Not exactly a new book, but All Quiet on the Western Front was a fantastic read. It's a grotesquely frank depiction of the unfortunate "Have Not"s fighting a meaningless war for the "Have"s in society, set in the german trenches of WW1.
From the same author, Erich Maria Remarque, "A night in Lisbon" is also very good.
We are legion we are Bob
Recently my favourite genre have been "2019 lesbian sci-fi debut novels about an empire, starting a series".
A Memory Called Empire is absolutely amazing. A very close second is Gideon the Ninth and its sequels.
thats such a specific genre haha. Have read the Traitor Baru Cormorant? Very slightly outside of your criteria but I'd recommend it
It isn't a lot, but it's weird that it happened twice.
I'll throw your suggestion on The Pile. Looks promising.
There's also Ancillary Justice which just barely misses the exact genre. Unfortunately I didn't really enjoy the way it is written, though the story and universe is super interesting.
I mean I’m a communist so YMMV, but I’m re-reading the Vietnamese textbook on Dialectical Materialism that Luna Oi translated. I’m re-reading it because I also have the second textbook she translated (on Historical Materialism) and I wanted to brush up before diving in to that one.
Luna Oi is a great comrade! She is doing so much for the cause!
Noice. I hope to get this sometime.
I’ve found it to be the most concise and straightforward (and yet thorough) primer on dialectical materialism that I’ve come across so far. In particular I liked how the book split dialectical materialism (the philosophy) from materialist dialectics (the tools of analysis).
If you are into fantasy, then I need to recommend you the books of Brandon Sanderson, especially the Stormlight Archive series. It's so epic, nothing else comes close
I'm currently on book 5 of the Dungeon Crawler Carl series, I started book one In January.
The audiobooks are amazing, super-talented narrator who does a while host of voices.
Book 5 is my next read. I try and stagger them with other things to draw it out some and make sure I don't burn out.
New Scientist magazine, the paper version so that I can put it down, think about it, and come back a week later. I’m not a scientist, and not highly educated, but I’m curious about the world, and many of their articles are easy to read at my level.
Dungeon Crawler Carl. The premise is that aliens take over the world and immediately kill 99% of the population. The remaining 1% are forced to compete on an intergalactic reality TV show called Dungeon Crawler World. The series is a scathing critique of modern capitalism, dressed up like a fart joke. If you liked The Good Place, you’ll likely enjoy DCC. Book 8 just released earlier this month, with more on the horizon.
He Who Fights With Monsters is a fun fantasy isekai series. The world-building in this one is absolutely top notch, to the point that I have considered ripping entire cities out of it for my tabletop games. The main character is pretty divisive, and enjoying the series is dependent on liking him. So the people who enjoy the series really enjoy it, and the ones who dislike Jason simply can’t like it. It has 12 books currently. It would have been 13 by now, but the author was in a medically induced coma for lots of last year. That kind of put a damper on his writing schedule. But he is back to writing now, so book 13 is set to release soon.
We Are Legion (We Are Bob) was a nice sci-fi series. It’s still ongoing, but book 6’s release date is TBA. Nerdy computer programmer gets Futurama’d and frozen. But instead of waking up in a distant future like he expected, he wakes up as an AI in charge of a self-replicating space probe.
Non-fiction:
Fiction:
Demon Haunted World is very timely
Always has been :(
I had put off reading it because I assumed it would be mostly preaching to the choir, but there are some challenging chapters to think about.
Ex. the idea that all the people who believe in aliens, and reject vaccines, and wear tinfoil hats, they're all doing the first step of science: which is to doubt. The problem is that people are generally untrained on what to do next.
The question is whether this modern era of science is an anomaly, or if there's something about the scientific method that gives it an advantage. If we fell completely into a dark age, is it inevitable that we find our way back? Or was this time period just a fluke?
It notes that throughout history, the dominant nation has always been the one who wields science most effectively. And the US wouldn't be the first to fall because it failed to.
I wish Carl were still around. He had a knack for cutting through bullshit we could really use right now
The blade itself is what I’m current reading (when not frantically trying to catchup on one piece)
Solaris by Stanislaw Lem. Truly magnificent, just like the movie by Tarkovsky.
In parallel to that I went also down the rabbit hole about what cybernetics was and what happened to it.
Recently read Piranesi. Wonderful book in a unique setting. A page turner which can be finished in a day.
I'm reading a famous superhero web novel called "Worm" part of the Parahumans universe.
It's pretty good. I heard it's got 30 or so arcs with 1.4 million total words.
I am at arc 10 currently, and I got here super fast because the story is pretty good.
The only thing I am reading rn is Capital but I don't think you came here for political theory so I will recommend The Hot Zone. It's the last book I read and it's about the discovery of Ebola, its investigations, and how it got to the US.
I recently read (listened to the audiobook actually) Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel.
