I have started The Three-Body Problem by Liu Cixin after hearing so much about it. However, I am struggling to keep going.
Haven’t read much new sci-fi as of late, other than The Expanse novells (starts with Leviathan Wakes). I’d say it’s pretty progressive, though not “young”, characters are in the range of late 20’s and into their late 30’s.
1 Like
I’d recommend looking into Becky Chambers’ books, The Long Way To a Small, Angry Planet and its sequel, A Closed And Common Orbit. Both are pretty fast paced sci fi books which i think pretty strongly fit into the “young, progressive perspective” you’re looking for.
3 Likes
What @Protome said about Becky Chambers, is spot on. You might also enjoy Anne Leckie and maybe Kameron Hurley, both of whom I think fit your brief.
1 Like
That’s the third time I’ve seen Becky Chambers recommended so I’m going to start there. Thanks everyone. 
1 Like
As far as I’m concerned comics are books. There is a very nice comics thread in this forum however.
Saga is amazing!
Randomly picked out Gwendy’s Button Box by Stephen King and Richard Chizmar, looks like another short one.
1 Like
Becky Chamber’s The Long Road to a Small Angry Planet is excellent and likely a good fit for you.
Currently reading The Wizard of the Crow,
By Ngugi Wa’Thiongo
Would really recommend it to anyone.
I’ve never read anything by Silva before. So far there’s lots of characters to keep track of, murders and international intrigue. Hope I like it because there are around 16 books in the series!
I’ve got a stack of about 26 Green Lantern issues I’ve ignored. I’m about to start digging into them, before they fall on me and trap me for days.
Currently I’m reading She of the Mountains as recommended by a friend,
She of the Mountains is a beautifully rendered illustrated novel that weaves a passionate, contemporary love story with a re-imagining of Hindu mythology. Both narratives explore the complex ways that we are formed and transformed by love, and show how the process of learning to love and be loved by another can ultimately—and sometimes painfully—bring us back to our selves.
This is the provided blurb for it, I don’t have a lot to say about it other than it’s been called good trans/nb fiction by a good friend of mine.
Dangerous Spirits is another one I’m not done yet, but is kind of a mix of a compilation of stories of the Windigo (Wendigo) through the lens of the Algonquian nations. It also goes a lot deeper, into how colonialists reacted and how they are also involved in some of the later stories.
In the traditional Algonquian world, the windigo is the spirit of selfishness, which can transform a person into a murderous cannibal. Native peoples over a vast stretch of North America—from Virginia in the south to Labrador in the north, from Nova Scotia in the east to Minnesota in the west—believed in the windigo, not only as a myth told in the darkness of winter, but also as a real danger.
Drawing on oral narratives, fur traders’ journals, trial records, missionary accounts, and anthropologists’ field notes, this book is a revealing glimpse into indigenous beliefs, cross-cultural communication, and embryonic colonial relationships. It also ponders the recent resurgence of the windigo in popular culture and its changing meaning in a modern context.
There are a couple other books I’ve been browsing lately, mostly for inspiration for a tabletop setting, these are the only I’m in the process of reading front to back.
I feel like every time I finish a volume of The Familiar it ends with me thinking “well what the fuck is he possibly going to do now?”
So upon finishing volume 4 earlier this afternoon, my thoughts were the same. Danielewski’s bringing together several of the different character threads which seem to be on collision course with one another. The real weird sci-fi hooks are deeply set at this point, and the more he hints at the more it seems like something thoroughly cosmic in nature. I’m real interested in it, but holy shit man - dude’s got another 20 volumes planned (I think), and it feels like things are coming together far too fast for a 20 volume pace (these guys can’t all stay alive for another 20 volumes, is what I’m saying). Still, I’m interested in seeing how it turns out, assuming he survives long enough to write them).
Gwendy’s Button Box, Stephen King and Richard Chizmar
A very short story (170 pages), fiction with some supernatural elements. A girl in Maine is entrusted with the fate of the entire world. Well written, a good light read.
I’m not currently reading anything right now, so thought I’d share a few recent favourites.
