I gave up on the TV show halfway through the first episode because it already seemed to be diverging from the books in ways that were central to character motivation, and from what I understand, the show really jumped the shark for S02. Big disappointment, as the books could have been directly adapted to film/TV. I’d recommend treating the books as completely independent from the show.
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It is a series and these are the first three. I think you could kind of say it is the first story arc. The series continues, but based on some of the synopsis’s I read, it seems to go off the rails. Or at least in a direction that I was not interested in.
I’ve read the books and watched the show. The show to me in s1 seemed a decent adaptation. There were changes, but I thought they skewed the way they did because of requirements of the media. Unlike many, I liked S2 also. It was a different show, and definitely took some liberties it didn’t have to take, but I liked it.
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Loved Hyperion Cantos. They’re so different in tone throughout but it’s very epic and never loses the plot. I’d also recommend the Ilium series if you like Hyperion.
I’m going to throw in basically any book by Kurt Vonnegut with The Sirens of Titan and Player Piano being my favourites.
Edit: forgot to add, my current reading is the Wheel of Time series. I’m 60% through book 12. It’s taken me a couple years so far.
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Thank you for the Ilium novels information, I will have a look for sure !
Ah an here I am having ditcvhed classics after University for more simple stuff.
Some books I still remmeber fondly from my uni reading list and more personal reading:
- The color purple
- The awakening
- 31 songs
- Incidents in the life of a slave girl
- A Short History of Tractors in Ukrainia
- Woyzeck
My reading nowadays:
- Gideon the Ninth
- The Witcher books (MUST READ)
- Lord of the Rings
- Earthseas Chronicles
- Sir John Franklin’s Erebus and Terror Expedition: Lost and Found
books I didnt like:
- King Killer Chrónicle (gave up on this one)
- the Belgariad (got worse with each book + bad women tropes)
- The eragon books series was good but then ending was super bad
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Wait there’s an Altered Carbon trilogy of books? I enjoyed the show, I wonder how much more I’ll enjoy the books!
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Lol. What I remember is that when he started the books, they weren’t great, but he was young. It was like as he got older, his skills didn’t really get better either.
You know, there’s one I forgot to mention that probably a lot of you have read already, but I recently read again and was reminded just how good it was. Like shivers good.
To Kill a Mockingbird, by Harper Lee
I read this in middle school and it was one of the only assigned readings I can ever remember actually enjoying (F* you AP English and your Crime and Punishment horsesh*t).
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This is a great topic!
I am a really big Kurt Vonnegut fan, and it fits somewhere between fantasy and sci-fi.
Both Breakfast of Champions and Cat’s Cradle are spectacular, though all of his works are really great.
Christopher Moore is another great author for this thread - specifically Lamb and Practical Demonkeeping to see a good range of fantasy.
If you are focused on the mix of gender representation in fantasy - I think the Wraeththu Chronicles by Storm Constantine are a pretty wild way to look at that particular topic in a series of really unexpected ways.
For a more standard suggestion, the Time Quintet by Madeleine L’Engle (A Wrinkle in Time is book one) is really fun.
Then, definitely in the sci-fi area, Daniel Pinkwater is one of the silliest authors ever, and if you like the surreal worlds created by Murakami, but don’t really want to be forced to actually ponder your place in life and existence, I’d wholeheartedly recommend his stories.
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I’m probably going to get stoned for this 
But I’ve really enjoyed reading all the Dan Brown books.
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The Count of Monte Cristo (unabridged) is my favorite novel, to this day.
Fantasy: The His Dark Materials trilogy is great, and I’m currently reading Annotated Alice, which is actually both Carroll books in one volume accompanied by a truly prodigious and enjoyable amount of scholarly context.
Lost World (Fantasy Sub-genre): King Solomon’s Mines is credited with starting the entire lost world genre, and it’s such a fun read. If you like Vernes, Burroughs, Indiana Jones, The Mummy, etc., you’ll like this.
