r/books discussion

I started reading Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality - you can get it here.

It is surprisingly good so far - the plotting reminds me of 'Death Note' the Japanese Anime show / manga and indeed it has a veiled reference to it in the text along with many other pieces of popular culture and science etc.

It seems somewhat of a shame that the book is unlikely to be read much as it is a 'fan-fic' (this is the first one of those I've read, and I must admit I'd always regarded them with a sort of stigma).

What books do you believe deserve more attention?

Brave Story by Miyuki Miyabe. It often gets overlooked-- I think because it is shelved with the manga in most book stores even though it is a 800+ page novel. It's one of my absolute favorite books, very whimsical and a very fun read.

Ok...so they may not be unknown, maybe not underrated, but worth sharing, since a lot of people I talk to haven't read them.

Speaker for the Dead If you liked Ender's game, try this one. Love the concept of the Speaker for the Dead.

The Last Question Brilliant short story by Asimov.

Haha, I too really liked Speaker for the Dead I found it much more philosophical than Ender's Game which was more character driven and it was a really interesting concept. I should read Xenocide at some point to finish the series.

The Last Question is good too - I love so many of Asimov's stories actually, 'The Bicentennial Man' is amazing.

Brave Story sounds odd :P I'll check it out.

As far as sci-fi goes 'The Engines of Light' series by Ken Macleod was pretty good and I'd never heard of it before my Dad recommended it to me. The same for The Wizards And The Warriors and Hugh Cook's other fantasy books.

In non-fiction I found Napoleon's Buttons: How 17 Molecules Changed History really cool - it's a look at how the discovery and exploitation of 17 different types of chemical molecules changed history. So it's not really a typical history of science book, as it looks at how the science affected history rather than vice versa. It was pretty interesting and the science is all introduced very gently (which was good as I hadn't done chemistry in years :P ).

The Last Question was mind-blowing. I never saw the whole thing coming. Asimov is such an amazing storyteller.