Every week, I'll be making a pinned post inviting you to share your favorite books with the slop-hungry hogs of Hexbear yummy. Each week will be loosely structured around a particular genre, time period or other theme.

Last week's thread can be found here

For this week's theme: Worlds to get lost in

Books whose settings are so vividly painted that it's a pleasure just to spend time in them. Maybe it's a particular historical moment brought to life or a fantastical world. Perhaps it's a particular scene or milleu. Whatever the case, even if you wouldn't want to live there in real life, you don't want to come back to reality either.

Optional nerd discussion questions

What techniques does the author use to achieve the verisimilitude of their world? What particular aspects of the setting do you, personally, find so compelling? What is most alien about the setting to your own experience? What is most familiar?

If you have suggestions for future themes, DM me!

If you want to be added or removed from the ping list when I post the thread in the future, respond to this comment in the thread

  • bubbalu [they/them]
    ·
    11 days ago

    I love this idea! Recently I have been reading a lot of books about being a gay man in New York at various points. The most textured and bizarre is 'Rent Boy' by Gary Indiana about a hustler who gets involved in an organ traffiking ring. Very good parody and insight into late-decadent 90s US art world culture told through a cryptic and biting epistolary format.

    In terms of overall worldbuilding, I love the Book of the New Sun series by Gene Wolfe. He writes these dark puzzle novels which transpire in the fully realized, living, breathing worlds that nonetheless exist entirely inside dream logic.

      • thethirdgracchi [he/him, they/them]
        ·
        11 days ago

        Gary Indiana is a fucking legend. His True Crime trilogy written in the style of Bernhard is such a perfect encapsulation of the Late USAmerican mind.

          • thethirdgracchi [he/him, they/them]
            ·
            11 days ago

            Yeah you'll absolutely love them, they've got the same propulsive energy and he's on record as being inspired to write them by Bernhard. The storylines have a bit more "plot" and there's multiple characters we get inside the heads of in some form, but the language and the spite is the same.

      • bubbalu [they/them]
        ·
        11 days ago

        Can you recommend some novels or novellas with the same sort of strong voice as Gary Indiana? I have been falling really flat recently and it's making me a bit bored. I'm agnostic about theme and setting I just want to read good writing!

        It's a truly demented book. The closest thing that comes to mind for me is 'Sugarfrosted Nutsack' by Mark Leyner which goes a bit too gonzo (as maybe the title suggests). Also I haven't read it in more than a decade. The title was entertaining so I read my dad's copy when I was little.