The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August, by Claire North
An excellent story of a man who finds himself living the same life over and over. Harry August was born in 1919, and lived a normal life until he died, whereupon he is reborn in the same place, in 1919, with the memories of his previous lives intact. Over the next lives, he meets others just like him.
The Beggar and The Hare by Tuomas Kyrö
It’s a Finnish novel about an impoverished Romanian man named Vatanescu who is trafficked to Finland by a criminal gang to work as a beggar.
He escapes this fate and with the company of an injured rabbit that he rescues, travels the country meeting a range of people and becoming a bit of a folk hero. It’s a lovely, quirky story about Europe, capitalism and the kindness of strangers. I suppose it’s little bit like Forrest Gump in some ways.
The Little Old Lady Who Broke All The Rules by Catharina Ingelman-Sundberg
Can you call something a genre after just a couple of examples? If so, then this is a very charming Swedish OAP Crime Caper. It’s marketed to look as much like the awesome ‘The One Hundred Year Old Man Who Climbed Out Of The Window And Disappeared’ as possible, because publishers have no imagination, but it’s not really all that similar. It’s great fun.
The Rabbit Back Literature Society by Pasi Ilmari Jaaskelainen
is an awesome novel about a young woman who is invited to join a famous elite writer’s society in a small Finnish town, discovering their weird games and past. It’s charming and Intriguing, full of creepy fantastical/folklore elements and dark humour. I really enjoyed it.
The Vanishing Act by Mette Jakobsen
It’s an enigmatic, dream-like story of a girl, Minou, living on a tiny island with her father and 2 other eccentric neighbours, and of her mother, who walked out of the door a year ago and vanished.
I think this is one I like more for how it feels, than the story. It’s quirky, melancholic, and beautiful, with a great sense of the loneliness and isolation of this island.
1 Like
Aside from school readings, I’m either in the middle of or have started a bunch of books that I’m working through at the moment.
The sort of prequel to The Golden Compass by Philip Pullman. It seems good so far, not super sure how into it I’m going to get after finding out it is a prequel, though I loved those books
I’ve been re-reading Dan Abnett’s Gaunt’s Ghosts books. I just really liked the characters and he’s the best 40k author out there. I don’t think I ever finished the series because everybody dying eventually got to me.
My partner has been getting me to try to read this forever and I started it but haven’t gotten around to finishing it yet. It actually seems pretty good but I’ve been too busy with other things.
This book is real good. I think I’m about halfway through it. It seems to be split into different sections that each tell different stories of varied interconnectedness.
I was reminded of this recently and it is incredibly interesting. I had to get it on kindle though since finding a physical copy is super expensive. The kindle version doesn’t have any of the maps in it though, which is a real bummer. There is a link at the beginning to an imgur album though.
Currently reading The lies of Locke Lamora…slowly but surely. It’s pretty good and a part of a trilogy. What I really enjoy is how it tells of how a youngman became something of an oldschool Lupin III
1 Like
I started reading The Tomb by F. Paul Wilson for my Halloween Horror Reading. I didn’t quite get it done by the end of October, but I’m still going to finish it.
https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/51bBE83yknL.jpg
Like many people, I read Jack Kerouac’s On The Road when I was 17 and it made an impression on me for what it meant, for the sense of freedom it carries. Time passed and, looking back, I kind of disregarded it a bit more every year, seeing it as a juvenile dream of living without consequences that hardly translates into happiness in the long run.
Last week I finished Kerouac’s Dharma Bums. I loved every bit of it. The way it’s written, the ideas it shares, the positivity between the characters. It might have been published a year after On the Road, but it does feel like a more mature version of it. I’m glad I waited on this one, and I’m glad I read it now.
1 Like
Kafka on the Shore, Haruki Murakami
My first Murakami book was The Wind Up Bird Chronicle, about 6 years ago? I remember reading it at the same time I had to serve on a Grand Jury, picked it up at random in a store near the courthouse. Was immediately hooked. Since then, I’ve been gradually reading all his books.
My favorite has been 1Q84 , have re read it many times.
