I think it’s fabulous that you read one book this year.
I think it’s amazing that you finally finished those four mangas you’ve had in your closet since you were fourteen.
I think you’re a hero for finishing off three chapters of Tad Williams while in the ICU with your mom.
I think you did such a good job getting through two audiobooks while pacing the floors for two months with a sick baby.
I think you’re so cool for having read all of the books and letters in Baldur’s Gate as they popped up.
I think you’re fantastic for having stuck to reading for 10 minutes every day on the bus.
Anyway, congratulations to everyone!
From the headline: Alexander Skarsgård Stars In ‘Murderbot’ Sci-Fi Series Ordered By Apple From Chris & Paul Weitz
Apple TV+ has officially picked up Murderbot, a 10-episode sci-fi drama series starring and executive produced by Emmy winner Alexander Skarsgård (Succession). Based on Martha Wells’ bestselling, Hugo and Nebula Award-winning book series, The Murderbot Diaries, the project hails from Chris and Paul Weitz (About a Boy) and Paramount Television Studios.
Now I have to get AppleTV…
Granted, I’ve only read the first trilogy in the Realm of the Elderlings series, but much of it honestly felt like it was just torture and misery porn just for the sake of being torture and misery porn to me.
People who love this series, just what is it about it that you love? How are you able to keep on reading about these characters who, time after time, keep getting hope dangled in front of them only for it to be yanked away again just before they can reach it?
Please do not downvote my topic just because you do not share my opinion or view on this matter btw, I wish to have an honest discussion about this and for my viewpoint to be challenged and, hopefully, changed for the better :)
As a complement to /u/Abz75 ’s best reads of 2023 thread, let’s discuss the WORST fantasy novels you read this year. My only request is that you give a reason for why you disliked your anti-recommendation.
For me, it was Tomi Adeyemi’s Children of Blood and Bone hands down. I’m a school librarian and spent a lot of time reading some of the most popular YA titles going around. I don’t generally have super-high expectations from YA, but this one really stood out on its suckiness. Every plot turn was a tired trope, there was no logic to any of the character’s decisions, the prose was amateurish, and plot holes abound. This was my first ever experience getting so mad at a book I yelled at it.
EDIT: PLEASE DON’T DOWN VOTE SOMEONE’S POST SIMPLY BECAUSE YOU LIKED THE BOOK THEY HATED. There is no such thing as an objectively good or bad book, and taste is subjective. Downvote if they don’t give any reason for disliking it.
I was scrolling through r/books today and saw two posts from people who just wanted to express how much they loved a certain book. It was obvious from their posts that they absolutely LOVED this book and wanted to be excited about it and gush about it and hopefully get to talk with others who also loved it.
If you are a reader, you know this feeling. At least, I hope you do. That feeling when you finish a book and the realization comes over you that this book is an all-time favorite. And you desperately want to talk about how much you love it with other people, to share in that amazing feeling.
I mean, for us readers, isn’t that one of the greatest feelings?
I open the posts and see that the top most upvoted comments are people expressing that they hated the book…. one was rather blunt and rude and the other was polite and vague, but still. They saw someone expressing love for a book and just couldn’t help themselves from commenting that they hated it. Negative comments were upvoted …
I’ve been mulling over a pattern I’ve noticed in many books set in places like modern America, where there’s a reasonable expectation of a diverse population. It’s about how race and ethnicity are described, or sometimes, conspicuously not described.
Currently, I’m reading a cyberpunk novel set in Night City – a genuinely engaging book, but there’s this one aspect that’s hard to overlook. The author seems to have a specific way of describing characters based on their race.
When a character isn’t white, the author leaves no stone unturned to highlight it. “The Black man did this,” or “Her dark skin,” or “His Asian features,” – it’s all very explicit. Even accents are used to mark someone as non-white, like pointing out a Mexican accent.
But here’s where it gets interesting: when it comes to white characters, the author switches gears. They’re not described as ‘the white …
Britney is an amazing person. She is incredibly resilient and strong.
It is absolutely heartbreaking and utterly dehumanising what she was put through, during her conservatorship. Her family dragged her through the mud at every possible opportunity and taken advantage of her in every possible way.
Having read her book, I could see how easily she could have taken her own life at that treatment centre. No wonder she is the way she is now, literally just trying to make herself feel some kind of normalcy. It is just absolutely disgusting what she’s endured throughout her life.
Edit: I have explained several times in the comments that I should have used different words, other than “legitimately traumatised”. The book is extremely distressing to read and it’s not an exaggeration. I was rather emotional after finishing it.
Thank you for reading my edit.
I’m a 30M, and whenever I chat with my buddies or similar age groups on books, they always gawk at fiction. Say they have no time to read it, or “why would I read something fake?”. Don’t get me wrong, I enjoy non-fiction work too but I tend to gear towards novels. I just don’t get the hate, especially from dudes my age.
I would also argue that I’ve learned more about what it means to be a good person and having humility just from reading Steinbeck, than any other self-help junk that’s out there.
I was really big on the Hardy Boys when I was growing up, maybe 5th grade? I got every book from the library and read them one by one. I owned a lot of them. I’d get them for Christmas and my birthday and I built a collection.
I even saved them since I thought it’d be cool for my future kid to see the stuff I read when I was that age.
Fast forward to now, and they just seem so ridiculously dated. The world has changed so much. I knew the books were set in another time when I was reading them in the early 90s but 30 years later I don’t know who would even want to read these which is kind of weird.
How many fights can you have while getting punched in the solar plexus? The only reason I even know that word is from those books.
It just seems crazy I’ve saved these books for 30 years and then what?
When my kid is 10 I don’t know that he’ll even want to read these.
Hi all,
I run a new book discovery website, and this year I asked 1200+ authors for their 3 favorite reads of the year. Then I crunched the results to see what new and old books were the most-read of 2023.
I know can’t share a link, but I wanted to share the sci-fi specific results as it has been a fun project, and I am a big sci-fi fan (esp hard sci-fi).
Top 10 Science Fiction Published in 2023
Top 3 Hard Science Fiction published in 2023
Top 5 Space Opera …
I’d like to find some books where space travel is unusual or feels like different from the classic “go through a wormhole” or “go at 0.9999C for hundreds of years in statis”.
Some examples of things that I liked in the same veins would be Embassytown by China Mieville, Radiance by Catherynne Valente or (not really print but whatever) Hadean Lands by Andrew Plotkins.
It doesn’t matter if the book does not have space travel as its core plot element, I’m just looking for books where the universe has that kind of elements !
Edit : Thanks for all of the answers ! I think I’ll have things to read for a few weeks :P
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Drake
“Hopefully he’s off on a new adventure, more “Starliner” than “Hammers Slammers”.”
There is a sub Reddit specifically for people who are trying to read all the Hugo Awards (mostly this means the novels). We have about 160 members but it would be great if the group was a little bigger with a few more active posters on award winning titles.
Who’s is it for? Good for completists, good for people who keep up with recent award winners, good for listeners of Hugo Girl, Hugos There and Hugonauts. Good for people who maybe find the journey through the syllabus a little long and lonely. It’s quite frankly a bizarre endeavour, so it’s nice know there is a little community out there trodding the same path.
If that sounds like you, come along.