The Kingkiller Chronicles, Earthsea, Dune, anything by Italo Calvino, Salman Rushdie, Charles Stross, or Brian Aldriss. Classic science fiction is still better than most modern stuff, although I just finished the Windup Girl and it was quite good.
Nonfiction is always better, but physics and math papers aren’t everyone’s cup of tea.
Mostly sci-fi. but currently reading Orwell’s 1984 so I can better understand our future.
I like almost all of Charles Bukowski’s books, Hunter S. Thompson, The Beat Generation, Dostoevsky, Sartre. Too many to name but I haven’t been able to read for fun lately.
I would recommend any of the Conn Iggulden series. His Mongolian one is my favourite though. Great exciting read and you get a little bit of real knowledge. Absolutely love historical fiction
Just read Cixin Liu’s Ball Lightening. Would recommend. Diving into The Three-Body Problem tomorrow to continue on with the series.
Cheers.
Sword of Truth series, starting with Wizard’s First Rule
The Shannara series starting with The Sword of Shannara
Mistborn series starting with Mistborn
I’ve read about everything written by David Dalglish. Probably my favorite author ATM.
Ive read it more than once. Check out The Running Man by stephen king as well if you like books like 1984
This was going to be my answer, for sure (note my name)! All 7 books in that universe are fantastic, and a new trilogy hits next year.
Book 3 (Memories of Ice) is easily one of the best fantasy audiobooks I’ve “read”, but that series really started to drag out after that book. I gave up around the middle of book 5 or so.
Author is Paolo Bacigalupi. He wrote Shipbreaker, The Drowned Cities, Pump 6 and The Windup Girl.
The Windup girl isn’t for kids. They’re all great books and have a similar theme so it’s almost like they’re a series but they aren’t.
It’s a possible future we face.
Another author is Cormac McCarthy. He is wonderful.
Read Animal Farm if you want to understand our present and future.
Philip K Dick, Aldous Huxley, Bukowski, Neil Gaiman, and George Orwell are some of my favorite authors.
I also like Alan Watts a lot but I spend more time listening to him than reading his writings.
Some recommendations:
Siddhartha, by Herman Hesse. Very short, just over 100 pages. Incredibly profound novel about self-discovery and what it means to be alive.
Mistborn, by Brandon Sanderson. One of the preeminent contemporary fantasy authors, and I recommend reading the other books he’s written (they’re all basically in the same universe, something he refers to as his ‘cosmere’).
The Count of Monte Cristo, by Alexandre Dumas. The best revenge story ever told. The structure of the book is a little weird, because it was originally written as a series of novellas for a newspaper that was later compiled into a full-fledged book. Absolutely worth it.
Worm, by John McCrae, aka Wildbow. Not technically a book, unless web serials count, but it too is very long. The story is basically an answer to the question, “What would happen if ordinary people got superpowers?” Fun to read.
Also one of my favorites. Im currently making my kids read it.
Raymond E. Feist - Riftwar Saga and onwards are great if you like long series (30 books total) and yes its completed and wrapped up nicely.
Katheryn Kerr - Devery Cycle, another long series, but this one jumps around a timeline and has character resurrections going on so much so she had to put a table in the front of the books to show who was alive when.
James Rollins, all his books are good. The Sigma Force series are my favorites, though the vampire themed Sanguine series is also good.
Also Lincoln Child’s books and Lincoln Child / Douglas Preston books are good especially the Pendergast series.
I love Stephen Kings short story collections. I feel he rambles on too much & get so unnecessarily descriptive that it bogs down the pace of his stories, but in his short stories he’s on point. The last book I’ve read was Fevre Dream by George R.R. Martin, & as far as WoW related books anything by Christie Golden is awesome. I really got into WoW after my cousin loaned me Rise of the Horde which got me more interested in the story of the warcraft universe & why almost all of my characters are Orcs.
I remembered a couple more, OP.
John Keel, The Mothman Prophecies. While the movie was good, the book is great, imo and it’s a true story.
It’s also very unlike the movie but even more fascinating.
For true crime and case studies, check out David Paulides Missing 411.
You can get these from Dave’s website, the CanAm Project. Here’s a link ~http://www.nabigfootsearch.com/missing_411.html
Yes, it has a drawing of a bigfoot head but ignore that. The books are great, all true cases and you can get them for a lot less there than at Amazon.
1984 is a famous favorite. Written in 1949 but damn it still feels relevant today.
Also like Cold Fire, by Dean Koontz (the ending was unexpected) Random book I read when I had no internet for a week. I should try more of his stuff.
I remember My Friend Flicka and Anne of Green Gables were some childhood favorites.