Tell us about what books you read and, most importantly, why you liked them. The books do NOT have to have been released in 2024. If you read them this year, they still count.
Hey folks,
Since we're not reading a book this month, I thought it might be nice to have a short retrospective of the last year instead.
As some of you may know, the book club originally started back in 2023 with a "pop-up event" hosted by @cfabbro. We read Roadside Picnic after a few users expressed interest in the title. The discussion had some great comments, and that helped lay the groundwork for making the book club a regular feature.
A few months later, @boxer_dogs_dance kicked the book club off proper in January 2024 with the first nomination thread. Cloud Atlas was selected based on voter interest and ideal library wait times. Despite being a difficult first book, participation was still high and has remained so for each month thereafter.
Boxer has since organized numerous nomination and voting threads, helped establish our format and rules, and has created many discussion prompts for each book. Huge thanks to you for the efforts, @boxer_dogs_dance!
Onto some stats for 2024:
The list of past discussions can be found here:
A big thank you to all who have participated, helped organize, commented, or quietly read along! You folks are what make the Tildes community so great.
So just to be clear, this isn't a nomination thread or an official post. I just thought it might be nice to look back, recap our progress, and maybe touch on some of the best picks from the last year.
What were your favourite reads from this past year? What are you looking forward to most in 2025?
See you all in January when we kick off 2025 with Kim Stanley Robinson's Ministry for the Future!
This is the fourth of an ongoing series of book discussions here on Tildes. We are discussing Project Hail Mary. Our next book will be Ocean at the End of the Lane around the end of July.
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.
Hello Tildes! I often find myself intimidated by authors of great sagas, trilogies upon trilogies, and dozens of standalone novels. How do I know which book (or series) to read first?
I've been recommended Terry Pratchett and Brandon Sanderson recently. I've read zero novels by either author. I've also been warned that there is a definitive best place in the canon to start, "and it's this one!" But then someone else interjects and says, "no, it's this one!" followed by passionate reasoning. Okay. If it is really worth starting somewhere in particular, where should I begin?
I'm unlikely to read an author's entire corpus. I just have too many books to read and not enough time. But I'm not opposed to reading longer series if they're really fun. I'd appreciate any input about these authors in particular and this problem in general. Thanks!
This will be the final topic in the series. (Sorry about the confusion!)
This one is about short books that have more heft than you would think from their size alone.
As before, there are no hard requirements on what counts as “short.”
We just looked at long and short series -- now it's time to do the same for individual books!
What's a long book that's worth its long page count?
Like before, I'm leaving length entirely open to interpretation.
I recently finished The Bonehunters, the 6th book in Malazan Book of the Fallen and taking the advice of @DynamoSunshirt I decided to post this to see the thoughts and opinions of everyone here on this book in the series, and by extension how it builds upon the previous books.
I've felt like each book in the series has drawn me further in, and this was no exception. One thing that I've found in reading large scale series with multiple POVs is that there are often ones that I'm not interested in or find less appealing than others while reading it and look forward to getting back to my favorite characters. There wasn't a single character in this volume, and so far in Malazan, that I wasn't interested in following.
I'm wrapping up my work day and don't have a lot of time to write out all my thoughts on the book but wanted to get this posted while it was on my mind and then add in more later.
I loved seeing so many potlines from the previous books start coming together.
The siege of Y'Ghatan was completely unexpected and was riveting to read, it being one of the longer chapters in the book kept me up late one night because I had to see how it wrapped up!
The end of the book felt like we were witnessing a pivotal moment and what seemed like a rapid fall of the empire. So many injustices with the Wican Pogrom and how the Chain of Dogs was being treated. I was honestly rooting for Tavore to usurp Laseen.
Heboric's potline feels like it is not completed and that the Jade Statue and all of those souls will have an impact on the storyline later on. I'm also left wondering what Hood wanted from Ganoes as part of the deal to let Heboric out of Hood's realm.
Karsa Orlong continues to be awesome and has become of my favorite characters. His self-assurance and introspection along with the seeming threat to civilization he represents is fantastic. I also saw a reference towards the end of the book about certain Tobalki possessing warrens of their own. I'm curious if he has reached that point and how exactly that works with all the other mysteries of the magic in this world.
