Currently reading about all the horrors of the CIA - finished The Jakarta Method and Washington Bullets, currently reading through Killing Hope, and next on my list is Operation Gladio.
this post was submitted on 30 May 2026
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Pick any of the Asimov's books if you're into science fiction.
I'm reading a famous superhero web novel called "Worm" part of the Parahumans universe.
It's pretty good. I heard it's got 30 or so arcs with 1.4 million total words.
I am at arc 10 currently, and I got here super fast because the story is pretty good.
For non fiction I'm reading The Concept of Mind by Gilbert Ryle, and can highly recommend. Short, thought provocative, and engaging. For fiction, Children of Strife is great, latest instalment in Tchaikovsky's Children of Time series which I really enjoyed overall.
Children of Time is great. I also thought Alien Clay by Tchaikovsky was interesting. Although I'm a little skeptical about how aliens work in that one.
I was gonna say, it was a neat concept, but he didn't really spend the time to make it convincing or explain the mechanism for how life would evolve to be like that. It's like he just had this idea that life could be more modular, but didn't bother fleshing it out past that. I actually enjoyed Shroud a lot more, I feel like he put more work into making it plausible. Can recommend if you missed it.
I haven't read Shroud. I will put it on the list, thanks.
Will definitely check those out
Liberalism: A Counter History, by Domenico Losurdo. Mostly so far looking at how all the liberal revolutions and theorists ended up being at least lukewarm to slavery.
Recently read Piranesi. Wonderful book in a unique setting. A page turner which can be finished in a day.
Non fiction I'd recommend atomic habits (self help), nuclear war: a scenario (existential horror),~~ and Outliers (thought provoking)~~. Yes Man (interesting)
Fiction I'd recommend There is no Antimemetics division (regular horror), Exhalation (thought provoking short stories), and A Memory Called Empire (very good commentary on cultural assimilation).
Depending on what you're looking to get from reading i have other recs
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"Venomous Lumpsucker" by Ned Beauman was good. The writing style reminded me of Weir a bit.
"The Reformatory" by Tananarive Due was also pretty good.
Very different books from each other. Neither are completely without flaw, but both books were a solid B+.
Ive never read a bad Agatha Christie book.
My favorite book is "A Confederacy of Dunces" by John Kennedy Toole, and his novella "Neon Bible" was also very good.
"The Dog Stars" by Peter Heller was good.
"Godshot" by Chelsea Bieker was very good.
Hunter x Hunter manga, currently in the chimera ant arc
Blood Meridian by Cormac McCarthy
Technically still reading the Dune series but I need to get back to it.
I read the first trilogy of the Red Rising series by Pierce Brown recently and couldn't put it down. I didn't expect to like it that much but, that story really got me.
The original series is easily digestible. I tried picking up Iron Gold a few years afterward and couldn't get into it, though.
Thinking fast and slow - Daniel Kahneman
Kaiju battlefield surgeon
I like Dungeon Crawler Carl but Kaiju felt like torture porn to me. I did not enjoy it.
Yeah I'm almost done with Dungeon Crawler, I thought I would check out other things by that author, and yeah it very much is torture porn. But it's also pretty damn good. It's a struggle to get through some of the gore though
Rejection by Tony Tulathimutte was fun
I have trouble keeping up a reading habit, but I've read 5/6ths of the Lord Of The Rings over the last year. Just can't seem to find the time/motivation to finish it, although I quite enjoyed it and I expect Tolkien to focus even more on the inner struggle of the ringbearer in the final book. That was the biggest advantage of reading the books thus far, over watching the movies.
Apart from that I've read the German Romantic (as in era) novella "Aus dem Leben eines Taugenichts" by Eichendorff. But despite it checking the boxes for that era and adding to my canon of bourgeois education, it didn't give me much. It was rather shallow lighthearted entertainment.
But I guess you could say I lean towards the classics. I don't know if I'd recommend it, for finding stuff that is actually good. But skimming through modern books in my library, I'm often already put off by their covers.
I actually never read Book of the New Sun by Gene Wolfe even though it gets recommended so much. It's great. Halfway through
I'll second Susanna Clarke's Piranesi.
RF Kuang's Babel
Adam Levin's The Instructions
and my favorite novel, PKD's Galactic Pot-Healer
The Rich Man's House by Andrews McGahan
In the same genre: Brene Brown: Dare to lead; Connor Beaton: ManTalks, Lindsay C Gibson: Adult Children of emotionally immmature parents, Kelly McGonigal: The Willpower instinct, and Thais Gibson: Learning Love.
Fiction: James SA Corey: The expanse series, and Sofia Oksanen: The dogpark. I also just started Dimitry Glukhovsky: Metro 2033 (Don't know if its good yet)
Metro 2033 is so good, you're gonna love it. He wrote such a fever dream of a novel.
Currently reading Here Where We Live Is Our Country by Molly Crabapple. Just finished Great Sky River by Gregory Benford
I'm currently reading The Ottomans: Khans, Caesars, and Caliphs by Marc David Baer. It traces the history of Ottoman Türkiye through the sultans, with a particular focus on the European character of pre-WWI Türkiye and how much European history and culture was shaped and influenced by the Turkish. Indeed, Baer states in the introduction that he wrote the book to push back on the idea that Türkiye isn't "Western" and that their history was peripheral to overall European history.
In particular, the centralisation of power in kings which is emblematic of Early Modern European history was driven to a large extent by non-Turkish kingdoms copying what was clearly working for Türkiye. Türkiye did take part in the Age of Discovery, establishing trading ports and colonies all along southwest Asia and as far as India, long before Portugal got there. Turkish nobles and artists were as much a part of the 15th-century Renaissance as those of France and England. And a big part of why Protestantism was able to establish itself in Germany was that the Holy Roman Emperor had to grant heretics considerable concessions in exchange for them joining the war against the Sultan.
Baer doesn't say Suleiman the Magnificent was bisexual, but he also very specifically doesn't nor say it.
Pet by Awaeke Emezi is really good. Partly childish innocence, partly heavy topic about child abuse
The Priory of the Orange Tree and Seven Recipes for Revolution were both pretty good.