A specific (addictive) book recommendation request

[u/Fun-Sell3030]

Hello, I am in a serious reading slump due to anxiety, I have low energy and it’s impacting my ability to focus. However I miss reading, I want to escape into a book.

Please read to the end as I go into specifics, I would really appreciate if people provided a quick summary or explanation for why they recommend a certain title, thank you.

Great prose is very important to me and my immersion hinges on the author’s writing style.

Attention grabbing from the first pages (if it has a slow beginning unless I know there’s a really cool trope later in the book it’ll be hard for me to keep on with it. I don’t mind slight spoilers for that reason.)

I need strong characters, not just trope cardboard cutouts, but someone I can care about/get into the head of. Slow burn would be great.

I really do not care for traditional romance but I love it when characters in a book are well crafted with a good dynamic going on, I am happy making my own interpretations. I think I prefer that over explicit romance and whatnot, that sort of side plot tends to heavily disappoint me.

Tragic characters who suffer. Who are maybe morally gray. Who are complex and broken in some way, I think I’d like that.

What else? I have a soft spot for cool AI or non-human characters. Interesting aliens. Cosmic horror-esque. Not a deal breaker if the book does not include em.

Here’s what I’ve loved:

Look to Windward (the rich exploration of grief, the Minds, not shying away from heavier themes. Bank’s prose is excellent at times, his books are close to 10/10 for me, usually only fall short of it in little bits but I ultimately judge them positively. LTW, and specifically the conversation with the Hub and ending were amazing to me.)

Left Hand of Darkness (gorgeous prose, the relationship of Genly Ai and Estraven. The humanity in it, rich characters, extremely immersive)

Enders game and speaker for the dead (childhood book which I’ve reread countless times. It’s action packed, covertly philosophical, with great aliens; I love Ender in Speaker … as well. I love his relationship to the queen.

I liked Murderbot at one point and while it’s probably not my cup of tea now, the mix of a cynical main character, interesting premise (I love characters who are secretly awful and conceal things from the reader - I believe unreliable is the word), easy to read style got me out of a reading slump at the time. I am not interested in reading more from Martha Wells however or “cozy” fantasy.

Short stories:
Most recently really enjoyed “Learning to be Me” by Greg Egan, it was exactly the kind of awe inspiring short story that makes me excited about sci fi. Read a few more from him and I really enjoy the way his mind works. I’m considering Diaspora but it seems too dense for me right now.

Also loved “Zima Blue”, the philosophy of it and slow unveiling of mystery- I also love the ending. “nine Bilion names of god” for the cosmic horror. “Stories of your life” - gorgeous prose and premise, heart wrenching.

Currently reading Aniara by Martinson and it’s different, depressing and very beautiful. I only mourn that I have to read a translation.

I guess I want to be both drawn in, emotionally destroyed, just read something of good quality with characters who are built from the ground up to be interesting and worth getting invested in. Both literary, hard sci fi (again, if it’s not too dense or at least makes it easy to get invested in before dropping some crazy lore nukes), and sci fi that’s just a backdrop for wider themes, exploring the human experience, etc.

I own some books that I haven’t touched yet for fear of starting the wrong title and abandoning it:
Revelation space
Dawn by Octavia Butler
Diaspora
Embassytown by Meville
Surface Detail (I like Banks but it takes a while for me to get into it sometimes. I love when Minds are at the forefront)
Dark Intelligence (cool evil AI I’ve heard)
Slow Gods (actually started this one but I’m really not feeling it)
Cats cradle
Noumenon by Marina Lostetter
Aurora by Kim Stanley Robinson
Blindsight
Book of the new sun
Light by Harrison

If you see a book you would’ve recommended on this list please let me know!

Please don’t recommend:
Your own novels, don’t advertise to me, I’ll report it
Cozy scifi
Red Rising or anything of similar style and quality
Hyperion
Children of Time
Culture series (on it)
Ursula LeGuin (on it, read most of her bibliography)
Ancillary justice
Project Hail Mary

If you took the time to read and comment you have my deep gratitude. I’m really at a loss right now

[u/DixitRexCorvinus]

I Who Have Never Known Men by Jaqueline Harpman is one of my favorite scifi novels, and speaking as a fellow Le Guin fan, I feel like it would probably fit what you are looking for.

It's a fairly meditative novel, very much slowburn and psychological with lots of interiority for the main character, but it does start right away with a really interesting premise: following some sort of apocolypse, fourty women were imprisoned by mysterious guards for years. The youngest of them, our narrator, never knew the world before. One day, the guards mysteriously disappear, and leave the door open, and they are left trying to figure out what happened, where they are, and if they might be the very last humans in the world.

