(Part 2) Reddit mentions: The best short stories & anthology books

There is a lot of crap erotica out there, for sure. Finding good ones are hit or miss.

I tried a regency romance once. Super cheesy and cliche. Not for me.

I like Literotica because there are lots of stories to browse. There good stories and there are a lot of bad stories. Sometimes I will open a story, read a paragraph or two, and go right back to searching for a new one.

I've been trying to find good erotica books and series. Every other book is a Shades of grey clone. There are times in most of them where I end up rolling my eyes at some of the dialogue and descriptions. Sometimes, I will skip over parts if I'm just not into it.

A lot of erotica on Amazon for the kindle is free. It will often be the first book in a series to try to convince you to continue reading the rest. I read lots of these free ones and if I like the author/style then I will consider reading more. I haven't found any I like enough yet but I keep trying. Sometimes I can read enough of a bad erotica to do the trick. There are definitely some that I just quit reading.

Not erotica but I will also /r/gonewildstories. Nothing like stories that can actually happen.

The best erotica I have read is the Sleeping Beauty Trilogy by A. N. Roquelaure, which is a pseudonym for for Anne Rice. But be warned, this is very, very heavy BDSM. It might be too much for many and at times it was a little heavy for me and I consider myself to be relatively kinky.

The best romance novel I have read was Outlander by Diana Gabaldon. It is a time-travel, historical romance to be exact. From what I remember it was actually a pretty good read. If you are going to read a romance, I think this is a good one to start with.

Though not erotica, Kushiel's Dart by Jacqueline Carey is a fantasy novel with some romance/erotic elements. I read it several years ago before my libido bottomed out but I'm pretty sure it turned me on. Interesting read as well. Definitely has a theme of sado-masochism, but compared to the Sleeping Beauty Trilogy it is nothing. If you already enjoy fantasy novels you should give it a go.

Hope that helps. You really have to dig to find anything good. That being said, often the act of searching alone is enough to get my engines revving.

Overview

Overall, pretty good.. needs a fair amount of wordsmithing, but I think you're doing a fair job of getting you personality across

Photos

Your main sucks wind, it doesn't look like the person in any of the other photos. I suspect it's the most recent, but it's focus is so bad it makes you look kind of like the brown eyed office bound older brother of the blue eyed mad bro who's out in the world having a great time in all the other pictures.

How much time are we talking about between the oldest and most recent pictures here?

You're 22, you've changed a lot in just the last year, for that matter 3 years. None of these should be more than 6 months old.

My self-summary

>Here's a hint... My name's not Steve! Recent University grad, Computer Science major. I'm very easy going and love to meet new people. I'm interested in traveling, photography, techy stuffy and love vinyl records.

Beeb! Hipster alert!

You're hopefully going to put most of this in it's appropriate section, so it really doesn't belong here.

Then come back here and give it a fresh try.. make this section why you like all the things you're mentioning in the other sections.. All of those are what you're passionate about, this section should be why you're passionate about it.


What I’m doing with my life

> Just graduated University! Currently working in IT for a corporate office. My coffee mug says that I'm the worlds greatest computer whizz.

I hope your coffee mug doesn't really say that, and if it does I hope you take it home, otherwise I will guess at least one fellow employee has taken a piss into your mug.

This is what you're doing in the "what's occurring in your life" sense not "What are your life goals and what are you doing to achieve them" sense. The question can go either way, I'm personally more fond of the later.

I’m really good at

Meh.. not terrible, not fantastic.

The first things people usually notice about me

Leave it blank, let it disappear.

Favorite books, movies, shows, music, and food

Not bad.. covering most bases.

No book? Not even a single favorite book?

Winter's Tale Paperback – by Mark Helprin

Get it.. wait till the first snowflakes start to fall, open it and start reading. Thank me or tell me it was crap when you finish reading it.

The six things I could never do without

Fair enough.

I spend a lot of time thinking about

> If the Oxford Comma is truly a necessity.

Yep. It's like ending a SQL statement with out a ;

On a typical Friday night I am

Paint a more vivid picture. Give the potential date reading your profile something they can mentally place themselves into. Do you frequent sports bars, wine bars, craft brew taprooms, live music, what?

The most private thing I’m willing to admit

No.. clear it, make it go away.

You should message me if

I was good with that until you used Adventure.

NO.

For Sci fi, Ian M. Banks: His Player of Games is the most accessable in my opinion.- Since he is one of my favorite authors I'd probably try and push Player of games, hoping the person would feel inspired after reading and wanting to read more of the culture novels.
(Player of Games is NOT (in my humble opinion) the best sci fi out there, but it can help you get into one of the best sci fi series ever written; The culture novels, by the same author - so its like reading something so so, to hook you to something great!)

For shorter easier access to the genre, I highly recommend trying to read Bruce Sterlings collection of short stories; http://www.amazon.com/Schismatrix-Plus-Complete-Shapers-Mechanists-Universe/dp/0441003702

These stories give a nice introduction to not only sci fi in general but in particular to Bruce Sterlings Shaper/mechanist universe which is just one of the most riveting things Ive ever read in sci fi.

For Cyber punk: This genre is just strange to the uninitiated. You probably want to read mainstream sci fi first.
If you read bruce Sterlings character driven sci fi first, and then try on cyber punk you might get a lot more out of it: Reading order - (im not sure if this is an official trilogy, but this is the order I recommend)
Neuromancer, Count Zero, Mona lisa Overdrive - Think of them as one large novel, and dont read other things in between for the best experience.

Then there is pulp sci fi. The easily consumed run of the mill, often very good sci fi. - Try Neal Asher, or Richard Morgan (Altered Carbon is awesome) - Reading books by these two is a bit like reading James Bond, beamed into the future in his underpants and just kicking ass and taking names. - I love it, but its not brainy sci fi in any way. Pure entertainment.

And then we should talk about space operas. - I dont like them. - There is one exception to every rule, and so my exception here is Peter Hamilton: http://www.amazon.com/Reality-Dysfunction-Nights-trilogy-Trilogy-ebook/dp/B003GK21DA (Im not sure if Im wrong in labelling these books space operas - maybe I head that somewhere, not sure if Im wrong) - However, I recommend reading this series AFTER taking on something like the bruce sterling suggestion I mentioned. Unless you want a brick of a book to be your introduction to the genre.

Honorable mentions: 1984 (dystopean sci fi is a whole sub genre in itself - Its not all Hungergames) - Do androids dream of electric sheep. (thats what Bladerunner the movie is based on)
For the easily consumed: Enders Game, and really anything by Orson Scott Card (his sci fi is really easy to read and he does great storylines and good character building).
Dune probably needs to be on the list. (I know the movies sucked, but the books are great)
Old Mans War was mentioned elsewhere and in that line, I recommend also : The Forever War - by Joe Haldman.
Snow Crash (cyberpunkish - but he is an author you'd want to check out for alot of his work besides this one)
2001 a space odyssey. And why not A hitchikers guide to the galaxy.

Don’t force it. Keep your heart open and listening to God, explore other ideas, relax, read John as if it were the only gospel you had in a world that idolizes physical and psychological domination of others, treats life as cheap and places hedonism above all. Read this and understand that the world honestly described is the natural state of man before the gospel. And maybe then try reading Mere Christianity by C.S. Lewis. I was a teenager when I started to drift away, I read the Upanishads, Lao Tzu, French and German philosophers, stoics, all sorts of stuff. I also went through a period in my life where I saw a lot of the bad nature of humans, almost in a banal way in hindsight. Christ really did bring something special and unique to humanity, and it took me a long time and exposure to appreciate that. I was lucky in the sense that I was able to step aside from the Church but God never let me go from his hand. I’m not sure it would have helped me to hear this back then, but I was unable to appreciate Christ’s revolutionary message because I was jaded living in a very secure and peaceful world as a very young man. I was very, very lucky for that but the irony was that I couldn’t see how bereft the world was from that vantage point. Like I couldn’t appreciate why the world needed Christ because I confused the truly good things as being the product of man’s doing rather than God’s. I’m not the most eloquent about that, just speaking off the cuff, but I hope it helps a little bit. Keep your heart open to God and listen to the Holy Spirit always - you’re allowed to do that no matter what else you read, do, or believe, and I found after many years that it ended up being my lifeline. Now I’m truly grateful for Jesus, fear the Lord and my personal relationship with Him is very real.

The Dying Earth is probably my first recommendation, but there are many good entry points to Vance's work. He was primarily a scifi writer, but his few fantasy works have received great praise. His writing style is his best quality, and I've always said he wrote literature at a time when scifi and pulp fantasy paid the bills.


Part one of the Dying Earth collection is a series of short stories, grim and wonderous in tonality- depicting adventurers and magicians on an Earth so old the Sun is dying. Gary Gygax of Dungeons and Dragons quoted these stories as part of his inspiration for the original DnD. Ignore the spaceship on the cover, it literally has nothing whatsoever to do with anything inside that book.

Books 2 and 3 of The Dying Earth collection retain the setting, but focuses on the exploits of a singular character, Cugel the Clever. He is a rogue/thief, and the stories are very, very funny, following him from one mishap to the next.

Book 4 is about Rhialto the Marvellous, one of the few Arch-Magicians left alive on the Dying Earth. Nearly omnipotent, with otherworldly demon servants at his command, he and his Arch-Magician cabal of "peers" are likely the inspiration for the Tel'Vanni of Elder Scrolls fame. These last stories (books 3&4) were written when Vance was in his prime, and his comedy here is so good I still laugh when rereading it. His other works retain his style of wit and humor but few large works are comedic in focus.

Edited- clarification and more words

I plot out the major arcs of both the story and the characters. I make sure to nail down the essentials of what is happening when, as well as developing a good understanding of my character motivations.

For me, a lot of planning involves just taking the time to mull over the themes I want to work with, or explore questions I want to raise. This involves asking a lot of questions to everyone I know, everyone I meet. It makes for great party conversations!

It takes a few months, during which time I'll also explore what's already been written/said about what I'm hoping to do. I look at similar movies and books, anything at all that's already been produced that has themes or topics similar to what I'm developing.

I watch a lot of movies and read a lot of books.

As a concrete example, my most recent novel is about what would happen if everyone in the world stopped sleeping.

I spent months asking everyone I knew what the longest was that they stayed awake. I also read pretty much the only comparable thing on the topic, a fictional novel called "Sleepless" by Charlie Huston. I also read articles on sleep and neuroscience, as well as watched TED talks and other related videos.

Then I conducted a sleep-deprivation experiment on myself. I wanted to know what it would be like to not sleep. (I am a wuss and didn't make it that long- I need sleep more than the average bear apparently!)

This novel is in the style of World War Z (early title: World War ZZZ, huehuehue) and so it involved a lot of characters. Too many to keep track of in my brain, unaided.

I had index cards for each one, as well as drafts notes (using Scrivener- hurrah!). I got really comfortable with character creation. I read Stephen King's On Writing and O.S. Card's Characters and Viewpoint.

