People told me I shouldn’t read it simply because it will never be completed, which makes no sense to me; if I enjoy a novel, who cares about the next one? It’s about the experience of enjoyment of the present moment of reading, not slogging through a book solely to get to the next one. Are there really people who read books as a chore for that reason?
It’s a reading challenge, a reading party, a reading marathon, and YOU are welcome to join in on our nonsense!
r/Fantasy Book Bingo is a yearly reading challenge within our community. Its one-year mission: to explore strange new worlds, to seek out new authors and books, to boldly go where few readers have gone before … (well, many actually because this is the TENTH year of our existence).
The core of this challenge is encouraging readers to step out of their comfort zones, discover amazing new reads, and motivate everyone to keep up on their reading throughout the year.
You can find all our past challenges at our official Bingo wiki page for the sub.
Time Period and Prize
Every day it seems like someone is asking for non grimdark suggestions or proclaiming that too many books are grimdark. But there are quite literally millions of fantasy books out there and only a tiny percentage of them are grimdark.
Where are people seeing this happen? All of the largest fantasy authors don’t write grimdark. Shelves at bookstores aren’t filled to the brim with grimdark, but reading some of the posts here you’d think it’s inescapable.
That you get more excited than a televangelist trying to convince people how much they need the book in their life?
Question taken straight from r/horrorlit as I loved the answers but wanted a fantasy-focused pool as well.
Mine is Howl’s Moving Castle and the Earthsea series.
Welcome to BINGO 2024! Buzz buzz, gentle folk of Reddit!
r/Fantasy Book Bingo is a yearly reading challenge within our community. Its one-year mission: to explore strange new worlds, to seek out new authors and books, to boldly go where few readers have gone before … (okay, a lot of us have gone here by now, just roll with it!)
The core of this challenge is encouraging readers to step out of the subreddit’s hivemind, discover amazing new reads, and motivate everyone to keep up on their reading throughout the year.
You can find all our past challenges at our official Bingo wiki page for the sub.
Time Period and Prize
I picked up the book because it was awarded best fiction by Goodreads but I found the book to be extremely underwhelming. First of all, the plot was so predictable, a third into the book and you know exactly how it it’s going to end and what the over all message is going to be. Second of all , the book has no subtly, many times while I was reading the book, it felt like I was reading a non fiction or a self help book. Because it comes of us preaching a lot of the times I love it when novels offer you life lessons but unlike non fiction it has to do it in a subtle manner, we are supposed to infer the lessons from the conflicts and the situations the main characters go through. This book has no such subtlety, the characters directly tell you all the life lessons. This for some reason made me feel like I was reading a children’s book. Sorry about the rant, also tell me what you thought about the book.
I just see the words when reading. I just process words.No I don’t know what characters look like unless I have pictures of them, and even then, I have trouble connecting them to the text I’m reading. I can imagine places, kind of, but I can’t imagine scenes playing out. Is seeing “movies” some inherent trait that people are born with?
Edit: Please don’t ask me, “But how can you enjoy reading?” I don’t want to answer it, as it annoys me with the insinuation that I can’t enjoy reading if I’m doing it differently from you. Thank you for undestanding.
So I’ve just finished The Shining.
Obviously I’ve found out from here that Kubrick and King didn’t see eye to eye when it came to the film, and I’ve heard people claim King was bitter. I never understood why, as the film is really good.
Yeah I understand now.
King made his female character strong and independent, despite the raging fury from the male protagonist. He explains ‘The Shining’ in more detail, and gives a lot more extra context to the story.
I turned to my wife and said the film made more sense now I’ve read the book. Which to me, is the mark of a good book and a bad film.
I won’t spoil it, but he had me gripped until the very last page and some parts of the story were genuinely scary. The film relies on surrealism and filming in brightly lit areas but gives no context to the scary things that are there.
10⁄10 book for sure, and I’m team King on this one.
If a description uses words like “lit”, “bougie”, etc., it totally takes me out of it. I immediately realize it’s more of a fun read than a literary read. This happened to me with “Yellowface” and my current read “Remarkably Bright Creatures” (which I’m enjoying but the writing is not my favorite).
