This for single player video games as well.
Being in a flow state is so nice and books and video games are both fertile places to achieve it.
Even 2+ years after playing it, I still wish I could experience Return of the Obra Dinn for the first time again 🥺 It had such mindblowing storytelling, despite (or because of) the 1-bit graphics, that I’ll never forget it enough to enjoy each revelation to the fullest like that first time. Gonna go listen to the soundtrack again…
This is how I feel about playing Outer Wilds.
I came to the comments just to say this. I’m glad I’m not the only one
Fffffuuuuuu you both beat me to it. I try to get others to play it so I can live vicariously through their amazement! Bought it on Steam for a gaming buddy and for my brother on Switch.
I need to play this. I get the same feelings with RPGs or really good open world games. Would love to add another to the list
That is outer worlds. Op said outer wilds. You are going to be disappointed (or maybe happy) if you pick up one thinking its the other lol.
Did you play with a mouse and keyboard? I started it on my PC and it said it needed a controller. So instead I switched to my Steam Deck, but I felt like the small screen wasn’t doing it justice, so I stopped.
Been meaning to pick it back up again.
Honestly you can play it with keyboard and mouse no problem. Don’t let it prevent you from playing!
Coming from someone who primarily games on Mouse/Keyboard, controller just feels better, but Mouse/Keyboard shouldn’t ruin the experience at all.
Controller all the way.
I think it’s mostly the zero-G and ship controls where it matters.
I’m a Stephen king fan, so by the time I finish one of his books he’s written 3 more
Stephen King is the opposite of G. R. R. Martin
they should have a child together who writes at the perfect rate
But Stephen King already writes at the perfect rate.
someone should tell him not to write anything on Twitter though
or why is he tweeted what he did regarding the Epstein list
I feel like his completion of the dark tower is on par with grim’s GOT wrap up.
He defended The List recently, so fuck him.
Idk what that is
The Epstein list. He basically said it was fake. He’s always been an asshole as far as I’m concerned, but I’ve usually agreed with his political tweets (or whatever he uses that people post). I have no loyalty to him, and find it strange that he would claim it was made up.
Does it make his books worse?
It makes it suspect that the books may have been written by a pedophile (overlooking things like the orgy in IT). Odd thing to defend the Epstein files if you aren’t one.
It makes it suspect that the books may have been written by a pedophile (overlooking things like the orgy in IT).
Tbh IT is a pretty strong argument for that… I have only hazy memories from when I read it as a child (very age-appropriate book lol 👌), but I still remember several scenes of children doing sexual activities. Looking back, I don’t think any of it was needed for the story to work - if not a paedo, King was probably drugged out of his mind when he wrote it.
I’m not sure I understand how saying something doesn’t exist is defending it?
I don’t know how you believe it doesn’t exist
I finished the LOtR trilogy as a kid and was absolutely crushed.
I re read it every few years not the same as the 1st time but still amazing. About 20 times now.
GNU Terry Pratchett
Or as I’ve recently come to calling it, GNU + Terry Pratchett
I’ve barely read any books since he died tbh.
Maybe try some sex instead
You are missing out. There is so much greatness out there
https://bookshop.org/beta-search?keywords=tanith+lee
Tanith Lee. British writer of the same time and mindset. The first book listed “Night’s Master” is set in the time when the world was still flat. A mighty demon prince spends the daylight hours in his underworld kingdom, and spends his nights tormenting and/or seducing humans.
Try Service Model by Adrian Tchaikovsky. It’s a wonderful story and has an underlying sense of humor in the way that Pratchett’s books did.
Greatest Nut Ultimately?
GNU STP
Giant Nosy Neighbor?
Me recently with Project Hail Mary. Now just reading sub par sci-fi space books trying to chase that same feeling of exploration and wonder.
Have you read Hyperion by Dan Simmons? Amazing sci-fi
One of those books I bought sitting on my bookshelf unread. Well right now its in my storage area cause I am between living arrangements EDIT: just looked i bought it digital my bad. I can bump it up the list a bit.
Of course, The Martian would be the next step if you haven’t read that too.
But also, I found it similar to The Andromeda Strain or multiple novels by Frederik Pohl.
I only read Artemis and Hail Mary, saw the movie The Martian, but haven’t read the book yet.
Hot damn, this has been on my reading list for a while, gonna start it today.
I highly recommend the audio book. I feel like it adds something extra over reading the text, which is unusual. No spoilers.
I would actually recommend the opposite. For something like this I really like letting my mind create the imagery. Especially with a movie coming
Wonder if I should re read the Anne Rice vampire novels again. At the time they were a refreshing change from the standard vampire fare. Will they stand the test of time.