I was able to craft an overarching narrative by determining which characters would inject the story with which elements, and placing them where they needed to be. They got moved around a bit as I went on, but throughout I was very aware of the overall flow of the work.

Through careful planning, the actual writing (80,000 words) only took about seven weeks. I am a machine when it comes to word output, if I've done my (months and months of) homework. A second draft saw a lot of that cut, and more added in to bring it up to 86,000 words in three weeks of the hardest work of my life.

For me, planning is super important. If I don't plan well enough, I waste days. Days where my story goes off the rails, or my characters do things which don't make sense.

It's wonderful to see some things happen more fluidly, and I've had lovely surprises this way, but I always stop and think about if that is really what I want to be doing before I proceed.

I hope this long winded reply answers your question. I do enjoy sharing this sort of thing, and I hope it helps other writers do what they love to do.

The last excellent work of fiction I read was City of Dreams by Beverly Swerling. The book that I feel best captures the feeling of New York City, however, is Winter's Tale by Mark Helprin.

I mostly read nonfiction books about New York City history, and I'll share a few of my favorites with you. The definitive tome, of course, is Gotham: A History of New York City to 1898 by Mike Wallace and Edwin Burrows. Another favorite of mine, as I love the history of New Amsterdam, is Island at the Center of the World:The Epic Story of Dutch Manhattan and the Forgotten Colony That Shaped America by Russell Shorto. One of the most fascinating subjects I have been learning about is Native American history at the period of first European contact, and I really recommend checking out Adriaen Van Der Donck's A Description of New Netherland (The Iroquoians and their World), which many scholars agree is just as much of a significant work as William Bradford's Of Plymouth Plantation, and would be the definitive guide to the new world if it had been written in English. Evan Pritchard's Native New Yorkers: The Legacy of the Algonquian People of New York also offers an incredible look at native culture.

If you are interested in the subway system, check out Stan Fischler's fantastic Uptown, Downtown. One of the most underrated books I have picked up recently explores the construction of the amazing Grand Central Terminal, and I learned an incredible amount from it: Grand Central's Engineer: William J. Wilgus and the Planning of Modern Manhattan. If you are interested in urban planning, I would also suggest The Measure of Manhattan: The Tumultuous Career and Surprising Legacy of John Randel Jr., Cartographer, Surveyor, Inventor.

At this point I've read a ton of nonfiction books about the city, so if you have any questions or want any other recommendations, feel free to ask!

My go to recommendation is typically either "Machine of Death: A Collection of Stories About People Who Know How They Will Die" or "This Is How You Die: Stories of the Inscrutable, Infallible, Inescapable Machine of Death". They are both collections of short stories with one simple premise in common. There is a machine that exists that will without fail tell you with 100% accuracy how you are going to die. However, the machine can be cryptic, vague or anything in between. It could say "Old Age" and you'd assume that you, a 22 year old person, are good to do whatever you want danger wise until you're super old. But that same 22 year old could be walking down the sidewalk after getting their diagnosis from the machine and be hit a by car... being driven by a very old person. THEIR old age is what killed you. Or maybe you survive the accident but are left brain dead and your family refuses to pull the plug, so you outlive all of them and end up dying naturally of old age, having spent the last seventy years of your life trapped inside your own body. They are an incredibly varied series, ranging from sci-fi to horror to comedy to mystery. They are some of my favorite books.

​

So that's two. Let's think of three more.

​

Next up is "Lamb: The Gospel According to Biff, Christ's Childhood Pal" by Christopher Moore. It's a new (clearly fictionalized) testament that chronicles the early life of the Son of God that are missing from the Bible. Who tells it? Why none other than Biff, Christ's childhood best friend who was purposely omitted from said good book for being a bit of a jerk. He has been resurrected by some angels and tasked with telling the world about the lost years of his best buddy's life. Biff and Josh get into all sorts of foibles, from reanimating dead bugs as children to scare the bullies in their village to learning martial arts from monks to teaching an elephant yoga to falling in love with the same woman. It's hilarious, and beautiful. Be you a believer or not, it's a great read. I'm an atheist and I was recommended the book by my best friend who is a minister more than a decade ago.

​

Now let's talk about "Lucky Bastard" by S.G. Browne. This book is about a private detective with a special ability: he can steal another person's luck, good or bad. He then can quite literally bottle and sell this to the highest bidder. He's been out of the Luck Poaching game for some time, but his past has finally caught up with him. He's offered a huge payday to steal back the mayor's stolen luck, and he's hurting for the cash. Our detective friend spends a lot of time and money at Starbucks, and $100,000 will buy a lot of lattes. Not to mention the job is offered to him by a beautiful, mysterious woman who he might just want to take the job in order to be closer to. The book is very funny, extremely tense and has tons of twists and turns. I discovered the author by accident when I picked up another book by him at the airport nearly ten years just to have something to read during a delay. I loved it so much that I wrote to him and he sent me an advanced copy of his (then) upcoming novel, and we've become casual friends online. He's a great guy and his stuff is a lot of fun.

​

The last book on my list is "House of Leaves" by Mark Z. Danielewski. There is almost no way to explain this book because it's so many different stories wrapped in a ton of layers, but I'll give it a go. At it's core, a man who was loosely acquainted with a blind older gentlemen checks out his apartment after the old man's death and finds endless notebooks, manuscripts and stories. These stories are all related to a video tape that is the stuff of legends. In that video tape is footage of a videographer who was filming his new home and family for months. He slowly starts to realize that his house is very slightly larger on the inside than it is on the outside. Then a tiny room appears between the master bedroom and his child's bedroom. Then a door appears on his living room wall, which when opened leads to an entirely black room with a spiral staircase leading down. He puts a team together and leads an expedition into this black room to figure out what's going on. Now, those are the BASICS of this book. It's a really trippy experience. There are some pages with only one word on them, some pages where the text is oriented in different directions, some pages just contain sheet music. The book is full of source notes and references, but none of them notate or reference anything that actually exists. In fact, Mark Z. Danielweski doesn't even exist. It's a pen name, a character in itself. The whole experience is insane. I've bought so many copies of this book for people. It's probably the gift I've given most often in my life, other than the gift of laughter.

My favorite SF short story writers (in no special order):

• Philip K. Dick--Selected Stories of Philip K. Dick is a really good collection
  
• James Tiptree Jr aka Alice Sheldon--Her Smoke Rose Up Forever is the best collection IMO, but it is sometimes hard to find (at a reasonable price)
  
• Ray Bradbury--too many volumes to count
  
• J.G. Ballard--The Best Short Stories collection is a nice sampling of his early classic SF. The Complete Stories is a comprehensive collection that includes his later conceptual work.
  
• Kurt Vonnegut--Welcome to the Monkey House has several SF short stories
  
• Jorge Luis Borges--Ficciones is a great short collection, but Collected Fictions is a wonderfully complete collection
  
  EDIT--added Amazon links
  
  EDIT2--Also Gardner Dozois' "The Year's Best Science Fiction" is always ridiculously good. I haven't read this year's collection, but I am sure it's excellent.

I'll just throw in there are actually quite a few book series that focus on superheros, but aren't adaptions.

George R.R. Martin edits a series called Wild Cards which he refers to as mosaic novels. He and his friends will right a series of short stories which fit into a novel, each novel is part of a trilogy, and each trilogy is part of the larger world. The series has been going on since the 80's. The first one Wildcards was recently republished with added material. If you want to skip forward though Inside Straight was written to be a good jumping on point.

Brandon Sanderson recently wrote a series called The Reckoners , where people with Superpowers have taken over the world and

I haven't read these, but Vicious is supposed to be really good as well. Ex-Heroes is massup of the Superhero and zombie genres, I can't speak to it's quality, but it's fairly successful.

I know it isn't exactly what you're looking for, but I thought these might interest you.

Edit: Oh, and if you are interested in the Wildcards series, I would highly suggest reading the first novel even if you skip forward afterwards. The first book is essentially a series of short stories that tell the history of the Wildcards from their appearance in the 40's to the 80's when the rest start taking place.

Your Writing;

Some good writing in your details and solid word images. You have a good sense of humor, I would have enjoyed more of your dry timing. The story and characters, that was very difficult for me to follow. The paragraphs seemed to dance, move to one thing or another, almost like it didn't need to connect. They did connect but It felt to me I had to work hard to get it.

I stopped when Owen got to Lake Tahoe.

I found it hard to understand when it's the Mc thinking, or a dream, or something else. It didn't feel very real to me. I didn't get a any sense of a 'when', no sense of time passing, nor a viewpoint that let me understand what I was reading.

I thought Owen was a type of kid I wouldn't much like to hang out with. The red haired girl, not sure. Good world building, a firm start.

Other ways to get better feedback;

If you want to avoid bad habits before starting, be clear about how much help you can get here. Ask specific questions about areas you think don't work. Post a small intro, maybe just a scene or two from a chapter. Start a bit smaller. Build up from there.

The best help I see comes from very specific questions about your work.

More detailed critiques can be found at the link shown below. There they will read all of it and give very detailed responses, however there is a catch. You have to do a 1:1 ratio of other works in order to receive the same. So you'd have to complete a high level critique of a 2,500 plus story, then you would get the same.

If you don’t follow this rule, your post will be marked as a leech post. And if your leech post has been up for 24 hours without any new critiques from you, it will be removed.

[Destructive Readers](https://www.reddit.com/r/DestructiveReaders/ "The goal: to improve writing and maintain the highest standard of critique excellence anywhere on Reddit. DestructiveReaders isn't about writers being nice to writers; it's about readers being honest with writers. We deconstruct writing to construct better writers." )

Sharing the writing process;

A lot of us here are working and struggling with becoming better writers. So you are not alone in this painful process.

I myself find the task of becoming a good writer very daunting. I only keep going because I create a belief in myself. After that I go through the slow hard swim in the deep dark oceans of the unknown. I have no directions, no compass, only fear which if allowed becomes an anchor.

It would be good to know something about your skill level, things you've already read to improve crafting stories, classes you've taken, daily exercises or how much you write each day.

Myself; I do a daily poem, then write from 5/6 am to 9 am, that will be either my current novel or on a short I plan to submit to a magazine. I listen to Podcasts and do exercises from Writing Excuses

Books I use as my reference on writing;

• Song Writing Without Boundaries by Pat Pattison
  
  
• Characters & Viewpoint by Orson Scott Card
  
  
• On Writing by Steven King
  
  
• The Elements of Style by William Strunk Jr and E.B. White
  
  end
  
  
  
  
  

The aspects of Clarke's style that you seem to enjoy really shine in the short story format. You said you've read everything, does that include his short fiction? There's a great anthology which collects them all.

Asimov was also great at writing short fiction, and I like this collection of his works.

Many of the stories curated in those anthologies were published 50 or so years ago in weekly/monthly science fiction magazines, you might see if any one has created 'best of science fiction weekly' collections.

Tor publishes short fiction for free on its website regularly. It's fairly hit or miss, but it's a good way to window shop authors.

