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The bone comic book omnibus from Jeff smith Bone omnibus amazon link
The book is basically Tolkien+Disney, it is aimed at a kid audience but it tackles some heavy topics that adults will enjoy, its great because it tackles metaphysics a lot in ways that are interesting for all ages.
A few I've read at least twice and will definitely read again at some point:
I believe the last book of dust is slated for this year unless I’m mistaken
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance
by Robert M. Pirsig
Hitchhikers guide to the galaxy
The Murderbot diaries.
This is also an awesome thread. I see a lot of books I love and a lot that I'm interested in.
While I enjoyed the first book, and might pick up the others, I wasn't as impressed, and wouldn't put it on any reread shortlist. What did I miss?
The Bobiverse recommendations seem to go hand in hand with Murderbot. Read both series back to back, didn't know what I was missing.
I'm on my 13th or so read of Blindsight. Think I've unpacked it all, finally. I feel like a fruitcake having read it and *Echopraxia" so many times, but damn they're deep.
Not a fan of all of Watt's novels, but those two feel like he packed something to think about into nearly every single sentence. Easy read if you want to go fast, or, take your time and dig in. Never read a novel(s) that could go both ways.
Fuck me. Just talking about it is getting me hype for another run.
Blindsight:
"I brought her flowers one dusky Tuesday evening when the light was perfect. I pointed out the irony of that romantic old tradition— the severed genitalia of another species, offered as a precopulatory bribe—and then I recited my story just as we were about to fuck.
To this day, I still don't know what went wrong.”
Echopraxia:
“Fifty thousand years ago there were these three guys spread out across the plain and they each heard something rustling in the grass. The first one thought it was a tiger, and he ran like hell, and it was a tiger but the guy got away. The second one thought the rustling was a tiger and he ran like hell, but it was only the wind and his friends all laughed at him for being such a chickenshit. But the third guy thought it was only the wind, so he shrugged it off and the tiger had him for dinner. And the same thing happened a million times across ten thousand generations - and after a while everyone was seeing tigers in the grass even when there were`t any tigers, because even chickenshits have more kids than corpses do. And from those humble beginnings we learn to see faces in the clouds and portents in the stars, to see agency in randomness, because natural selection favours the paranoid. Even here in the 21st century we can make people more honest just by scribbling a pair of eyes on the wall with a Sharpie. Even now we are wired to believe that unseen things are watching us.”
Several that others have already mentioned, and:
Love the culture series! Communism..... In space!!! Though I'd say to anyone who hasn't read them yet to skip the first and come back to it. It's a great novel, but it smells like the 80's. Was my first read in the series and it turned me off to the rest of them until years later when I have the series another chance
IMHO, post-scarcity is really the only way communism works. And it's not true communism in the Culture; people still own things - artifacts, art, themselves. And it's also not communism in the Marxist sense, where the workers own the means of production, because there isn't a working class and production is largely automated. It's some sort of post-Communism thing we don't have a name for. Or, maybe we do, and I just don't know it?
Easier to say which books I WOULDN'T read again.
The Art of War in the Middle Ages. Just interminable.
There was another book, I can't recall the name of it unfortunately. It was about ethical non-monogamy but went into such blatantly STUPID territory that I classed it as "should not be set aside lightly, it should be thrown with great force."
One of the more stupid statements was about how gangbang porn is prevalent (multiple men, one woman), but the inverse doesn't exist. I was like "Fuck off, you aren't looking very hard then..."
Edit My wife assures me it was "Sex at Dawn".
Adam Levin's The Instructions
Ecclesiastes
Philip K. Dick's Galactic Pot-Healer — actually most Dick outside of A Scanner Darkly
Neal Stephenson's... well, anything, but especially Zodiac, Anthem, and Diamond Age
Brian Daley's Requiem for a Ruler of Worlds
Margaret Atwood's The Year of the Flood and The Blind Assassin
Anything by Ursula LeGuin, ever
Hugh McLeod's Ignore Everybody
Lloyd Alexander's Prydain series
Douglas Adam's Hitchhiker's Trilogy
Adam Levin's The Instructions
I have that on my shelf, but have only read the first chapter or so, I think, just couldn't get into it. Bought on a whim, partly because of how huge it was!
I take it it's worth another shot?
Project Hail Mary was amazing. Can't wait for the movie too.