I have a friend who has already read all 10 books, and I've been bouncing ideas/predictions off of him which has been great.
I am currently starting book 7 and would appreciate if any spoilers for the following books, or other books in the Malazan setting, are avoided.
Sibling topic: What long book series is worth its page count?
What short series does such a good job that it feels long and substantial? What short series punches above its page count?
Just like last time, I won’t put a qualifier on “short” and leave that open to interpretation.
What are you reading currently? Fiction or non-fiction or poetry, any genre, any language! Tell us what you're reading, and talk about it a bit.
I'm interested to know what are some series you think are worth reading all the way through -- especially if someone is less likely to start them because of how long they are in the first place.
I'm going to leave series length completely up to interpretation and not set a specific minimum number of books/pages/words. If you think it's long but worth a read all the way through, then it's worth sharing here!
I'm looking for something new to read, so I'm just selfishly posting this in the hopes that it works.
Doesn't have to be your all-time favourite I guess, if you can't decide. Feel free to do multiple books too, or maybe just whichever is on your mind a lot recently.
What are you reading currently? Fiction or non-fiction or poetry, any genre, any language! Tell us what you're reading, and talk about it a bit.
I’m looking for a book recommendation. I loved the name of the wind by Patrick Rothfuss, but I have accepted he is unlikely to ever write the third book. My favourite part of the story is the university bits. I also enjoyed Harry Potter and the Arcane Ascension series for similar reasons.
Does anyone have any suggestions for something similar? Thanks!
What are you reading currently? Fiction or non-fiction or poetry, any genre, any language! Tell us what you're reading, and talk about it a bit.
This thread is an opportunity to vote between a couple of options I see for our spring schedule based on the votes received in the two voting threads.
Please vote for one of them by upvoting. If anyone wants to propose an alternative reasonable set of books based on the numbers in the voting thread, for the consideration of the group, please feel free.
Our next discussion will be the City We Became and we will be discussing in early December.
What are you reading currently? Fiction or non-fiction or poetry, any genre, any language! Tell us what you're reading, and talk about it a bit.
It is time to vote for our minority and disadvantaged perspective books for the next book list.
Please vote for only two books this time after Deimos adds the books as comments.
Thanks for reading with us. I look forward to discovering some great books with you this year.
This is a first attempt at a nomination thread for books targeting this group's stated desire to read books representing minority, or diverse or disadvantaged perspectives and experiences.
I'm drawing the boundaries of the category as broadly as I can and feel free to include a book (within the length limit of 600 pages) that you think fits within these parameters. Also, diverse or minority or disadvantaged can apply to either or both of author or main character.
Here is my attempt to find examples of what we might choose. This is not meant to be a set of hard boundaries, just a descriptive exploration.
Books that qualify include but are not limited to: being from a poor or formerly colonized country, being an immigrant or refugee, being a political/ethnic minority such as basque, tibetan, romani or catalan or kurdish, being indigenous, being poor or ethnic minority in a dominant country, being a sexual/gender minority, being disabled etc.
What are you reading currently? Fiction or non-fiction or poetry, any genre, any language! Tell us what you're reading, and talk about it a bit.
$14 USD for new novels. $10 for novels from the 1970s, riddled with OCR errors.
Yes, I know you aren't paying for the "paper", you are paying for the content.
Yes, I know authors and people who work for publishers need to pay rent. I know servers cost money. Those costs and reasonable profits are more than covered several times over in eBook prices.
I recently switched over my reading platform from Kobo to BookFusion. BookFusion lets you upload your own ebook files and sync them between devices, so I spent a lot of time de-DRMing my Kobo library and porting it over, as well as adding in some old de-DRMed books from my old Kindle.
For "traditional" titles I plan on still buying them on Kobo and then just stripping the DRM and transferring them over, but I also know there's an entire internet out there full of non-traditional publishing:
I'm interested in adding some of these to my library, given that it feels like the "spirit" of BookFusion is to bring your own organic grassfed files, rather than glom them off of a DRMed service like I have been doing.
