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If you want some pleasant fiction, I suggest the Lies of Locke Lamora

> The Lies of Locke Lamora, Scott Lynch.

Recently read the first volume — wasn't sure about the series so only got the one, it was a great read and the next volumes are on the list for my next book ordering.

Discworld: Going Postal, Making Money, and Raising Steam (3 books total)

The Lies of Locke Lamora (and sequels, 3 books total so far)

The Name of the Wind (and sequels, 3 books total so far)

Ancillary Justice (and sequel, 2 books total so far)

All of Iain M. Banks Culture series

Old Man's War (and sequels)

It depends on what kind of genre you are talking about.

For fantasy, I would say "Lies of Locke Lamora" is one of the best Audiobooks ever narrated. There is a character called 'Father Chains', and this character is voiced in an iconic way; I am sure you will like it.

For non-fiction, I would say "The Smartest Guys in the Room" is a canonical account of what happened with Enron. This is an interesting book because there are a lot of common traits shared between Enron and many of the unicorns we see today.

I have others that you might like, but these two come to mind in their respective genres.

The Lies of Locke Lamora. Not a new book, but I read it this year and as a fan of the thief/conman type in fiction, I found it fun. Will probably pick up the next one next year.

It seems that everybody has been recommending sci fi and fantasy... Well, so will I.

- The Lies of Locke Lamora: fantasy (think fantastic Renaissance Venice), fairly light read, very well written, great characters.

- Accelerando: from our own cstross. Postuhumanist episodic scifi, pretty much a required read for the average HN reader.

- The Book of the New Sun: fantasy (or is it?), On the surface episodic adventures of an executioner, but it is built on multiple layers. Not an easy read, but masterfully written. Might require multiple reads. Long series.

- Blindsight, bleak diamond hard scifi, about first contact, consciousness and life. Not an easy read, but strongly recommended.

The Lies of Locke Lamora is easily the best-written fantasy novel I've read—save perhaps The Hobbit, but that's fairly unlike modern adult fantasy. It's sad that thorough competence at storytelling is a rare quality in genre fic but, well, here we are.

Book two he gets a little too nuts with sailing junk and wow that plot device at the end is awfully familiar, but it's still got some nice world building. Three's back to form (though I'd favor the first one, slightly).

Just recently finished "Seveneves" by Neal Stephenson. It's sci-fi, but fantastic.

For non-sci-fi, my favorite fantasy book I've read recently was "The Lies of Locke Lamora" (and its sequels) by Scott Lynch. Another is "Dirty Jobs" by Christopher Moore, a bit on the Pratchett-inspired side of things.

I also recently finished Felicia Day's memoir, "You're Never Weird on the Internet," which I highly recommend.

Here are some mostly SF suggestions:

Use of Weapons, Iain M. Banks. One of many books he's written in the galaxy-spanning setting of "The Culture", an anarchist techno-utopia. Everyone who likes the Culture has an opinion about the best one to start reading with; this is mine. He's also written many SF books outside that setting, and many non-SF books as 'Iain Banks'. Sadly he died recently so there will never be any more.

The Quantum Thief, Hannu Rajaniemi. An ultra-dense draught of future shock; a thief pulls off a complicated caper in a Solar System transformed into something alien and strange by Moore's Law.

The Laundry Files, Charlie Stross. A series about a computer programmer who works for a secret arm of England's intelligence agency dedicated to fighting off magical menaces. Each book stands alone but the end of the world is looming on the horizon. Stross has written a LOT more stuff, pretty much all worth reading IMHO.

The Lies of Locke Lamora, Scott Lynch. A very witty romp about a thief in a fantasy land. There's three books about Locke now; while there's continuity between them, they mostly stand alone - right now I'm reading the latest, where he has to rig an election for a council of wizards, while an old flame does the same for the other side.

Bridge of Birds, Barry Hughart. The first of three gorgeous fantasy detective novels set in magical medieval China. Find them, read them, possibly love them.

The Iron Dragon's Daughter, Michael Swanwick. A changeling's journey through a mad steampunk version of UK fairy myth. Utterly gorgeous and beautiful, also profoundly alien and nihilistic. Not my absolute favorite of his works - that honor goes to Stations of the Tide - but this one's a very close runner-up.