There will be a movie‽‽‽
Story spoiler:
spoiler
"No voice actor for rocky has not been announced" - A voice actor for... musical notes?
I'm super worried they're not gonna do rocky well. I think the appropriate thing would be to use subtitles, however I doubt normal people would be into that
It's got Ryan Gosling cast as the main, I think?
Understanding Comics by Scott McCloud. A comic book about comic books, cartoons, sequential art, and art in general.
Nobody has yet mentioned A Gentleman in Moscow, so I will. It's fairly recent, but I know I'll read it again in a couple of years.
I have all discworld books, I would definitely reread most of them. I just reread The Hail Mary Project.
Third run through Discworld in the past 2 years. My god, been trying to think how to explain to my best friend. I lack the words.
Books. Multiple.
The Practice Effect by David Brin. It's an isekai (it's not anime, but it's an isekai) where things get MORE useful when you use them, reversing entropy.
Sentenced to Prism. MC is sent on a mission to a world inhabited by silicate based life forms. Shenanigans ensue. Mildly autistic coded MC.
Resurrection Inc. The dead are resurrected as mindless zombie robots. Sometimes it goes wrong and the dead regain their memories. The MC does. Hijinks ensue.
edit - more
Mistborn Chronicles - an orphan gets super powers in a very messed up world. A group recruits her for a heist.
World War Z has hit differently after major life stages: College, marriage, kids, global pandemic, etc.
Too many to count. Foundation trilogy, anything by Heinlein, Asimov, Arthur C. Clarke or various other classic sci fi writers, any Conan book or story, any Jeeves book or story, The Mote in God's Eye by Niven & Pournelle, Mary Lasswell's Mrs. Feeley books (pretty obscure), anything by HP Lovecraft...
Also, I keep meaning to make time to re-read some required reading books from HS: Where the Red Fern Grows, Call of the Wild, Flowers for Algernon. It's probably all going to be painfully YA, but I've thought about the stories often over my life, and they deserve a re-read.
The Dark Tower series. All of them
That series was amazing and I'm still mad they tried to cram it all into a single movie.
The gunslinger is def up there for me
Yes. Another good series; some better than others - I personally liked the first the most - but I think they're all important pieces of the story.
Definitely on my "read again" list, although I only discovered and read them all a couple of years ago; maybe next year.
Don't ask me silly questions, I won't play silly games I'm just a simple choo-choo train, and I'll always be the same I only want to race along, beneath the bright blue sky And be a happy choo-choo train, until the day I die
Childhood's End by Arthur C. Clarke
I re-read it a few times already, and even though written in the 50s it holds up quite well (except for the total absence of computers). Its a brilliant read. Edit: to clarify, I meant the societal trends he projected are quite fascinating. Also the transition to a post scarcity society. It's not very prophetic obviously. :)
Just done a reread of these and would gladly reread again.
The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy (all 5 books in the series)
They are short enough that you could easily read all of them in a couple months at a steady pace.
That's a good series, too. Another set of books I used to re-read every few years, but got out of the habit.
Slaughterhouse 5 by Kurt Vonnegut Jr.
Lord Of The Rings.
He Who Fights With Monsters.
Thrawn.
The Hunt For Red October.
The Cardinal of the Kremlin.
So many I will give another listen to.
Most of The Culture series
Speaker for the Dead
Eisenhorn
Count of Monte Cristo
The Emperor of All Maladies
Moby Dick
Lords of Silence
All Honorable Men: History of the war in Lebanon
Adams and Victor's Principles of Neurology
The Biology of Cancer (Weinberg)
Japan to 1600
History of Medieval Russia (Martin)
The Baltic: A History
On War (Clausewitz)
The Back Channel
Timbuktu (Villiers)
Sorry if this is too many, just looked at my book app for ones I keep reading.
Edit: Fuck it, I'm having fun. Here are a few more I remembered while roasting a bowl.
Dune
Amulet of Samarkand
Venice (Madden)
The Golden Compass
First and Only (Abnett) - read the first omnibus
Harrisons Manual of Medicine 18th ed
Gomorrah (Saviano)
The Gunpowder Age (Tonio)
The Money Illusion (Sumner)
Snow Crash Rendezvous with Rama Foundation (all of them) Moonwalking with Einstein (non function about memory champions)
I’m not a big rereader, but at some point I’d like to read through the expanse and the locked tomb again
