The first two Kingkiller books.
Where’s the god damn 3rd book, Patrick? I
Agree, but also a little toxic, but also the donation fiasco, but also bringing that to is a little toxic on my part, but also the Kvothe sex was a little bit out of character, but also it’s easy to second guess, but also the stolen ring disappointment was perfectly bittersweet so I think I’m happy with just the two books and I wish you and him the best, and it would be a nice little life bonus if we got a 3rd book, but again I’m happy with what we got, and I got my best trivia team name from one of his livestreams: dick wizard
I just keep reading The Neverending Story.
You mean the wandering inn webseries?
No one who writes in this pidgin has ever read a book.
I still haven’t recovered from reading The Left Hand of Darkness and The Dispossessed
I’m in the middle of the Dispossessed and I love The Left Hand of Darkness. I swear if these books were less sexual I’d want teenagers to have to read them. Left Hand to teach about cultural and gendered biases and the Dispossessed to teach that your ideology won’t create a utopia, but that doesn’t mean it won’t make things better. It’s an absolute shame that LeGuinn kinda requires nerdiness to be introduced to.
City of Illusions still haunts me as well and I keep bringing it up to my wife as we watch Three Body Problem. Its prequels Rocannon’s World and Planet of Exile were good as the sci fi sword and sorcery followed by sci fi pocahontas (problematicness included) that they were. But City was a book about a Taoist against lies and liars and it hit hard for that.
Personally I found Omelas highly overrated though. It’s a visceral depiction of a common thought experiment but a common thought experiment it was
I read those Dispossessed and LHoD in the 80s, and then reread them more recently, and I’m amazed at how well they hold up. So often stories and sensibilities feel dated when you get to many decades from when they were written, but those two books could have been written yesterday. Both masterpieces, for sure. I’m not sure who you feel they’re inappropriate for teenagers though.
I never read City of Illusions - at least I don’t think I have. I’ll add it to my list. What do you think of Three Body Problem? I read the book and didn’t really care for it (I know I’m in the minority there).
Teenagers shouldn’t be reading about sex? Am I reading your intention correctly?
I’m not going to be the one to advocate for teenagers having to read about sex
Well I think it needs done. But like many things…no one asked me so here I am! Have a good day, Comrade.
Bro when I was 16 all I thought about was sex
That’s easy. I never finish the book. Same with great TV shows.
I’m a Stephen king fan, so by the time I finish one of his books he’s written 3 more
Stephen King is the opposite of G. R. R. Martin
they should have a child together who writes at the perfect rate
I feel like his completion of the dark tower is on par with grim’s GOT wrap up.
He defended The List recently, so fuck him.
Idk what that is
The Epstein list. He basically said it was fake. He’s always been an asshole as far as I’m concerned, but I’ve usually agreed with his political tweets (or whatever he uses that people post). I have no loyalty to him, and find it strange that he would claim it was made up.
Those are the books worth reading
that when I watch movies. even monty python life of brian. I ended up “I consumed that whole journey in about an hour seems taking too much of my energy”. So I never like watching movies.
Especially a more dramatic movies, I once watched a movie about the hussite war (forgot its name, same timeline to kingdom come deliverance) and it was more exhausting. Video games too sometimes.
Often. That why I don’t start a series of books unless there are at least like 4-5 in the series. But even then the series ends sometimes and it feels like you’ve lost a dear friend.
Heck yes. “What happens now!?” Where do the characters go? What happens next in the world the author built for us? Personally there’s even a slight bit of resentment to pick up another book about another character set in the same world, perhaps somewhere else in the timeline, because I got so into the part I’d read and don’t want to have to shift gears and learn about new characters, settings, and personalities.
I don’t EVER start an anime or a comic book unless the entire series is complete.
I rather miss out on the new stuff. There is plenty of completed comics and anime to enjoy.
