Asking for recommendations of books or series of books from the genres fantasy & scifi mostly that are sort of escapist and nice/fun to read.
I use audiobooks for my sleep as audh and have listened to the Discworld novels for that for some time now, but I can't really handle the individual angle and especially the way he writes about womens bodies anymore. Also this is my third round of it unless I find an alternative. Last night got to the point in Unseen Academicals where he felt the need to make sure every reader knows that nobody, absolutely nobody found the fat girl attractive & I just can't do this to myself anymore.
And the same goes for reading other fiction. I have read my Steinbecks and Asimovs long ago, have read most of Stephen King even though he is vey much ultralib, but I love horror. Tolkien, scifi classics, horror classics and such I have all read, but am struggling to find modern fiction that is written from a leftist pov even a little.
Any recommendations on this and on the night-night audiobook series would be so so welcome.
Gideon the Ninth by Tamsyn Muir. Well written, character driven, lesbian space necromancy.
The Culture Series by Ian M. Banks? Kim Stanley Robinson's stuff, maybe? I've only read a couple of KSR tho.
Edit: Eh, prolly not all that lighthearted now that I think about it.😅
Also, I think Pratchett gets better as he gets older... my favorite series by him was actually his Tifanny aching series. But I totally get it.
Tiffany is probably my favourite as well. I also really like the Moist Von Lipwig books, they are just good fun. He also feels like a neurodivergent character to me, misfit and needs to have his brain go brr.
But yeah, need me a break from them still. They are obviosly going to feature a very individualistic worldview and am currently just a bit tired of all that.
The Culture was amazing, I could take that on the night night list. It's scifi so it's my kind of lighthearted. Been so long since I read it too that all I really remember is how much I loved it. His other books were amazing too, including the non scifi stuff, The Wasp Factory is quite the book, but definitely not lighthearted.
Kim Stanley Robinson I will definitely look up. Thank you.
Welcome! Hmm, have you tried LeGuin? I've only read her Hainish cycle, but I hear Earthsea is pretty good too.
Well this is one of those that I have never gotten around to, no idea why either. Will probably read these as books. Thanks so much.
Oh I love these recommendatios, thank you. Looks like I can get The daughter of Doctor Moreau from my local library and Perdido Street Station is there too, just have to wait a bit for it.
Welcome. I found the latter half of the Hainish Cycle to be a dramatic improvement over the first few, but your mileage may vary. I'll get around to Earthsea myself, one of these days. Those Becky Chambers books sound pretty good too though.😅
The Player of Games is fairly lighthearted, and a good intro to the series. Others... not so much.
His Dark Materials.
A little girl goes up against the fascist church-state to save her friend and encounters theoretical physics and/or God. Also featuring: talking bears, a scientist on the edge, and gay angels.
10/10
Thank you. Wasn't this a tv series as well? I remember starting to watch it, but it didn't hook me at least in that format.
Yeah there was a TV show and a movie. The movie SUCKED ASS (fuck you Nichole Kidman) but the TV show is good IMO, it makes a lot more sense if you've read the books though.
Phillip Pullman pissed of theists so much they published a whole book about how he's the "Pied piper of Atheism" lmao
Have you tried any of Yahtzee's books? The "will save the..." Books are really good.
Anything by Becky Chambers but specifically the Monk and Robot books. They're solarpunk novels set on a new world that humans colonized. There was a robot awakening but it resolved peacefully. The robots just left for the woods and the humans transitioned into a sustainable and equitable society. The main character is a non-binary person who pours tea and listens to people's problems. They pedal around the world with a solar-powered bike trailer. Very cozy.
Seconding Becky Chambers but for the Wayfarers series, starting with Long Way to a Small Angry Planet. Super cozy slice of life stuff in a Star Trek-ish universe.
I found the Wayfarers first book as an audiobook, going to pick this up as the good night story today.
I read the first Wayfarer book yesterday and really enjoy it. Thanks for the rec!
It's a fantastic comfort book and I'm an absolute sucker for interspecies romance
I"m loving them. I just finished the second one. So much for getting work done today.
Last night got to the point in Unseen Academicals where he felt the need to make sure every reader knows that nobody, absolutely nobody found the fat girl attractive & I just can't do this to myself anymore.
I'm not sure of the exact timeline, but I think that was one of the books co-written by his daughter because his alzheimers was starting to make it difficult/impossible for him to write on his own (I think this started around or just after the 30th discworld book; there's a slump in the prose and it starts to scan a little differently, then picks up and improves over a few books, giving the impression that it was someone else's hand and it took a while for them to get into the swing of it). Also that story in particular basically revolved around appearances and human spite/prejudice in much the same way Jingo revolved around, well, jingoism and racism.
Could be, but he isn't exactly kind to fat womens bodies in previous books either.
It's the whole way in which a larger body turns the woman into a wholly non-sexual maternal object (Unseen Academicals) and the character is just trying to prove their worth despite the flaw of failing to meet the body ideal. Or like in Lord and Ladies where the entire character arch of Agnes just really isn't great.
It's especially shitty when Terry was so great with marginalized people and yet even he did not do so great on this. Which I understand from just how our society views larger bodies, but it's still shitty.
I do still love these books, just need a break from them.
For light-hearted sci-fi, I like Ringworld and the other Known Space books. It's just far out space adventures. It is mid-century sci Fi written by a man, though...