The hard part is that discoverability for stuff like this is really tough, since they're sort of just scattered across the internet. Furthermore, when I do tend to find stuff, I tend to find entire catalogs rather than individual titles. It's hard to know what's worth diving into from entire collections. That's why I'm hoping people can help me out by pointing me in the direction of specific stuff that they've loved!
With regards to recommendations, I want to leave the topic open to anything and everything. I don't want to limit this topic to just my tastes, in case other people find it useful.
If people do want to tailor some recommendations to me though, I tend to love sci-fi, nonfiction, LGBTQ stuff, videogame-related books, and comics/graphic novels (but only if the series are completed).
Important note: I am NOT looking for pirated books. I'm happy to pay for books I'm interested in, especially if they're supporting independent authors/publishers or online hobbyists.
This is the eighth of an ongoing series of book discussions here on Tildes. We are discussing Kindred by Octavia Butler. Our next book will be The City We Became by Jemisen the first week of December.
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.
Hey, I'm trying to pull back a bit from the present news cycle, so I'm looking for some alternatives. My brain often is looking for some stimulation that isn't something huge and meaty, so I figured short stories and novellas could be helpful in particular. If you have something long that's great, feel free to toss that in as well.
I like short stories that depict interesting and different worlds, though they don't need to be particularly detailed. Stories with positive (or at least not miserable) endings would probably be better for my mood. For some examples, I liked the I, Robot stories, particularly the first one with Grace and Robbie, They're Made out of Meat, Flatland, The Year Without Sunshine. I'm realizing that is kind of Sci fi heavy, but that might just be because there are more Sci fi short stories I've bumped into, a lot from links elsewhere on the internet.
For some examples of novels and series that I've liked, Cradle by Will Wight, Anne McCaffrey's Pern novels, Scholomance by Naomi Novik, Ender's Game. Recently, I liked Tomorrow and Tommorow and Tomorrow, and Elsewhere by Gabrielle Zevin, but I don't know if I could handle that level of sad right now. For historical fiction,the only examplez I can think of right now are A Woman of Independent Means, and a Tree Grows in Brooklyn, but I used to read a lot of it when I was younger.
Books I didn't like, but loved aspects of are Babel (I absolutely loved the setting, the book itself felt like it was beating you up with a cudgel), The School for Good mothers (I enjoyed the exploration of what Good motherhood is, and how mothers are judged by society, I disliked how disjointed the actual plot was).
I tend not to like stories where most or all characters are hard to have empathy for -- I hated A Catcher in the Rye, and loathed the Arthur Miller plays I had to read in school. I can get impatient with stories that keep the world vague for a very long time, like Never Let Me Go.
So, any recommendations?
I read thinking in systems a primer by Donella Meadows and really found it interesting. I have been struggling to find a follow up book about systems aimed at a reader with intermediate but non specialist Knowledge of systems thinking. They are all either to basic, too advanced, or so dry it’s impossible to concentrate. Has anyone found a good follow on book for this book?
I appreciate this might be a bit of a niche topic!
It's time to vote. This thread is for voting on the next set of books for book club. Voting will close end of day Sunday.
If you would like to read with us, please upvote as many as five titles. We will select at least four, probably more if there are books with solid support. I look forward to reading and discussing with you all.
There are a few people who voted before the thread was complete so books with authors earlier in the alphabet got a slight statistical advantage. I will take lessons for next time to avoid this.
So I have been reflecting on the statements of many members of this book reading group that they want to include books from diverse perspectives. Talking about next year and looking at our current voting results, I see three options and I would like us to vote on which the group prefers.
First, we could accept a very long list from this voting thread and cut off choices just after Heaven and Earth Grocery Store. That would delay new nominations for over a year.
Second, we could elevate Heaven and Earth Grocery Store and possibly Demon Copperhead to the top of the list in a sort of affirmative action.
Third, we could agree that our next nomination thread (for a smaller list of books) would exclusively be taken from groups that are disadvantaged in some way. An incomplete list of such disadvantage would include being from a poor or formerly colonized country, being an immigrant or refugee, being a political/ethnic minority such as basque, romani or catalan or kurdish, being indigenous, being poor or ethnic minority in a dominant country, being a sexual/gender minority, being disabled etc.