A novel you might enjoy is Leviathan Wakes. It's a hard sci-fi novel in which humanity has colonized Mars and the Asteroid Belt. At this point all have their own unique cultures because it takes so long to travel between them. Not a lot of character development, which you don't seem to be into anyway, just fun ride in a cool setting. First in a series, but I haven't read the sequels yet so I can't comment on those.


You also might like The Martian, by Andy Weir. An astronaut is stranded by himself on Mars and has to survive. Weir wrote a short story called "The Egg" which gets posted to reddit on a regular basis.

The main character of Steven Brust's Jhereg series is pretty overpowered. He's a talented fighter, a high level caster in multiple types of magic, has a familiar, and has access to tons of resources (including magic items). His friends are equally OP; one of them has a flying castle.

Malazan and House of Blades are both good examples, although House of Blades has more of a shonen anime leveling arc.

Another good one if you're willing to watch the main character level up is Mother of Learning. The main character is a mage stuck in a time loop and gets progressively more powerful as he continues looping.

If you like graphic novels, I recommend Tower of God. Lots of super powerful folks in here.

My own books might fit what you're looking for, too. All my main characters are sorcerers with varying specializations. Taelien, one of the protagonists, manipulates metal to enhance his swordplay, including doing some anime swordsman stuff like cutting through spells. Fair warning that I go into a lot of detail on the magic system, so it can come across as RPGish. If you like that sort of thing, the first two books are out now, and you can find book 1 here. The Kindle version is on sale for 99 cents.

I'll be quite frank in saying that I haven't read Ibn Fadlan in either the original or in translation, but after looking into the question, as is so often true of Arabic texts, you don't have a lot of choices.

Unless you speak something other than English, there are basically three translations in print:

https://www.amazon.com/Ibn-Fadlan-Land-Darkness-Travellers/dp/0140455078/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1503110083&sr=1-1&keywords=ibn+fadlan

and:

https://www.amazon.com/Ibn-Fadlans-Journey-Russia-Tenth-Century/dp/155876366X

and:

https://nyupress.org/books/9781479899890/

In his introduction to the last one, which is also the most recent chronologically published, Montgomery notes in regard to the other two translations:

> My translation aspires to
lucidity and legibility. James E. McKeithen’s excellent PhD thesis
(Indiana University, 1979) will satisfy the reader in search of a crib
of the Arabic. There are two other translations into English, by
Richard N. Frye (2005) and by the late Paul Lunde and Caroline
Stone (2012). They are both admirable: Frye’s is very useful for the
studies he provides alongside the translation, and Lunde and Stone
have produced a nicely readable version of the work. Both, however,
effectively promote a version of Ibn Faḍlān’s text dominated
by Yāqūt’s quotations.

Which is to say the commentary of the compiler from which Ibn Fadlan's text is recorded (i.e. we don't actually have Ibn Fadlan's tex to translate from.)

Montgomery's introduction is worth reading in full as I think it will explain some of the problems in preparing a translation from such a source:

https://nyupress.org/webchapters/Montgomery_Mission_Introduction.pdf

In particular, Montgomery is trying to shave off the outside commentary, as a result his work is considerably shorter.

Frankly, to a lay reader, I'm not sure it would make much of a difference.

If you have any other languages, particularly German, there may be other translations that are worthwhile.

A library and interlibrary loans (if you can find a place that does those) are going to be your best friends if you're looking at getting basically anything in print. A lot of the resources we rely on are very rare.

I've never seen a book about modern slavic paganism by a pagan that is reliable.

The historical books I recommend which can be found online are Chronicle of the Slavs and The Russian Primary Chronicle. One that is on amazon and not too expensive is Ibn Fadlan and the Land of Darkness: Arab Travellers in the Far North. These texts are the closest we get to primary texts, and are all really important histories that talk about Slavic pagans. More obscure historical texts and chronicles can be found in excepts on this page.

The Song of Igor's Campaign is an ancient epic poem which has a bit of information contained about Slavic paganism. It's not too expensive on Amazon, and I have a this copy on my altar right now that I read from sometimes during ritual. It has some good commentary. A barebones pdf can be found here.

The Mythology of All Races (Celtic and Slavic) is pretty valuable because Jan Machal synthesized a lot of not-English and disparate sources, including rural folk practices, into a digestible resource. It's afterword about Baltic paganism is also really important because of its close relation to Slavic mythology. Like /u/trebuchetfight said, Eliade's A History of Religious Ideas Volume III is pretty good (even though its section on Slavic religion is only ~20 pages iirc).

Similar secondary sources include Russian Folk Belief by Ivantis, Russian Fairy Tales by Afanasyev and Perun: God of Thunder.

----

None of these sources are really going to tell you what Slavic neopaganism is or how to practice it, though. These are sources from which we can collect small details and weave together an actual religious practice. An example of this is a ritual format I wrote about here, based largely on the sources above.

Labyrinths, by JL Borges.

From Amazon:

> If Jorge Luis Borges had been a computer scientist, he probably would have invented hypertext and the World Wide Web.
Instead, being a librarian and one of the world's most widely read people, he became the leading practitioner of a densely layered imaginistic writing style that has been imitated throughout this century, but has no peer (although Umberto Eco sometimes comes close, especially in "Name of the Rose").
Borges's stories are redolent with an intelligence, wealth of invention, and a tight, almost mathematically formal style that challenge with mysteries and paradoxes revealed only slowly after several readings. Highly recommended to anyone who wants their imagination and intellect to be aswarm with philosophical plots, compelling conundrums, and a wealth of real and imagined literary references derived from an infinitely imaginary library.

Reviews

“Borges is arguably the great bridge between modernism and post-modernism in world literature.” (David Foster Wallace - The New York Times )

“Borges anticipated postmodernism (deconstruction and so on) and picked up credit as founding father of Latin American magical realism.” (Colin Waters - The Washington Times )

Ambrose Bierce- The Devil's Dictionary.

Don't really read it as much as browse through it from time to time. It's an old book but much of its cynicism is as relevant and as funny today as when written.

Something a bit longer try Post Office by Charles Bukowski. That's semi-autobiographical, easily accessible and there's not really that much of a plot to it- so it doesn't really matter too much if you lose your place.

edit: Would you consider collections of short stories? I often find them the best thing to read if I'm unsure as to when I'll get the chance. Most definitely not light but short would be a collection of Jorge Luis Borges stories. Some of them are complete mind-fucks a few pages long. I have a copy of Labyrinths and it's pretty damn good, but there are many similar collections about. It's the only book that I've lent out, not had returned, and then replaced- usually I don't bother if it's something I've already read.

further edit: Both non-fiction and short- Anton Chekhov- A Journey to Sakhalin. Truly remarkable book, especially the letters to his family.

Oh my god, I am so hot for this book (and was pleasantly surprised and violently vindicated when I guessed the content of the link correctly).

If you're into historical fantasy, I have to push Naomi Novik's Temeraire books. The grandness is less condensed but there are six sweet, sweet books, and more on the way.

[edited to add more books]

If you include mythology, I recall liking The Lost Books of The Odyssey by Zachary Mason quite a bit.

In terms of fairies and weaving tales, In the Night Garden and its sequel The Orphan's Tales by Catherynne M. Valente have excellent and complexly tangled story lines.

Other favorites: American Gods by Neil Gaiman, anything by Terry Pratchett, perhaps even Robin McKinley?

Though the majority of it is straight material, The Sleeping Beauty Trilogy isn't bad. There are a few good lesbian scenes sprinkled throughout the series to keep us interested, but far more straight and gay male scenes. I will not lie and tell you that during the straight scenes - most, not all - I looked at each situation through the eyes of the dommes, be they male or female, and didn't just associate with the female lead. It's VERY deep into the BDSM lifestyle, involving a great deal of humiliation and public degradation - which I'm not into; our BDSM stays private, intimate, a subtle rippling just below the surface meant to produce an almost secret response, something that is only noted by your instincts, we're reduced to animals sensing pheromones and reacting to those - so take that with a grain of salt.

I'm still looking for a good lesbian domme/sub story that actually piques my interest and is something with which I can relate; maybe I'll just write my own, until then I'll keep you updated if I find anything worthwhile :)

Well's there two characters like Kilgrave in the Wild Cards series


SPOILERS FOR THE WILD CARDS BOOKS


The Envoy and Puppetman are the ones with powers like that(mind control like powers), the book series is an anthology series so vastly different characters to follow along arcs that sometimes take more than one book to see the end.

The Envoy is minor character compared to the others, he's in the first book, and he does appear later in Book Six Ace in the Hole where we found out what he's been up too in the past 42 years(book timeline) and he does play a part in the end of the book.

Puppetman appears in almost all of the first six or seven books, You can read the first book then jump straight to book Four ( Aces Abroad ) , than after than jump straight to book Six ( Ace in the Hole ). That will get you very far into Puppetman's arc throughout the series.

Hope that helps, the series is really well done and builds a small universe. The first two books have been released as audiobooks and are very well done.


Book 1 audiobook


Amazon link to book 1

If you spend time in the webcomics part of the internet you probably heard of Machine of Death when it was published a couple years back. If you don't, you probably never heard of it, unless you heard Glenn Beck complaining that this book kept one of his books from debuting at #1.


The book is a collection of short stories that were inspired by a Dinosaur Comics webcomic that fans wanted the author to make happen. Notable figures from across the internet, as well as some random authors, each wrote a short story based only on that comic (essentially, that a machine somehow existed that would tell you in very few words how you would die, but not when or where). Every story is accompanied by a single amazing illustration from a different artist.

What is so cool about the book is that every author worked from the same original but with no communication, so you get these amazingly unique interpretations. Many are sad, but some are happy and a few are laugh out loud funny. I read it during a cross country trip and absolutely lost myself in it for the better part of the trip.


(On a side note, a few people are recommending Chuck Pahalniuk. His style will engross you, hold you tight, and then hold your head underwater until you can't breath. He regularly has people pass out at the line "corn and peanuts" when he reads a particular short story to groups. If you pick one of his books, go with one where the characters do a lot of the story telling, it adds so many layers of depth and gives you some needed diversity in prose. Rant or Haunted I would say are hands down his best books, despite the fact that Fightclub and Choke were made into movies.)

If you've enjoyed Sanderson, you're in for a real treat! Many of Brandon's books occur in a shared universe called the Cosmere.

There's also a recently published Stormlight novella, called Edgedancer. At the current time, it's only available as part of a collection of Cosmere stories called Arcanum Unbounded.

There's a non-canon excerpt that Brandon wrote about how a certain character survived in WoR. It's a fun, quick read.

And there are some Oathbringer excerpts floating around the internet if you look. One for Kaladin, two Dalinar flashbacks, and (most recently) a Kaladin flashback. There's a short story collection called Unfettered II which includes an additional Dalinar flashback. So if you're super impatient for Oathbringer then you can hunt for these. :)

Alright. The other rec is Tales of the Dying Earth by Jack Vance. It's not technical or complex at all in terms of how science-y it gets. There's really no science in it all and is actually probably closer to fantasy than it is science fiction. Science-fantasy maybe.

