I’ll start first: (bear in mind I usually listen to audiobooks)
- Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir |A guy finds himself stranded in space aboard an international space vessel where he has to remember who he is.
- The 57 Bus by Dashka Slater |A true story about how hanging with the wrong crowd can have life-altering consequences
- The Animorphs series by KJ Applegate |Young adult series in which a group of kids find an alien, get the powers to morph shape into animals, as well as uncover an alien takeover conspiracy (Plus, detailed depictions of how grotesque those transformations are!)
- Saga by Brian K. Vaughn & Fiona Staples (Comic, ongoing) |Following the story of Hazel, a baby born from an ex-soldier and an enemy combatant, Saga shows how gowing up and raising a kid in a wartorn universe can have highs and lows.
Edit: added pipes for better separation
Finally reading it to understand the memes and I’m thoroughly dune pilled
First book?
Yes chairman
The Odyssey by Homer, translated by Robert Fagles. My first time reading an ancient classic, and it’s much less scary than I thought. In fact I’m quite enjoying it, and might read The Iliad (Homer’s other epic poem) next. The humanness of the characters (well, the human ones!) is very relatable, even though it’s 2700 years old. I don’t know why I expected it to be crusty and boring. Maybe I assumed it’d be like the Bible.
The intro explains a lot of stuff about the original Greek poem and how it was written in dactylic hexameterwhich bards back then used to be able to improvise in, which is amazing to me. Reminds me of 8 Mile or something. 😅
Not recently but the Witcher audio books are really well produced.
Also the lord of the rings as read by Rob Inglis are, I think, the best way to experience that tale.
Watership Down. Way better than I thought 🙂.
I’ll take “Books that made me sob like a baby” for $500, Alex.
Conspiracy: Why the Rational Believe the Irrational by Michael Shermer
I’m about 75% through The Ritual by Adam Nevill. It is also a movie. I really enjoy how he writes his characters, and the book is legitimately scary and creepy. I have to set it down sometimes.
On the scary/creepy note, another amazing book and movie is Birdbox by Josh Malerman. That book legitimately terrified me.
Just finished The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath. Her imagery is beautiful and you can feel her talent. It’s a an autobiographical roman à clef of her struggling with bipolar disorder/depression. And the only book she wore before taking her life when the love of her life left her for another woman.
The Impending Blindness of Billie Scott by Zoe Thorogood.
I’ll just steal the description from Amazon "Billie Scott is an artist.
Her debut gallery exhibition opens in a few months.
Within a fortnight she’ll be completely blind.
Zoe Thorogood’s first graphic novel is a story about what it’s like to get something you want, have it immediately taken away from you and then how you put it all back together again. Set in a world of people down on their luck from Middlesbrough to London, it’s a graphic novel that speaks of post-austerity Britain and the problems facing those left behind."
The art is great, the characters feel real, and the issues with it are minor. I read it for a book club and loved reading this and discussing it
I enjoyed the trilogy “Remembrance of Earth’s Past”, on which 3 Body Problem is based.
Also, The Power Broker has been quite nice.
Shattered by Lisa Morgan.
Entangled Life by Merlin Sheldrake. So fascinating. https://www.merlinsheldrake.com/entangled-life
“Parable of the Sower” by Octavia Butler. Published in 1993 but set in 2024. Definitely resonates with the state of things today.
- The Mercy of Gods: The first book in a new trilogy from the guys behind The Expanse.
- How to ADHD: Because I wasn’t diagnosed until 40 and now I have to rethink everything about me.
- My War Gone By, I Miss It So: The memoir of a British war zone journalist who covered the Bosnian War and other Balkans conflicts. I originally read it decades ago but was reminded of it after watching Civil War earlier this year. I heard lots of criticism about the main characters in that movie not being relatable or very likable so I picked this back up to confirm that yes, that’s accurate, and I think part of the point of the movie…
How is the ADHD book? Actually helpful?
Yeah, I would recommend it. My biggest takeaways from it so far have been understanding how many of my habits and personality quirks are actually coping strategies that I just didn’t realize. Like, I always thought I just happened to like chewing gum all the time because I enjoyed the minty flavor. Turns out the repetitive chewing motion can actually stimulate the dopamine I crave. I thought everyone has a collection of rhyming phrases or little songs that they only say in private and we all collectively pretend like we don’t because it’s embarrassing. Turns out that’s verbal or auditory stimming. It’s been great in that regard, helping me understand why I am the way I am.
Can’t really speak to how effective any of the ADHD management techniques in the book are since I’m still working through it and trying to take things onboard, but the author also has a very popular and successful Youtube channel where you can probably find all the same information and more if you’re interested.
Learned on Lemmy a couple of weeks ago that Neal Stephenson has a new book out, and I’m still a sucker for them. Polostan is (so far) historical fiction and very readable. The Stephenson-esque infodumps seem to mostly concern the game of Polo and interwar Communism, with healthy dashes of 1930s physics and ranching.
The First Law series.
