitude - Garcia Marquez
• The Windup Bird Chronicle - Murakami
• Pride and Prejudice - Austin
• Burr - Vidal
• Brave New World - Huxley
• The Handmaid's Tale - Atwood
• Hitchhikercs Guide to the Galaxy - Adams

Currently reading, and enjoying, Half of a Yellow Sun, by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie 🙂

EDIT - also head over to !Books@lemmy.world for lots of chat and more recommendations

We is amazing! Read it recently, alongside Swastika Night, which is very different, but similarly dystopian.

Even Lynch hated that movie! 😁

I've never read the book, nor seen the modern adaptations, should really remedy that.

Name of the Wind by Patrick Rothfuss. It's a fuking work of art and I'm afraid I will never find something this good.

Imajica by Clive Barker
LA Confidential by James Ellroy

Fiction: The Lord of the Rings, it's a basic answer but it's just so good.

Non-Fiction: The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte

Same. I made it about halfway through at the furthest. It kinda shows that it was an undergrad thesis project, and I think his own assessment that it seemed to be written by “a very smart fourteen-year-old” speaks to the roughness. I get it though — he’s chasing the sparks that we find developed later on. It’s funny how close this was written to Girl with Curious Hair, which is so much better.

I love all of the books in Brandon Sanderson's Cosmere universe and it's definitely my number 1. Mistborn, Stormlight Archive, Warbreaker, Elantris, all of them. I think it's worth looking into reading order. It doesn't matter too much in the earlier books, but there are some references that add to the experience. In the latest books, there are things that need to be understood from other books for it all to make sense, particularly between Mistborn and Stormlight.

Other series I really enjoy:

• Robin Hobb: Realm of the Elderlings anthology.
• Jim Butcher: The Dresden Files.
• Brian Mcclellan: Powder Mage series.
• Joe Abercrombie: The First Law series.
• James Islington: The Licanius trilogy.
• Robert Jordan: The Wheel of Time. This is what got me into Sanderson since he finished the series

Unfinished series:

• Scott Lynch: Gentleman Bastards.
• Patrick Rothfuss: The King Killer Chronicles

I’ll check out swastika night! Thanks for the reco.

Another one you might like is Jack London Iron Heel. Yes, that Jack London. When we talked about white fang in school, we seemed to conveniently gloss over his very strong socialist leanings.

Iron heel has a fair amount of preaching in it, but the story is also a really good one. I’ve been recommending that one to folks (especially left leaning)

The Dispossessed by Ursula Le Guin.

Few other sci-fi books do as good a job of depicting how a gift/library economy could work like in practice. It's quite a hopeful vision of where we can collectively go in the future.

House of leaves was the first time I ever even considered a book could be like that. Kinda like watching Memento for the first time, or a Kubrick film or something. It's just on another level of crafting a narrative at every level.

I thought for sure it had to be one of a kind, but it makes sense there's a rabbit hole of a genre to go down and that it leads to solo ttrpg territory lol

Conceptually it's probably general enough to occur over and over independently, but what an odd throughline in the zeitgeist

Has he put out any updates on the last book? Big reason why I haven't read it yet.

Only ever met one other persons who had ever even heard of her but I have a particular love for the works of Jaqueline Carey. The Sundering duology is gorgeous moral greyness with epic fantasy scale and yet personal characterization. The Kushiel series (the parts I have read so far) is the intertwining of political thriller, historical fiction, magical realism, BDSM romance, and again, has both epic scale plot and personal characters. I recommend the Sundering to everyone and Kushiel's Dart to anyone old enough their mother won't come around and attack me for exposing their son/daughter to the sexual parts of the book. There are others but those ones always come to mind when I see/hear this question.

Definitely a Discworld book, but hard to narrow down which exact one.

Night Watch should take it, but to get the most you have to read the 4 or 5 books before it in the guards series. It works on its own, but a lot of the flavour will go over your head.

After that is a toss-up between Reaper Man and Small Gods.

Reaper Man - Death "loses his job" and becomes mortal for a few weeks and becomes a farmhand.

Small Gods - A God comes down to Earth to stomp around and inspire fear, but the church no longer believes in him anymore, just the power structure within the church, so he doesn't actually have any power and ends up stuck as a Turtle, only able to talk to the one guy who believes in him.

If you want to read forever, the Wandering Inn is a good series.

I've been reading his work.

Mistborn, Warbreaker and some short novellas in between.
Now I'm halfway into The Way of Kings and loving it.
Saving your comment for possible future reference!

She does incredible world-building. All three books are wonderful!

Ive been chasing the dragon trying to find another book that hits as good as Anathem. Beautiful, fun and philosophical beast!

I've read "Player of games" by Iain M. Banks so many times I broke it and had to buy a second copy.