Also seconding the recommendation elsewhere in this thread for Gene Wolfe's Book of the New Sun series. Huge and dense and slow and beautiful and absolutely in love with language. I couldn't get into the two subsequent Books of the Long/Short Suns, but the New Sun is amazing.

Oh and of course George R. R. Martin has been writing for years; have you tried any of his other work?

Was a bit disappointed to see Malazan Book of the Fallen #1 - Gardens of the Moon so far down. It'd be interesting if they took the series as a whole. One example is The Lies of Locke Lamora, I think it's a good first book but almost everyone I've spoken to/read comments from agrees is bottoms out in book 2 and 3. Personally think the same of Rothfuss' work. Conversely a lot of people say MBotF improves past the first book (I think its excellent from the start), so it's a tough list to base the entire experience on.

I have a similar, possibly identical complaint about American Gods. Reading American Gods made it clear that Neil Gaiman is very clever (intelligent, tricky plotting) and, independently, a great writer (good with words).

But his tastes are different from mine. There are sections of American Gods that are much too vulgar/crass/obscene/whatever for my taste.

This is also why I never read the sequel to Lies of Locke Lamora.

> The Lies of Locke Lamora, I think it's a good first book but almost everyone I've spoken to/read comments from agrees is bottoms out in book 2 and 3. Personally think the same of Rothfuss' work.

Well to add to your data points, I disagree with both statements that the gentlemen bastards and the kingkiller chronicles get worse.

I think they both depart from their source material in the second books but do so necessarily in order to create a standalone story that isn't formulaic.

Especially with regards to Locke, the author made some incredibly bold kill-offs at the end of book one which left the question of how to follow up with a sequel. I'd say his strategy of consolidating the key characters while expanding our knowledge of them through flashbacks is very compelling. I can't get enough of their origin stories and allows me to experience the "dead characters" again, albeit in small quantities. I'm also a huge fan of how powerful wizards are in those books, it seems closer to how unbalanced a mage would be wandering around our world and the fact we follow non-mages really sets the tone for uphill battles.

Books that set out to be comedy don't really work for me. HHGTTG is probably the best I've read but even that was just... tolerable. Biggest laughs I've had came from "normal" fiction, sprinkled in here and there. Dickens is good at that. Best laugh I've had from a book may have been from a set up chapter followed by a punchline first sentence of the next in Lynch's The Lies of Locke Lamora, a book that's otherwise occasionally funny but not at all a comedy. I had to put it down for a while to stop laughing.

By contrast, comedy's almost the only thing that works for me in silent film. And not just the slapstick (though that's great) but also visual-narrative comedy. That and mind-blowingly-large-scale spectacle, like the epics usually manage for some part of their runtime. Serious, personal drama? Nope. Books or talkies for that.

One genre that is always missing from HNer's and YC's recommendations is Fantasy.

It feels like most people here read books to acquire knowledge and philosophy to apply to real life.

Most fantasy books are read for entertainment and imagination. There's no hidden message to parse and put toward your next start-up project. That doesn't mean Fantasy books are a waste of time though if they're engrossing and entertaining. That's why I read them.

Some fantasy recommendations:

The Name of the Wind, by Patrick Rothfuss

The Lies of Locke Lamora, by Scott Lynch

The First Law series, by Joe Abercrombie (especially the standalone books #4, #5 and #6)

The Way of Kings, by Brandon Sanderson

Tend read more Sci-fi/fantasy. Some good ones this year:
Name of the Wind by Patrick Rothfuss http://amzn.com/B0010SKUYM
Lies of Locke Lamora by Scott Lynch http://amzn.com/B000JMKNJ2
The Way of Kings by Brandon Sanderson http://amzn.com/B003P2WO5E
Mistborn by Brandon Sanderson http://amzn.com/B002GYI9C4
The above four are the first book in their respective series. I've also enjoyed the sequels to all of them. Several of the series are not yet finished.

Several of the books are on this list from several years ago by NPR: http://www.npr.org/2011/08/11/139085843/your-picks-top-100-s...
flowchart of the NPR list: http://www.sfsignal.com/archives/2011/09/flowchart_for_navig...

Alchemist by Paulo Coelho