I like to read books. In my over two decades of experience as a living being, there are many books that I have read over the years. In this blogpost, I will be talking about the books that were the most memorable as well as give them a rating and explanation as to whether or not I recommend them. Please note that these are just my own subjective opinions and may differ from your own personal tastes or preferences.
Dune by Frank Herbert – 11/10
Dune was a very good book, in my opinion. Probably my favorite book, actually. It starts off a little slow, but it sets itself up for a much bigger overall story. The worldbuilding and characters are very cool. I’m a very big fan of the sci-fi genre, and Dune was just an incredible experience. I cannot rave enough about this book without spoiling the story, so I will not. I think everyone should read this book so I’d rather let you read the book for yourself so you can enjoy it.
I watched the movie and it was a very good depiction of the book which was very nice. There were a few tweaks that the movie made that they probably changed to make the movie more appealing to general audiences, but I can’t complain about them.
Six Wakes by Mur Lafferty – 10/10
As I have previously stated, sci-fi is one of my favorite genres (probably influenced by my being a STEM major.) There are just so many different futuristic concepts for people to explore. Obviously, fantasy settings have a lot of options to explore whether that be magic systems, societies comprised of multiple species, or even alternate worlds. However, sci-fi can do all those things (including magic) but with the added exploration of very cool technological concepts. It’s everything that a fantasy setting can have, plus super cool high-tech stuff. Obviously, there is a genre appeal to seeing characters living in a low-tech medieval world and there are people who prefer that. However, I really enjoy sci-fi because it takes place in the future and I like to wonder what technological concepts I read about will someday become true. I have yet to see the normalization of flying cars but one day…
Rant about my love for sci-fi aside, Six Wakes was a very good book. In this world, cloning has become normalized and people backup their memories, genetics, and personalities by turning them into data that can be stored elsewhere. This is to allow people to be reborn via cloning upon death in order to continue living. Basically, a futuristic equivalent of pseudo-immortality.
The main plot of the story is a take on the classic murder mystery trope where a group of characters find a body in an estate and must get to the bottom of the mystery and the killer could be any one of them. A classic tale of intrigue, deceit, and backstabbing where peoples’ true selves are revealed. Now, take that concept and apply this story’s world’s idea where everyone is cloned upon death. The characters all wake up in their spaceship’s respawn machines with their memories wiped and their ship in shambles in the aftermath of a massacre where all of them have died and none of them knows what happened. They need to get to the bottom of what is going on and the killer could be any one of them. But because they have all been cloned with memories recently wiped, no one can be sure that they themselves are not the killer.
It’s an amazing book that I could not put down until I finished reading and I highly recommend it to anyone out there, especially if you are a fan of sci-fi or mystery.
Brass Monkeys by Terry Caszatt – 8/10
This one was quite interesting. I’m not even sure how to describe it.
The protagonist enters a new school and all the teachers are evil and steal the soul and creativity from the students.
The Hunger Games trilogy – 8/10
The Hunger Games book trilogy is a timeless classic from the 2010s era. I remember reading the first book in sixth grade and it had me hooked. I read the second and third books and watched all the movies too. I’ve already expressed my love for the sci-fi genre, so you already know that I really liked this book’s worldbuilding and concept. Not to mention that the characters are all pretty good and honestly I feel like this was one of the first books that I read with deeper political themes and it just blew my mind that stories could actually delve into social issues the way real life does.
In hindsight, the book is still pretty good. I don’t think that it’s as mind-blowing as I once thought it to be, but it does hold up to the test of time pretty pretty well. If you haven’t read this book trilogy yet, I highly recommend it.
I heard there was a new book that came out as a prequel recently. I haven’t read it and honestly don’t really have much of a desire to do so.
The Maze Runner trilogy – 7/10
This trilogy, in my opinion, had some ups and downs all throughout the series. It was one of those books that was good when I read it but I for the life of me cannot remember a single thing that happened in the books after I finished reading them.
However, the premise was pretty cool.
Divergent series – 6/10
These books were pretty good when I read them in middle school.
In hindsight, it still isn’t that bad. However, the worldbuilding is a little strange, to say the least. The story setting is interesting but doesn’t really get extrapolated on.
However, my main issue with the Divergent series is the whole concept of Divergents as a whole. The main setting of the story is that the population is separated into five different factions based on their most prominent character trait (smart, kind, honest, fearless, or selfless).