I’ve been in somewhat of a reading slump lately. I used to read a lot of books at the beginning of the year, but I got distracted by video games and neglected reading for the past few months. I’ve only gotten around 42 books finished so far and I’m trying to get to my goal of at least 50 books each year.
So I’m looking for a few books that aren’t too difficult to finish and will still be enjoyable. I liked books such as A Clockwork Orange, The Count of Monte Cristo, Crime and Punishment, Bunny, The Master and Margarita, Lolita, and Nausea.
If you’re a gamer like me and you know some of these video games, I would also love to have any book recs similar to them: Cyberpunk 2077, Bioshock, The Last of Us, Detroit: Become Human.
by xiafri
10 Comments
Norwegian wood by Haruki Murakami is an excellent slump buster for me
If you want a fast and fun read, there’s at least one Bioshock novel. Rapture is the back story on how the city was built and then decayed.
>book recs similar to them: Cyberpunk 2077, Bioshock, The Last of Us, Detroit: Become Human.
Cyberpunk 2077 is based on a tabletop RPG that was inspired in part by the book Hardwired by Walter Jon Williams. It’s out of print and pretty hard to find a paper copy of these days, but there is an ebook version. It’s quite old so not *that* much like 2077. It is *a lot* like Cyberpunk 2020, the version of the tabletop RPG most played before the new edition Cyberpunk Red came out. You may like **Voice of the Whirlwind** instead, which is set a bit farther in the future in the same universe as Hardwired.
I’m only passingly familiar with Detroit: Become Human (I watched some videos of it and didn’t decide to buy in the end) but you may like these books about humans and robots/AI attempting to coexist:
* The Imperial Radch series by Ann Leckie.
* The Moon is a Harsh Mistress by Robert A. Heinlein
* A Closed and Common Orbit by Becky Chambers. It is second in a series, but for the most part works as a standalone novel. It follows the story of side characters introduced in the first book, one of whom is an AI.
* Not a novel, but a novella. The Life Cycle of Software Objects by Ted Chiang.
* Autonomous by Annalee Newitz
* The Murderbot Diaries by Martha Wells
The Stranger by Albert Camus
Neuromancer by William Gibson
Portalwar saga. 7 books all relatively short. Available on audiobook/storytell (if you prefer to listen, its around 5-7 hour each book)
*Neuromancer* — William Gibson
*Blindsight* — Peter Watts
*Invisible Monsters* — Chuck Palahniuk
The Beach and Fight Club
Tower of Somnus series by Cale Plamann. Cyberpunk style world where aliens making first contact with Earth are so appalled at the behavior of the humans in charge, that they place an embargo on the planet and ban humans from leaving. However, to help them integrate into the galactic society, they give humans access to an mmorpg that they can play while they sleep that let’s them interact with the other species. The thing is, any ability/power you get in the game, you get to keep in real life. So you end up with a cyberpunk world of technology that now has to deal with people being able to throw fireballs.
Edit: Spelling and word changes due to mobile typing being a pain in the butt
The Stand by Stephen King. Long but super addictive
Yellowface by RF Kuang is impossible to put down. I loved Bunny and The Count of Monte Cristo as well.