8 ms·
Mostly non-fiction books. I am one of the few people in my circles who reads primarily fiction books. Anyone else read mostly fiction?
by TedDoesntTalk 6y ago
Mostly non-fiction books. I am one of the few people in my circles who reads primarily fiction books.
Anyone else read mostly fiction?
- uncledave 6y agoYes. I want an escape these days. Worked my way through the Expanse series this year.
- ngngngng 6y agoI'm having a hard time justifying reading those books after watching the show. I feel like typically the book gives me a vastly different experience from the on-screen adaptation. But The Expanse screenwriters did such a great job transferring it to a TV series it feels like I'm reading exactly what I already watched.
- uncledave 6y agoThat wears off at season 5. There is a lot of divergence from the book there already.
- jacksonkmarley 6y agoMiller in the book and on screen was one of my favourite characters ever, watching Thomas Jane own that role makes it worth it. I was really interested to learn that the book was written by two people, one wrote Miller, the other wrote the other (annoying) guy.
- rtkaratekid 6y agoI felt that way but I’m on book two and it’s totally worth reading them. They’re even better. Not that the show isn’t good, the books are just fantastic.
- SamBam 6y agoI read 95% fiction, but I feel like a book list from a notable in the tech field is expected to be mostly tech non-fiction, because, honestly, why would I trust a Swift developer more than anyone else for fiction reading? (That is, there's no reason why his recommendations would be any worse than anyone else's, but I see no real reason I'd trust his fiction recommendations more than anyone else's -- being in tech doesn't mean we'd have the same taste in fiction.)
- travmatt 6y ago> I read 45 books in 2020 He’s claimed to have read a fairly large number of books in 2020. So not on the basis of his writing swift, rather his taste as a reader.
- criddell 6y agoWhat novel have you read recently that you would recommend? I've asked that in the past here and was recommended The Dog Stars and The Goldfinch, both of which I enjoyed. Probably the best books I read in 2020 are Norwegian Wood (Murakami) and Warlight: A Novel (Ondaatje).
- ofrzeta 6y agoSpeaking of Murakami I re-read Hard-boiled Wonderland this year which is a bit of tour de force at times but in my opinion still one of his best novels. Sci-fi in a weird way without a lot of technology and in a dream-like (nightmarish at times) narrative.
- criddell 6y agoThanks for the recommendation. I’ll put Wonderland on my list.
- cgh 6y agoThe Goldfinch is on my list. I’m a big Murakami fan as well so I approve of your excellent taste.
- jacksonkmarley 6y agoEarlier this year I read Lavie Tidhar's 'A man lies dreaming', that was a bit of an experience. Only attempt it with a very open mind.
- criddell 6y agoI just looked this one up wow - sounds provocative and interesting. The Amazon page says: > [A Man Lies Dreaming] supposes that the National Socialists lost their bid for Germany in 1933, after which the country fell into the hands of Jewish Communists in an event known as the Fall. Now it's 1939 and an underworld of ex-Nazis has taken root in London, where they are essentially an oppressed minority. It’s on my list now too. Thanks.
- warent 6y agoYep! Not just fiction but fantasy. It's my favorite genre, and the more fantastical the better. I'm currently on book 9 of 12 in the Wheel of Time series by Robert Jordan. Also enjoying everything by Brandon Sanderson who I believe to be greatest living fantasy writer, perhaps one of the greatest of all time.
- angrais 6y agoI've heard good things about Brandon, and since you speak of him so highly, which of his books or series would you recommend I start with?
- rjkaplan 6y agoStrongly recommend either The Way of Kings or Mistborn. They're the first books in two separate series of his. The Way of Kings is epic fantasy. Mistborn is somewhere between fantasy and YA.
- bitexploder 6y agoWay of kings is epic in scope. Try Mistborn — it’s faster pace, lower commitment, and showcases Sanderson style and magic system building nicely. Just an aside if you have kids he has a lot of great young adult novels as well. He is simply prolific and enjoyable. I worked through most of one of his writing classes he teaches and it changed how I view fnantsy fiction.
- fermentation 6y agoMistborn is definitely the best place to start. It is a fantastic trilogy that wraps up so perfectly, which is rare in the world of popular fantasy. Stormlight Archive is amazing, but it might be worth waiting for the 5th book to release (maybe 3ish years from now), which appears to be a sort of stopping point before the next five books.
- pugio 6y agoWhile Mistborn is an excellent choice, I sometimes start people on some of his YA (as a lower commitment): - Rithmatist is my favorite, but is only one book. - Steelheart is a very fun fresh take on super powers. - Skyward is like Dragon's Blood meets Space Invaders - it's great. The third book should be finished this year. Finally, he does have one middlegrade series which most people seem to overlook: Alcatraz vs The Evil Librarians. It is just awesome, especially for anyone who loves trope busting.