About to start another replay of The Last of Us both one and two. I would pay a lot of money to be able to forget the story and experience it again anew.
The second game is so good. So many people had a negative knee-jerk reaction to an event that happens early in the game, but I thought it was amazing.
And then playing from both Ellie and Abby’s povs was the perfect way to tell the subsequent story. By the end you’re just emotionally drained… But the story is so well told imo.
I had an experience with the part two and I liked/hated it but I don’t think I want to experience it again for the first time. Not the emotions I want in my life even though the game is great. Apart from the “experience” the gameplay was also top.
I slowly read the dark tower series over the past 3 years and this is still how I feel after having finished it 2 weeks ago.
Time for a second read through? I’ve listened to it about 3 times now, and from re listening to books (about 5ish on Dune series so a regular thing) it feels so satisfying to realize all the previous clues you didn’t catch the first time.The Dark Tower is definitely a favourite, The Dark Tower definitely has lows that are harder to listen to as often as the Dune series though. And King can surely write emotion better than Herbert, I think he understands people in general better than many, which shows in his writing, as meandering as it gets. If I had a clue of the expanse of his story and multi universe I’d have read it SOOO much sooner, but I hadn’t the idea how awesome it was when I was younger.
Okay time to hear the story of the Gunslinger again, thanks for the push! The man in black fled across the desert, and the gunslinger followed…
And Ka rolls on…
Edit I wanted to include my favourite bits, it’s not really a spoiler, but at one point the grizzled gunslinger is going towards an unknown danger with his pal, a dude from the 80s (if this is confusing and slightly interesting read the Dark Tower till book 2 or don’t whatever), and he takes his friends hand to hold it. There’s so few times you see much of that affection between men without people being awkward after in modern media but the characters knew they were there for each other whatever they came across. It’s one of the things that makes King’s writing awesome. If you’ve ever been through real trials with someone, you get it and it.
Same with good shows, movies, games, etc. I kinda feel hollow after.
I know I’m gonna get this with Digital Circus and part of me is really salty it’s only getting one season
Dungeon Crawler Carl for all you video game nerds. Listen to the audiobook…
I’m lying. I’ve reread it multiple times and picked up new things each run.
The problem with DCC is the next book isn’t written yet :(
So you get that prolonged feeling with each new book. Same with he who fights monsters- another decent LitRPG series.
You can enjoy the rereads while knowing that the first read is a unique experience!
I’m lying. I’ve reread it multiple times and picked up new things each run.
Treating DCC like NetHack, I can dig it.
Easily my favorite thing I’ve ever read.
Literally just finished my first re-read last night.
There’s Cradle too, not as “video gamey” but it’s a very easy read, almost feels like a shonen manga/anime.
I’ve been loving the series, just working my way through the last book now, and already getting the feeling in the OP from seeing that there’s not that much book left anymore :(
I somehow at the same time feel that it has no right being this good, but also enjoy it a ton. It’s a weird feeling but I’ll take it - it really appeals to my taste.
After watching Breaking Bad, I felt as if a part of my life had been torn away from me and I have been left with a hole.
Good thing we got an entire other show and movie to go along with it.
Any interesting sci Fi or magic/fantasy books that did this to you? I’m looking for something new!
Definitely The Expanse series if you haven’t read it yet. I loved so many of the charcters, a bit sad to not be reading about them anymore.
May I present to you the next series James S. A. Corey are writing? The Captive’s War!
I’ve enjoyed the book and novella published so far, and definitely sated that itch I had after finishing the Expanse. :)
Awesome, thanks!
Oh yes, I have! Good choice :)
Sanderson’s big fantasy series right now, the stormlight archive. Oh my god, each book is just made to make you get drawn deeper, and deeper until you hit the end. The gap between the first and second book was so freaking long to wait. I think we’re up to book five now, so you don’t have to have that feeling for a while.
Alternatively, if you like blue fantasy (talking animals and wise spirit guides that help sometimes hapless humans), mercedes lackey did great things with her heralds of valdemar series. I’d actually recommend jumping into it at a later point because her writing greatly improved from the first trilogy. You could start with magic’s pawn/promise/price, which has one of the earliest depictions of lgbt protagonists I ever read.
If you like more ‘earthy’ fantasy, the wit’chfire series (actual series name, banned and the banished) by james clemens (who I just found out is a pseudonym for a sci-fi author who didn’t want to be ‘smeared’ as a fantasy author and has some other good books when i googled for the name) is really good. Don’t start his other series, because even though it was fantastic, it’s never going to be finished. I think we’re at like 30 years now and never gotten the third book.