I love Sanderson's writing style. The way he builds up the characters and environment is unparalleled imo. That and the vastness and variability of his magic systems really keeps everything fresh. There are a couple non Cosmere or at least not intertwined novels that are great too. During the pandemic he wrote 4 books in one year. Absolutely insane. Yumi and the Nightmare painter was maybe my favorite of them, but I'd recommend all of them.

I'm gone through his YA work with Janci Patterson, and it's good, but too juvenile for me.

The other authors and books I listed I was chasing Sanderson like work. None of them are quite there but I know that hes praised at least the powder mage series.

Another one I forgot to like was Brent Weeks: Lightbringer Saga. I want to say Brent was a student of Brandon's. The magic system feels like something he would write, but the writing isn't quite as mature. It was still a good series and worth a read.

The City and the Stars is one of my all time favorites.

Anything by Emma St John Mandel. I started with The Singers Gun, but probably enjoyed Station Eleven most. It was made into a series by HBO - I'm in "the book was better" camp. The Glass Hotel is also good, and Sea of Tranquility. A quirk is that various characters pop up or are referenced in different novels.

China Mieville is another writer I like a lot. I read most of his steampunk novels - Perdido Street Station and The Scar stand out. But my favourite was Embassytown, which is basically about language.

No, I'll check it out.

Arundhati Roy's The Ministry of Utmost Happiness is about the horrors (and occassionally the beauty) of being an outcast in modern-day Delhi. Another of Roy's works is The Briefing, a short story in the form of a speech given by a guerilla leader to their followers as they are about to attack a fortress in the Alps.

TIL Station Eleven has a tv adaptation, thanks for making me aware!

Anything by Le Guin is amazing. Have you read Left Hand of the Darkness? It explores themes of gender identity. It’s my favorite of hers. The Word for World is Forest is also really good

In the guards series: The 5th elephant.

In the witches series: very hard to pick. Granny is my favourite.

I love all of the books except for the first two, he really hadn't settled down as a writer yet.

My Year of Rest and Relaxation by Ottessa Moshfegh

Brandon Sanderson is a genius, and I read through the entire cosmere in a little over a year after not reading a whole lot for years.
As for reading order, it doesn't matter quite as much as people sometimes say. There are two standalones that don't really work as a starting point (Sunlit Man and Isles of the Emberdark), but the rest works great. You can even start with Stormlight Archive if the sheer size of the books doesn't scare you off.

The Silmarillion has endured since my early teens. I've read it closer to ten times in the past 20 years.

I read both mistborn and a large part of the stormlight series, though the latter I never finished because books were still coming out at the time. The first Mistborn book is great and can in my opinion even be read standalone if you don't want to commit to a whole series. I also just finished Yumi and the Nightmare painter which I found pretty good. I wished Sanderson would put out a second book to the Rithmatist

Gentleman Bastards and the First Law Series are two more series that I've had on my readlist for quite some time now. Kingkiller chronicles I remember also finding pretty good back when I read it, though I am a bit miffed that it still isn't a finished series.

The Licaniud Trilogy is the one with the book "The will of the many"? If so that's anothet series on my readlist. I am starting to think we have a pretty similar taste in books ;D

Nabokov is so full of references and clever jokes, he was a mad genius. I love Lolita too but it's definitely not what I would recommend anyone read first.

<3

She has some really wacky stuff too haha.

That book is so good!

I loved Seven Eves as a whole, but the novella AR the end drops in quality significantly imo. Still very worth the read.

Just started this a few days ago. It’s a little confusing with some characters apparently sharing names, but the story is fun so far. A few topics (Childs marriage?) ring strange however.

I can't name a favorite but I'm reading an interesting one now which is Wittgensteins Tractatus Logico Philosophicus. You really have to think about what he's trying to explain.

Alright, so you don't let the movies stop you from loving it, but from telling people, that you do.
That's different and unerstandable.

Maybe blindsight by peter watts?

I can definitely understand that. I think it’s a book that’s more of a “read it at the right time and moment” kind of book. If I remember well, I read it when I had a lot going on in my life and then found comfort in the book. Like I loved the idea of ''hopping from life to life'' to see which would eventually fit you better and then coming to realize that every life that you could've gotten would always have a downside.

Plus, I genuinely love some of the sentences/ quotes of the book, such as:

• “The only way to learn is to live.”
• “Never underestimate the big importance of small things”
• “Sometimes regrets aren't based on fact at all”

And a bigger one but my most favorite of the book:

• “If you aim to be something you are not, you will always fail. Aim to be you. Aim to look and act and think like you. Aim to be the truest version of you. Embrace that you-ness. Endorse it. Love it. Work hard at it. And don't give a second thought when people mock it or ridicule it. Most gossip is envy in disguise.”

Anna Karenina

Everyone needs to read it once in their lives. It's the best love story ever written IMHO

Barring that, people read any Russian classic. Their literature just hits different. Say what you want about the government, but the people are so beautiful in their complexity.