Thanks to everyone who discussed Cloud Atlas and to those who attempted to read it and to those who read along at home.

Piranesi is significantly shorter than Cloud Atlas. I hope you will join us in reading and discussing in a month.

I've recently finished Mary Oliver's A Poetry Handbook and have begun writing my own poems (just for fun). I feel though that I may be limited by my having read little poetry. So, I'm searching for anthology recommendations to get some inspiration.

I'm not really looking for collections of "classics," just a large collection of poems generally considered to be "very good," and maybe leaning more towards contemporary (late 19th century onwards?). But I'd welcome recommendations outside of these guidelines too if anyone feels particularly strongly about some collection.

This is the first of an ongoing series of book discussions here on Tildes. We are discussing Cloud Atlas.
Our next book will be Piranesi, sometime in the third week of April.

I don't have a particular format in mind for this discussion, but I will post some prompts and questions as comments to get things started. You're not obligated to respond to them or vote on them though. So feel free to make your own top-level comment for whatever you wish to discuss, questions you have of others, or even just to post a review of the book you have written yourself.

For latecomers, don't worry if you didn't read the book in time for this Discussion topic. You can always join in once you finish it. Tildes Activity sort, and "Collapse old comments" feature should keep the topic going for as long as people are still replying.
And for anyone uninterested in this topic please use the Ignore Topic feature on this so it doesn't keep popping up in your Activity sort, since it's likely to keep doing that while I set this discussion up, and once people start joining in.

This sci-fi book starts out as a first contact novel. Aliens show up and say "Your planet is dying--we're here to rescue you! Come join our galactic federation!"

Here's the twist: the protagonist emphatically refuses. The world is sick, but humanity is healing it. Successfully. They have been for decades. And they refuse to leave Earth and go explore the stars until the job is done.

Thus begins this story's major conflict. The aliens have visited a few other planets with signs of advanced civilization, and in every case they've arrived too late--the other civilizations have extincted themselves by the time they arrive. The aliens are emphatic that technological societies cannot thrive on a planet's surface; in every other case, either the planet or the civilization dies. The humans are unfazed. Repairing an ecosystem is possible, they say. We've proven it. Are proving it. Yes, there's a hurricane bearing down on us, but the storms get a little less intense every year.

This is a story about meeting people utterly unlike you and finding common ground with them. It's about imagining a better future and working doggedly toward it.

Eco-focused stories usually have a back-to-the-land, pastoral vibe; they want to get in touch with nature by reducing our use of technology as much as possible. That's not this book at all. Our heroes use neural interfaces and networked decision-making algorithms to manage the restoration of the ecology. They write algorithms that weight the vote in favor of community-defined ethical preferences. Technology isn't the enemy--corporations are, which is why the corps were exiled decades ago. Networks and algorithms can be powerfully good when they're used to benefit the many instead of the few.

This book has so much heart and so much beautiful imagery. It is gloriously weird in lots of ways I'm not going to spoil. It's a hopeful book that's giving me ideas I'm starting work on now. You can find it here or in your local library.

Inspired by this thread about the "bible" of your activity or hobby - What's a book that you would recommend to someone who has a vague interest in an activity or subject of your interest that you think will make them find it super interesting and/or impart a good surface-level understanding of your field?

I used to read voraciously in my youth, but as an adult it is very difficult to get into a story, even if it seems to be good. So, I'm asking for what you'd recommend... based on a few options.

I typically love/hate dystopian options that show that humanity is just a complete horrorshow. That being said, I haven't been able to get past page three (I think it was?) in Clockwork Orange. But, some of my favorite books are: The Lord of the Flies, 1984, To Kill a Mockingbird, and Tale of Two Cities in backwards order (that is, Dickens' is my favorite, and Lord of the Flies is still great but the least of those four).

I feel that futility and the rest of the world hating on you or just being its normal awful self are the main themes I seem to gravitate to.

As I mentioned though, I still intend to read Clockwork Orange but I'm not a fan [yet?]. I also read The Good Earth when I was about 11, and honestly, it's a godawful book but I read the whole thing because its horror kept me reading. Just putting that out there for ideas. Also I'm not much of a fan of sci-fi, unrealistic fantasy (though that might be an exception), or zombies/apocalypse.

So with all that in mind, does anyone have anything either modern or classic that you'd recommend?

EDIT: THANK YOU ALL! (And feel free to continue adding more suggestions!) I just wanted to say thank you for so many potential options; I just have to get over to the library for a card (scheduled for Friday), and what I can't get there or something that seems a little too dense, I will look into audiobook options since I drive a lot.

Hey y'all! I'm finishing up a work (academic) project, and, to my delight in the near future I will have time to read for fun again! In talking with a friend, I realized that many people have at least one or two favorite books no one's ever heard of before.

Fiction, nonfiction, weird, old, whatever! What're your favorites?

I'll start: Karl Kerenyi's book on Hermes, and Ex Libris, by Anne Fadiman. The Kerenyi text is lovely because he dwells in this between-place of pure academic and personal experience, and it reads almost like a memoir of a man who is still very much in the midst of his love affair with his research. The Fadiman book is a lovely (if tiny!) volume of essays that I've come back to time and time again about what books mean to a reader, and how they have shaped her life.

I think I first came across "The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas" by Ursula K LeGuin a few years ago. I read something else in conversation with it, but somehow had missed the original. Hugo Award winning and Locus award nominated, I thought folks might be interested in discussing it and its descendants.

LeGuin's original in pdf format

Omelas is a utopia in the middle of a festival. And as the narrator explains the city to you, they understand that you may not believe it is even possible.

Othe authors have written stories in conversation with this,

NK Jemisin's The Ones Who Stay And Fight is directly engaging with it.

The Golden Enclaves by Naomi Novik (the 3rd Scholomance book) engages with this idea too.

So I had read all of the above works and been mulling over the topic of Omelas, and then found this story today

Why Don't We Just Kill the Kid In the Omelas Hole

In which people, uh, start killing the kid in the Omelas hole. Sorry, not a lot of room not to spoil that given the title. I'll let you read the story for where that goes.

Risk of spoilers for the above works from here:
I think there is a lot about our society here. LeGuin herself said the story, "has a long and happy career of being used by teachers to upset students and make them argue fiercely about morality." Because what is the right answer? Novik, via El in the Scholomance series says to burn it down. Jemisin says there is a better way. I don't believe LeGuin is arguing that the ones who walk away are "right" in that they leave having benefited from Omelas and the child still suffers.

But I thought folks who hadn't read one or more of these might enjoy them, and I find they make me think and often won't stop letting me think.

ETA: ST:SNW did an entire episode using Omelas as an inspiration. I haven't seen it so I can't speak to it but wanted to add it here for reference.