It's about the life of Thomas Cromwell. The narration style is not for everyone, but it's the best historical fiction story I've read.
The show is also excellent
Pick any of the Asimov's books if you're into science fiction.
Non fiction I'd recommend atomic habits (self help), nuclear war: a scenario (existential horror),~~ and Outliers (thought provoking)~~. Yes Man (interesting)
Fiction I'd recommend There is no Antimemetics division (regular horror), Exhalation (thought provoking short stories), and A Memory Called Empire (very good commentary on cultural assimilation).
Depending on what you're looking to get from reading i have other recs
Take anything written by Gladwell with a large helping of salt.
Malcolm "who is this Epstein guy and how did I get on his plane? 🤪" Gladwell (not paraphrasing)
"Venomous Lumpsucker" by Ned Beauman was good. The writing style reminded me of Weir a bit.
"The Reformatory" by Tananarive Due was also pretty good.
Very different books from each other. Neither are completely without flaw, but both books were a solid B+.
Ive never read a bad Agatha Christie book.
My favorite book is "A Confederacy of Dunces" by John Kennedy Toole, and his novella "Neon Bible" was also very good.
"The Dog Stars" by Peter Heller was good.
"Godshot" by Chelsea Bieker was very good.
The Fifth Season. I'm currently on the second book The Obelisk Gate so can't attest for the quality of the whole thing but it's geological fantasy and I find it quite fascinating. The scale of the world and conflict keeps getting bigger and bigger. It's very dark but also really draws you in as things ramp up. Themes of the paradox of tolerance, and the challenge of preparing for future crises. The magic system she came up with also feels very fresh to me
Poject Hail Mary, The Martian
Both by Andy Weir.
Also M.O.N.A. and S.I.N.O.N. by Dan T. Sehlberg
The books by Andy Weir are hard sci-fi books. Very grounded in physical/realistic expectations but with a sprinkle of "the future".
The books by Dan Sehlberg are IT thriller-like novels.
Basically something like current 'Neuralink'.
The first books plot is about a scientist developing a brain-computer interface enabling the user to visit cyberspace in a sort of advanced VR like world but full on inside instead of just goggles you put on.
His wife trials it, visits her job sites web page during a cyber attack on the jobs IT-infrastructure, get's in contact with the malware there and brings the digital virus inside her to the real world.
Now the digital malware/virus has become a biological one. The scientist now wants to find the cure for the illness.
Thinking fast and slow - Daniel Kahneman
For non fiction I'm reading The Concept of Mind by Gilbert Ryle, and can highly recommend. Short, thought provocative, and engaging. For fiction, Children of Strife is great, latest instalment in Tchaikovsky's Children of Time series which I really enjoyed overall.
Children of Time is great. I also thought Alien Clay by Tchaikovsky was interesting. Although I'm a little skeptical about how aliens work in that one.
Will definitely check those out
I just got a kobo for Christmas so I've been catching up on a ton of Stephen King I hadn't made time for, re-reading some Michael Crichton. Trying out some of Clive Barker's horror stuff (never read it before).
Just read Back To The Island, a companion/episode guide to Lost. Which has made me want to watch the show again.
Currently reading about all the horrors of the CIA - finished The Jakarta Method and Washington Bullets, currently reading through Killing Hope, and next on my list is Operation Gladio.
I read the first trilogy of the Red Rising series by Pierce Brown recently and couldn't put it down. I didn't expect to like it that much but, that story really got me.
Kaiju battlefield surgeon
I like Dungeon Crawler Carl but Kaiju felt like torture porn to me. I did not enjoy it.
Yeah I'm almost done with Dungeon Crawler, I thought I would check out other things by that author, and yeah it very much is torture porn. But it's also pretty damn good. It's a struggle to get through some of the gore though
I have trouble keeping up a reading habit, but I've read 5/6ths of the Lord Of The Rings over the last year. Just can't seem to find the time/motivation to finish it, although I quite enjoyed it and I expect Tolkien to focus even more on the inner struggle of the ringbearer in the final book. That was the biggest advantage of reading the books thus far, over watching the movies.
Apart from that I've read the German Romantic (as in era) novella "Aus dem Leben eines Taugenichts" by Eichendorff. But despite it checking the boxes for that era and adding to my canon of bourgeois education, it didn't give me much. It was rather shallow lighthearted entertainment.
But I guess you could say I lean towards the classics. I don't know if I'd recommend it, for finding stuff that is actually good. But skimming through modern books in my library, I'm often already put off by their covers.
Hunter x Hunter manga, currently in the chimera ant arc
Blood Meridian by Cormac McCarthy
Technically still reading the Dune series but I need to get back to it.
I'll second Susanna Clarke's Piranesi.
RF Kuang's Babel
Adam Levin's The Instructions
and my favorite novel, PKD's Galactic Pot-Healer
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