I do the same for TV series, I don’t watch one unless it’s complete. Why wait for episodes or invest time in a series that turns out to get bad or get cancelled? There is enough good, complete ones to watch.
Many books have done this to me, but the most significant recent experience of this was Elden Ring.
How’s weird sad melancholic ache better than sex?
It lasts more than 3 minutes Bazinga
Weird sad melancholic ache doesn’t give you Chlamydia.
They’re saying a book is better than sex if, when it’s finished, it produces that effect because of how good it was reading it.
Probably The Count of Monte Cristo. Really the perfect book in my opinion - long, but with so much going on and so many interweaving plotlines that it kept me interested throughout. What an adventure.
This is how I feel about playing Outer Wilds.
I need to play this. I get the same feelings with RPGs or really good open world games. Would love to add another to the list
Did you play with a mouse and keyboard? I started it on my PC and it said it needed a controller. So instead I switched to my Steam Deck, but I felt like the small screen wasn’t doing it justice, so I stopped.
Been meaning to pick it back up again.
Honestly you can play it with keyboard and mouse no problem. Don’t let it prevent you from playing!
Controller all the way.
I think it’s mostly the zero-G and ship controls where it matters.
I came to the comments just to say this. I’m glad I’m not the only one
Fffffuuuuuu you both beat me to it. I try to get others to play it so I can live vicariously through their amazement! Bought it on Steam for a gaming buddy and for my brother on Switch.
Any interesting sci Fi or magic/fantasy books that did this to you? I’m looking for something new!
I read a stupid amount of SF and fantasy (up to 60 books so far this year), and I keep notes, so if there’s a particular kind of thing you enjoy I might be able to make a more focused recommendation.
I believe I’ve read everything recommended in reply to you, and most are excellent. Some books I’ve read recently that really pulled me in, and that I didn’t see mentioned elsewhere, are:
- Sleeping Giants, Neuvel
- Ammonite, Griffith
- Spin, Wilson
- The Space Between Worlds, Johnson
- Service Model, Tchaikovsky
- The Tainted Cup, Bennett
Lots of others of I go further back. I hope you find something you love.
Psalm for the Wild-built. It was so sweet and gentle.
To Say Nothing of the Dog by Connie Willis is the first book I’ve read since Hitchhiker’s Guide that actually made me laugh out loud repeatedly. It’s about a time-travelling historian who takes a vacation to Victorian England, and nearly ends the universe while trying to return a missing cat. The book’s part of a series, but this is definitely the most fun entry.
Sanderson’s big fantasy series right now, the stormlight archive. Oh my god, each book is just made to make you get drawn deeper, and deeper until you hit the end. The gap between the first and second book was so freaking long to wait. I think we’re up to book five now, so you don’t have to have that feeling for a while.
Alternatively, if you like blue fantasy (talking animals and wise spirit guides that help sometimes hapless humans), mercedes lackey did great things with her heralds of valdemar series. I’d actually recommend jumping into it at a later point because her writing greatly improved from the first trilogy. You could start with magic’s pawn/promise/price, which has one of the earliest depictions of lgbt protagonists I ever read.
If you like more ‘earthy’ fantasy, the wit’chfire series (actual series name, banned and the banished) by james clemens (who I just found out is a pseudonym for a sci-fi author who didn’t want to be ‘smeared’ as a fantasy author and has some other good books when i googled for the name) is really good. Don’t start his other series, because even though it was fantastic, it’s never going to be finished. I think we’re at like 30 years now and never gotten the third book.
And then there’s the big one, the bold one, the ‘start you off so small and build you into a great, grand sweeping epic’ jim butcher series: the codex alera. The first book was riveting from start to finish. I actually think it was the best one, because the worldbuilding was just so sublime. I loved the characters more and more with each added book, but the magic of the beginning was just amazing.
Oathbringer did this to me the first time, but since then have not been able to enjoy Sanderson’s work unfortunately. Was super hyped for mistborn era 2’s last book but after multiple attempts, was unable to get through.