Science Fiction: Ender’s Game (and its sequels) and Dune, of course.
Non-fiction: Bending Adversity is about the three major disasters Japan experienced in the 20th Century and the ideas and philosophies that allowed it to recover and thrive in the respective aftermaths. It’s really well written, which adds satisfaction to an already interesting premise.
Philosophy/Theology/Classics: I’m also currently reading a new-ish translation of the Odyssey which I got recently and I’m re-reading one of my favorite C.S. Lewis books, The Screwtape Letters, which is a series of letters from a high-ranking devil in hell to his nephew, a novice demon who is charged with corrupting an ordinary man. It’s hilarious and insightful. I also have Sciences of the Artificial queued up at the behest of a good friend, and I’m looking forward to reading it soon.
Manga: Read One Piece, duh! That said, I just finished the entire set of (thus published) Yotsuba&! volumes, and I love 'em. It’s very Calvin & Hobbes-esque.
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I read them too and loved them tbh
I feel its often: oh you must read classics or your reading is stupid
But no, some of the not so deep books can be amazing. i love reading the Temperance Brennan books, They are good fun
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The books were definitely a bit different. Maybe because I watched the show first then read the books, I didn’t have the preconceived notions of what should be to colour my enjoyment of the show. I liked both, for different reasons.
Had to dig up this thread because I’ve recently started reading Initial D on Mangadex. I remember back when I initially discovered mechanical keyboards, seeing people’s Fujiwara Tofu Shop decals and not having any real idea what was going on there. It was such a touchstone for me in a lot of ways and I guess I understand the cool factor involved now. Did KBDFans take inspiration from Initial D when naming the Tofu keyboard or was that trying to evoke the pointy corners of the board?
I also am sure I saw Trueno featured somewhere heavily but I can’t remember where. Cool to know it means Thunder in Spanish, I hadn’t understood that before.
As for the manga itself, I am enjoying it so far. I’m still in the very early going, just after Takumi’s first real race down Mt Akina. The “aloof genius” archetype is fun and very much reminds me of the books that first got me into manga: Mitsuru Adachi’s baseball works like Cross Game, H2 and Touch. The major contrast being Adachi’s much more technical art style vs Initial D’s looser work. Though, there’s no doubt it’s easier to tell characters apart in Initial D I was initial off-put by Initial D’s style in the first few chapters but I’ve come around for sure.
It’s daunting but also exciting to see there are another 700 chapters waiting for me, I’ve found with manga it tends to go by in a flash. I know very little about cars but, at least very early on I’ve appreciated the characters that surrogate for the inexperienced reader by making it clear how good the unassuming Takumi is.
edit: I figured out where I had seen TRUENO prior to reading Initial D: the GMK Laser Novelties set!
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I’m new here, but to go all the way back to the OP’s post…
Sure, in some ways Shakespeare is more interesting as a set of historical texts, and inaccessibility is a fair criticism that is overlooked by old-heads obsessed with “canon,” but it’s important to expose people to at least 2-4 of the plays, and some sonnets. Shakespeare’s stuff is (mostly) some of the most interesting lyrical poetry ever written in English (ACKSHULLY very little prose), and in the service of a level of psychological realism, intimacy, and form-stretching that was unprecedented at the time and unmatched for many decades, I’d say until the rise of the epistolary novels in the mid-1700s. It also has great insults. That said, they’re mostly plays. No shame in catching a movie adaptation. Branagh’s Much Ado About Nothing is super watchable, and Luhrmann’s Romeo + Juliet is interesting on multiple levels.
For fantasy that is less formulaic and has a very flawed female hero, try the Broken Earth trilogy by NK Jemisin. The narrative conceit of the first book is not as sneaky as she thinks, and the mechanism of the magic starts off as basically “Earth-bending,” but the series goes some interesting places. Definitely some parallels to the Book of the New Sun, which I admit I did not enjoy enough to read past the first “volume,” which I guess is books 1 and 2.
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