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"Southern Reach Trilogy" by Jeff VanderMeer [0]. I absolutely loved every book. "Annihilation" is probably my favorite. What hooked me about the series were tw

"Southern Reach Trilogy" by Jeff VanderMeer [0]. I absolutely loved every book. "Annihilation" is probably my favorite. What hooked me about the series were two things: 1) It was very, /very/ weird and 2) it often times felt like the characters had no power. "Bliss Montage" by Ling Ma [1]. The short stories felt dreamy - drifting in perspectives, places, and times. Many of the stories had a supernatural aspect to them. "Invisible Cities" by Italo Calvino [2]. This book is a puzzle. You could read it front to back, or you could read it in the various different orders. There is no intended order. Again, very dreamy and weird. This book is a conversation, where Marco Polo is telling Genghis Khan of the cities within his kingdom. I was introduced to this book by Jacob Geller's video essay "Cities without people" [3]. "Ring" by Koji Suzuki [4]. One of my first horror book reads, and also the first in the Ring series. The "Ring" movies are based off of this book. I also read the 2nd one, which provides a very different view on the series and gives the horrors in the book a scientific backing. This year for me has been the year of strange novels. [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Southern_Reach_Trilogy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Southern_Reach_Trilogy [1]: https://us.macmillan.com/books/9780374717124/blissmontage https://us.macmillan.com/books/9780374717124/blissmontage [2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Invisible_Cities https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Invisible_Cities [3]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aBBuoD9eL5k https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aBBuoD9eL5k [4]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ring_(Suzuki_novel) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ring_(Suzuki_novel)

unaindz 3y ago
Last year Annihilation and the rest of the trilogy rekindled my passion for reading after almost a decade. Vandemeer really has a way with words but specifically in this novel he manages to describe what I though was indescribable. It was only fair that I tried another one of his trilogies, Borne, The Strange Bird and Dead Astronauts. With Borne being pretty normal (for Vandermeer standards) and the other two reading like pretty ramblings at times if you lack the context. I still loved them but they may not be for everyone. You should read them in the order above so that you have as many pieces of the prose puzzle when you reach Dead Astronauts. But even if you end up not liking the writing of the last two books, Borne can still be enjoyed independently. As for this year. "Blood music" by Greg Bear. Biology scify with a pretty weird concept. "Firefall" trilogy by Peter Watts Usually a scify story revolvs around one core idea, this one does too, but it kept surprising me with new secondary but interesting ones until the end. Read The Colonel between the two main books. "Rifters" trilogy by Peter Watts Exploring sexual abuse, empathy "Story of Your Life" by Ted Chiang Short story about a linguist learning the recently arrived aliens language. Liked the humor depicting the different perspectives between scientists and military. Pretty emotional. I'm not sure what it tells about me but all of these are bittersweet scify with good prose.
- cyrialize 3y ago
  I've read "Story of Your Life" for a class in college! I really wish I kept the book that had that story, there were many other interesting ones in there.

unaindz 3y ago

Last year Annihilation and the rest of the trilogy rekindled my passion for reading after almost a decade. Vandemeer really has a way with words but specifically in this novel he manages to describe what I though was indescribable. It was only fair that I tried another one of his trilogies, Borne, The Strange Bird and Dead Astronauts. With Borne being pretty normal (for Vandermeer standards) and the other two reading like pretty ramblings at times if you lack the context. I still loved them but they may not be for everyone. You should read them in the order above so that you have as many pieces of the prose puzzle when you reach Dead Astronauts. But even if you end up not liking the writing of the last two books, Borne can still be enjoyed independently. As for this year. "Blood music" by Greg Bear. Biology scify with a pretty weird concept. "Firefall" trilogy by Peter Watts Usually a scify story revolvs around one core idea, this one does too, but it kept surprising me with new secondary but interesting ones until the end. Read The Colonel between the two main books. "Rifters" trilogy by Peter Watts Exploring sexual abuse, empathy "Story of Your Life" by Ted Chiang Short story about a linguist learning the recently arrived aliens language. Liked the humor depicting the different perspectives between scientists and military. Pretty emotional. I'm not sure what it tells about me but all of these are bittersweet scify with good prose.

cyrialize 3y ago
I've read "Story of Your Life" for a class in college! I really wish I kept the book that had that story, there were many other interesting ones in there.