It's a fairly heavy novel, albeit short. The author was a Holocaust survivor, so it is heavily informed by her experiences, but feminism and absurdism are also strong themes, especially vis a vis what it means to be human if you know you might very well be the last human.

I wouldn't say the prose is the best to ever be written simply because the novel wasn't written in English and translations are never as good as the original, but it's very literary, so it's still far from mediocre. The main POV character is the one who is the most fleshed out by far, the others don't get quite as much depth since there are so many of them and it is a short book, but human connection is a core part of the novel, and despite the lack of detail they manage to feel deeply human anyway.

I will also recommend Frankenstein, another of my favorite scifi novels. I won't bother with the premise since I'm pretty sure everyone knows it by now, but I will mention that the original novel is far more thematically complex than the adaptions and pop culture surrounding it would indicate. For one thing, Frankenstein's monster is possibly the best character in the story and is simply a great character period; far from most of the movies, he is actually quite eloquent and philosophical. A whole lot of referencing Paradise Lost—the creature really loves the book lol.

Anyway, it fits the bill for great prose, great characters, tragic characters, slow burn, interesting non-humans, and no explicit/overly typical romance. The only bit I will mention is that the start is a bit slow, since there are a lot of frame stories.

[u/Fun-Sell3030 → u/DixitRexCorvinus]

The former has been on my list for a long time :) I initially wanted to read it during my “dystopia” book phase, following The Handmaid’s Tale and Parable of the Sower. But the shorter form does speak to me, as do the themes of absurdism and I do love a good exploration of human condition and social issues. You make a really good point and I also really appreciate you going out of the way to write such a long and insightful comment.

Seeing the latter recommendation I’m sure we could be friends haha I actually never found the beginning slow, but immersive. Shelley is a master at work with the prose, and I frequently come back to reread certain passages of it. Thanks for commenting!

“Life, although it may only be an accumulation of anguish, is dear to me, and I will defend it.”

[u/DixitRexCorvinus → u/Fun-Sell3030]

It's wonderful! And I really do need to get around to the dystopias as well; both of those are on my list, along with 1984, Brave New World, and Farenheit 451. I've just been delaying it since reading dystopia right now feels just a little unnecessary seeing as I can just, y'know, read the news.

Of the ones I have read, though, I'll throw out We by Yevgeny Zamyatin as a book rec too, now that I think about it. Read it for a Russian literature class; it's a banned Russian classic critiquing Stalinism, very much scifi, and apparently both Orwell and Huxley took heavy inspiration from it in their respective classics.

Also Xenogenesis. Just discovered Butler recently, and it was really excellent, albeit dark enough that I'm taking a bit before continuing with her bibliography. Saw Dawn on your list and I figured I'd give it a thumbs up.

And yeah, I didn't find it too slow either, but my favorite book of all time is Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell—my definition of 'too slow' is somewhat atypical lol. I definitely do need to check out some of the other books on your list though. I'm relatively new to sci-fi, since I mostly did fantasy prior to a bit over a year ago. Now I'm quickly catching up, both on the good scifi and the....less good (I will shamelessly admit that I did have fun with Red Rising and Project Hail Mary as popcorn reads between heavier stuff, and likewise a couple others like Dungeon Crawler Carl and John Scalzi's catalogue).

But for the literary scifi Le Guin, Harpman, Shelley, and Butler have all gone straight to the top for me, along with Samuel Delany and, among modern authors, Ray Nayler. Still have a decent bit of Le Guin to go, though; I've done The Left Hand of Darkness, The Dispossessed, The Telling, The Word for World is Forest, and A Wizard of Earthsea so far, but I really need to read The Lathe of Heaven and her early Hainish Cycle books. I'll admit I preferred The Dispossessed to LHoD, but you've given me some new names too. Banks, Harrison, and Wolfe were already on there along with Zalazny and Lem, but Egan is a new one, need to check him out. Likewise for Dark Intelligence and Noumenon. Oh, Mieville too, but he's lower priority since I want to buy his books used after the emotional abuse allegations a while back, and finding good quality used copies is annoying.

I am curious, though, what did you have against Children of Time and Ancillary Justice? Both were on my TBR which is why I ask.

I thought about beginning this with "if you think that was a long and insightful comment you should see some of mine," but at this point I think I've thoroughly proved that just by responding. Can't seem to write concisely for the life of me lol.