You’re slightly weirding me out as being sick of books where normal people just do normal stuff, or at ones that assume you’re interested in what serial killers think are some of my go to hot takes.
If you ever want a hate read then I think Delillo’s “Falling Man” might be a classic of those ‘genres’. His 9/11 take is chronicling its effect on some New Yorker’s love lives, whilst also chucking in short chapters from the point of view of one of the hijackers.
@TheHip41, I think the odd thing for me is that No Country for Old Men and The Road are easily among my favorite books of all time, as are the film adaptations, but I don’t like most of McCarthy’s other work. Not that it’s BAD, just not to my taste.
Did you find that McCarthy in general is to yours?
I’ve liked pretty much everything I’ve read by him, but they aren’t easy reads
I read all 3 of the pretty horses trilogy, blood meridian, and suttree
The pacing is quite different and tone as well, from the road and no country
The Border trilogy is strange for me. I didn’t love anyone of them as I was reading but I couldn’t stop thinking about them.
Just the way CM writes I feel like he’s attacking my brain.
I can’t heart this post enough
Read HOL over 20 years ago and I’ve never forgotten it.
I read a lot of LM in college. All four Lonesome Dove books are worth reading
As well as many other books he has
Not enough time to re read books I loved and new books.
I read this and the Sympathizer back to back
Both are must reads.
The count of monte Cristo might be the best fiction book ever. If you have 25 hours to spare
Okay so it’s rare I meet someone familiar enough with a book for me to ask a specific question.
How do you interpret the ending of The Road? Happy to go to spoilers if needed.
Yes. I really had no idea what I was in for so it hit pretty hard.
Did you ever read Oryx and Crake? I’ve got a lot of Atwood catching up to do, but I really liked O&C. It’s a fucking trip though.
More generally, I just finished Station Eleven, which is a little on the nose for our current situation, but if anyone wants to read a beautiful but occasionally haunting post-apocalyptic book about a virus pandemic waaaaaaaay worse than ours, I really recommend this one.
Annihilation is good. I liked Hyperion.
The classic Sci fi are great. Fahrenheit 451 and a Brave New World.
For a dark comedy Bel Canto is one I really liked growing up, though it’s not Sci fi, more like a more grounded magical realism
Someone needs to stitch together the good parts of Animorphs. Or do a retelling or variation on a theme.
Would you believe I have the ultimate fan summary somewhere in my bookmarks? Let me see if I can find it 
Shoot, no instant luck, but I did come across the old letter KA Applegate wrote to fans after wide criticism of how she ended the series.
Dear Animorphs Readers:
Quite a number of people seem to be annoyed by the final chapter in the Animorphs story. There are a lot of complaints that I let Rachel die. That I let Visser Three/One live. That Cassie and Jake broke up. That Tobias seems to have been reduced to unexpressed grief. That there was no grand, final fight-to-end-all-fights. That there was no happy celebration. And everyone is mad about the cliffhanger ending.
So I thought I’d respond.
Animorphs was always a war story. Wars don’t end happily. Not ever. Often relationships that were central during war, dissolve during peace. Some people who were brave and fearless in war are unable to handle peace, feel disconnected and confused. Other times people in war make the move to peace very easily. Always people die in wars. And always people are left shattered by the loss of loved ones.
That’s what happens, so that’s what I wrote. Jake and Cassie were in love during the war, and end up going their seperate ways afterward. Jake, who was so brave and capable during the war is adrift during the peace. Marco and Ax, on the other hand, move easily past the war and even manage to use their experience to good effect. Rachel dies, and Tobias will never get over it. That doesn’t by any means cover everything that happens in a war, but it’s a start.
Here’s what doesn’t happen in war: there are no wondrous, climactic battles that leave the good guys standing tall and the bad guys lying in the dirt. Life isn’t a World Wrestling Federation Smackdown. Even the people who win a war, who survive and come out the other side with the conviction that they have done something brave and necessary, don’t do a lot of celebrating. There’s very little chanting of ‘we’re number one’ among people who’ve personally experienced war.
I’m just a writer, and my main goal was always to entertain. But I’ve never let Animorphs turn into just another painless video game version of war, and I wasn’t going to do it at the end. I’ve spent 60 books telling a strange, fanciful war story, sometimes very seriously, sometimes more tongue-in-cheek. I’ve written a lot of action and a lot of humor and a lot of sheer nonsense. But I have also, again and again, challenged readers to think about what they were reading. To think about the right and wrong, not just the who-beat-who. And to tell you the truth I’m a little shocked that so many readers seemed to believe I’d wrap it all up with a lot of high-fiving and backslapping. Wars very often end, sad to say, just as ours did: with a nearly seamless transition to another war.
So, you don’t like the way our little fictional war came out? You don’t like Rachel dead and Tobias shattered and Jake guilt-ridden? You don’t like that one war simply led to another? Fine. Pretty soon you’ll all be of voting age, and of draft age. So when someone proposes a war, remember that even the most necessary wars, even the rare wars where the lines of good and evil are clear and clean, end with a lot of people dead, a lot of people crippled, and a lot of orphans, widows and grieving parents.
If you’re mad at me because that’s what you have to take away from Animorphs, too bad. I couldn’t have written it any other way and remained true to the respect I have always felt for Animorphs readers.
K.A. Applegate
Hey, what do you mean the good parts? 
What parts did you not like?
From what I remember about me reread a few years after reading them all the first time was that usually the first third or so was a “Previously on…” part that I could pretty much skip and there being a moderate amount of fluff because of the quick turn around of part of the series.
So not so much parts of the story or parts of the various stories, a lot of which were good and were exceptionally good for a YA book series before YA became about serious stories, but more parts of the necessary mechanical parts of telling a serial that I wondered if anyone had stripped out to make a condensed “meat on the bone” book so to speak
Are you talking about Ann Patchett’s book? Its neither sci fi nor is it magical realism, unless those words have some meaning I have never learned.
No, it’s definitely not sci fi. It’s not really magical realism either.
Awesome!! I can make further recommendations for books like that. They are my favorites. Happy to have a new fan to delight with me over this book.
I’ve just picked up Titus Groan and have presently been introduced to Abiatha Swelter and the vast kitchen of Gormenghast. It’s a bit heavy going but this Peak dude can sure set scene and tone.
Good fun so far.