Recommendations
Cold open: These are specifically recommendations: there’s a difference between the things I enjoy and the things I (without more information about the receiver) recommend to others. So, there’s a relative underrepresentation in this list of, among other things very long works.
Additionally, this is for the moment one unified page, I might split it into separate ones later (once again, h/t gleech.org).
Books
Fiction
This list is mostly un-ordered, but at the number one spot is: There is No Antimemetics Division, by qntm
Sailing to Sarantium and Lord of Emperors by Guy Gavriel Kay Exhalation by Ted Chiang
This is How You Lose the Time War
Honorary Mentions
First, things that are too long to outright recommend but I still enjoyed:
R. Scott Bakker’s Second Apocalypse series (#1 The Darkness that Comes Before, #2 The Warrior Prophet, #3 The Thousandfold Thought, #4 The Judging Eye, #5 The White Luck Warrior, #6 The Great Ordeal, #7 The Unholy Consult).
Several Wildbow projects (in general order of recommendation):
- Worm
- Pale
- Twig
- Pact
- Ward
Frank Herbert’s Dune (Dune, Messiah, Children of Dune, God Emperor of Dune (I haven’t read more than these))
K.A. Applegate’s Animorphs.
Brandon Sanderson’s Stormlight Archives series (The Way of Kings, Words of Radiance, Oathbreaker, Rhythm of War)
James S.A. Corey’s The Expanse (Leviathan Wakes, Caliban’s War, Abaddon’s Gate, Cibola Burn, Nemesis Games, Babylon’s Ashes, Persepolis Rising, Tiamat’s Wrath, Leviathan Falls)
Stephen King’s Dark Tower Series (The Gunslinger, The Drawing of the Three, The Waste Lands, Wizard and Glass, Wolves of the Calla, Song of Susannah, The Dark Tower)
Second, things I really enjoyed when I was young, and YMMV if you’re reading these past the intended age:
- Suzanne Collins’ Gregor the Overlander Series
- Eoin Colfer’s Artemis Fowl series
- Michael Grant’s Gone series
Non-fiction
Intuition Pumps and Other Tools for Thinking, Dan Dennett Superintelligence, Nick Bostrom The Dictator’s Handbook, Alastair Smith and Bruce Bueno de Mesquita The Anthropocene Reviewed, John Green The Art of Statistics, Sir David Spiegelhalter
Manga
Music
Classical
Strings
- On the Nature of Sunlight, by Max Richter
Piano
- Cynthia’s Theme
- Gwyn, Lord of Cinder
- Never Coming Back, Violet Evergarden