It's weird though. The writing is wordy and formal, the dialogue is strangely unnatural (though awesome and the biggest reason I read it) and "mannered," and the characters are jerks. It has a very subtle and dry humour. Sometimes not so easily picked up on, but the way the characters interact give it a certain tone I haven't found in any other book. It can be kind of a dark sometimes cynical humour, but witty and ironic.

I don't know if you can find an audio version of it though so here is a link to a paperback with all his Dying Earth stories in case you wanted to look for it somewhere. Actually, because of how wordy the prose is it might be better to read it rather than listen.

Sorry for the long reply for such a simple question. I just like to rec Vance wherever I go because many people don't know him and it's one of my favourites.

Hope you enjoy Hitchhikers Guide by the way!

Oh my goodness, you absolutely cannot have a magical realism rec list without Mark Helprin's Winter's Tale on it! (Okay, maybe you could, but in my view it'd be like...like having a historical fantasy rec list without Guy Gavriel Kay on it. A travesty. Unless you're deliberately leaving off hugely successful books.)

The book is not at all like the movie of the same name. Like many magical realist novels, it's hard to describe; plus I find it hard to talk about because, as Benjamin DeMott said in his New York Times review, "I find myself nervous, to a degree I don’t recall in my past as a reviewer, about failing the work, inadequately displaying its brilliance."

It is a love letter to the New York City of the past, and of (at the time of the book's publication) the future. At times exhilarating, at others heartbreaking, simultaneously full of wry humor and grand vision. I suppose the back-of-book blurb I have on my battered, much-read copy is as good an overall description as any: "Vault into the cold, clear air across a frozen, fabulous time of love and laughter with Peter Lake, master thief, and his flying white horse. Thunder toward the 21st century, leading lunatics, lovers, rascals, and dreamers over snowdrifts, through raging storms, furious battles, walls of ice and pillars of fire, to the golden city of our glorious future."

I'll second Ubik. I also enjoyed Flow My Tears..., The Man in the High Castle, Clans of the Alphane Moon, and The Simulacra. A lot of his more known works to a general audience are short stories, so I would also recommend getting a collection of those. That might even be the best place to start now that I think of it. This book has a lot of the popular stories like Minority Report, Total Recall (We Can Remember It For You Wholesale), The Adjustment Team, etc. Good place to dive in.

Per Amazon:

Product Description
An all-new Stormlight Archive novella, "Edgedancer," will be the crown jewel of Arcanum Unbounded: The Cosmere Collection, the first book of short fiction by #1 New York Times bestselling author Brandon Sanderson.

The collection will include nine works in all. The first eight are:

“The Hope of Elantris” (Elantris)
“The Eleventh Metal” (Mistborn)
“The Emperor's Soul” (Elantris)
“Allomancer Jak and the Pits of Eltania, Episodes 28 through 30” (Mistborn)
“White Sand" (excerpt; Taldain)
"Shadows for Silence in the Forests of Hell” (Threnody)
“Sixth of Dusk” (First of the Sun)
“Mistborn: Secret History” (Mistborn)

These wonderful works, originally published on Tor.com and elsewhere individually, convey the expanse of the Cosmere and tell exciting tales of adventure Sanderson fans have come to expect, including the Hugo Award-winning novella, “The Emperor's Soul” and an excerpt from the graphic novel "White Sand."

Arcanum Unbounded will also contain the Stormlight Archive novella "Edgedancer," which will appear in this book for the first time anywhere. It is a story of Lift, taking place between Words of Radiance and the forthcoming Oathbringer.

Finally, this collection includes essays and illustrations for the various planetary systems in which the stories are set.

Resumen de la noticia

>> “If our heart were large enough to love life in all its detail, we would see that every instant is at once a giver and a plunderer,” the French philosopher Gaston Bachelard wrote in contemplating our paradoxical experience of time in the early 1930s.
>
>“It is the insertion of man with his limited life span that transforms the continuously flowing stream of sheer change … into time as we know it,” Hannah Arendt wrote half a century later in her brilliant inquiry into time, space, and our thinking ego.
>
>It was later included in Labyrinths (public library) — the 1962 collection of Borges’s stories, essays, parables, and other writings, which gave us his terrific and timeless parable of the divided self.
>
>> Borges begins by noting the deliberate paradox of his title, a contrast to his central thesis that the continuity of time is an illusion, that time exists without succession and each moment contains all eternity, which negates the very notion of “new.” The “slight mockery” of the title, he notes, is his way of illustrating that “our language is so saturated and animated by time.” With his characteristic self-effacing warmth, Borges cautions that his essay might be “the anachronistic reductio ad absurdum of a preterite system or, what is worse, the feeble artifice of an Argentine lost in the maze of metaphysics” — and then he proceeds to deliver a masterwork of rhetoric and reason, carried on the wings of uncommon poetic beauty.
>
>> Writing in the mid-1940s — a quarter century after Einstein defeated Bergson in their landmark debate, in which science (“the clarity of metaphysics,” per Borges) finally won the contested territory of time from the dictatorship of metaphysics, and just a few years after Bergson himself made his exit into eternity — Borges reflects on his lifelong tussle with time, which he considers the basis for all of his books:
>
>> Time, Borges notes, is the foundation of our experience of personal identity — something philosophers took up most notably in the 17th century, poets picked up in the 19th, scientists set down in the 20th, and psychologists picked back up in the 21st.
>
>> Returning to Hume’s notion of the illusory self — an idea advanced by Eastern philosophy millennia earlier — Borges considers how this dismantles the very notion of time as we know it:

---

Source Code | Tell me how to improve | Created by: u/Alawichu u/BaraBatman u/Craccini u/louislagrange

	

	

	

> # A New Refutation of Time: Borges on the Most Paradoxical Dimension of Existence - Brain Pickings - Pocket
>
>
>
> borges_time1.jpg
>
> “If our heart were large enough to love life in all its detail, we would see that every instant is at once a giver and a plunderer,” the French philosopher Gaston Bachelard wrote in contemplating our paradoxical experience of time in the early 1930s. “It is the insertion of man with his limited life span that transforms the continuously flowing stream of sheer change … into time as we know it,” Hannah Arendt wrote half a century later in her brilliant inquiry into time, space, and our thinking ego. Time, in other words — particularly our experience of it as a continuity of successive moments — is a cognitive illusion rather than an inherent feature of the universe, a construction of human consciousness and perhaps the very hallmark of human consciousness.
>
> Image
>
> Wedged between Bachelard and Arendt was Jorge Luis Borges (August 24, 1899–June 14, 1986), that muscular wrangler of paradox and grand poet-laureate of time, who addressed this perplexity in his 1946 essay “A New Refutation of Time,” which remains the most elegant, erudite, and pleasurable meditation on the subject yet. It was later included in Labyrinths (public library) — the 1962 collection of Borges’s stories, essays, parables, and other writings, which gave us his terrific and timeless parable of the divided self.
>
> Borges begins by noting the deliberate paradox of his title, a contrast to his central thesis that the continuity of time is an illusion, that time exists without succession and each moment contains all eternity, which negates the very notion of “new.” The “slight mockery” of the title, he notes, is his way of illustrating that “our language is so saturated and animated by time.” With his characteristic self-effacing warmth, Borges cautions that his essay might be “the anachronistic reductio ad absurdum of a preterite system or, what is worse, the feeble artifice of an Argentine lost in the maze of metaphysics” — and then he proceeds to deliver a masterwork of rhetoric and reason, carried on the wings of uncommon poetic beauty.
>
> Writing in the mid-1940s — a quarter century after Einstein defeated Bergson in their landmark debate, in which science (“the clarity of metaphysics,” per Borges) finally won the contested territory of time from the dictatorship of metaphysics, and just a few years after Bergson himself made his exit into eternity — Borges reflects on his lifelong tussle with time, which he considers the basis for all of his books:
>
> > In the course of a life dedicated to letters and (at times) to metaphysical perplexity, I have glimpsed or foreseen a refutation of time, in which I myself do not believe, but which regularly visits me at night and in the weary twilight with the illusory force of an axiom.
>
> Time, Borges notes, is the foundation of our experience of personal identity — something philosophers took up most notably in the 17th century, poets picked up in the 19th, scientists set down in the 20th, and psychologists picked back up in the 21st.
>
> Borges compares the ideas of the 18th-century Anglo-Irish Empiricist philosopher George Berkeley, chief champion of idealist metaphysics, and his Scottish peer and contemporary, David Hume. The two diverged on the existence of personal identity — Berkeley endorsed it as the “thinking active principle that perceives” at the center of each self, while Hume negated it, arguing that each person is “a bundle or collection of different perceptions, which succeed each other with an inconceivable rapidity” — but they both affirmed the existence of time.
>
> Making his way through the maze of philosophy, Borges maps what he calls “this unstable world of the mind” in relation to time:
>
> > A world of evanescent impressions; a world without matter or spirit, neither objective nor subjective, a world without the ideal architecture of space; a world made of time, of the absolute uniform time of [Newton’s] Principia; a tireless labyrinth, a chaos, a dream.
>
> aliceinwonderland_zwerger1.jpg
>
> Illustration by Lisbeth Zwerger for a special edition of Alice in Wonderland.
>
>
>
> Returning to Hume’s notion of the illusory self — an idea advanced by Eastern philosophy millennia earlier — Borges considers how this dismantles the very notion of time as we know it:
>
> > Behind our faces there is no secret self which governs our acts and receives our impressions; we are, solely, the series of these imaginary acts and these errant impressions.
>
> But even the notion of a “series” of acts and impressions, Borges suggest, is misleading because time is inseparable from matter, spirit, and space:
>
> > Once matter and spirit — which are continuities — are negated, once space too is negated, I do not know with what right we retain that continuity which is time. Outside each perception (real or conjectural) matter does not exist; outside each mental state spirit does not exist; neither does time exist outside the present moment.
>
> He illustrates this paradox of the present moment — a paradox found in every present moment — by guiding us along one particular moment familiar from literature:
>
> > During one of his nights on the Mississippi, Huckleberry Finn awakens; the raft, lost in partial darkness, continues downstream; it is perhaps a bit cold. Huckleberry Finn recognizes the soft indefatigable sound of the water; he negligently opens his eyes; he sees a vague number of stars, an indistinct line of trees; then, he sinks back into his immemorable sleep as into the dark waters. Idealist metaphysics declares that to add a material substance (the object) and a spiritual substance (the subject) to those perceptions is venturesome and useless; I maintain that it is no less illogical to think that such perceptions are terms in a series whose beginning is as inconceivable as its end. To add to the river and the bank, Huck perceives the notion of another substantive river and another bank, to add another perception to that immediate network of perceptions, is, for idealism, unjustifiable; for myself, it is no less unjustifiable to add a chronological precision: the fact, for example, that the foregoing event took place on the night of the seventh of June, 1849, between ten and eleven minutes past four. In other words: I denny, with the arguments of idealism, the vast temporal series which idealism admits. Hume denied the existence of an absolute space, in which all things have their place; I deny the existence of one single time, in which all things are linked as in a chain. The denial of coexistence is no less arduous than the denial of succession.
>
> Image
>
> One of Norman Rockwell’s rare illustrations for The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.
>
>
>
> This simultaneity of all events has immense implications as a sort of humanitarian manifesto for the commonness of human experience, which Borges captures beautifully:
>
> > The vociferous catastrophes of a general order — fires, wars, epidemics — are one single pain, illusorily multiplied in many mirrors.
>

> (continues in next comment)

I really like the short story suggestion, and wanted to add Ray Bradbury to the list! He has a compilation of all of his short stories (except for the stories in The Martian Chronicles, which I also recommend!) and it's MARVELOUS. Some stories are sci-fi, some are spooky, some are sweet and thoughtful. He's a very talented author.