The wheel of time series is the best out there.
And it just keeps going. There’s so much, and so much of it ties back and stays relevant to the end.
The Player of Games by Iain M. Banks
Nearly all of the culture books! The very first scene of the very first book, Consider Phlebas, just sets the bar so high (and is only one scene). It outdoes entire other works of horror in just half a chapter… and then the actual action starts.
Great book as well. Of all the sci-fi universes, The Culture is the one I want to live in the most.
Definitely The Expanse series if you haven’t read it yet. I loved so many of the charcters, a bit sad to not be reading about them anymore.
Oh yes, I have! Good choice :)
May I present to you the next series James S. A. Corey are writing? The Captive’s War!
I’ve enjoyed the book and novella published so far, and definitely sated that itch I had after finishing the Expanse. :)
I have this a lot, but the most it has happend was about 10 years ago with the webserial worm ( https://parahumans.wordpress.com/ ), I read it so much. I read it before work, I read it during lunch, I read it when I got home, I went to sleep late etc. etc.
When it was done I had forgotten what to do with my time, I wound up re-reading it again but slower at a few chapters a day rather than turning myself into a gremlin for maximal reading efficiency.
If you want a summary, it’s a superhero story, which usually really isn’t for me, but something about the tone of the writing and the way the world worked in this one made it work.
Powers are incredibly varied, but the strongest characters are the ones who know how to use their powers well, the protagonist exemplifies this, where she doesn’t get a cool flashy power but she figures out how to use it so well and adapt to each situation that she becomes terrifying.
I also liked the charactersation of the heroes and the villains, where the heroes are somewhat vain and egotistical which means they do good things when the cameras are rolling rather than being “morally good”. the villains are mostly just people on the edges of society for a mix of reasons which means they do what they want, but I think since then “The Boys” has also done something similar so the effect may be lessened.
Curious if anyone else on Lemmy has wound up reading it.
Worm was definitely like that for me. I was reading it at work (we monitored stuff and responded if needed, so I had a lot of free time if things weren’t happening), and it really sucked me in. I didn’t get into his later work, maybe because of burnout.
I think the characterizations of the superpowered folks were great, but they did suffer a little bit from flanderization. It’s to be expected when the author is literally handling hundreds of different characters. The plot overall was just so good though. Maybe some individual points weren’t as great, like super spoilers ahead
spoiler
the naked invulnerable chick and how they defeated her, or the existence of the three super enemies (leviathan, tyrant? and whatever the bird/smart thing was), and how once the protagonist figured out her plan for the ultimate win, it happened so quickly.
Robin Hobb’s assassin series
N.K. Jemisin’s Broken Earth trilogy (beginning with The Fifth Season).
Also, Brandon Sanderson’s various Cosmere works, especially The Stormlight Archive (beginning with The Way of Kings) and the original Mistborn trilogy (beginning with The Final Empire).
For me it was His Dark Materials. I read it when I was 14 and it completely changed me. My mind was aware that it was a book, but my soul knew that reality is what you experience and I just experienced a lifetime.
I read it again ten years later and I recognized so much of myself in those books, I was actually surprised by the impact it made on me, even though I already knew back then that I would never be the same.
Saving for later when I forget all about this. Why is there no remindme function on Lemmy?
Also, do you like space operas? Bobiverse series Lost Fleet series Expeditionary Force (ExForce) Series Odyssie One series (Into the Black) Murderbot diaries
You can use this mastodon Remind me bot, works with Lemmy. Or use piefed
The Red Rising trilogy left me with this feeling. I loved the terraformation zones descriptions and how the technology is described and implemented.
The story takes lots of twists and turns, kept me glued to the books.
Came here to preach for the red rising. Awesome series. Sanderson’s stormlight archive and mistborn also. And Abercrombie’s first law.
I think I read that there’s a fourth one
In the author’s wikipedia it just shows another series I haven’t read called Iron Gold
