I need a new (fiction) book

Water Cooler
#1

I’ve just about finished the book that I’m reading and I need a new recommendation. Who has read something excellent lately?

For context, I think my fav book ever is A Little Life. Also love The Time Traveller’s Wife, My Sister’s Keeper and pretty much anything ever written by Ken Follett.

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#2

Some of my favorites: Jitterbug Perfume by Tom Robbins, Anything by David Sedaris or Milan Kundera but I really liked Immortality. Of course you could always go to GoodReads.com and let their algorithm suggest something too.

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#3

The books I always recommend to people, if they haven’t read them yet:

  • Ready Player One (Ernest Cline)
  • Ender’s Game (Orson Scott Card)
  • The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy (Douglas Adams)
  • The Complete Adventures of Sherlock Holmes (Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)
  • The Zombie Survival Guide (Max Brooks)
  • A Confederacy of Dunces (John Kennedy O’Toole)
  • Me Talk Pretty One Day (David Sedaris)
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#4

I just finished Ender’s Game(again)! I’m starting Ender’s Shadow (again).

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#5

Are you on goodreads? I have a whole bunch of 5 stars books there… The Dog Stars, Cutting for Stone, The Sisters Brothers, The Good Thief, City of Thieves… and many more…

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#6

Hitchhiker’s guide! I read them ALL!!! best books ever! listened to a lot of them on audiobooks and they are great!

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#7

They were the first novel-length books I read! I didn’t get all of the humor then, but I still go back and re-read them every now and then. Totally worth a read :slight_smile:

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#8

I love this book! Great suggestion and anything by Milan Kundera.

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#9

Perhaps this is a cliche, but have you read any of the William Gibson novels?!
I am a huge fan of ‘sprawl trilogy’: ‘Neuromancer’, ‘Count Zero’ & ‘Mona-Lisa Overdrive’

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#10

I am currently working though the ‘Chung Kuo’ series by David Wingrove which I can also highly recommend if you like your distopic sci-fi??

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#11

Hi @HAWK

Last really good book I read was Birds Without Wings
by Louis de Bernières

Paddy

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#12

Thanks all. There are heaps here! Much appreciated.

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#13

if you like sci-fi, I recommend you Seveneves, from Neal Stephenson
I am finishing it by these days

Here is a review fron Bill Gates https://www.gatesnotes.com/Books/Seveneves
which was one of the reasons bought this book

Hope you can enjoy it
regards
Victor

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#14

Chiming in late (I’m new), but I have been very impressed with some new authors recently:

Nnedi Okorafor

  • Akata Witch
  • Akata Warrior
    (This series is still in production so is not yet complete)

Another really good series is the Broken Earth series by N.K. Jemison.

  • The Fifth Season
  • The Obelisk Gate
  • The Stone Sky
    (This series is complete. The first book can take a bit to set the hook, but after reading the whole series I cannot recommend it highly enough)
#15

Welcome! And it’s never too late to add to this kind of topic. :slight_smile:

#16

I’m glad and I hope you get a chance to read them. I’ve really enjoyed those works.

#17

They sound like they might be fantasy books. Is that so? I fall into that rare category of people that have never seen a Game of Thrones episode. :wink:

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#18

You don’t know what you’re missing!

Two good intros to fantasy:

The Kingkiller Chronicles - Not too heavy on the magic and dragons are actually large slow moving lizards, its a good character story with amazing world building and lots of meta stories. It’s a smart boy growing up in a travelling show who ends up at a university of magic after his parents and troupe where killed leaving him homeless and alone for several years.

The Gentleman Bastards - Again, set in a fantasy world but it is really about a gang of orphans turned con-artists who are actually quite likeable, each book is them doing a long-con and not predictably so.

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#19

FTR - despite having read, and enjoyed to a degree the GoT series, I would never recommend them to someone I did not know well. There are themes and scenes in those books that cross lines many people do not want to cross in their reading.

The Akata series is modern fantasy. Along the lines of Harry Potter, but IMO better written and more engaging. Lighthearted but with solid story and engaging characters.

The Broken Earth series is alternative Future Science Fantasy. We, the human race, caused a global natural disaster that brought on a cyclical nuclear winter. There are beings with “powers” but not of the sort you are used to seeing in high fantasy novels. Think powers more rooted in very advanced science as opposed to “magic”.

If I were to recommend one of them over the other for someone who has never been a reader of Fantasy, I would say the Broken Earth series. It’s more related to Sci-Fi or Alternative Future than it is Fantasy.

The Kingkiller chronicles are excellent books as well. The series is still under development, so if that matters. I know people that refuse to read a series until it’s complete.

If you want another recommendation that’s more traditional fantasy and Excellent; I would recommend the Mystborn trilogy from Brandon Sanderson.

For some campy Science Fiction, I would recommend the Murderbot Diaries. They are very entertaining. :slight_smile:

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#20

GOT is also a major investment in time. George R R Martin can spend pages describing the food eaten at a feast.

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