I've heard good things about The New Penguin Russian Course. I also like to have plenty of reading material, like readers and parallel texts to help build my vocabulary and work on comprehension.

As others have said, there's plenty of free and usually legal stuff out there, so give those a shot too. While materials can help or hurt your motivation, the specific brand or program isn't as important as doing something every day to improve your Russian.

Michael Swanwick, The Iron Dragon's Daughter. Yes it has elves and dragons and whatnot. On the other hand those dragons are massive sentient war machines, made by changeling slave labor. This was "steampunk" before that label ossified into "British colonialism with cool gadgets"; there are Dickensian orphans, student riots, strange Elven politics, and the raw animal lust of being mind-linked to a sleek black death-machine. It's a beautiful book. I also really love Swanwick's "Stations of the Tide", which straddles SF and fantasy in the last days of a planet of islands about to be engulfed by rising tides; a nameless bureaucrat from the Bureau of Technology Transfer chases a mysterious magician through the most lyrical apocalypse ever written.

David Mitchell, The Bone Clocks - a few groups of secret immortals war through the ages. Beautifully written, and delightfully coy in how it dances around the magical happenings for most of its length.

Russel Hoban, The Medusa Frequency, an unsettling little story about a writer looking for inspiration and getting lost.

And perhaps you are ready for Jorge Luis Borges. Short stories that are more about the concepts than the worlds: a near-endless library that contains every text that could ever be written, a cabal of rebel historians creating an alternative history that begins to swallow up the world... very fantastic, very not something a D&D campaign would be based on.

Jack Vance, Tales of the Dying Earth. And here is something that was an explicit influence on D&D - the 'forget a spell the moment you cast it' system comes from Vance. A thief named Cugel steals from the wrong target - a wizard - who sends him halfway across the world. Cugel's quest for vengeance drags him back, twice, and ends horribly, but really what the story's about is the weird people and places he encounters along the way. (Originally a series of short stories.)

And while I am talking about stories of Self-Serving Bastards Who Inspired D&D (and quite possibly Locke Lamora), how about the first of Fritz Lieber's books about Fafhrd and the Grey Mouser? A blonde mountain of a swordsman teams up with a little weasel of a thief (with a few bits of half-remembered cantrips); they wander the mean streets of the rotting city of Lankhmar, getting in and out of trouble. There's a bunch of stories about these two guys, with varied emotional tones. Also I liked his Our Lady Of Darkness a lot; it's about a person who stumbles into a skyscraper built with very particular magical proportions.

Oooh yes, also. Zelazny. Let's go right to the most wild and experimental, Creatures of Light and Darkness. Technomagical Egyptian gods war with each other through time and space. The story is told in a dream-like kaleidoscope of styles, but builds up to a beautifully strange whole. It is broken and difficult and short and rewarding.

Tim Powers. Would you like to read a story about pirates and voodoo magic? (A certain series of Disney movies owes a lot to this, not the other way around.) Or a story about time travel to Dickensian England and a disastrous attempt to resurrect dead gods? Or how about the secret history of how Byron, Shelley, and other consumptive poets were beset by vampires?

(And any mention of Powers should also include his buddy James Blaylock; I recommend "The Last Coin" and "Land of Dreams" in particular. The former is a madcap chase for thirty silver coins; the latter is an elliptical story about a Magical Carnival of Dubious Morality.)

Also if you are bored with traditional fantasy try reading some Lord Dunsanay. His work may rekindle the 'standard' fantasy for you; 'King of Elfland's Daughter' is melancholic, magical, and beautiful to read aloud; 'Idle Days on the Yann' is a wonderfully elliptic bit of world-building.

And finally, an extra-weird one. Larry Marder's Beanworld, an 'ecological romance' that I think is one of the best things to come out of the 80s B&W comics boom. It is gorgeous, alien, and familiar, all at once.

(Spoiler: The fate of the world hangs in the balance in one of these books. The protagonist, however, intends to destroy it. And succeeds. Despite this, there is a sequel to that book.)

Young and new to reading, you probably want something more exciting, not too slow or drawn out. Maybe Sci-Fi? Maybe Adventure?

Ray Bradbury was an excellent Science Fiction and short story writer. He wrote tons of stuff other than Fahrenheit 451.

http://www.amazon.com/Bradbury-Stories-Most-Celebrated-Tales/dp/0060544880/ref=sr_1_10?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1416108681&sr=1-10

Robert Louis Stevenson wrote lots of action packed adventure novels, if that is more your thing. Two of my favorites are The Black Arrow and Treasure Island.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Louis_Stevenson#Bibliography

Feeling the urge for a bit of mystery? Try Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and his Sherlock Holmes stories.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arthur_Conan_Doyle_bibliography

Want a bit of horror instead? You could always give Edgar Allen Poe a try. Amazon is selling his complete works for like $10

http://www.amazon.com/Edgar-Allan-Poe-Complete-Tales/dp/0785814531/ref=la_B000APVRP2_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1416109099&sr=1-1

There are a number of dual english-russian books out there:

Amazon link

I have specifically used this one. It might be a good way to review the same text from two different perspectives and then talk about it together. As a bonus you could hash out the differences in how a sentence gets translated one way or the other.

Alternatively I would suggest modern fairy tales and childrens books. Simple stories, simple grammar. Easy to glom onto. There are three or four Dr Seuss books that have been translated into Russian. Likewise, she could send you russian books for children. I found kids books really helpful. They are, after all, designed to help build grammar.

I love short stories. Have you read any Etgar Keret? I've got all of his books, and he's one of my favorite authors. Here's my favorite book of his, if you're looking for something to read.

I've actually read at least one book by each of those authors, and I've seen "The Diving Bell and the Butterfly" movie, so it seems we have pretty similar taste. I have a bit of a hard time getting into books after having seen the movie; that said, would you say the book is still worth checking out? The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, that is.

You might enjoy The Golem and the Jinni...It's set in turn of the century New York, and has strong cultural and religious overtones. The magical aspects of it are quite secondary to everything else.

A Winters Tale...the movie apparently sucked, but the book has stuck with me for quite some time. It's a lyrical piece of magic realism, much stronger on the realism. Another book on turn of the century New York.

Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell may be a bit more magic than you'd like, but it's astonishingly good. It's what Jane Austen would have produced if she'd decided to write a fantasy novel.

The Night Circus is good.

I've only read a bit, but it is pretty good if you are into the whole superhero and shared world anthology thing.

The first volume is only $8 new on amazon if you want to give it a read. Martin wrote some of this volume himself, as well as serving as editor.

Here's my list of standard recommendations:

Yellow Silk, a compilation of stories from a now-defunct erotica magazine.

Delta of Venus, stories by Anaïs Nin. (The story goes that she and Henry Miller and some of their friends were paid by the page to write erotic stories for a private collector.)

The nice thing about the two collections above (and short story collections in general) is that there are a variety of topics. It's a good way to figure out what your wife might like.

And I second the recommendation for the Sleeping Beauty series—these might be too kinky for your wife, though. Not vanilla at all, by any stretch of the imagination.

Welcome, welcome! If I can rec two books:

https://www.amazon.com/Machine-Death-Collection-Stories-People/dp/0982167121

https://www.amazon.com/This-How-You-Die-Inscrutable/dp/1455529397/

They're sci-fi and really, REALLY enjoyable. Or at least I found them to be! (:

Oh, it's really good! Etgar Keret is a pretty great writer.

This is the book I have with it in it, along with several other good short stories.

These are my must-see episodes of the 1980s Twilight Zone series, in no particular order. Some are classic.

Season 1.
Children's Zoo.
Nightcrawlers -- based on the classic short story by Robert M. McCammon, available in Blue World, the Complete Collection.
Examination Day.
Paladin of the Last Hour -- based on a story by Harlan Ellison.
One Life, Furnished in Early Poverty -- based on Harlan Ellison's short story.
Her Pilgrim Soul.
I of Newton -- based on Joe Haldeman's short story, available in Cosmic Laughter, Science Fiction for the Fun of It.
But She Can Type?.
The Star -- based on Arthur C. Clarke's excellent story, available in The Collected Stories of Arthur C. Clarke.
The Misfortune Cookie.
A Small Talent for War.
A Matter of Minutes.
To See the Invisible Man.
Gramma -- based on the classic short story by Stephen King, available in Skeleton Crew.
Dead Run -- based on Greg Bear's short story, available in The Collected Stories of Greg Bear.
The Last Defender of Camelot, based on a short story by Roger Zelazny and teleplay by George R. R. Martin, available in Last Defender of Camelot short story collection.

Season 2.
A Saucer of Loneliness -- based on Theodore Sturgeon's excellent short story, available in The Complete Stories of Theodore Sturgeon, Volume VII.
The Storyteller.
Toys of Caliban -- Teleplay by George R. R. Martin.
The Road Less Traveled -- by George R. R. Martin; memories of Martin's experience working on the Twilight Zone writing staff, and two teleplays, this one and an unproduced one, are available in Dreamsongs: Volume II.

Season 3 -- This season is worth a look, but none of them are my favorites.

--edited for formatting--

Dual text or dual language, most likely. Here is an example, a good collection of short stories I read for a class last year. Wonderful stuff. Good luck!

No Taltos can be hard to start because the order he wrote the series in is not chronological with in the Taltos series, and it gets confusing where to start. Here is a collection of the first 3 books he wrote. Here is the earliest book in universe. I read them in published order and there was no confusion, but I also reread them in the chronological order, which was enjoyable. Sorry for the long response, but I really love this series, they are light and enjoyable and always fun to go back to, and it makes me sad when people can't figure out where to start.

Go with short story anthologies for a while. Here are a couple you might like:

• Asimov (This was a series of books, no longer in print--there are other Asimov anthologies out there.)
  
  
• Clarke
  
  You might also find the Years Best series to your liking:
  
  
• Years Best Science Fiction

I would try his short stories.

The Illustrated Man would be a good place to start, but he has many collections. Another choice might be to try a career overview collection, like Bradbury Stories: 100 of His Most Celebrated Tales.

