I've not read anything in years. I was recommended 3 Body Problem but hear it starts very slow and I could do with something easy and engaging.
Think mindless action film but in book form. To keep my attention and make me read. Get back in the habit.
Likes:
- Dark Materials trilogy.
- Horror - esp. Graham Masterton
- Non-fiction - love popular science books and history.
- Sci fi
- Short stories
If you haven't read Philip Pullman's other novels in the HDM universe they might be worth a go. The Book of Dust trilogy is still waiting for its third part, and the second book is not brilliant, but I really enjoyed the first one and it stands pretty well on its own as a prequel novel.
I've recently been reading the Rivers of London series, which is sort of urban fantasy / crime. They're not high literature, and I recommend them only relatively weakly, but they're very easy reading and pretty fun. Might be a nice one to ease yourself back into the habit again.
If you want some "serious" sci-fi that is also very accessible and action-oriented, The Expanse might be worth a look too.
I have read Three-Body Problem, and it certainly wasn't a bad book, but it also was far from top tier for me. The story is a little silly in places, and the writing (at least in the English translation) can be a bit of a slog. By all means read it, and you'll probably enjoy it, but maybe not as your first foray back into casual literature.
The Book of Dust
Funnily enough what triggered me to write this post was when I looked over at my full bookcase at all the unread books and then saw my original trilogy of HDM. I thought "Maybe I should re-read it?". I've never re-read a book in my life cos I never saw the point in re-treading something.
But it's been almost 20yrs since I did and I've forgotten a LOT of it. I don't think I'd be able to read the new series without re-reading the OG trilogy but maybe that's a good starting point anyway? Reading a series I loved to springboard into the new series? It'll be easy cos I'll be rediscovering something I know.
So I just grabbed Northern Lights after adding everyone's recommendations to my list. I may start with NL though.
Funny you should say that. Someone had bought me The Book of Dust vol.1 ages ago, and it had been sitting on my bookshelf unread for exactly that reason. About a year ago I finally convinced myself to re-read the HDM trilogy so that I could finally get on and read it!
HDM held up decently well with adult eyes. It's still a very emotive, well-paced and convincingly plotted read, although there were parts that made me raise my eyebrows in a way I undoubtedly didn't as a younger reader, and the third book perhaps didn't hold up quite as well as I remembered. But all in all I greatly enjoyed the revisit, and like I said I really enjoyed La Belle Sauvage (which is a pretty weird and trippy book in a way, but a very enjoyable trip all the same).
I recommend the Forever War by Joe Haldeman, it's kind of dated and amateurish and weird in a Heinlein kinda way
Forever War and Forever Free are an amazing duo. I don’t think they are amateurish though, Haldeman writes these exactly as they need to be to represent the difficulty Vietnam vets faced returning home.
Edit: I confused the novels Forever Free and Forever Peace. Forever Free is the duet to Forever War, while Forever Peace is disconnected but plays with similar themes as both Forever War and Ender’s Game.
I like how humanity becomes a literal hivemind of Polynesians it rules but also making the enemies a totally mindless drone hivemind is pretty yikesy tbqhbbq
It's interesting in that historical sense idk if I agree about whether it really expresses something we need to get abt the vets suffering after the war or something though haha, and that when he comes back from the time skip everyone is a hivemind of Polynesians.
The hivemind is an analogy for the way the average person had turned on the war and viewed it as a national disgrace. Just watch that opening act of Rambo, the soldiers returning from Nam late in the conflict came home to joblessness and derision. A far cry from the parades and support of the GI bill the generation before had.
Haldeman is trying to show a universal truth of long wars, at some point the home you left stops existing, and you return to a place that isn’t what you fought for in the first place, though of course Haldeman takes this to absurdity almost. Like many vets of Vietnam Mandela and his fellow soldiers are now so feared and removed that society doesn’t have a mechanism for integration. Haldeman uses genetic and cultural shifts to represent the more subtle social ones.
I've got two for you. Both by the same author but they're both real page turners.
The Seven Deaths of Evelyn Harcastle and The Devil and the Dark Water by Stuart Turton.
If you like horror, I find Stephen King books pretty easy to read. The Mr Mercedes books are worth a read. Then there's always the show to compare to. Although I guess pretty much every King book has a movie or show.
I will just say that the Three-Body Problem and its sequels are some of the most amazing, mind-harrowing books I’ve ever read. The first book does take some getting into, sure, but they will definitely repay the effort.
There are few series I am evangelical about and they are:
- The Laundry Files by Charles Stross - darkly funny spy horror with lashings of Lovecraft
- The Bas-Lag trilogy by China Mieville - fantasy/horror/weirdness
- The Divine Cities by Robert Jackson Bennett - but difficult to summarise but a fantasy novel if the setting was a bit like the Indian subcontinent fighting back against the British Empire with a weapon that allowed them to kill the gods that enabled their subjugation.
