I read some free kindle books back in the day, that probably only a few thousand other people have read, so very plausibly no one on Lemmy has ready.
So, what books have you enjoyed that you feel confident no one else on Lemmy has read?
At the time he died, I’d been a fan of Douglas Adams for about 25 years. After he died, they released a collection of essays, works in progress, notes and such. In it, he described the amazement he had for his favorite author, who he described as having an amazing way with words. The guy that amazed me with “It flew in much the same way a brick doesn’t.” was amazed by someone else’s way with words. So, I put down Salmon, walked to the nearest bookshop, and bought a couple of volumes by P.G. ( if I may call him that) Wodehouse and began a new era of fandom that rivals my adoration of dear old Doug.
What book would you suggest starting with?
I started with a random Jeeves book and was immediately hooked. This blogger put some thought into it: https://honoriaplum.wordpress.com/2014/08/10/getting-started-with-bertie-and-jeeves-a-chronological-challenge/?wref=tp
I would say Joy in the Morning has one of my favorite sentences in the English language, describing a fellow who is startled by an intruder while he’s feeling a bit embarrassed.
Momo by Michael Ende. He also wrote The Neverending Story. Where The Neverending Story is about imagination, Momo is about listening and time.
Wow. A friend of mine recently recommended that book to me. Interesting to find it mentioned here
And if you are younger, also check his jim button stories, not as dark as momo or neverending (though it has it’s moments), yet still great.
I have never met anyone who has read Alastair Reynolds’ Revelation Space series. It’s one of my favourite sci-fi’s and I can’t even get someone I know to read it, everyone thinks it’s boring :)
Great series, love all his works. He also wrote the Zuma blue episode for Netflix’s love death and robots
Got an elevator pitch for us?
Post and trans humanism, far future, long time scales, democratic experiments, aliens, old aliens, new aliens, robots, organic tech, living tech, harmless aliens. It kinda has everything. Space opera with some urban fantasy elements, but rather dark and not light-hearted. No FTL travel (at first, can’t remember if there was some at the end), which makes for interesting timescales.
A friend gave me that and name of the wind for my birthday 10+ years ago. Loved name of the wind but never picked up the Alastair Reynolds book.
I’ve read Revelation Space and Chasm City.
I’m sorry, but they are a massive struggle.
After Man by Dougal Dixion.
It’s a book about speculative biology. It hypothesizes that humanity will lead to the extinction of most of the animals we know. After that new animals will evolve to take their place. The book speculates that rabbits will take the place of deer, and that rats will evolve into dog like animals .
The best part about the book is that there are great illustrations.
To my knowledge it’s not a very well known book, just because speculative biology is a very niche subject.
Have you ever checked out Alltomorrows by Nemo Ramjet? It’s got some of the best illustrations and stories in the speculative evolution genre.
I am talking out of my butt here, but I read a related book, “Man After Man”, by the same author, when I was a kid, and it stuck with me, so many years later when Amazon became a thing, I tried to find it and his other books. I wound up in a rabbit hole of Google that suggested that he does some of the art and was discredited for it? At least. I think I remember something like that. Man After Man was trippy though.
Edit: Googled a bit, can’t find reference to this now. Maybe I’m wrong? It could happen, in theory.
I genuinely wanted to read this book, but it appeared to be a prank.
https://www.latimes.com/books/jacketcopy/la-et-jc-fake-self-help-books-20150318-story.html
Any translation of “The Divine Comedy” should be atleast interesting! Possibly the best feat of poetry of our time.
Back when I was an edgy teen, the saga of Darren Shan and the adjacent content of the Demonata were good as far as I can remember. I don’t know if it will hold up for a more mature audience despite that being the demographic.
The Art Of Learning - Josh Waitzkin
If you saw the movie Searching For Bobby Fischer, you might remember the main character Josh Waitzkin. Based on a true story and book written by his father, the movie tells the story of Josh who becomes a world renowned chess champion at a young age.
IRL, Josh also goes on to compete internationally and excel in Tai Chi Push Hands. In his book, he talks about how he isn’t inherently talented at either of these disciplines but that he’s learned how to learn and that it can be applied to any interest.
I love that book! I try to read it once a year to keep the ideas lodged in my brain.
Riddley Walker by Russell Hoban.
Quoting from wikipedia:
The book is set “roughly two thousand years after a nuclear war has devastated civilization … [and] … is written in a stylistic, imaginary dialect based on and inspired by the dialect of Kent”
“The struggle with Riddley’s language is what makes reading the book so absorbing, so completely possessing."
It takes a while for your brain to adjust, but once it does, you don’t even notice.
“Red Harvest” by Dashiell Hammett.
Almost 100 years old, and it is still one of the best things you’ll ever read.
If the plot sounds familiar, it’s because it’s been stolen over and over and over.
A private detective is hired to investigate corruption in a small city. When the man who hire him is gunned down, the unnamed hero decides to set all the town’s gangs at each others’ throats to see what shakes out.
A Salty Piece of Land by Jimmy Buffett… No, seriously.
He has the reputation as “the patron saint of drunken uncle beach bums”, but if you dig into his earlier catalogue, its rife with beautiful, lyrical storytelling songcraft. When you consider that, itss no suprise that he can write a decent book.
Money: The True Story of a Made-Up Thing. It’s a very easy read all about how weird currency is. My only gripe is that Jacob Goldstein often leaves out too much detail of historical accounts in favor of keeping the book light and accessible.
Looks rather popular with how many reviews it has, and there are like lots of news stories on it.
But it looks really fun so I may grab it anyway!
Rymdväktaren (“The Space Guardian”) and Nyaga, a duology by late Swedish author Peter Nilson. He was a prominent doctor of astronomy at the University of Uppsala, and a board member of the International Astronomical Union. But he also released many works of poetry.
The books are pretty fantastical and have a lot of speculative ideas but you can tell they are grounded in a solid understanding of physics and cosmology, with a big chunk of interesting philosophy thrown in. A lot of mind boggling stuff happens. For example the protagonists try to build a quantum computer that simulates the universe and end up creating an actual universe, which causes some weird effects on physical constants of our universe.
The main theme is how information is encoded in physical events and whether it can be preserved past the end of our universe. It’s been a long time since I read them but at the time I enjoyed them immensely. Unfortunately no English translation seems to be available.
Pretty much most manhua/manhwa. There’s sadly no manhua/manhwa community here.
The Last Ringbearer by Kirill Eskov. It is an amazing book, though some of it is lost in translation. If you are reading it in English, make sure to use the v2 version which fixes a lot of issues with the v1 version.
Social Life in the Insect World by Jean-Henri Fabre