Based on the collaborative novel 'Machine of Death'

Don't let this spoil the read though, amazing book and I completely recommend it! Starting from the premise that we have a Machine that tells you when you will die, different authors submitted short stories about it. This collaborative novel has the selected best.

I love Schismatrix and I'm thrilled someone else mentioned it. Bruce Sterling is a genuine visionary.

Yeah you really should. It's not too late. You could probably pick up Book 3 and start from there since that's where the TV show is now and the first two seasons were pretty faithful to the books.

The show is good. The books are 100 times better. Although as someone who read the books before the show I probably think the show is "less good" than someone who has never read the books if that makes sense.

It's late and I'm tired...

Also, as much as I like the GoT books I think Martin's "Wild Card" series was better but that might just be because I grew up reading a lot of superhero comics

http://www.amazon.com/Wild-Cards-George-R-R-Martin/dp/0765365073/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1370235354&sr=1-1&keywords=wild+cards

You might know this already, but there is a really cool short-story collection and a sequel that deal with this topic.

Both great books, cannot recommend them enought

The Schizmatrix by Bruce Sterling.

It is an epic space opera that spans an incredibly long period of time, but characters develop through the whole thing.

Why did it blow my mind? Because when I read it in college, it was the book that first caused me to truly realize the scale of what it means to be human, and how trivial and irrelevant we all are. It also made me truly question what it meant to be human in that genetic modifications start out small, but at what point do you draw the line as to whether something is human or not?

At the end of the day it made me much more appreciative of my individual life, but it also made me much more selfish in getting everything I could out of it because my time is short, there is no god, etc.

The accounts of Ibn Fadlan's travels are a quick and fascinating read--he's remarkably dispassionate and non-judgmental about the exotic customs he observes for a travel writer of his time. This Penguin edition includes a ton of other little scraps from various other Arab and Persian travelers about encountering tribes and nomadic peoples from around Central Asia down to southeastern Europe.

Central Asian history is so absolutely weird and wild and bewildering and fun. It's so strange to think about what were basically the same bunch of folks being gawked at and talked about by Chinese commentators and by Arabs and Franks, thousands and thousands of miles away. I'd also recommend this really nice brief history of the Silk Road.

Seems pretty off. He already has chapters written for the sixth book. He is working on another anthology like the successful Warriors.

Here's a blog post by GRRM talking about what he's up to...

As someone that has much of this problem as well all I can say is reading books or following courses on writing fantasy.

Personally I really appreaciated the two books from Orson Scott Card (Ender's Game if anyone does not know him) which are: How to write science fiction and fantasy and Characters and viewpoint.

There are also uploaded on Youtube the lectures held by Brandon Sanderson (MIstborn) which are free to watch and great to get abearing on writing. Here's the most recent one.

Yup, the driver is a jerk, but I don't want to spoil the tale for you :) is for kids though, but very fun! http://www.amazon.com/The-Driver-Wanted-Other-Stories/dp/1592641059

For anyone else who really loves the "stories within stories' format, I definitely recommend the Orphan Tales books (Book 1 here and Book 2 here) by Catherynne M Valente.

I will let [the book] (http://www.amazon.com/dp/0553384031/ref=rdr_ext_tmb) speak its sentences for itself:



"On an evening, when I was a very small child, an old woman came to the great silver gate, and twisting her hands among the rose roots told me this: I was not born with this mark. A spirit came into my cradle on the seventh day of the seventh month of my life, and while my mother slept in her snow white bed, the spirit touched my face, and left there many tales and spells, like the tattoos of sailors. The verses and songs were so great in number and so closely written that they appeared as one long, unbroken streak of jet on my eyelids.

Ibn Fadlan and the Land of Darkness is something you should look in to, it deals with Fadlan's accounts of the Volga Vikings among other observations. As for people who were raided not many spring to mind aside from historical accounts after said raids(Such as the Frankish Annals.) The problem with these is they aren't always accurate and are usually biased but that doesn't mean there isn't some truth to them! Sorry I couldn't turn up more but best of luck finding what you're after.

Schismatrix by Bruce Sterling is the best space novel I've ever read. It really gets into what life would be like for future humans who must stay on the bleeding edge of technology and ideology or be out-competed.

To this day there is still no greater book for opening up the world of thought than Will Durant's The Story of Philosophy. This book is indispensable.

Aside from that the best advice, as many here have noted, is to simply read widely and often. Here are some other books I can personally recommend as being particularly insightful:

• Wind, Sand and Stars
  
• Einstein's Dreams
  
• Family Happiness
  
• Borges
  
• Kafka
  
• Tao Te Ching
  
• Book of Job
  
• The Stranger
  
• Prometheus Rising
  
• Shakespeare

If you like The Dresden Files I'm pretty sure you'll like Steven Brust's novels featuring assassin Vlad Taltos. I'm in love with Vlad. He's smart and troubled and extremely funny, and he has a smartass familiar. Awesome books, and I've been following along in that universe since the 80s. It's arguably fantasy, but has the grit of SF.

Start with the first three published, which are in an omnibus called The Book of Jhereg.

The New Penguin Russian Course is amazing and includes everything you need to know about Russian grammar. A book I am reading right now for beginners is First Reader in Russian. It is a very basic Russian book that has exercises and a dictionary in the back. The only bad thing about it is the dictionary doesn't include all of the words from the book so I usually have to go to my Russian-English English-Russian Dictionary. This dictionary also lacks many important words, but it hasn't given me any problems. Another good Russian reading source is Russian Stories: A Dual-Language Book. If you just look around on amazon you will find many good resources.

While "All Summer in a Day" is a great one from Bradbury, it's also overplayed. Check out the recent (2003) publication Bradbury Stories. Loads of good stuff in there.

In general, Bradbury is a master at creepy young adult topics. Off the top of my head:
"The Veldt" (downright spooky)
"The Small Assassin" (a baby plots to kill his parents)
"Summer in the Air" (not creepy, but a great story highlighting persuasive rhetoric)

Based on her liking the Auel books, I'd bet she'd dig the trilogy: Namaah's Kiss, Namaah's Curse, Namaah's Blessing by Jacqueline Carey. They're all pretty thick and interesing in world-building, female-centered fantasy type.

Has she read the Dunk & Egg stories (a.k.a. The Hedge Knight series) and other prequel stories to ASOIAF? That would be a nice treat for a big fan of the series, if she doesn't have them all yet. It's tricky, because the stories are currently broken up and scattered across a few books, haven't been compiled into one (yet). And, bonus, she'd get a bunch of other stories by other great sci-fi/fantasy writers in those, that may make her discover and fall in love with another series.

Legends I

Legends II

Warriors

...and not directly the 3 main Dunk and Egg stories, but other ASOIAF prequels in these:

Dangerous Women

Rogues

Beware: with the "Legends" ones, if you get PBs instead of the HC edition, the first "Legends I" was broken into three books for PB release, Legends 1, Legends 2, etc., which can get confusing considering they later put out a "Legends II". So, if you get the mass market PBs on those, you could wind up with a shorter version that doesn't include the right stories ASOIAF fan is looking for.

for a truly mind-bending set of short stories with a central thread i'd recommend schismatrix by bruce sterling...really well-written and extremely creative thinking about humanity's future from a genetic-vs-technological modification perspective.

They're kind of hard to come across because well, they're always included in collections. The Mystery Knight is in a collection called Warriors. I've read all the Novellas since the Hedge Knight was originally published in the first Legends collection. Luckily there is a paperback available for Legends 1 but I think it's out of print. Also to be more confusing, the paperback it's contained in is called Legends 2 because it's the second part of the hardcover or something? But Legends II collection is where you get the Sworn Sword. Well here's a handy list though some might not be in stock (PB = Paperback/HC = Hardcover):

• The Hedge Knight - Legends 1 PB HC
  
• The Hedge Knight - Graphic Novel PB HC
  
• The Sworn Sword - Legends II PB HC
  
• The Sworn Sword - Graphic Novel - PB HC
  
• The Mystery Knight - Warriors I PB HC

I couldn't recommend Steven Brust's The Book of Jhereg enough. It's the first collection of books in a series he's been writing since 1983. Every book is a great read, and the characters will really grow on you. I believe any fan of Zelazny will like Brust.

Catherynne M. Valente writes each scene in her books like vivid paintings that you've been dropped into. The Orphan's Tale: In the Night Garden and it's companion [In the Cities of Coin and Spice] (http://www.amazon.com/The-Orphans-Tales-Cities-Spice/dp/055338404X/ref=pd_bxgy_b_img_b) are highly imaginative tales interwoven into one finale heart wrenching yet warming conclusion. It is a modern writing style that incorporates many aspects of tale weaving that was found in Arabian Nights.

Great article! I can't stand having to wait until the summer for the next book so learning they were releasing another novella is good news.

The next novella is released on April 15th:
The Churn: An Expanse Novella by James S.A. Corey

read etgar keret! (wrote the story this was based on)

the story is in this book and the title story is pretty much perfect.

Sleeping Beauty, by Anne Rice - formerly written under the pen-name of A. N. Roquelaure.

The Marketplace, by Laura Antoniou.

Possibly The Story of O, by Pauline Reage. It's kind of a classic, but I didn't care for it much. It's a lot more about the headspace of the slave than kinky shenanigans.

There's also the movie Secretary with a very young James Spader and Maggie Gyllenhaal. It's pretty tame but makes a good starting point to gauge the reaction of a potential partner.

Most things from the past will be unknown to most people - usually people know of the major stuff - not the minor details.

You might consider reading original material from scholar/travelers from China to India (the advantage of reading original material - esp. for a writer - is that you get loads of detailed material which is relevant for you and you may notice it - although it may not be relevant for the wider picture a historian maybe painting - so there will be details which will be valuable to get a sense of the environment).

For example:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Faxian

and his accounts of visit to Taxila (Greco-Buddhist university - in present day Pakistan - which was part of the greater India in pre-1947 era):

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taxila

Or this guy:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xuanzang

another link for him:

http://www.chinabuddhismencyclopedia.com/en/index.php/Xuanzang_or_Hsüan-tsang

There are many other original travelogues you can read to get an idea of that period and region.

You can read Al Biruni's India - which chronicles India as he experienced it in 1000 AD - the variations in Hinduism as were apparent to him. He bitterly criticizes one of his contemporary Muslim conquerors for being brutal (Mahmud Ghaznavi who is remembered by both Muslims and Hindus for his aggressive actions against hindus and their temples).

And these are all modern looking books - i.e. since the people/scholars who wrote these were perceptive etc. So Al Biruni's India includes some details about variations and the types of people.

https://www.amazon.com/Alberunis-Abridged-Library-Al-Biruni-1993-05-01/dp/B017POL2C8/

As aid to Al Biruni's critical recounting of the state of India around 1000 AD (much of the book is very technical examination of things) - you may consider reading some of the British journals of the people of India - where they documented for each region the tribes and their oral history (as an effort to understand them so they could rule them).