And then there’s the big one, the bold one, the ‘start you off so small and build you into a great, grand sweeping epic’ jim butcher series: the codex alera. The first book was riveting from start to finish. I actually think it was the best one, because the worldbuilding was just so sublime. I loved the characters more and more with each added book, but the magic of the beginning was just amazing.
Oooh, I love talking animal series, a guilty pleasure of mine. I read and loved A Fire Upon the Deep and was devastated to learn the author passed away before finishing the series.
That series is genuinely through provoking sci-fi, though some elements do require a bit of suspension of disbelief. Honestly though, some characters are so interesting, it’s worth a read.
Just a note of caution: the series ends unexpectedly and was never finished, though some points can be inferred at the end.
Oathbringer did this to me the first time, but since then have not been able to enjoy Sanderson’s work unfortunately. Was super hyped for mistborn era 2’s last book but after multiple attempts, was unable to get through.
I have this a lot, but the most it has happend was about 10 years ago with the webserial worm ( https://parahumans.wordpress.com/ ), I read it so much. I read it before work, I read it during lunch, I read it when I got home, I went to sleep late etc. etc.
When it was done I had forgotten what to do with my time, I wound up re-reading it again but slower at a few chapters a day rather than turning myself into a gremlin for maximal reading efficiency.
If you want a summary, it’s a superhero story, which usually really isn’t for me, but something about the tone of the writing and the way the world worked in this one made it work.
Powers are incredibly varied, but the strongest characters are the ones who know how to use their powers well, the protagonist exemplifies this, where she doesn’t get a cool flashy power but she figures out how to use it so well and adapt to each situation that she becomes terrifying.
I also liked the charactersation of the heroes and the villains, where the heroes are somewhat vain and egotistical which means they do good things when the cameras are rolling rather than being “morally good”. the villains are mostly just people on the edges of society for a mix of reasons which means they do what they want, but I think since then “The Boys” has also done something similar so the effect may be lessened.
Curious if anyone else on Lemmy has wound up reading it.
Same here! I stumbled onto Worm a few years ago and read it way too quickly. I taught myself some (very basic) editing skills, corrected a few typos and paid ~300 bucks to get the whole story printed out on paper so my wife would read it as well.
I would add that despite being a story with superpowers, it is very much a story about people, and not about powers. You progressively discover the rules of a world that make perfect sense in retrospect, the stakes scale up really well and I found the ending to be a culmination unlike anything I have read.
Exactly! find it so hard to describe though, over the course of reading the thing Taylor changes so much, the world changes so much and your understanding of the world gets so much deeper.
This makes it very hard to explain the later acts or why they were good though.
Have you read anything else that hooked you in a similar way?
I don’t think anything hooked me quite like Worm! I completely agree with Taylor evolving a lot throughout the story, and I feel the whole scope of the story gets so much larger, in such a satisfying way.
I read a few arcs of the Worm sequel, Ward, but it didn’t really click for me. From the same author, I found Twig to be really interesting. It takes place in a very different setting and has a darker tone, but I feel some of the narrative techniques are the same as in Worm. For example, the characters know more of the world than the reader does, who gets to discover it piece by piece, and the characters themselves are the important part, not whatever magic or science powers the world. The scale and stakes do not explode like Worms’ do, but the story definitely does not stay stale either.
To me very personally, Ward felt a bit like “more Worm but not quite”. I didn’t really want more Worm. Twig felt like a new, very different story, in a somewhat similar style. It didn’t hook me like Worm did, but it scratched a similar itch of discovering an atypical world, with its rules, characters and unreliable narrators.
Worm was definitely like that for me. I was reading it at work (we monitored stuff and responded if needed, so I had a lot of free time if things weren’t happening), and it really sucked me in. I didn’t get into his later work, maybe because of burnout.
I think the characterizations of the superpowered folks were great, but they did suffer a little bit from flanderization. It’s to be expected when the author is literally handling hundreds of different characters. The plot overall was just so good though. Maybe some individual points weren’t as great, like super spoilers ahead
spoiler
the naked invulnerable chick and how they defeated her, or the existence of the three super enemies (leviathan, tyrant? and whatever the bird/smart thing was), and how once the protagonist figured out her plan for the ultimate win, it happened so quickly.
Apparently this was not the first serial he tried to write in this universe, which is why so many of the side characters are so fleshed out.
I remember enjoying the interlude with battery a lot.
Did you find anything else that you enjoyed in a similar way?
The Player of Games by Iain M. Banks
Nearly all of the culture books! The very first scene of the very first book, Consider Phlebas, just sets the bar so high (and is only one scene). It outdoes entire other works of horror in just half a chapter… and then the actual action starts.
