Concerning Fine Literature

[Elok]

I'm feeling poor/cheap right now, so I'm making good use of the local public library. So: recommend me some books to try, please. Our rural library is surprisingly well-stocked; it has all of the Ender books, for example, including the ones that just came out in 2012. Somebody at the library evidently thinks highly of Orson Scott Card, too; a lot of the books are stored under "classics," right next to Dostoevsky. Not just Ender's Game, they've got A War of Gifts in there too.

I mostly go in for speculative fiction, as I imagine most of you do. They don't have the first Discworld book (I've never read any), so I settled for starting with the second. Just checked it out, haven't started it yet. I've heard good things about Neal Stephenson, so I looked at their selection of him. They didn't have Snow Crash, which annoyed me since that sounded like the most accessible. They did have Anathem, but I looked at the dust-jacket blurb and...well, I remembered this xkcd, which mentions the book in its mouseover.

Is William Gibson worth a shot? I forgot to look for him yesterday.

[SlowwHand]

nm

[DinoDoc]

I would give Glen Cook's The Black Company series a look. What I've read of the series so far has been excellent. I would also recommend The Dresden Files by Jim Butcher. Both of those excellent series are old enough that you should be able to find them at your library easily enough.

Depending on how nerdy you're feeling the Ciaphas Cain books are quite good as well.

[Elok]

Yeahhh, I'm looking for something a bit more interactive. Compare:

ELOK: Recommend me some good speculative fiction!
GOOGLE: "The Handmaid's Tale" is popular speculative fiction.
ELOK: (slogs through Wiki, risking plot spoilers of what could have been a good book, or just goes to library and checks out what turns out to be a really crappy book)

to

ELOK: Recommend me some good speculative fiction.
POLYTUBBY: I liked "The Handmaid's Tale."
ELOK: What's that about?
POLYTUBBY: It's a paranoid-feminist fantasy about Christians taking over the US so they can control all the vaginas!
ELOK: Hmm. I think I'll pass.

XPost

[BlackCat]

Try this : The Night's Dawn Trilogy

Who needs zombies if you can have Al Capones soul taking control of a living person in a space faring universe

[self biased]

Depending on how nerdy you're feeling the Ciaphas Cain books are quite good as well.

also the hours heresy novels are pretty good.

[DinoDoc]

also the hours heresy novels are pretty good.

With exceptions.

[snoopy369]

Glen Cook is good, certainly. Discworld, don't start with the second. Start with anything but the second. The second is the direct sequel to the first. Go here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Discworld

And look at the list, by 'storyline'/'group'. Read the first one in any of the storylines. The best are the City Watch and the Death storylines; City Watch is fairly chronological, while Death isn't really - you could read almost any of them. The Witches ones aren't very chronological, either, and Rincewind's are mostly fine other than The Light Fantastic which really won't make any sense without The Color Of Magic.

Without knowing who you've already read it'd be hard to rec stuff at a library, which will tend towards more popular authors. John Scalzi, Lois McMaster Bujold (space opera)? The latter has a few fantasy series as well, but the Miles Vorkosigan stuff is really key (and if you like Ender's Game, you'll appreciate it for sure). Steven Brust's Vlad Taltos stuff is good (as is his standalone stuff), maybe they have some of the collected trade paperbacks. Karen Miller's fantasy stuff, both written under her own name and as K. E. Mills, is pretty solid also (Kingmaker,Kingbreaker is epic fantasy, while K.E. Mills has the Rogue Agent series, sort of like Charles Stross' "Laundry" series.

Speaking of that, Charles Stross is incredible (science fiction, space opera, sort of). Alan Steele ("Coyote" series) is fun space opera also, that might be at a library. Jack McDevitt has two space opera series, both of which are decent at least at first (some people think both take a nosedive a few books in, but I find them at least palatable). Robert Sawyer had some pretty good ones, more sciencey than most (a lab scientist is usually the main character in his). David Brin, excellent.

William Gibson is good, though complex in some ways so hard to get into if you aren't willing to put in some effort. Sort of like Neal Stephenson in that, but shorter books. John Barnes had some good ones that I would compare to Gibson's, until he went insane (not quite Anne Rice insane, but like that, just not religious). His current books scare me a lot. I'll leave you with this quote, explaining a lot IMO:

The Last President was originally scheduled for 2012. Barnes has written that the delay was caused by disagreements between him and the publisher over the direction the series was taking. As of 2012, plans are for The Last President to be the final book in the series published by Ace, with future volumes self-published. Barnes is considering re-writing the first two books to make them more consistent with his original conception of the series

[snoopy369]

Depending on how nerdy you're feeling the Ciaphas Cain books are quite good as well.

Yeah, Games Workshop is on my **** list right now... even via library reads I wouldn't touch them with a ten foot pole (As it might encourage the library to get more). http://whatever.scalzi.com/2013/02/0...of-tradem-ark/

[DinoDoc]

Is that a GW issue or an Amazon not using its brain issue?

[Bugs ****ing Bunny]

Try China Mieville. "Perdido Street Station" is the one to start with.

[Elok]

What I've already read: well, for much of my life I stuck to classics--Twain, Tolkien, Lewis, all sorts of old stuff. Recently I've tried to branch out and broaden my mind. In the past five years or so I've read Dune up through God-Emperor, all of Asimov's Foundation books (none of the other-author prequels, they seemed crap), C.S. Lewis's adult fiction, all of the Ender books including the one prequel "cowritten" with some screenwriter I've never heard of...crud, I know there are others, but I'm blanking here. Oh, I did read many of McCaffrey's Pern books as a teen, and mostly liked them except for the tedious dragon-sex. Liked the Pern books a lot, still like most of the Ender books.

[Elok]

Oh, and I do slum in YA fiction for light reading--Harry Potter and the Hunger Games were both fun. I'm looking for something a little more challenging here though.

[Guynemer]

Another vote for the Black Company series. Just stumbled upon it one day, and really enjoyed it.

Dresden Files are a very different ball of wax altogether; enjoyable, surely, but not exactly what one would call literature. I've read them all and had a great time doing so, but many of them are eminently forgettable.

Now, Neal Stephenson? Neal Stephenson is my jam. I love 'em all. Snow Crash might be the most accessible, which is saying something as it is completely balls-out insane. His newest, Reamde, is possibly his most sane book, and it is still quite bonkers at several points. Anathem is terrific, as is The Baroque Cycle, which could easily keep you occupied for a month.

[DinoDoc]

Dresden Files are a very different ball of wax altogether; enjoyable, surely, but not exactly what one would call literature. I've read them all and had a great time doing so, but many of them are eminently forgettable.

I agree that it is pulp. But it's fun pulp.