Mer

Jasper Fforde’s skill in general at writing cozy post apocalyptic settings cannot be overstated either, and this book is right up there with his other efforts. It’s set in a fucked-climate future where winters are so vicious that humans just hibernate through them in special residential facilities.

(If you take the one hint that is buried in the middle of the book as proof of Charlie’s gender identity, then Early Riser is also gay as hell, but regardless: here’s a novel for my agender and enby fam to revel in)

There’s literally one (1) hint in the entire novel as to Charlie’s assigned sex at birth and not one single time are they ever referred to by a gendered pronoun, but it’s so smoothly written that I was 1/3 of the way into the book by the time I realized I had no idea if they were male or female

Thinking about modern scifi and have decided it’s time again to recommend Early Riser by Jasper Fforde. Not only is it gently unhinged with a pretty solid post-apocalyptic setting and mystery/thriller plot, it’s also an achievement in writing and editing because the protag’s gender is never given.

I’d never recommend any of those three to people when Downbelow Station by CJ Cherryh exists to be read instead. I am not even that into spaceship-scifi but that book was actually riveting

My friend was HOOKED on Wheel of Time in high school. She read those books to pieces lol. She was very “oh gdi” when he died

I also really really love Jasper Fforde but generally wouldn’t recommend his stuff to a preteen because there’s adult themes scattered throughout that I think are not scarring, but better for teens and up. The Nursery Crimes series may be an exception (he also wrote The Last Dragonslayer, for kids)

The other reason I’m glad I wasn’t into ASOIAF. I watched my friend suffer Robert Jordan’s untimely and mid-series passing and took the lesson lol

Elsewhere in the replies, I recommended The True Meaning of Smekday for kiddos 👍 I think they adapted it to a… movie…? With a different title?

I didn’t even get past the prologue of A Game of Thrones, I’m just grateful he helped me see right away that I didn’t like his writing style before I sunk any real time into it

The movies are excellent adaptations, and you really appreciate that once you read the books and see how much stuff they cut out or glossed over 💀 Tolkien is not my cup of tea either

The current crop of teenagers and 20-somethings is also, broadly, deep into a counterculture that asks very prudent questions about the nature of authority, so it makes sense for them to gravitate to dystopic fiction as they’re assembling and processing these ideas for themselves anyway

Stranger in a Strange Land aged poorly, I’d never recommend that one to a kid/teenager. I read it in my 20s (I think?) and was like “wow this is extremely Of The 1960s”. I also found Dune kind of oof, but it’s also very slow too.

A proper scifi book for actual kids: The True Meaning of Smekday

Tbh Keanu has aged SO well into his allegedly middle aged face and rocks that scruff and long hair so naturally that it’s reached back and retroactively devalued his White Boy period in the early 90s (e.g. Speed) for me

a close up of a man 's face in the dark with a red light behind him Alt: John Wick looms sexily out of a shadow to kill you with nothing but the elegant chiaroscuro line of his nose

I’m happy to nail down the John Wick movies as his napalm era though

I am not entirely sure if the Keanu Hotness Eras can be easily labelled and described (maybe it’s just that I’ve never tried to) but they can definitely be tracked through his filmography

Everyone in The Mask of Zorro was beautiful. Keanu started out beautiful and has simply evolved through 3 or 4 further types of hot since then as he’s aged

Keanu was not great in that movie but director and star Kenneth Branagh didn't need him to be great in that movie, he needed him to be hot and occasionally shirtless in that movie, and Keanu delivered on that brief and then some

Actual PhD-level experts, rather than a large language model flummoxed by how to spell certain common fruits

If streaming platforms didn’t play musical chairs so aggressively with licenses that now you have to look up what platform the thing is on that you decided you want to watch again (and if you don’t subscribe to it, make a further decision…). There’s shows I’d get on disc if they sold them that way

The ereader is easier to move houses with than a bookshelf full of books and I prefer getting epubs from the library due to the sheer convenience, but on the other hand, I never have to worry about my paper books running out of battery. It’s good to diversify the collection

Filth 💜

My dad had a 1994 Isuzu pickup and he sold it before I learned to drive and I was CRUSHED

And now it’s 25 years later and I am still crushed about it tbh, what a good small truck

really feels like housing affordability is one of the most important political issues of our time, affecting nearly every aspect of our lives, and everyday our mainstream political discourse is about whether sour cream is woke or not

I went to NY once and spent a lot of time walking around and was like, ah I’ve found my people 🤷‍♀️

This never occurred to me till just now but possibly the reason I hate “going for walks” even though a walking commute is just fine for me, is my walking speed. It’s a speed that needs a destination

Literally watched this like “that’s just how fast people walk when they’re not fucking around!” City walking is a way of life

Spirk

Wow I basically like every decision she made in this, vocally

I don’t blame you even a little

It took me a while to figure out what they intended to say there, the phrase they landed on was too good