The Book of Tea by Okakura Kakuzō. Philosophy, history, and aesthetics in a 1906 treatise on tea.
Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the end of the world is the most scifi Murakami. Wonderful stuff. Then read all his others. Knausgård 'My Struggle' is a very compelling personal story (5 volumes!) where you get inside his head. Not a novel. Ursula Le Guin - the Lathe of Heaven. More scifi.
Can’t go wrong, good vacation reads. M
Any of the "Laundry Files" novels by Charles Stross, or Glasshouse also by Stross.
Permutation City by Greg Egan.
Off To Be The Wizard by Scott Meyer.
Any of the "Dresden Files" novels by Jim Butcher.
The Shockwave Rider by John Brunner.
Neuromancer by William Gibson.
Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson.
I guess that's what makes these threads so interesting. Seeing just how radically different two people's respective opinions on the same book can be.
It's a fun series. If you are a fan of the show I think you really should read the books. Even if you haven't watched the show I think most people will enjoy the books. They are page turners and I've stayed up way to late almost every night since I got them.
Kurt Vonnegut's novel Slaughterhouse-Five has also faced censorship for its political message. Published in 1969, Slaughterhouse-Five is one of the most censored books in recent years.
Childhood's End by Arthur C. Clarke
The story follows the peaceful alien invasion of Earth by the mysterious Overlords, whose arrival begins decades of apparent utopia under indirect alien rule, at the cost of human identity and culture.
Slaughterhouse-Five is a great read, and really gets to Vonnegut's style of writing.
Player Piano is his earliest novel and reads very differently (a more conventional style), but the story and writing are fantastic. It's a world where machines can do most kinds of work, so the majority are unemployed except a few specialists (primarily management and engineering).
Cat's Cradle is closer in style/tone to Slaughterhouse-Five. While dark, both of them are, it's another really good read.
Mother Night is among my favorites, if not my favorite, of his writings.
The Three-Body Problem, The Dark Forest, Death's End.
I really liked this sci-fi trilogy, can't talk more about it without spoiling it. Enjoy your vacation!
It straddles subgenres, like the author thinks that all science fiction needs to be Hard SF, but has never actually read hard SF. You can leave things unexplained in speculative fiction, but if you're going to explain them, at least make the explanations sound plausible to a lay-person like me.
Nevermind the fact that nothing in the story has to do with a 3-body system or the 3-body problem. It is referenced in name, but the author botches that too.
The characters are so flat, you can't even call them 2-dimensional with the exception of the cop, who btw has the magic gift of always being able to outthink a roomful of scientists. The other characters are so interchangeable I had to take notes to remember who was who.
I tell friends to avoid this book at all costs. When the big reveal came, I got so angry I threw the book on the floor, left the room and debated finishing it at all. The setup is so intriguing and the reveal is so hackneyed, unpredictable only because who would choose to write something so mundane?