There are many books about history - Ibn Khaldun's Preface to his history of the world is one of the most famous books of science/observation (The Muqaddimah) - but you could peruse his voluminous history of the world - which would be somewhat fanciful - and this again would be around 1000 AD.

https://www.amazon.com/Muqaddimah-Introduction-History-Princeton-Classics/dp/0691166285

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Al-Biruni

If you have interest in the European region from 900AD - there are some travelogues by Muslim scholars/travelers who went north into european lands (the inspiration for the movie starring "The 13th Warrior" starring Antonio Banderas):

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0120657/

The 13th Warrior

https://www.amazon.com/Ibn-Fadlan-Land-Darkness-Travellers/dp/0140455078/

Ibn Fadlan and the Land of Darkness: Arab Travellers in the Far North

Again these books come across as very contemporary - as their writers analyze each group of different (to their eyes) people they meet. It also gives secondary insight into the details of those periods.



Although slightly later than your time period - from the 1300s - you can read Ibn Battuta and his travels all over - and his fanciful descriptions of the people he meets:

https://www.amazon.com/Travels-Ibn-Battutah/dp/0330418793/

You could try something like this

http://www.memrise.com/course/86069/intermediate-russian-bookbox-stories/

Also Amazon have a book with stories where the left page is in Russian and the right in English. I prefer Duolingo at the beginner stage, but you sound more disciplined than me so maybe it works better for you

Edit: Amazon link for the book http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/0486262448/ref=mp_s_a_1_3?qid=1463390139

The Collected Stories of Arthur C. Clarke is completely wonderful. Plus, you can find the plot of a good percentage of today's sci-fi/futuristic movies somewhere in there.

Also need "Best of" so that we can re-hash new ideas on old prompts. We can have recurring competitions like the Machine of Death prompt. [edited link]

Bradbury Stories: 100 of His Most Celebrated Tales

I have it, it's great, get it. Read by the fire for hours.

You might like Bradbury Stories: 100 of His Most Celebrated Tales.

Anything by Arthur C Clarke is great.

If you've read Peter F. Hamilton's Night's Dawn trilogy, then you should also read his related volume of stories called A Second Chance at Eden.

Not really fantasy, but the Machine of Death book is really excellent.

You can get short story collections that contain them through Amazon (Here, here, and here), but that'll add up price wise. I think GRRM is putting together an anthology of the Dunk and Egg novels, so you may want to hold off until then.

GRRM is a huge comics fan. If you haven't read any of the Wild Cards series, I highly recommend it. It's a fairly long series of anthologies about an alternate history starting from WW2. GRRM is one of the writers and the main editor.

Here's a link.

http://www.amazon.com/Sleeping-Beauty-Trilogy-Box-Set/dp/0452294754/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1368414295&sr=8-1&keywords=The+taming+of+sleeping+beauty

This trilogy is a classic one hand read. I've had them in one form or another for ten years, and they still work. :)

Thank you, but I just translated what I learned elsewhere. I checked this out at the library for free and read it in about 2 days, changed so much for me:

https://www.amazon.com/Characters-Viewpoint-Elements-Fiction-Writing/dp/1599632128

This is a pretty good overview of the world that the books are set in: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dragaera

If you can find a copy of this book, it has a compilation of the first three novels in a usually supercheap paperback.

Short stories are always a good place to start with an author, and Phillip K Dick's are especially good in my opinion.

http://www.amazon.com/The-Driver-Wanted-Other-Stories/dp/1592641059/ref=pd_sim_b_2?ie=UTF8&refRID=09Z9VFV9SAG9G7HGJDFQ its based off of a short story from this book. weird, fun stuff if anyone is interested in more of the story.
they did a decent job with the movie

The short story it's based on is worth a read as well. Some other enjoyable yarns in this collection by the Israeli writer Etgar Keret.

I don't recall the name, and details would ruin the story, but you can find it, along with every other short story he had written up to its publication date in The Collected Stories of Arthur C. clarke. It's worth every penny of the price. I have the hardcover in my library somewhere.

Edit: I just noticed--the hardcover is under $5 used. Definitely worth the price.

Annnnd here we go again. I'm doing this with all books, just because.

Allegiant

Berenstain Bears

Calvin and Hobbes

Dune

Edgar Allen Poe collection

Fahrenheit 451

Gulliver's Travels

Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

If You Give A Mouse A Cookie

Julie of the Wolves

Kite Runner

Little House on the Prairie

Machine of Death

Neverending Story

Omnitopia Dawn (The book I'm reading now, actually!)

Pilgrim's Progress

Quarter Share (Also available free as a podiobook!)

Room

Snow Crash

[Tell-Tale Brain](http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_ss_i_0_9?url=search-alias%3Dstripbooks&field-keywords=tell-tale brain&sprefix=tell-tale%2Cstripbooks%2C222&rh=i%3Astripbooks%2Ck%3Atell-tale brain&ajr=2)

Uglies

Voyage of the Dawn Treader

Watership Down

Xenocide

Year Zero

Zen and the Art of Knitting

If you like The Orville, you might like The Expanse (Formerly a ScyFy Show, now being produced by Amazon, also a series of books).

The character Amos is originally from Baltimore, there's a novella that dives into his past in a dystopian Baltimore. The Churn.

> the Kushiel saga

Yes!!!!

and honestly ladies if you want to read a kinky trilogy [sleeping beauty] (http://www.amazon.com/Sleeping-Beauty-Trilogy-Box-Set/dp/0452294754/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1376431269&sr=8-2&keywords=the+claiming+of+sleeping+beauty)

Highly recommend his prequel novella, The Churn for anyone interested in reading into his backstory.

this thread seems like a good place to namedrop this book:

Machine of Death

Get Bradbury Stories. 100 short stories. Every one is the best.

A lot of the quotes (particularly the ones illustrating his use of language) in the articles are from the Dying Earth series. There is an omnibus volume with all the stories in it. When I read it -- considerably later than adolescence -- it blew me away. I was further fascinated to find out how much it influenced the creation of D&D (if you're a gaming fan).

So my vote is for the Dying Earth series.

Well the Poetic Edda would be where you start. It's all the stories of the norse mythology. I bought two transcripts of two texts that were written in old icelandic and in arabic. Book 1 was about the discovery of Vinland (North America) by the vikings. Book 2 one is about an Arab who wrote down what he saw when he met Vikings. This is the only detailed account that we have about a viking burial.

I recommend them very highly, but the Poetic Edda would be what you're looking for ;)

If you're serious about this, the very best thing for you to do at this moment would be to read "Characters and Viewpoint" and it will answer the question you're asking, and the myriad of questions you aren't.

PG Wodehouse is great. Terry Pratchett, IMO, is rubbish compared to the early comedy/adventure stuff by Jack Vance. Check out "The Eyes of the Overworld," which you can get in this omnibus.

I found that Orson Scott Card's book "Characters and Viewpoint" has helped me lay the foundation for great characters.

Read Bruce Sterling. Sterling is spelled with an "e", not an "i". The "i" is a completely different author. If you've read all William Gibson, then you've already read one book by him, The Difference Engine, co-written by Gibson and Sterling. Specifically - Schismatrix Plus. It is fucking amazing.

The short stories are all amazing, and a couple bucks each on Amazon. The Churn tell Amos's backstory. Wes Chatham read that book with a therapist to talk about what that sort of childhood would do to an adult to prepare to play Amos. The Butcher of Anderson Station reads like the attack on Thoth station, but way harsher. Much more details than the show portrayed. The Vital Abyss shows what happened to the surviving scientists from Thoth.

Though it's not strictly about time travel, I loved reading Machine of Death.

Yep. The Churn will help you understand Amos.

Others have already explained the Cosmere, but it should be mentioned that all of the Cosmere short stories and novellas plus maps and in-cosmere essays on each star system can be found in Arcanumn Unbounded.

>“The Hope of Elantris” (Sel, Elantris 1.01)

>“The Eleventh Metal” (Mistborn preTFE)

>“The Emperor's Soul” (Sel)

>“Allomancer Jak and the Pits of Eltania, Episodes 28 through 30” (Mistborn post-AoL)

>“White Sand" (excerpt; Taldain)

>"Shadows for Silence in the Forests of Hell” (Threnody)

>“Sixth of Dusk” (First of the Sun)

>“Mistborn: Secret History” (Mistborn postHoA, read after BoM)

>"Edgedancer" (Stormlight 2.5)

I'd recommend the Shaper/Mechanist stories by Bruce Stirling, try Schismatrix Plus which consists of the novel Schismatrix and a few short stories set in the same universe.

One suggestion that may be worth your time is The Vlad Taltos Series by Steven Brust
Although they are never explicitly called Elves, the Dragaeran culture is an entertaining spin on the Elven civilization.

Reading through this collection of PKD short stories it's amazing how many ended up getting turned in to major sci-fi hits in the last 10-20 years. After I recognized the first couple ones, I started to wonder when I started each new story if it was some famous movie, or if maybe someone was working to turn it in to another hit right now?

In the collection of short stories This is How You Die (more stories based on Ryan North's Machine of Death concept), in one of the stories there's a counseling job like that. Government blood records know how everyone will die, but the information isn't given out to people without extensive counseling as people almost exclusively are worse off for the knowledge (it would be like the HD test, but the result would always be positive, just not always HD).

Anyway, most of the stories are based upon how the Machine would change the world, I hadn't considered how closely a real-world analogue would exist.

I'm reading Machine of Death right now and I'm really enjoying it. I'd say I'm about 1/3 of the way through it.

I own this book and it has gotten good reviews on Amazon. I think this is what you are looking for.

http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/0486262448/ref=mp_s_a_1_1?qid=1459022403&sr=8-1&pi=SY200_QL40&keywords=russian+stories&dpPl=1&dpID=5199t8ch4ZL&ref=plSrch

The girl in the Garden. This is inspired by this book.

Schismatrix Plus, that is Schismatrix and all related short stories, is only somewhat opera-ish but it might be interesting nevertheless. It's very short and condensed, establishes a universe with several factions, covers a big period of time.

The UK paperback is already out, but it was split into two volumes. The US paperback was due out in August, but it was delayed until early next year. The only US release so far is the hardcover. I feel like I've seen pics of a one volume paperback ADWD though...

tl;dr - The $35 hardcover that both Amazon and Barnes & Noble have for $21 or the eBook version that both have for $15.

> I'm supposed to wait some 3-4 years after ADWD for the next book? Rough, since I started the series this June.

Yes :( You can try to find the Tales of Dunk & Egg in the anthologies each one comes in (Legends, Legends II, and Warriors). A fourth Dunk & Egg novella is coming out soon, and all four will be released in one volume afterwards.

It's the graphic novel of The Hedge Knight that sells for stupid prices.
The actual novella is available in this book or this one. (Kindle edition).

The Sworn Sword is in Legends II. Alternatively, it's in this book which only contains part of the original Legends II anthology.

The Mystery Knight is in Warriors, or in paperback, this volume.

