Ask Lemmy

Get yourself a bit of Christopher Moore or some Neal Stephenson.

Tim Dorsey was great up until the end although there was a lot of same-ness about much of his work.

Work your way through Cory Doctrow's catalog of unique fiction.

I love almost everything by Dean Koontz - he is a magical phrase turner.

You can always sell me on a Kaiju novel.

Let me look through my growing library-called-a-room:

It might be considered a "safe," or "of course it is," pick, but "Love Me For Who I Am," would be my answer. It is a series that helped me understand myself a lot, and I credit it for helping me understand the complicated feelings I had inside when searching for who I really was and how to engage with the world around me. On the heels of that, "Is Love The Answer?" is a one-shot that is a phenomenal read exploring the spectrum of Aromanticism. Imagine that recommendation coming from me cough bio cough, but seriously, those two reads I think can safely be called cornerstones of my reading journey. I have read many amazing series(SAO:Progressive the LN(not the fake other ones), Drugstore In Another World, When Will Ayumu Make His Move? and otherwise), but those two really helped lay out in print what I could not put into words, and showed that there was an answer.

All of the ones I mentioned I would recommend, but those first two would be my genuine answers to your question.

"House of Leaves" made me throw it against the wall.

I did like "XX" a novel by Rian Hughes. Different characters 'speak' in different typefaces, and the story zips through time and space.

"The Iron Dream" by Norman Spinrad is a massive mindfuck. The forward explains that Adolph Hitler came to America in 1922 and managed to find work illustrating science fiction pulps. Eventually he felt confident enough to start writing in English. This book is his masterpiece.

"Flashman" by George Macdonald Fraser. The author follows the career of a successful Victorian gentleman, General Sir Harry Flashman, VC. Flashy is a slaver, rapist, murderer, liar, cheat, coward, and scoundrel who has decided to write his memoirs for posterity.

Orbital by Samantha Harvey

From my review:

"This is one of those rare books that changes what I think a book can be.

"A beautiful meditation on the human condition as coupled to the — so-called — "Overwatch Effect." It took me a while to catch the rhythm of the book, but once I was in, I was in."

I read it just after it won the Booker Prize. But, I didnt know it had won the Booker Prize when I read it.

I once saw in a book store a book called conversations with god 2 or something like that, I picked up thinking let's see what kind of bullshit is in here, I read a random page and I thought, hey that wasn't bad let's see another page, oh this seems good. Then I bought it.

The book was a dialogue between the author and god, what surprised me the most is that it never felt religious and covered concepts I've seen on many other places decades later.

I ended liking the trilogy, and it played a big role on shaping my current beliefs (an odd mix of mostly atheism with a bit of faith on something that is actually irrelevant). I avoided looking the author up just in case he ended up creating a cult or something.

Not me, but my spouse read House of Leaves

The reason I loved The Reluctant Fundamentalist is that it's in second person. It's a conversation Hamid had with himself as a young Pakistani-American immigrant, torn between two worlds in post 9/11 America. It's short but evocative.

Alan Lightman's book Einstein's Dreams. It uses stories to explore how time moves, or could move if the laws of the Universe were different.

How many times are you AI bots going to ask this question?

Edit: This is the fourth time I've seen this exact post.