From a young age, all the way through high school, I would read anywhere from 50 to 100+ books per year (my mom would take me to the library every weekend). I really enjoyed reading and picked up new books any chance that I could. Sadly, I hadn’t read a single book for fun since starting college about 15 years ago. I finally picked up a book a couple of weekends ago, “Fourth Wing,” which I finished over a weekend.
Afterwards, I went out and got myself a Kindle so that I could read on-the-go without having to carry around a book all the time. However, I’m having some difficulty trying to find the next book to read. I browsed Amazon during Black Friday and was overwhelmed by the number of options and just gave up. I was wondering if you all could help me out in finding some books to read.
Off the top of my head, some authors that I have enjoyed in the past include: Tom Clancy, Ken Follett, John Grisham, Brian Jacques, and James Patterson.
Genres that interest me include: Fantasy, Historical Fiction (Medieval, especially), Military, Romance, Sci-Fi, and Sports. I absolutely hate anything horror.
Thank you!
by heyitsme0513
1 Comment
Welcome fellow reader! I’m going to give a few suggestions but I also recommend the free tool https://moody.games. You have to check the Books tab (otherwise it defaults to video games), and then put in as detailed a promo as you like and it will give you 5-10 books with synopsis the AI thinks meets your request. It’s not perfect, but I’ve gotten a lot of really good suggestions from there when I’m feeling overwhelmed by choice.
– **Ghost Fleet** and **2034** are both really phenomenal speculative fiction about what WW3 will be like. Different authors, but both are written by people with real knowledge and insight about military and foreign policy which makes the books imminently more believable.
– **Deep State** by Chris Hauty is an awesome political thriller. It features a recurring character in Hauty’s novels (Hayley Chill) but that’s the only one I’ve read.
– Pretty much anything by **Blake Crouch.** Has that fast-paced thriller feel you get from Clancy and Patterson, but instead of a political backdrop, all his stories feature emergent technologies/concepts (like CRISPR gene editing or quantum physics). My favorite is the **Wayward Pines** trilogy of books, but his standalone novels are excellent as well.
– **Silo** trilogy by Hugh Howey. Kind of a sci-fi dystopian mystery that unwinds itself over a multitude of characters and events. Why does everyone live in a giant underground silo? You’ll have to pick up the books to find out.
– **The Man in the High Castle** by Phillip K Dick. Well-known since there’s now a TV series with the same name, but it’s an excellent alternative history novel where Japan and Nazi Germany win WW2.
– **The Three Body Problem** trilogy. Part alternative history, part sci-fi, part fantasy, these books focus on one young woman who lives in Communist China and eventually gets pulled into the revolution. Gorgeous prose and gripping story.
– **Accessory to War** by Neil Degrasse Tyson. It’s a non-fiction, but it’s a really interesting history of how military policy throughout history has driven the invention and deployment of space technology.
– **American War** by Omar el-Akkad. This cli-fi is set in the near future, in a climate-change-ravaged United States. The North and the South again fight in the second Civil War, this time over fossil fuels. But with one side (North) with all the advantages and the other (South) too stubborn to ever surrender, the war simmers over decades. The book follows one young, bright girl from the South through and a bit past her death. A masterpiece of any age, I think the book has something especially important to say in today’s geopolitical reality about how humanity shapes war and how, in turn, war shapes humanity.
– **The Camel Club** by David Baldacci. Another great political thriller. At the center of the narrative are four older, quite eccentric (and generally poor) gentlemen who meet regularly to discuss conspiracies having to do with the US government. At first glance, they are cute, old men who are bored and mostly meet up to pass the time. But, one day, they witness a murder that may very well be tied to a conspiracy that goes all the way to 1600 Pennsylvania. I believe this is the first book in a Camel Club series (where the conspiracy group is always involved), but I have only read this one so far.
– **World War Z: The Definitive Edition** by Max Brooks. Pretty much the gold standard of the zombie genre. No real gore or horror (just a few very vague descriptions of victims), and each chapter features a different person from all over the world who bore witness to events before during and after the zombie wars almost ended the human race.
– **Lincoln Lawyer** books by Michael Connelly. Pretty much as close as you can get to Grisham without reading Grisham. The MC generally works with a rougher crowd than Grisham (who sets a lot of his stories in a more white collar environment). They’re all great books, but I just finished **The Law of Innocence**, when the Lincoln Lawyer himself gets framed for murder and must defend himself. Definitely recommend.