Ideally the school would be more than a backdrop for storytelling. I really enjoy reading about magic classes and assignments and projects. However anytime I do find it it’s tied in with the typical YA tropes and I’m feeling sick of that at the moment. I’m fine with a teenage cast so long as it isn’t written in YA style.
Adult Hogwarts please.
This post was inspired by u/Temibrezel and u/appseto, who had previously compiled lists of popular book series and charted them by word count.
I loved the idea and decided to take it one step further and create a live version on my blog (via Chart.js) that can be continuously updated w/ new series and additions to series:
If you’d like me to add/update any series or fix any mistakes, please respond to this comment.
A few notes:
2022-04-22 Update: Fixed some formatting, updated the slug to my site, …
I finished the goblin emperor last night. I read the entire thing in two sittings, and was up until 4:00 AM in the morning to finish it. I loved that book so much, and at one point I bawled my eyes out.
The book is about Maia, fourth son of an emperor, who was shunned from the royal court and was never expected to amount to anything. But an accident killed his father, all of his brothers, and an unprepared, not very educated, eighteen year old Maia finds himself the emperor in a strange place among strangers. The book is about Maia and how he rises up to that task.
But I didn’t care about the plot. Maia is immensely lovable. He is sweet, kind, gentle, and empathic. He is not perfect, he snaps at people, loses composure and what not. But he is super likable. What elevates him though is how well he is written. Maia’s mom died when he was 8 and for the next ten years he has been abused by his caretaker and didn’t have any other company for the most part. The author …
I was removed from my PhD program and I’m still trying to comprehend why and come to terms with it. I need a source of inspiration. Please tell me of a book where the protagonist is removed from their place of learning (school/college) and somehow keeps their head straight and achieves their academic goals.
Edit: I want to thank all of you for both the suggestions and the sympathy. You lot are the answer for when someone says humanity is inherently evil. I love all of you and want to meet you some day. I will make reading all these books part of my bucket list. I don’t know what I’m going to do next, but as Jerry Smith once said, “Life is a struggle and I’ll stop when I die!” I hope I die quick though.
There’s an astounding amount of people that seem to have issues with almost every single female character and they don’t seem to realize they’re the ones who have the issue.
If a female character is written as nice, she’s called submissive and anti feminist.
If she’s muscly and badass, she’s too much like a man.
She wants to get married and have a family? Sexist.
She never wants to have children, maybe doesn’t even like children? Sexist.
She’s attractive? Pandering to male gaze (because fuck us queer women, amirite? We don’t like looking at attractive women 🙄). Sexist.
She’s unattractive? Pandering to purity culture. Sexist.
If a male author created her, he’s misogynist because he’s a man, so of course he’s misogynist.
If a female author created her, she’s got internalized misogyny and has fallen victim to the patriarchy.
These attitudes are prevalent everywhere, but I think, from my personal …
A funny book is funny from chapter to chapter.
A heartbreaking book is often only heartbreaking near the end of the story. (Yes, exceptions exist, that doesn’t invalidate this trend.)
Even if you don’t care about spoilers, please consider the feelings of people other than you, and try not to spoil books by posting that they are “heartbreaking.”
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Thread inspired by: I’m 75% through book 2 of a series that has not been heartbreaking at all, and then someone mentions that it’s heartbreaking – and I’m pretty sure I’ve figured out what will happen to make this otherwise fun story turn heartbreaking, and it would have been much more fun to figure it out on my own.
My childhood was basically two things: The Simpsons and Goosebumps. I stopped reading Goosebumps when I got to high school, but before that I had all the OG collection that was released until I stopped reading them and I was so proud of them I would pack them all in my schoolbag and take them to school to pile on my desk like it was a status symbol.
Naturally as I got older I stopped reading them, they got packed away into a box and stored. I grew older, then I had a kid and had me reflecting on my life as a child and what I loved. So I did some research on goosebumps and was completely blown away that the series is still going!
There’s something like 200 or more books in the various series and a new one was just released and another announced for release.
I’ve started re-reading the original series in between other books as a bit of a nostalgic hit and started collecting the others as well. It’s nice that in today’s unpredictable, chaotic world there is …
I love to use the site to connect with friends, organize my books, and keep a memory bank of quotes/books that i’ve loved over the years, but i’m just really disappointed in their lack of growth and overall maintenance of the Goodreads platform.
