I'm forcing myself to take a vacation from my startup. Looking for some good stories to get lost in. No business books. Help me Hacker News, you're my only hope.
Some suggstions on my end would be:
Ready player one - Ernest Cline
Mistborn trilogy - Brandon Sanderson
A short history of nearly everything - Bill Bryson
Dune - Frank Herbert
<i>Children of Time</i> by Adrian Tchaikovsky. Sci-fi action-adventure involving AI, terraforming, and a man-made race of intelligent spiders.<p><i>The Book of Tea</i> by Okakura Kakuzō. Philosophy, history, and aesthetics in a 1906 treatise on tea.
Try Murakami, Knausgård and Ursula Le Guin.<p>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.
Discworld Series by Terry Pratchett. I’d start with the DEATH series (Mort is first book in that one) but a lot of folks like the City Watch. (Guards! Guards!). Lighthearted, hilarious, and some real insights into the human condition in a tongue in cheek way.<p>Can’t go wrong, good vacation reads. M
Some suggestions:<p>Any of the "Laundry Files" novels by Charles Stross, or <i>Glasshouse</i> also by Stross.<p><i>Permutation City</i> by Greg Egan.<p><i>Off To Be The Wizard</i> by Scott Meyer.<p>Any of the "Dresden Files" novels by Jim Butcher.<p><i>The Shockwave Rider</i> by John Brunner.<p><i>Neuromancer</i> by William Gibson.<p><i>Snow Crash</i> by Neal Stephenson.
I'm on book four of The Expanse series. They are long, but easy reads. I picked them up at the start of the month. Depending on how long your vacation is, you could start with the first three and probably have enough to last.<p>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.
Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut<p><i>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.</i><p>Childhood's End by Arthur C. Clarke<p><i>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.</i>
The trilogy Remembrance of Earth's Past by Cixin Liu:<p>The Three-Body Problem, The Dark Forest, Death's End.<p>I really liked this sci-fi trilogy, can't talk more about it without spoiling it. Enjoy your vacation!
If you want non-business non-fiction, I've always enjoyed Robert Greene's books. They're short history snippets first and foremost, with some Aesop-like morals of the story.