The Fantasy/Sci-Fi Books Thread Book • Page 50

Riyl?

 

Magical realism, a tinge of Gothic era horror, literary writing without a literary plot, the city of Barcelona.

it’s a book series about loving books without ever being explicitly about that plotwise

 

I think it's time to get everyone's top-ten book lists. Any genre, just wanna know what you guys love.

 

I can maybe try give you a top 10 of this year so far! I've been branching out genres so would be interesting for me to put together.

 

Oh man that is difficult. Also non-fiction?

 

That would be so tough and I'd have to make a lot of concessions, like only 1 book per author, since it would just be 10 stephen king books.

Something like...
1. It or Dreamcatcher
2. Last Days - Adam Nevill
3. The Crippled God (Malazan)
3. N0S4A2 or the Fireman - Joe Hill
4. A Once Crowded Sky - Tom King
5. Ilium/Olympos - Dan Simmons
6. House of Leaves - Mark Z. Danielewski
7. The Ruins - Scott Smith
8. A Memory of Light (Wheel of Time)
9. Deaths End - Cixin Liu

I'll leave the last spot open for the obvious thing I undoubtedly forgot

 

Still to read any Dan Simmons/Joe Hill but I've seen them mentioned constantly. IT is amazing (though I gave my only copy to a colleague who has since left the business). Wheel of Time will also be a favourite and I only read book 1 of Three-Body. Need to get the rest started!

 

Yeah I'm thinking fiction, nonfiction, whatever, and make as many liberties/concessions as you want. If you wanna list a whole series as a single entry, go for it. But probably a good idea to stick with one entry per author for the sake of variety. These are gonna be very unofficial lists though haha so do whatever you want

 

The next two books in the Three Body problem are such a massive leap forward. Although the first book is great, the last two blow it out of the water. The ideas just keeping getting bigger and crazier with much higher stakes.

 

Turns out I haven't had many 5 star reads so I'll attempt a top 10!

 

Lol I had the opposite problem of too many 5 stars.

 

For me:
1. The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien
2. The Dog of the South - Charles Portis
3. If on a winter's night a traveler - Italo Calvino
4. Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
5. The Dark Is Rising - Susan Cooper (the book and the series as a whole)
6. The Well of Ascension - Brandon Sanderson (but also, you know, all of the rest of his stuff)
7. The High King - Lloyd Alexander (and the rest of the Chronicles of Prydain)
8. Rise of Endymion - Dan Simmons (and the Hyperion Cantos as a whole)
9. The Fisherman - John Langan
10. The Little Paris Bookshop - Nina George

I immediately regret this entire endeavor haha. I have way too many 5 stars as well, and way too many books that I love and consider "essential" to who I am. But this is a pretty decent overview.

 

I wrote Langans name out twice (once for Fisherman, and again for House Of Windows), but then deleted it. I think Langan's prose is some of the best I've ever read, definitely the best in modern horror, but I feel like his "perfect" book for me is right around the corner. I gave both Fisherman and HOW 5 stars, so I mean I absolutely adored them and have nothing bad to say about them, but I think he's got better ones coming and I'll just keep the seat warm for them.

Basically I think I would be adding the author, not the book.

 

Turns out I actually have more 5 stars than I thought and its hard to include Sanderson but not both Mistborn & Stormlight!

 

1. J.R.R. Tolkien - The Lord of the Rings (standing in for all Tolkien works)
2. Carlos Ruiz Zafon - The Shadow of the Wind (standing in for the series)
3. Robert Jordan - The Shadow Rising (standing in for all The Wheel of Time)
4. Donald Miller - A Million Miles in a Thousand Years
5. Lev Grossman - The Magician King (standing in for the whole trilogy)
6. Brandon Sanderson - The Hero of Ages (standing in for the Cosmere, I guess)
7. Andre Agassi - Open
8. J.K. Rowling - Goblet of Fire (standing in for the series)
9. Andy Weir - The Martian
10. Emily St. John Mandel - Station Eleven

Don't love that this list is mostly men and I've been taking active strides to read more widely/diversely for a few years now. But these are still the ones that have hit the hardest/I've loved the most. A few towards the end may not be on an official list with a lot more thought.

 

I feel a little weird that my Sanderson is the last WOT, but if it's not obvious from my list, and from like everything I've ever said in this thread, I live for epic endings. I imagine book 10 of Stormlight will prob give it a run for its money.

If I had to choose only 1 Sanderson book right now that wasn't WOT it would be Well of Ascension, which is weird, middle book in a trilogy like wtf, but goddamn what a perfect book.

 

Well of Ascension vs Hero of Ages took me quite a few minutes to decide on, ngl. But mf'in SAZED

 

The hardest part of this list is if I can do without Mistborn or SA....

 

Yeah Hero of Ages is also a perfect book.

 

The entire Mistborn OG trilogy honestly it's a "no notes, perfectly executed" trilogy.

 

leaving Words of Radiance off felt criminal

 

Yeah tons of hard choices, especially for Sanderson. I ultimately went with Well of Ascension because that ending... completely blew me away. It's easier to pick that book for that particular part that to try to decide whether I really like Words of Radiance better than Hero of Ages, for example.

 

Would all be opposed if I added a brief summary as to why they are in my top 10?

 

Well of Ascension was also a perfect "Siege" book, which is something that I feel like I should hate in theory, the fighting is usually at a stalemate and you're stuck in one setting, but they usually end up being favorites of mine.

 

The best part of any Sanderson book ever is Adolin hiding everyone in his tailor's house.