Book suggestions
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Why are no posts about how those other books failed to be enjoyed by everyone?
Yeah, I'll reiterate the above: Because not everybody everywhere clamors about how you just HAVE to read those other books. It was more or less the same with the Wheel of Time books. They were mostly trash, but their fans were fans and god help you if you didn't enjoy them.
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Never read Wheel of Time... wasn't that the series that just kept going and going and going, like the Energizer bunny?
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@HelloRaptor Hm. All popular books will have some rabid fans, but I never saw SoIAF or WOT fans as more so than others. I've mostly liked SoIAF, though I found especially book 4 disappointing. I also mostly liked WoT, though in the end I just wanted it to fucking be done already. I thought Brandon Sanderson did an excellent job at that.
By the way, his Stormlight Archives is off to a really great start I thought.
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I read the Second Thomas Covenant series. It didn't change me, but I went, "Wow, that was pretty depressing." In a later discussion with a friend who apparently knew the author, said author wrote them because he was tired of writing what he normally did and wanted to try something different and because he could and that if people didn't like it then he didn't mind. He wrote them mainly for himself, in a fairly open way. For that kind of series, I thought it was decent. Not great, but decent.
Basically: It's absolutely not for everyone, and that's fine. It doesn't even have to be for anyone.
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He has something of a talent for writing unlikeable protagonists. If that can really be called a talent
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@HelloRaptor said:
Why are no posts about how those other books failed to be enjoyed by everyone?
Yeah, I'll reiterate the above: Because not everybody everywhere clamors about how you just HAVE to read those other books. It was more or less the same with the Wheel of Time books. They were mostly trash, but their fans were fans and god help you if you didn't enjoy them.
Point out where in this thread this happened. Or, if it did, shouldn't the peeve be about those people and not about the books they are fans of?
I usually couldn't care less what other people don't like that I happen to but it just seems to come down to a very hipster-ish thing, you know? I don't like these books which are so popular - also because of that.
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@lordbelh said:
I also mostly liked WoT, though in the end I just wanted it to fucking be done already. I thought Brandon Sanderson did an excellent job at that.By the way, his Stormlight Archives is off to a really great start I thought.
The novels in the Stormlight Archives so far have been amazing. Oddly, although I've read most of Sanderson's books, this series was the only one I really enjoyed.
The rest of his books were always good reads (Mistborn, for example, was solid) but not truly top-notch in the way that they could get an emotional response from me or I truly cared about the characters. They just made me want to find out what happened, to solve the mystery, since in his books there's always a mystery.
Until The Way of Kings Sanderson to me was an excellent world builder but only an okay storyteller. Maybe that's when he finally hit his stride.
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@Arkandel I think you're right re: Sanderson.
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@Usekh said:
He has something of a talent for writing unlikeable protagonists. If that can really be called a talent
Since it's intentional, I'll call it an amazing talent. There have been many books in this list that are at least somewhat challenging of preconceived notions. Heroes are easy to write. Villains are harder. Anti-heroes are the hardest of all.
Besides, I liked Perdito Street Station and Scar. If you want a book where not one person comes out likable, Scar is a fantastic read.
“If you wish to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first invent the universe.”
― Carl Sagan, Cosmos -
@Thenomain said:
If you want a book where not one person comes out likable, just pick up The Great Gatsby.
Fixed it for you.
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The Long Earth, written by Terry Pratchett and Stephen Baxter.
I think it's a very nice mixture of Pratchett's famous strange and humerous meeting Baxter who is a rather hardline so called 'hard sci-fi' writer. The premise is a new technology which allows access to parallel universes, each with a new and usually untouched Earth that gives an out and a new frontier for people, now that the original Earth is overpopulated as it is. But who knows if these parallel worlds really are as identical as they seem?
I find it rather funny and intresting, and was a good read.
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I don't particularly like science fiction (other than Isaac Asimov) but these were excellent:
Basically they are Ender's Game meets Hunger Games set in the a dystopian caste-based segregated society where lower classes are oppressed by the ruling one. They are amazing page-turners, I burned my way through those books and can't wait for the third.
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I'll try these out!
