Ask Lemmy

NK Jemisin's trilogy, that starts with The Fifth Season.

(I can never remember if the proper title of the trilogy is Broken Earth or Shattered Earth!)

Vita Nostra by Marina and Sergey Dyachenko. Really weird, abstract and interesting. Anyone labeling it as Dark Academia or a magic school book is both completely correct and dead wrong at the same time.

Piranesi by Susanna Clarke, This Is How You Lose the Time War by Max Gladstone and Amal El-Mohtar both have very interesting concepts and great executions.

When it comes to interesting concepts in fantasy/sci-fi, Adrian Tchaikovsky has some bangers. Elder Race, Children of Time, or Alien Clay are some random example recs.

China Mieville's New Crobuzon trilogy is really out there too. 2nd book is the best and can be read independently but does spoil some things from the first.

I'll throw Locked Tomb Trilogy.

It's a good mystery series that's well paced (for me) in that I had my moments of realisation only about a chapter before each reveal most of the time.

One of the books is written in second person, and it's about an unreliable narrator, so that's... fun? I spent a lot of my time, when not reading the book, wondering who the 'I' was to narrative's 'you', then not being able to answer how the 'I' knew the things the 'I' knew, so 'I' couldn't be the 'I' I think 'I' am. But no-one else makes sense, and the second guessing continues.

Also, doesn't do mystery through vague language much, which I dislike most of the time. The viewpoint characters are doing their best, you know what they know, it's just they don't know enough yet. You never really zoom out into an omnipotent narrator, to then not describe what's happening beyond vibes.

All the characters are unlikable though, the universe is unlikeable, it does unlikeable things to everyone, so their unlikability is undertandable at least. But, if you can't get past a purposefully unlikeable cast, that might be a barrier. I don't want to meet any of them (the ones I would be most willing to meet, I'm sure I just don't know well enough), but I'm content reading about their exploits, or rather how they're exploited.

Probably The Silmarillion. It reads like a fucking poem that goes on for hundreds of pages.

This might be stretching the definition of "read" but I love skimming the Voynich Manuscript every once in a while. It reminds me of Tolkien's Tengwar

Flowers for Algernon

Children of Time was an interesting concept that I thought came together well. It's a science fiction book with a split narrative where one half is about science experiments on a distant planet, and the other is about a colony ship that is searching for a new home. Because of the vastness of space, there are long stretches of time that are covered (I believe the book ultimately takes place over a thousand years). The two narratives overlap at different points.

Dungeon Crawler Carl may have one of the weirdest and fun plots I've read in a while. A guy named Carl and his ex-girlfriend's cat named Princess Donut the Queen Anne Chonk are given the opportunity to be on the galaxy's favorite game show. The show is very similar to an RPG with fighting monsters, level ups, rare items, etc. Also, due to unfortunate timing, Carl is participating in the game without wearing any pants.

I answer with this a lot on Lemmy but House of Leaves. That fucking book. Everyone should read it once. If you read it multiple times you are a crazy person, and if you are not: trying to understand it will MAKE you a crazy person.

Kafka on the Shore by Haruki Murikami. It’s not just the story but also the writing style that I found captivating. But it’s the story too. It flirts between the real and the surreal.

I also have ADHD and find reading really hard. I hate it because I really like learning.

Gnomon by Nick Harkaway.

The book Is set in a near future Britain where surveillance is omnipotent and the accused are interrogated by detectives who read their thoughts.

A suspect dies during an interrogation, highly unusual, so a detective is brought in to investigate the case. She begins to review the thoughts of the suspect and finds not just the suspects memories, but whole other persons whose lives intersect and intertwine created a tapestry narrative that runs counter to reality.

It’s a really Interesting read. I will fully acknowledge its overly long and needed a strong editing pass. But I first read it a decade ago and I still think about it regularly.

Saint of Bright Doors by Vajra Chandrasekera is one of the most different stories I've read. Just so much different about it that it's hard to even describe. Plus a twist end that actually had me going "no fuckin way" out loud.

"The Book of the New Sun" by Gene Wolfe.

Its a cold open without exposition into an unknown world. Is it fantasy? Is it sci-fi? There's possible hints of both. The protagonist is the narrator and the character tells the story. Since the character already knows this world, he doesn't both explaining what is happening very often. The style of speech the character uses including the vocabulary isn't quite common. The storytelling is unforgiving because the protagonist has no frame of reference from our world to explain. There's even more to the difficulty in following the story than this, but some of that speaks to the plot points, so I won't explain further.

If you want a hard, but eventually rewarding read, go into it cold without reading any synopsis or reviews.

Here's the opening paragraph from the first page:

"It is possible I already had some presentiment of my future. The locked and rusted gate that stood before us, with wisps of river fog threading its spikes like the mountain paths, remains in my mind now as the symbol of my exile. That is why I have begun this account of it with the aftermath of our swim, in which I, the torturer’s apprentice Severian, had so nearly drowned."

Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid by Douglas Hofstadter.

It's been a good many years since I had my nose in my copy, but I am glad I was able to read it at a time of my life that I could attain some appreciation and understanding of it. Right now, I don't think I could focus my attention long enough to get back into it.

I haven't sought out Hofstadter's other works, but if I could get that mindset back, I'd definitely consider it. I Am a Strange Loop is on my want-to-read list.

And if the surname seems familiar, a character in a popular TV show was given his surname on purpose by the writers.

Runny Babbit by Shel Silverstein

The whole thing is written in spoonerisms, and it can tret gicky to lead out roud ko a tid. Honestly, not his best, but certainly the most unique.

These are almost cheating, but I’ll go with Gravity’s Rainbow followed by Blood Meridian.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gravity%27s_Rainbow

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blood_Meridian

the Amber books by Zelazny

The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat and Other Clinical Tales, by Oliver Sacks

My ADHD always made it really hard to read an entire book, but one of the last books I read that was cool was Goosebumps: Beware Of The Purple Peanut Butter. I loved that I could choose what to do in a book, it felt like a video game.

Maybe The Sybil, by Par Lagerkvist, a sort of parable.

https://sites.udel.edu/britlitwiki/the-sibyl/

i just started battle royale, they're still on the bus. i've seen the film of course so interested to see how it compares. filth by irvine welsh and under the skin by michel faber are my other favourite books with film adaptations, i've high hopes for this

I really enjoyed The Raw Shark Texts. It's a weird page turner. Has a cat.

The Raw Shark Texts

Riddley Walker by Russell Hoban. Set in a post apocalyptic England where all of society has broken down, even language. Stick with it, your brain will adjust and you won’t notice after the first chapter or so.