What about you guys? Do you tolerate/not mind or does it take you out too? Like if a character overuses “literally”.
I don’t know, I’m a nitpicker.
EDIT: to clarify, I will tolerate words like this in a contemporary book when it is dialogue (though I might not like the character). I’m referring to the narrator using these words. Slang in dialogue is common and important. I just don’t like when a description or narration uses modern slang. I think I prefer a book to be more evergreen- as people have mentioned, too much current day social media, companies, etc. will become outdated quickly (any mention of Candy Crush and I’m out).
EDIT: A specific line from “Yellowface” I remember making …
In reading sf you most likely stumbled upon some really disturbing concepts that haunts your mind ever since, it could be just a tiny part of a book or the core subject in a novel, but it’s so fundamentally frightening that human mind simply isn’t ready to take it and thus it remains there forever with you, like a pain that’s haunting your tiny human brain (maybe that’s a bit too far lol!).
For me it’s gotta be Stephen King’s depiction of teleportation in The Jaunt, Roko’s Basilisk (although not fiction), Blindsight and David Langford’s short story BLIT.
Please share your experiences here, maybe this post could be a place for everyone to get familiar with these unknown fascinating concepts and ideas…
I haven’t read either so far, but I am really looking forward to it. These types of things are a relatively rare find especially in the UK.
What’s cool about Robinson’s Mars Trilogy is how mundane the technology and vehicles are. Yes, they’re awesome feats of engineering - some are staggeringly huge - but Stan always keeps them feeling grounded and plausible.
Here’s our first introduction to the Mars Rovers in “Red Mars”:
The expedition rovers were each composed of two four-wheeled modules, coupled by a flexible frame; they looked a bit like giant ants. They had been built by Rolls-Royce and a multinational aerospace consortium, and had a beautiful sea-green finish. The forward modules contained the living quarters and had tinted windows on all four sides; the aft modules contained the fuel tanks, and sported a number of black rotating solar panels. The eight wire-mesh wheels were two-and-a-half meters high, and very broad.
Later we learn that the rovers can drive themselves, have AI brains, can clear simple paths (rudimentary roads) for other vehicles to follow, and have modular …
I recently finished The City & The City again by Mieville. I think this is the 4th time I’ve read it now and everytime I enjoy it more. I love the descriptions of this weird overlapping set of environments, the way it affects people’s views of their environment, their perceptions, their understanding of what’s going on. This weird tone that exists between the liminal, the political & oppressive, and an almost lovecraftian quality of otherness.
I was wondering if people had recommendations for similar kinds of books. They don’t have to be investigation or mysteries in the same way that City was, but books about weird spaces or cities, with weird realities, structures or systems in place over them. I’ve read all of Mieville’s own works, so things like Perdido aren’t what I’m looking for in this case.
Hi! So I was wondering if there are any novels (apart from Neuromancer) that capture the hacker culture/atmosphere of the first Matrix movie, while Neo is still in the matrix. I’ve seen book recommendations related to the matrix mostly but it seems to be about the whole simulation thing, which isn’t exactly what I am looking for. I’m looking for more of a cyberpunk type vibe, but not necessarily super futuristic if that makes sense. Any help would be appreciated. Thanks!
I haven’t seen this movie in a long time but am rewatching now. In the first half hour there is Josh Hartnett, Orlando Bloom, Tom Hardy, Eric Bana, Jeremy Piven, Ewan Mcgregor, and I remember from a post before that the dad from modern family pops up eventually. I know Eric Bana was already well known in Australia and Ewan in the UK, but this cast is absolutely stacked with US stars. Were any of them already famous in the US? And if not, is there another movie that went on to ‘produce’ more stars? (Not saying their success is related to black hawk down, just that it’s the first movie before they got big in the US)
Edit: okay so replies are coming in faster than I can reply to now. There are definitely a lot of movies that fit this criteria and I want to watch them all, I love seeing older movies with someone I recognize. Please keep letting me know even if I can’t reply directly.