This is the third nominations thread for Tildes book club.
If you think you might be interested to read with us, please name between one and five books you find intriguing and think others might enjoy. We will later have a voting thread so that each nomination gets an equal shot to win votes with no early nomination advantage. After we finish discussing Kindred this month and the City We Became at the end of November, we will move on to read the new titles.
Please feel free to nominate both fiction and nonfiction and consider nominating a diverse selection of books and authors. Books should be 600 pages or shorter. The first books in series are fair game for nominations if they tell a complete story.
What upcoming books are you looking forward to? I'm excited for my copy of Light Bringer by Pierce Brown to arrive!
Our next book discussion will be about Kindred by Octavia Butler. Have you started? How is it going? I'm looking forward to discussing with you all.
Howdy,
Just this morning I got a wild hair and started thinking about replacing my older Kindle Paperwhite, mostly because something with a a USB-C port would be nice to have. I'm still not sure I'll actually do this, as my Kindle works just fine, occasionally needing a reboot is about the extent of it, as well as the reading time can get janky here and there.
Based on what I'm reading about Kobo, it seems like it offers a bunch of features I'll never use or be interested in. I do not care about customization. I don't borrow from the library. I don't mind buying from Amazon. I rarely read books more than once, so I almost never go back through my collection to see what I have. I don't like ads (I have a PiHole, for example), but the ads on Kindle don't bother me, my brain skips over them, never even noticing. And by casual reader, I mean I read maybe 5-10 books a year, so my Kindle often just sits by my bedside, gathering dust for a spell.
Basically all I do is pick up my Kindle, unlock it and get back to reading whatever I had been, then close the case and set it aside. I like that I can read on the Kindle app on my phone if I've forgotten my Kindle at home. I do read lots of samples on it.
Kobo seems nice and I like an excuse to migrate away from a major corporation, but it's more expensive than a Kindle (I've bought both my Kindles I've owned, used for $40) and seems to offer little that I care about over the Kindle. I'm well aware I can transfer my purchases over, but I'm not sure I care or want to bother with the hassle, so I'm wondering if a Kobo would be at all the right choice and am looking for opinions.
Thanks!
What are you reading currently? Fiction or non-fiction or poetry, any genre, any language! Tell us what you're reading, and talk about it a bit.
I used the Kindle ecosystem for a while before souring on Amazon. Now I’m bought into the Kobo ecosystem, which is great in some ways but frustrating in others.
I’m curious if there’s a sort of DIY book cloud platform out there. I’ve come across a few, but they all seem to lack what, to me, is the killer feature of the Kobo/Kindle platforms:
Cross-syncing between mobile (iOS), ereader, and web reader
Most of the ones I’ve found can do this with some of those devices, but not all three.
I ask because I regularly hop between reading on different devices to the point that I avoid reading books that I can’t do this with (e.g. all my DRM free books, physical books, etc.). I’ve even re-bought books I already own in other formats just so I can have them inside the “sync loop” because it’s so much easier for me. I’d rather not have to do that though.
Are there any independent options out there that cover this use case? I primarily want to use it for DRM free books I got from bundles, as well as books that I de-DRMed from my Kindle. I would also happily buy a different ereader device that supports this (currently I use a Kobo Forma).
Meta note: wasn’t sure if this topic was better in ~books or ~tech — feel free to move it if needed!
Following this month's discussion of Small Gods by Terry Pratchett, , we are set up to read This is How You Lose the Time War towards the end of September. After that we will discuss Kindred by Octavia Butler at the end of October and The City We Became by Jemisin at the end of November.
I look forward to reading with you.
This is the seventh of an ongoing series of book discussions here on Tildes. We are discussing This is How You Lose the Time War by el-Mohtar and Gladstone. Our next book will be Kindred by Octavia Butler around the end of October.
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.
What are you reading currently? Fiction or non-fiction or poetry, any genre, any language! Tell us what you're reading, and talk about it a bit.
What are you reading currently? Fiction or non-fiction or poetry, any genre, any language! Tell us what you're reading, and talk about it a bit.