Great book as well. Of all the sci-fi universes, The Culture is the one I want to live in the most.
After reading all ten of Iain Banks’ “Culture” novels, there was definitely a sense of “oh, okay, now what?”.
I read a stupid amount of SF and fantasy (up to 60 books so far this year), and I keep notes, so if there’s a particular kind of thing you enjoy I might be able to make a more focused recommendation.
I believe I’ve read everything recommended in reply to you, and most are excellent. Some books I’ve read recently that really pulled me in, and that I didn’t see mentioned elsewhere, are:
- Sleeping Giants, Neuvel
- Ammonite, Griffith
- Spin, Wilson
- The Space Between Worlds, Johnson
- Service Model, Tchaikovsky
- The Tainted Cup, Bennett
Lots of others of I go further back. I hope you find something you love.
Thank you so much, I saved a ton of these in my browser :)
The wheel of time series is the best out there.
And it just keeps going. There’s so much, and so much of it ties back and stays relevant to the end.
N.K. Jemisin’s Broken Earth trilogy (beginning with The Fifth Season).
Also, Brandon Sanderson’s various Cosmere works, especially The Stormlight Archive (beginning with The Way of Kings) and the original Mistborn trilogy (beginning with The Final Empire).
This was the second recommendation for those books! I’ll definitely be looking into them, thanks :)
For me it was His Dark Materials. I read it when I was 14 and it completely changed me. My mind was aware that it was a book, but my soul knew that reality is what you experience and I just experienced a lifetime.
I read it again ten years later and I recognized so much of myself in those books, I was actually surprised by the impact it made on me, even though I already knew back then that I would never be the same.
Psalm for the Wild-built. It was so sweet and gentle.
The Red Rising trilogy left me with this feeling. I loved the terraformation zones descriptions and how the technology is described and implemented.
The story takes lots of twists and turns, kept me glued to the books.
I think I read that there’s a fourth one
In the author’s wikipedia it just shows another series I haven’t read called Iron Gold
Came here to preach for the red rising. Awesome series. Sanderson’s stormlight archive and mistborn also. And Abercrombie’s first law.
Robin Hobb’s assassin series
Saving for later when I forget all about this. Why is there no remindme function on Lemmy?
Also, do you like space operas? Bobiverse series Lost Fleet series Expeditionary Force (ExForce) Series Odyssie One series (Into the Black) Murderbot diaries
You can use this mastodon Remind me bot, works with Lemmy. Or use piefed
Oooh, if you like space operas, you might really like the Hyperion Cantos series.
Thank you, I’ll keep these in mind!
To Say Nothing of the Dog by Connie Willis is the first book I’ve read since Hitchhiker’s Guide that actually made me laugh out loud repeatedly. It’s about a time-travelling historian who takes a vacation to Victorian England, and nearly ends the universe while trying to return a missing cat. The book’s part of a series, but this is definitely the most fun entry.
No, but I wish I did. What book would be that good?
Maybe The Stand by Stephen King?
Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson might do it.
Hyperion by Dan Simmons will almost definitely do it…
+1 for Snow Crash, time for another re-read
Baldurs Gate 3 and the original Deus Ex did that for me.
I wish I could get the Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind treatment for those games.
Da Vinci Code
A little life and The goldfinch did it for me. Also others that I am too lazy to list.
The Mass Effect trilogy did it too and still does every time I finish it (4 or 5 times now)
Often. That why I don’t start a series of books unless there are at least like 4-5 in the series. But even then the series ends sometimes and it feels like you’ve lost a dear friend.
That’s also why I don’t like to watch a TV show when it first comes out, since it’s so common for them to get canceled partway through a major storyline. Got left hanging a few times and it sucked.
110% agree … It’s so frustrating to get hooked on a show and Netflix/Amazon cancels it because it was only slightly popular and didn’t have Stranger Things kind of numbers.
Case in point, I’m a huge Star Trek fan but I didn’t start Strange New Worlds until now after it had three seasons under its belt.
Heck yes. “What happens now!?” Where do the characters go? What happens next in the world the author built for us? Personally there’s even a slight bit of resentment to pick up another book about another character set in the same world, perhaps somewhere else in the timeline, because I got so into the part I’d read and don’t want to have to shift gears and learn about new characters, settings, and personalities.
The Magicians book series by Lev Grossman was really a big nice circle with a complete ending in my opinion. I read it twice and so truly immersed in the entire experience.
A House For Mr Biswas by V.S. Naipaul was another deeply immersive experience of an entire life itself. And every person out there is living all this on their own. When I finished it I just thought “what an epic masterpiece!”