- cgh 6y agoYes, currently working through the Bernie Gunther series by Philip Kerr. Highly recommended. Bernie is a Berlin PI who ends up in the SS. It is pretty grim in spots but full of tremendous black humour as well. If you enjoy detective stories and/or historical fiction, please take a look at this series.
- xcambar 6y agoI second this recommendation. The whole series is amazing. I doubt though that Bernie would appreciate to be said to "end up in the SS" :)
- eatonphil 6y agoThis was a good read. If anyone familiar with Germany authors can comment I'd love to be reading more historical fiction by actual Germans (Kerr is English, I think). I'm familiar with Thomas Mann and Hermann Hesse (and of course, Goethe), but looking for authors a little more approachable than these greats. All Quiet On The Western Front was more in this category of an approachable read. tldr; looking for recommendations from more recent German novelists translated into English because this American has a hard time finding them.
- muffinman26 6y agoHans Peter Richter wrote multiple young adult historical fiction books about the rise of Hitler, which have been translated to English and are very approachable. His most famous is Friedrich. They were written in the 80s, which isn't exactly modern but is certainly more recent than Herman Hesse. Not recent at all, but as you mentioned Goethe, the comparatively lower class playwright Friedrich Schiller was considered to be his intellectual equal and rival.
- eatonphil 6y agoThank you! I'd really like to get away from war novels, but I'll give this one a try.
- elorant 6y agoI read a shit-ton of science fiction books and the main reason is that I find them useful as a prelude in doing further research for various scientific issues that I'm unaware of. That and the fact that they're fun.
- croh 6y agoCan you please provide the list of sci-fi books ? I am really missing good books from sci-fi genre, these days.
- elorant 6y agoSure, here are the best ones I've read this last year (not all of them are published in 2020 though). We are legion - D. Taylor. A four book series, haven't read the rest of the books. Children of time - A. Tchaikovsky The Unicorn Project - G. Kim. This would be especially interesting for the HN crowd. It's not sf per se, rather more than contemporary fiction, but the main theme is about programming and politics in a big corporation. Quite original and a lot of fun. Agency - W. Gibson The space between worlds - M. Johnson To sleep in a sea of stars - C. Paolini The algebraist - I. Banks Hope you'll find something to your liking. Happy new year.
- croh 6y agothanks a lot. Wish you same !
- jacksonkmarley 6y agoAltered Carbon, read it before you watch it imho. Amazing, awesome book/series.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- Jtsummers 6y agoI normally read a lot of fiction, but for some reason couldn't get into anything non-technical this year. I have several books that I've started and enjoyed, but couldn't make myself sit down and read. If it's technical, though, I can read it cover-to-cover in a week. Very frustrating, but maybe next year I'll get back into fiction reading.
- colechristensen 6y agoI have a difficult time finding fiction that I appreciate these days. I could make a long list of things I have enjoyed, but I haven’t been able to do much to add to it.
- Kratisto 6y agoIf you don't mind me asking, what fiction have you enjoyed? Maybe some people in here can help out.
- jacksonkmarley 6y agoThis, I feel like I have already read all of the books I'll really like.
- TedDoesntTalk 6y agoThat sounds like “I’m not going to travel anymore because I’ve already seen all the places I’ll really like.”
- jacksonkmarley 6y agoHaha, maybe, although I would suggest that it's easier to be exposed to all the good fiction than to visit all the good places. I can scan through a lot of books with everything online.
- TedDoesntTalk 6y ago> it's easier to be exposed to all the good fiction Exposed or actually read? If you read on average 1 book per month and are aged 50, that's at most 600 books you've read. There are thousands upon thousands of books that have received awards and are worthwhile (obviously that is subjective but even if you consider 10% to be "worthwhile", there is still a huge corpus), so to say you've been exposed to all the good fiction is unlikely. I think you need more influences if you are out of ideas. Or you're not trying hard enough.
- ofrzeta 6y agoThrough a newspaper article I discovered Lauren Groff. I read and liked The Monsters of Templeton, Fates and Furies and Florida.
- iamacyborg 6y agoI read a lot of Warhammer stuff, interspersed with a mix of non fiction. I need my bolter porn though.
- renke1 6y agoMostly hard science fiction with the occasional technical non-fiction book mixed in between. For the next year I want to read more non-fiction non-technical books.