This is discussed pretty much weekly in this subreddit and really ought to be in the sidebar. For anyone from the future who is reading this thread, all the deleted comments are below were links to pirated versions of the books.

Unless it's some sort of silly loophole to it. For example, get "in your sleep", go skydiving, but then you get hit by the wing on your way out, go unconscious, and then hit the ground w/o a parachute while asleep.

There's actually a really nifty book about it that I'd recommend

I think you might enjoy these books. Seems to be right up your alley.

http://www.amazon.com/Sleeping-Beauty-Trilogy-Box-Set/dp/0452294754

The standalone versions are expensive because they're rare / collector items.

The stories pretty affordable when you get them in the anthologies they originally were published in. The Hedge Knight is in Legends and also Dreamsongs Volume II. The Sworn Sword is in Legends II. The Mystery Knight is in Warriors.

Did you read The Churn? It's about Amos' past growing up in Baltimore and talks about a food-stamp/credit chit like program for basic IIRC.

• Godstalk and sequels, by PC Hodgell.
  
  
• The Riddlemaster of Hed. In fact "delightful" pretty much sums up everything by Patricia McKillip.
  
  
• The Anubis Gates and others by Tim Powers, just brought up in another thread in r/books.
  
  
• Steve Brust's Dragaera books, starting with Jhereg.
  
  
• The Lions of al-Rassan by Guy Gavriel Kay (and everything else by Kay, but this is my favourite).

this isthe cover to one of my favorite books of all time:
http://www.amazon.com/Winters-Tale-Mark-Helprin/dp/0156031191/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1314131907&sr=8-1

http://www.amazon.com/Winters-Tale-Mark-Helprin/dp/0156031191/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1335458478&sr=8-1
Same photo on my favorite book's cover

Well if you haven't yet, I'd encourage you to read the book for Man in the High Castle. If you like Dick's style you should also pick up a book of his short stories. This is the one I got about fifteen years ago, albeit an older edition. Check with wikipedia and after you finish a story you can watch the movie that was based on it (so many of them get turned into movies)).

So like Sanderson did then.

Anything by the Argentine author Jorge Luis Borges. After reading his short stories, I would always have to sit and think about what I had read for a while. Here's one of his more famous stories, The Zahir. I highly recommend the book Labyrinths, which is an English-language collection of his short stories.

There are three novellas by J.S.A. Corey, set in the world of The Expanse: 1) Gods of Risk, 2) The Churn and The Vital Abyss

You should definitely read "The Churn."


The Churn: An Expanse Novella (The Expanse)

You say Wild card and I'm like stop editing this stuff and finish the Song.

https://www.amazon.com/Arcanum-Unbounded-Collection-Brandon-Sanderson/dp/0765391163

It looks like the only new material on that list are the Stormlight Novella and the Allomancer Jak Mistborn story, although that might already have been published elsewhere...

I always like to keep a spare bullet, just in case.

It did. It's quick read too (couple hours) and I think I only paid like $6 for it on Kindle. Actually, now only $2.99

I also recommend reading this, which is what Crichton based the premise of his book on:
http://www.amazon.com/Ibn-Fadlan-Land-Darkness-Travellers/dp/0140455078/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1419520500&sr=8-1&keywords=ibn+fadlan

Ibn Fadlan, a real person, wrote about traveling north from Baghdad and meeting vikings. He didn't go on an adventure with them but he described their rituals.

I have used this book in my Russian classes. It has the English translation on one page and the original Russian on the facing page.

http://www.amazon.com/Russian-Stories-Dual-Language-English-Edition/dp/0486262448/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1411531020&sr=8-1&keywords=russian+stories

Yep. It's in Arcanum Unbounded: The Cosmere Collection.

Orson Scott Card wrote this book on creating believable characters. It was one of my bibles when I was writing fiction.

Songs of the dying Earth.

Its a book with a collection of writers writing a story within the Dying Earth universe.

It's really worth the read.

the scenario does, not the writing. a good spell check will help

http://www.amazon.com/Sleeping-Beauty-Trilogy-Box-Set/dp/0452294754

I'd check if you'd read any of Steven Brust's books, and if you hadn't, I'd send you The Book of Jherg and The Book of Taltos, as well as instructions on reading them. (He didn't write them in chronological order, which I prefer to read them in.)

Alfred Bester, an early sci-fi author who was very influential but perhaps overlooked because he mixed in some supernatural with his sci-fi. The Stars My Destination.

Bruce Sterling, whose career has been overshadowed by and his contributions to the genre largely attributed to William Gibson or even Neal Stephenson. Schizmatrix Plus.

Well you asked for big series

 

---

 

Honor Harrington by David Weber
 

• Honor Harrington by David Weber (On Basilisk Station, The Honor of the Queen, The Short Victorious War, Field of Dishonor, Flag in Exile, Honor Among Enemies, In Enemy Hands, Echoes of Honor, Ashes of Victory, War of Honor, At All Costs, Mission of Honor, A Rising Thunder))
  
• Honorverse: Saganami Island by David Weber (Storm From the Shadows, The Shadow of Saganami, Shadow of Freedom))
  
• Worlds of Honor by David Weber, David Drake, S. M. Stirling (More Than Honor, Worlds of Honor, Changer of Worlds, The Service of the Sword, In Fire Forged, [Beginnings](https://www.google.com/#q=David Weber AND Beginnings)))
  
• Stephanie Harrington by David Weber (A Beautiful Friendship, [Fire Season](https://www.google.com/#q=David Weber, Jane Lindskold AND Fire Season), [Treecat Wars](https://www.google.com/#q=David Weber, Jane Lindskold AND Treecat Wars)))
  
   
  
  Wild Cards Series by George R. R. Martin
  
  
• Wild Cards by George R. R. Martin ([Jokers Wild: A Wild Cards Mosaic Novel](https://www.google.com/#q=George R. R. Martin AND Jokers Wild: A Wild Cards Mosaic Novel), Aces High, Jokertown Shuffle, Death Draws Five, Fort Freak, Ace in the Hole, Down and Dirty, Dealer's Choice, One-Eyed Jacks, Double Solitaire, Busted Flush, Suicide Kings, Aces Abroad, Dead Man's Hand, Wild Cards, Inside Straight, Turn of the Cards, Black Trump))
  
• New Cycle by George R. R. Martin (Card Sharks, Black Trump, Marked Cards))
  
• ibooks Inc. by George R. R. Martin (Death Draws Five, Deuces Down))
  
• Wild Cards (Tor) by George R. R. Martin (Fort Freak, Busted Flush, Suicide Kings, Inside Straight))
  
   
  
  Vorkosigan Saga by Lois McMaster Bujold
  
   
  
  
• The Vorkosigan Saga by Lois McMaster Bujold (Falling Free, Shards of Honor, Barrayar, [The Warrior's Apprentice](https://www.google.com/#q=Lois McMaster Bujold AND The Warrior's Apprentice), The Mountains of Mourning, [The Vor Game](https://www.google.com/#q=Lois McMaster Bujold AND The Vor Game), [Cetaganda](https://www.google.com/#q=Lois McMaster Bujold AND Cetaganda), Ethan of Athos, Borders of Infinity, [Labyrinth](https://www.google.com/#q=Lois McMaster Bujold AND Labyrinth), Brothers in Arms, Mirror Dance, Memory, [Komarr](https://www.google.com/#q=Lois McMaster Bujold AND Komarr), [A Civil Campaign](https://www.google.com/#q=Lois McMaster Bujold AND A Civil Campaign), Diplomatic Immunity, Captain Vorpatril's Alliance, Cryoburn))
  
  
  

And now you can pre-order the physical hardcover book on Amazon, which collects all Cosmere novellas and short stories published before and more, including Emperor's Soul, Secret History, and 1 or 2 Stormlight stories.

http://www.amazon.com/Arcanum-Unbounded-Collection-Brandon-Sanderson/dp/0765391163/

According to Amazon: 77 pages

Perhaps if you consider reading the synopsis on Amazon a spoiler. But I tagged it anyway.

Yes, you have to get the books containing all these short stories (these books are called Anthologies). For the Hedge Knight, you can get it in an anthology called Legends I - this has a bunch of stories from a bunch of authors you've never heard of. Kindle version is $8, and hardcover is $16. OR you can get the Dreamsongs Volume 2 anthology for $11 kindle or $15 paperback. This is full of George R R Martin short stories that you'll probably really like.

For Sworn Sword, your only choice, unfortunately, is Legends 2. It's $6 for a digital version, and $7 for a paperback at Barnes and Noble.

The third story is only in Warriors which is unfortunately another nobody-anthology. $10 for kindle, $13 for paperback.

How about some Fantasy and SciFi combined?
If so, Jack Vance's omnibus "Tales of The Dying Earth" is a great one to read. It contains all 4 books (each with its own stories) and is about 750 odd pages long. Some of my very favourite F&SF material. Jack Vance was just such a great storyteller in general.

The Dying Earth series is
>Set in a far distant future, the setting is marked by the presence of unaccountably ancient ruins and other fragments of now-decayed civilizations [....] many people make use of technology or magic which was created long ago, but which they no longer understand.

That seems to meet at least your main criteria?

More info on Wikipedia: http://www.wikiwand.com/en/Dying_Earth

well, i never finished it, but this series might be up yer alley.

http://www.amazon.com/Machine-Death-Collection-Stories-People/dp/0982167121/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1349001983&sr=8-1&keywords=machine+of+death

I got this book of short stories for my kindle. Similar vain to your question, and I think you'd enjoy it.

I don't know if I've read that one. I have the collection with a blue and white swirly cover, and I've read several of his books. This is wonderful news, I have more Philip K Dick to read.

I used this book when learning:
http://www.amazon.com/Russian-Stories-Dual-Language-English-Edition/dp/0486262448/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1374777073&sr=8-2&keywords=dual+russian+reader

It's got good stories and has stress marks.

You should read Ibn Fadlan's The Land of Darkness.

That plus some others in one volume

Cugel's Saga is included in this compilation:
http://www.amazon.com/Tales-Dying-Earth-Jack-Vance/dp/0312874561/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1311963411&sr=8-1

Jack Vance!

Specifically, The Dying Earth.

It's completely different from everything else out there.

Close. Start on PP. 55.

The Collected Stories of Arthur C. Clarke

http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/review/0312878605/R3MU4HD4Y28792/ref=mw_dp_cr?cursor=1&sort=rd

That's actually not the premise of the story, it's just a little side note of the world's history. Here's the first three books in the series.

Steven Brust's Draegera series are (mostly) caper-crime novels set in a fantasy city with magic and mafiosi. A little more High Fantasy than Lynch, but he pushes a lot of the same buttons.

Start with Jhereg.

Also, Lynch is channeling Fritz Leiber's Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser stories a lot—you can start reading these from just about anywhere, but the first collection is Swords against Deviltry

Anne Rampling

Anne Rice wrote under the pen name A. N. Roquelaure called The Claiming of Sleeping Beauty it could explain the vampire connection?

Try this , it has Russian stories printed on English on one page and in Russian on the other