I know it’s hardly groundbreaking to dislike the Goodreads website, but I’m genuinely curious as to the possible reasons why they’re so firm in their lack of updates, despite the overwhelming amount of criticism they get from readers to change their site? Other than the fact that they barely have competition when it comes to book/social media hybrid sites (storygraph included). do you guys think they might have some major changes in the works for the future?
I know. It might not immediately sound apealing to read old russian literature from an author who’s name you can’t pronounce.
But please, at some point, read a book written by Dostojevski.
Reading the psychological novels ‘Crime and punishment’ and “The brothers Karamazov’ was a truly mindexpanding experience for me.
Moreover, although Dostojevski’s novels can be complex and layered, they are surprisingly easy to read. You will soon find yourself drawn in by one of the main storylines, only to realize that there were always more stories being told.
Enjoy.
The Three Body Problem itself is is such a wildly creative book, and absolutely deserved the Hugo. If you haven’t read it, do yourself a favor and pick it up. The sequels, though, take a real turn, and I can see why they soured some people on the whole series.
The first book has so many good things going for it I almost don’t know where to start. The overarching mystery of The Three Body Problem makes the plot unbelievably propulsive - it’s definitely the kind of book you’ll stay up too late reading.
It is also jam-packed with novel tech ideas that are integrated into the plot extremely well - central to the story but embedded within it so it doesn’t feel like there’s too much exposition. Carbon nanotubes, super advanced video games with haptic feedback suits, radio astronomy - seriously so much here.
And then there are two big things that really differentiate it from the sequels. First, it has a very interesting narrative structure with two …
Well, simply put… I now know I definitely have to read everything from him.
I just finished Cage of Souls and man, what a ride.
…by the way, quick spoiler that will mean nothing to you if you havent read the book but still beware : does that make me shallow if I really really want Faith to the account there at the end?
Yes probably. But still, that’s my wish…
Anyways… one more fantastic book from the man. The world-building, the details, the perfectly painted characters (all vivid, unique and breathing straight through the page)… and most of all, the simple and brilliant idea to have the account of one unreliable narrator yet perfectly placed to tell us the story of his dying word.
A couple weeks back, I finished Doors of Eden and loved it as well, though I have less to say about it, it absolutely grabbed me.
Discovering all those alternate paths evolution has taken across parallel Earths and seing it cataclysmic collide (once again …
Some of my favorites are Le Guin’s The Left Hand of Darkness, a reference to a poem inside of the novel, Light is the left hand of darkness, and darkness the right hand of light.
Lathe of Heaven is also another great title from her, even though it comes from a mistranslation, if you take it literally the title is the main character, the lathe in which the doctor uses to create hevean.
I could go on with le guin lol all of her titles are great but I might be bias because shes my GOAT when it comes to sci fi.
A Deepness in the Sky by Vernor Vinge, A deepness is a place in which these aliens heibernate deep underground, a deepness in the sky is the ships where humans hibernate in cryo sleep, great title! I liked this one because halfway through reading it I finally understood the title, I was like wtf is a deepness in the sky, I mean it sounds like A fire upon the deep so I guess? Then I was like oh man this is great!
I also love Becky Chambers’s super long titles, but my …
I am hungry for a hard sci-fi book that is about humans in the near future (if it is too far in the future it becomes too fantasy-like for me). I would love to read a hard sci-fi take on exploring/colonising the solar system, or let’s say the first interstellar journey to nearby stars.
Books I have read and enjoyed so far, off the top of my head -
Of these I really enjoyed the portrayal of human space travel in The Martian, Pushing Ice, R with Rama, Seveneves. And even Blindsight’s space travel to an extent.
I couldn’t get into the Mars Trilogy, the book starts with a city already established which kinda took away the magic for me.
Would love to hear your suggestions!
I want to read parallel world books that do not give just tiny personal changes. I wanna read that have deep time changes where technology and worlds is way different from us. Like there could be a world that could have Westworld equivalent technology in start of 21st century or before. Like there could be a world where something else evolved other than humans or that earth didn’t play any important role and galaxy was teeming with so many advanced civilizations even millions of years ago that it could be that in a parallel universe there were even more powerful civilizations than that. Something like that. I think excession from culture series was kinda like that but I don’t remember well. Anything u can think of…
If anyone’s read Quarter Share/Trader Tales by Nathan Lowell, I really loved most of that series. Focuses mostly on culture and life on an intergalactic shipping vessel, as well as the many spaceports they visit.