- nanomonkey 6y agoSome favorites from this last year: Gideon the Ninth, & Harrow the Ninth by Tamsyn Muir. Delta V by Daniel Suarez (space mining!!!) Battle Grounds, & Peace Talks (Dresden Files) by Jim Butcher Bobiverse 1,2 & 3 by Dennis E. Taylor
- anotherevan 6y agoThere is a forth in the Bobiverse series called Heaven's River. Currently only available in audiobook. Other formats later this month by the looks of it. https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/42950440-heaven-s-river https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/42950440-heaven-s-river
- nanomonkey 6y agoThanks!!
- sharkweek 6y agoAlmost entirely fiction here (literary, contemporary, book club type novels mostly, occasional genre). I enjoy the occasional history-focused narrative non-fiction, but like to use reading as escapism, so prefer stories.
- screye 6y agoI usually read fiction. It feels like the difference between a photograph and a painting. My biggest complaint with non-fiction is that it often starts with a person with a story, who may not be the best writer. Thus, despite the content of the material, the prose can be rather drab. Additionally, no - fiction also falls into the trappings of 'why not just read the synopsis?'. The non-fiction I love tends to often just be compellingly written textbooks. Eg: DesignOfDesign or Indian after Gandhi OR Blogs (Derek Lowe, Sinocism, SSC) Fiction simply has a LOT more freedom to experiment with ideas and lets the author disto ideas in a way that non-fiction never can, due to its constraints. I am good at suspending disbelief, so the emotional attachment for both mediums is pretty equal for me. I know many friends who can't read fiction, because they simply can't get invested in a 'not-real' story.
- nairoz 6y agoMy favorite books of 2020 are : - Lolita by Nabokov, delightfully written and disturbing - the Foundation series by Asimov, a classic. Great plot
- anotherevan 6y agoBooks that I particularly enjoyed this year: I reread the tripod trilogy by John Christopher: The White Mountains, The City of Gold and Lead, and The Pool of Fire. Hadn't read them for a while but enjoyed them as always. Heaven's River by Dennis Taylor is the forth in the Bobiverse series. Three Laws Lethal by David Walton. The House of Styx by Derek Künsken took me a while to get into, but then enjoyed it. The Oppenheimer Alternative by Robert Sawyer. Don't usually like historical fiction but will make an exception for this one. And for something different, if you want to try rural Australian fiction find anything by Jane Harper, but in particular The Dry and The Lost Man.
- ulisesrmzroche 6y agoI read Game of Thrones for the first time. I was surprised to find out how different it is from the TV series, and that it's still being written. This was after completing Robert Jordan's Wheel of Time, which was a favorite in high school but never finished. This was really just nostalgia. But I figured why not, it's 2020. They're not so good though, I think the series will be better with both books.
- KineticLensman 6y agoI read predominantly fiction with some occasional non-fiction thrown in. My two big recommendations from my 2020 reading are (fiction): A Memory Called Empire, by Arkady Martine, 2020 Hugo Winner. It could be loosely described as a SF political thriller and contains some great characters, good ideas and genuine suspense. The future context of the story is based on the author's Ph.D research into the imperial tension between the intensely sophisticated Byzantine empire and its smaller neighbours in the 11th century. (non-fiction): Carrying the Fire, by Michael Collins. This is the autobiography of the astronaut who stayed in orbit around the Moon while Armstrong and Collins gained the kudos of the first lunar landing. I've read several accounts of the Apollo programme over the years, and this was by far and away the best written. Collin's account of his Gemini 10 mission is also gripping. This involved him spacewalking to an undocked Agena Target Vehicle while John Young was manually formation flying the Gemini spacecraft. Collins had to make sure he wasn't over any of the manoeuvring thrusters that Young might have needed to use to avoid a collision with the Target.
- TedDoesntTalk 6y agoCarrying the Fire sounds great! Thanks for the recommendation.
- mariusor 6y agoI can recommend two strong stories that came out earlier in 2020: "Piranesi" by Susanna Clarke was great. Minimalist and eerie, with a satisfying science-fantasy plot. Very different in size, scope and theme from Clarke's previous novel, "Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell". "The invisible life of Addie La Rue" by V.E. Schwab. A good character and a good story, but with a couple of tropey elements here and there. I had fun with it, but since I can't remember its end just a couple of months after reading it, suggests that it (the end) might be a little underwhelming.
- checkyoursudo 6y agoBecause I read so much nonfiction for my work as a cognitive scientist, I tend to prefer fiction for my personal enjoyment. I suppose that I could choose other unrelated nonfiction subjects, but for some reason that seems more like work again. Though, I do read some nonfiction for personal enjoyment, such as history, pop science, etc. The evolution of my career has been (nonfiction) writer, then (nonfiction) editor, then lawyer, and finally cognitive scientist. Almost all of my adult life has been either writing and reading for study, or writing and reading for work. Reading is still the #1 thing I do on my own time despite it also being the #1 thing I do for work, but, please, make it pretend. :)