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@Arkandel
It's easy drama. -
I want a new series to read! It's months and months and MONTHS until the next books I normally read are out. I've reread almost every Nalini Singh book I own 3+ times now. (Even the ones I'm 'meh' on! Meh, Tally is lame, meh! Meh, Kaleb's book, meh.)
Series I Like:
- Patricia Brigg's: Mercy Series (Urban fantasy).
- Nalini Singh's: Anything (Paranormal romance).
- Meljean Brook's: Iron Seas Series (Steampunk Romance)
- Ilona Andrew's: Kate Daniel's Series (Urban Fantasy) & Hidden Legacy (Urban Fantasy/PNR)
- Jennifer Estep's: Elemental Assasin Series (Gritty Pulp Fictiony Urban Fantasy) & Mythos Academy Series (YA/New Adult Urban Fantasy) & Big Time series (Superhero Romance)
- Chloe Neill's: Chicagoland Vampires (Urban Fantasy) & Dark Elite (YA Urban Fantasy)
- Grace Draven: Master of Crows (Fantasy Romance)
- Robin McKinley: Chalice (Fantasy) & Sunshine (Urban Fantasy)
- Sharon Shinn: /ANYTHING/. (Samaria Series is great, fantasy. I've never actually read the shifting circle series, I probably should. and the elemental heirs series is awesome)
- Meredith Duran: Victorian/Period romance.
- Kate Griffin: Midnight Mayor & Magicals Anonymous series (Urban Fantasy)
- Rachael Caine: Morganville Vampires (YA Urban Fantasy, I stopped reading because every book was a cliff hanger and it made me mad.)
- Kim Harrison: Hollows/Rachael Morgan series (I am so far behind I'd probably have to reread from the beginning to figure out how far exactly, and I'm not sure the books have aged well enough that I'd enjoy it.)
Sssooooo gimme suggestions? I'm going to die until Octobor when the Ilona Andrews' books come out. I'm not even going to look at Nalini's release schedule. I know the next Psy/Changeling comes out in June but it'll be fooooorrrrreever after that. FOREVER.
T_T
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@Cobaltasaurus
Is still say you and everyone should read the Bartimaeus Sequence by Jonathan Stroud,
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@Cobaltasaurus
If you like paranormal romances, you might want to try Sherrilyn Kenyon. She has a few different series out in that genre (BAD, The League, Dark Hunter/Dream Hunter/Were Hunter/Hellchaser, are her most popular series to date). She also writes under a pseudonym, Kinley MacGregor.
Christine Warren is another paranormal romance author with a good series that has intertwining characters.
There's The Becoming trilogy by Jess Raven & Paula Black.
I've only read the first book so far, but I'm enjoying the Edgewood series by Karen McQuestin (YA Urban Fantasy/Sci-Fi, potential for YA-rated romance).
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Occupational hazard of a librarian - having someone in the library who has to familiarize/make suggested reading lists & book order lists for genres of books that might otherwise not be something that they read a lot of broadly enough to know "what would entertain a variety of people". My recently assigned genre - Erotica. (Because we have to "offer alternatives to 50 Shades of Grey, particularly if we're of the opinion that the books are crap".)
And while I do read erotic fiction, I'm a bit "niche-ed" in my interest of it. So, anyone able to give me some book suggestions for what would fall into this genre? And if you're not inclined to add to the thread directly for Reasons, please just message me.This said, @Cobaltasaurus you might check out Kelley Armstrong's Women of the Otherworld series. Also, I just read through the Steam & Seduction novels by Delphine Dryden like so much brain candy. (Steampunk Romance rather than specifically paranormal, but it was entertaining. 3 books in 2 days.)
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@Cobaltasaurus, go grab The True Game, by Tepper. 9 books total, currently sold in omnibus-form because they're out of print otherwise. Science-fiction disguised as fantasy.
@2mspris, are you looking for Erotica in general, or a particular flavor of it? If it's just in-general, you might look at the Clan of the Cave Bear sequels. There are several, and Our Heroine has sex sex sex all the damn time with everybody she likes even a little throughout. It's not the best-written stuff in the world, but I remember it fondly from whenever I read them ages ago.
ES