I read through He Who Fights with Monsters and it was not only my first read into the genre, so far it's been my favorite. I've come to absolutely love the characters, especially the protagonist, and the humor. Interesting and likeable characters are what makes or breaks a book for me.
I'm waiting on the next book to release, and in the mean time I've tried reading some others, but I've disliked what I've read so far. I read through the first three and a half books of Defiance of the Fall, but not only is the main character just hands down boring and contradictory, it's made worse by the fact that I don't believe the author is a very good writer. The amount of times a character has "snorted" and "rolled their eyes" is honestly a bad running joke.
After this I tried reading the Iron Druid Chronicles. It's not a LitRPG book, just a fantasy novel that takes place in modern times, but the author spent very little time on anything but the major plot points. Everything happens in such rapid succession that there's no depth given to the characters. I don't think it's poorly written, I just think it's just written for a different kind of reader. The books are also incredibly short for me, and I finished the first three in just a few days.
I'm halfway through the first book of The Primal Hunter now, and the writing is far better than Defiance of the Fall, the protagonist much better written, except I'm not sure I like him all that much. Very much the "I'm quiet, smart, and better than everyone" kind of attitude you'd get out of the know it all in high school, except supposedly this guy is a grown adult.
I've read all of these through Kindle Unlimited and they were all suggested to me by the app itself. I've only recently picked up reading again since dropping Reddit altogether, so I'm not super well versed into the best ways of finding new series to read.
This is the sixth of an ongoing series of book discussions here on Tildes. We are discussing Small Gods by Terry Pratchett. Our next book will be This is How You Lose the Time War around the end of September.
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.
What are you reading currently? Fiction or non-fiction or poetry, any genre, any language! Tell us what you're reading, and talk about it a bit.
Hey all, I'm trying to get into reading historical books - I have a broad range of interests and would be open to trying anything. The only thing that bothers me is when the author is very clearly pushing an agenda. For example, last year I read Band of Brothers which I really enjoyed, but I felt there was quite a bit of American propaganda mixed in which detracted from the historical aspect.
I typically read more fantasy/scifi novels:
Examples of some of my favorite fiction series:
I'm interested in more historical novels because i've listened to a handful of excellent history podcasts and think I would enjoy getting closer to the source, but I've been struggling to pick a book because I'm afraid of choosing one that is too dry.
Podcasts I enjoyed:
Please give me some recommendations!
Has anyone else read this book? Without spoilers (or hiding them) what did you think?
The closest I have read to this is Gaiman's American Gods but the pace is much faster and more intense. I want to reread the first half to see what I missed because I didn't know what was going on.
What are you reading currently? Fiction or non-fiction or poetry, any genre, any language! Tell us what you're reading, and talk about it a bit.
In our last voting thread, Kindred by Octavia Butler, N K Jemison the City we Became, each earned a high number of votes.
Should we add them to our schedule, or should we hold a new voting thread?
I have withdrawn the recent voting thread until I get responses to this question.
Edited to remove Anathem for length
This is the fifth of an ongoing series of book discussions here on Tildes. We are discussing Ocean at the End of the Lane. Our next book will be Small Gods by Terry Pratchett around the end of August.
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.
What are you reading currently? Fiction or non-fiction or poetry, any genre, any language! Tell us what you're reading, and talk about it a bit.
What are you reading currently? Fiction or non-fiction or poetry, any genre, any language! Tell us what you're reading, and talk about it a bit.
What are you reading currently? Fiction or non-fiction or poetry, any genre, any language! Tell us what you're reading, and talk about it a bit.
Have you ever read it? And what do your friends think about it? I'm really interested in foreign (I'm from Ukraine) opinions on this subject. Sorry for my bad English, thanks.
as in the title. Be it textbooks, bios or anything else. Somewhere I've heard that a couple of books in a given subject can give you quite a good understanding of it.
It does not have to be a niche either; I am interested in hearing about your favourite general psychology or biotechnology books just as well; I hope we can exchange recommendations about how to dive into a given field.
For me, I'd say that to get a taste of Computer Science from the metal to high level concepts, I'd go with: