This is the twelfth of an ongoing series of book discussions here on Tildes. We are discussing Hyperion by Dan Simmons. Our next book will be Elder Race by Adrian Tchaikovsky at the end 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. Also, this month will be slightly different. I have been exceptionally busy and didn't finish the book this time. I am hoping that you all who did read it will come up with interesting questions in addition to your comments/ reviews.

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.

I'm not a very smart person, and never studied philosophy at school or college. I've been reading Discworld books since I was a wee little person and even though I've pretty thoroughly absorbed the messages to the best of my understanding, I'm sure there's lots I've missed.

I know this question has a bit of complexity in it, as someone like Vimes believes different things to the Patrician, or Granny Weatherwax, or Brutha, or Death.

Still, I feel like there might be something that links it all together and was wondering if anyone smarter than me might know?

Hello bookwyrms.

I've just finished reading the entire Aeon 14 universe, that's around 100 ish-books. It had some great moments, some high highs, and a few that I had to plough through, but on the whole, really great and I'm quite sad to be at the end of it. Happy to answer some questions if anyone wants to know about Aeon 14.

Following this I read Children Of Time by Adrian Tchaikovsky, and thought it was just okay. I liked the generational ship aspects - though not the humans, they were not likeable and entirely forgettable. The non human characters were great, easily the best parts.

I didn't like it enough to continue with the series though.

So. I'm after suggestions for next read. I've read a lot by Asimov, and Arthur C. Clarke, and Alastair Reynolds, Douglas Adams, also I do read books by authors who don't start with A, but I always smile that Poul Anderson is in my library and Kevin Anderson, and Allen Steele, and ... anyway.

Whilst I do like space opera, I feel that Aeon 14 leans toward that, which is why I'm looking for more hard or mil suggestions. Any ideas?

Edit:

Result!
Thanks everyone. Iain Banks Culture series is up next, though there are so many great suggestions, it might be a couple of years before I come seeking more recommendations :)

Don't think of "rules" in the question as necessarily a hard-and-fast thing (though it certainly can be if you work that way!). It can be interpreted as "guidelines" or "parameters" or "workflow" or whatnot.

I'm interested in learning about what guides your reading habits and choices. Stuff like:

• How do you choose what to read next?
• Do you read one book at a time or jump between multiple titles?
• How/why do you choose between physical/ebook/audiobook for a given title?
• How do you decide to stop reading a book you don't like (if at all)?
• Do you have a specific "spot" for reading?
• Do you have any particular reading rituals?
• When do you decide whether a book is worth a re-read?
• Do you track/rate your books?
• How much do you learn about a book before you read it?
• How do you manage your "TBR" (to be read) list (if at all)?
• etc.

Don't think of this as a survey where you have to answer each question, but more that those questions are all trying to get at the idea that I want to hear about the decisions you make about reading itself. Anything and everything you feel is relevant is fair game!

Hello, not sure if this belongs in books? Because I am looking for all forms of story telling (with an emphasis on folk tale, however).

Are there any other stories out there similar to: Sisyphus, "There Was an Old Lady Who Swallowed a Fly", and the Herculean task of slaying the hyrda?

For me the theme is, if you don't deal with the root problem, you're screwed/can't win.

Doesn't have to be English based, but I'll need a translation if it's not.

Thank you in advance!

Hi tildizens, the NYC subway often has posters with a poem and artwork on them which provide some relief from the ads that decorate the trains. On my commute today, I found this poem by Srikanth Reddy quite tantalizing.

Everything

by Srikanth Reddy

She was watching the solar eclipse
through a piece of broken bottle

when he left home.
He found a blue kite in the forest

on the day she lay down
with a sailor. When his name changed,

she stitched a cloud to a quilt
made of rags. They did not meet,

so they never could be parted.
So she finished her prayer,

& he folded his map of the sea.

Unfortunately, the single piece of related online discourse I can find is a two-line comment on a 2008 blog post of the poem. So tell me: do you like this poem? What do you make of it? Is it about a couple that splits up due to infidelity (as Google's gemini ai told me) or people that are connected despite having never met (as Mistral's le chat claims)? What of the kite? Why is it blue? Why might his name have changed? To me, it seems he must be a sailor (but different than the one she lays with?) and she relatively poor. We're reading a lament of a missed connection, perhaps.

I'm about 5 percent into the book Hyperion and I am already noticing that the author is drawing on a rich context of cultural background knowledge from a wide variety of sources and disciplines.

This thread is a place to collect observations about culturally laden content within the book that might enhance understanding. It is not a place to spoil the plot.

No obligation, but feel free to contribute what you see.

(Inspired by some discussion over at the The New Lifetime Reading Plan topic)

Which authors or texts do you feel deserve a place in the literary canon, but don't currently have one?

There is, of course, not one singular, well-defined "canon" -- so interpret "the canon" as "the classics" or "required reading" or "most important works of literature" or however else you care to define it.

In particular, consider areas that the canon tends to overlook: female authors, eastern perspectives, plays (besides Shakespeare's works), etc.

This is the eleventh of an ongoing series of book discussions here on Tildes. We are discussing Born a Crime by Trever Noah. Our next book will be Hyperion by Dan Simmons at the end of March.

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.

Thirteen is a difficult age for most. It's a time of transition from childhood into early adulthood.
I'm keen for book recommendations you think a 13-year-old should read. Specific topics I'm keen to be covered, either directly or through metaphor, are:

• Confidence
• Development
• Fitness / Nutrition / Physical Health
• Mental Health
• Finance
• Ethics

But really, anything you think one could tackle at that age and benefit from having read the content.

I've specified boy, because it is a boy who I wish to pass these recommendations on to, and I think that perhaps the advice would be different for a girl.

I’m jumping off of the controversy about the release of Harper Lee’s Go Set a Watchman mentioned here.

Regarding the question: it means that something stood in the way of that particular book “getting out” but, for better or for worse, it did. This could be the author’s direct wishes, government or publisher censorship, it being found or leaked, etc.

• What are some of those books?
• Are they worth looking into?
• Does the fact that we weren’t “supposed” to read them change how we understand or appreciate them?
• If the author themself didn’t want their works published (such as Kafka), what do we have to take into account when deciding to go against those wishes?
• What do we gain/lose by respecting/ignoring those wishes?

Also, I’m open to answers that involve parts of books rather than the whole books themselves, since I know there are many books out there that were partially censored or edited and have since been restored.

The flip can be from widely liked to widely disliked, or it can go the opposite direction.

Also, it doesn’t have to be based solely on the book itself (though it certainly can be).

• Maybe the actions of the author changed the perception of the book.
• Maybe a bad sequel tanked the esteem of the original story in hindsight.
• Maybe cultural changes now cast the book in a different light.
• etc.

Whatever the case: what’s a book where opinion has flipped, and why do you think people’s opinions changed?

I'm looking for a book I read in middle school where people are factory farmed for their parts before they hit puberty by organic mech of some sort, but the protagonist escapes and is hunted but is able to hide in an abandoned (ship?) with some others and starts to fight back? For the life of me, my search skills are failing.

I haven’t read many books that explore unreliable narrators. I would love some recommendations.

Next week we will be discussing the City We Became. Our next book discussion after that will be at the end of January.

I've organized this schedule so that longer books are followed by shorter ones. I look forward to reading with you.

Last week in January : Kim Stanley Robinson Ministry for the Future,

Last week in February: Trevor Noah Born a Crime,

Last week in March: Dan Simmons Hyperion,

Last week in April: Adrian Tchaikovsky Elder Race,

Last week in May: Victor LaValle a People's Future of the United States,

Last week in June: T Kingfisher A House with Good Bones,

Last week in July: James McBride the Heaven and Earth grocery Store,

Last week in August: Cats Cradle by Kurt Vonnegut

Last week in September: Ted Chiang Stories of Your Life and Others

I'm looking for your short stories, novelettes and novellas, and to a lesser extent novels too, that directly speak to the politics and social realities of today.

https://www.uncannymagazine.com/article/rabbit-test/ was a short story I shared here about 18 months ago that directly dealt with abortion restrictions and the future created from them.

Another user shared Better Living through Algorithms for a more optimistic sort of take on "AI"

And recently I was reminded of Mur Lafferty's The Ophelia Network, a novella which features a dystopian society where one of the changes from today was the Heritage Law. People of color needed to prove ancestory at least three generations, "preferably" descended from slaves. This plot point runs mostly in the background through the story but pops up occasionally.

I can think of a bunch of novels that say big things. The Handmaids Tale, 1984, Fahrenheit 451 etc. But I find shorter works tend to be more responsive to current events and often more cutting for their shorter length. I'd also suggest trying to avoid really common novel recs and focus on niche novels or shorter (also typically more niche I guess) works. But I'm not the boss of you.

Share your recs? Link them here if they're free to read online?

The time loop topic has a few entries of media where the time loop is a twist/spoiler, and made me think of how hard it is to recommend books/media where the reveal is part of what makes it impactful.

Two I can think of off the top of my head are

• The Girl with all the Gifts by Mike Carey

• We are all completely beside ourselves by Karen Joy Fowler

Very different genres and topics and I can't at all think of how to describe either one without spoiling it.

“Your area” is intentionally vague and could be:

• Your community
• Your town/city
• Your region
• Your state
• Your country
• Your area of the world
• Your career
• Your area of study
• Your expertise
• Your interest
• Your hobby
• Your generation
• Your identity
• Your language
• etc.

Basically, it’s something that is specific to you, but that you think still would be interesting to people outside of “your area.”

Both fiction and nonfiction alike are valid. Also, be sure to explain why you think the book has appeal beyond its range.

I have a sudden unexplainable urge to learn about how people got through it, and I don't really mind what century or location.

I'm talking about people who couldn't be heroes, who couldn't just leave, and just had to do what they could to survive.

Does anybody know any books that touch on this subject matter?

I’m in between books now, and would like to ask for some suggestions for new books to look at. I use a Kindle and the Kindle app for books usually, so it shouldn’t be difficult to find most books on Amazon.

I’m very close to finishing the Stormilight Archives by Brandon Sanderson and well into The Harrowing by James Aitcheson where i really enjoy both a lot. So if you’ve either read The Harrowing or any of the Sanderson books I’d love some recommendations on books who are in the same vein as these.

Thank you in advance!