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After reading the Memoirs of Field Marshal Montgomery and Rick Atkinson's Pulitzer Prize winning Liberation Trilogy.

I need something fun to read. Like John Scalzi's The Kaiju Preservation Society or Redshirts.

The books can be any genre, I just don't want to be depressed or sad. I can be sad for free.

Thank you!

In Sci Fi, I’d recommend the Murderbot Diaries, which are more fun than hilarious, or maybe Hard Luck Hank if you prefer a bit more of a silly noir feel. If you want kickass space battles and a bit of dark humor, the Dread Empire’s Fall/Praxis series is good.

For horror, it’s hard to beat the early short story collections from Stephen King for gonzo thrills. David J Schow invented the subgenre of Splatterpunk, but later moved to hardboiled action and other stuff.

For a fun mystery/thriller, I recommend Robert B Parker’s Spenser series, specifically one of the middle books like Playmates where he’s found his flow but before the books feel like a rote paycheck job. Dave Barry’s Big Trouble is worth a read if you like his sense of humor.

The Dresden Files are compulsively entertaining reads, at least starting with the third book.

If you want to stick with the hobby, the Ciaphas Cain and (William King) Gotrek and Felix books are delightful.

If you can find it, Nick Pollotta and Phil Foligo's Illegal Aliens. It's on the silly side, a story of first contact between Earth and galactic society gone terribly wrong in the funniest way possible. Best of all, it has ABSOLUTELY NOTHING to do with current political issues despite the name.

Discworld.

All of it.

Get it through your eyeholes and into your thinky bits.

I second Discworld and I also say not only read all of it - read it in publication order.


This gives you the best experience because you see every single in-joke and world reference as they are formed. You also get a fantastic display of how the characters and the Discworld and its peoples evolve and change over time.


Most of the books do technically stand alone, and you get a good number of footnotes to fill you in; but honestly its not the same experience. The first time read them the order they came in. Once you've been through it once then you can dip back and forth between books at random as you want .

Go find Gruntz by Mary Gentle. It’s glorious. A stereotypical evil wizard orc horde gets magically influenced by USMC equipment brought in by a dimensional dragon.

The terminally wounded orcs aren’t history, they are field rations!

I third the DiscWorld series. All of it. It is amazing, laugh out loud and thought provoking all at the same time. Pratchett was a rare, rare talent.
Jasper Fforde is fun, particularly "The Eyre Affair" to start with.
Ben Aaronovitch's "Rivers of London" series is incredibly engaging, light and fun but definitely with some solid plot and character development.
Simon R. Green's "The Man With the Golden Torc" definitely pokes fun at the spy genre and Bond in particular.
J. Zachary Pike's "Dark Profit Series" has 2 excellent books - "Orconomics" and "Son of a Liche". Definitely light, enjoyable and fun fare with a twist.

Lots of good ones in here already. Particulary;

Gruntz
Man with the Golden Torc
Dresden Series
Disc World

I'd add in Dungeon Crawler Carl as it's amazing. Though it might be one of the first books that's better as an audio book since they do a full production for it.

The philosophical Strangler, by Eric Flint is pretty delightful. It's told from the viewpoint of the manager of an assassin who discovers the only thing worse than religion- philosophy! And all of the complications that arise when the brawn half of brains and brawn suddenly grows a conscience.

Although far harder to locate, Another Day, Another Dungeon by Greg Costikyan is an absolutely hilarious tale of a regular old adventure done to pay the bills going horribly, horribly wrong. And all of the greeps you can eat along the way.

The Kama Sutra can be a fun book.

Raided the used book store and ended up with 2 Discworld novels Color of Magic and Hogfather... but I'll head back when I get more time.

Thanks for the advice!

 Gitzbitah wrote:
The philosophical Strangler, by Eric Flint is pretty delightful. It's told from the viewpoint of the manager of an assassin who discovers the only thing worse than religion- philosophy! And all of the complications that arise when the brawn half of brains and brawn suddenly grows a conscience.

God I love this and the second book in the series. So sad he died before he finished the series. It was so....so good.

 Lathe Biosas wrote:
Raided the used book store and ended up with 2 Discworld novels Color of Magic and Hogfather... but I'll head back when I get more time.

Thanks for the advice!

You’ll notice a real difference between those two

The earlier books (such as The Colour of Magic) are, more or less, satires of existing fantasy tropes. But as Pterry grew as a writer, Discworld really becomes its own world. I genuinely don’t consider any to be duff, but I prefer the ones where the world has developed.

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:

 Lathe Biosas wrote:
Raided the used book store and ended up with 2 Discworld novels Color of Magic and Hogfather... but I'll head back when I get more time.

Thanks for the advice!

You’ll notice a real difference between those two

The earlier books (such as The Colour of Magic) are, more or less, satires of existing fantasy tropes. But as Pterry grew as a writer, Discworld really becomes its own world. I genuinely don’t consider any to be duff, but I prefer the ones where the world has developed.

You weren't kidding, the writing is much better in Hogfather. I love DEATH speaking in all capital letters.

These two have been pretty good, so what's next?

Guards Guards is my favourite Discworld book...

Sci fi wise the lost fleet is average writing but a fun pulpy adventure.

The_Real_Chris wrote:
Guards Guards is my favourite Discworld book...

Sci fi wise the lost fleet is average writing but a fun pulpy adventure.

I've read every Jack Campbell/John G. Hemry book (Even his fantasy novels).

Guards, Guards? I'll see if it's at the bookstore/library.

I love anything to do with The Watch, and the Lancre Witches.

Also, for a later sequence, Moist Von Lipwig and his adventures are incredibly solid, and see Ankh Morpork move, quite rapidly, from Late Medieval to Industrial Revolution really swiftly.

But, with Colour of Magic down? I’m gonna endorse reading the books in release order. And here’s a handy dandy list! With all numbers and that! But thankfully, no jometry.

https://www.discworldemporium.com/reading-order/

Joe Abercrombie and Scott Lynch both write excellent fantasy.

Joe is very grimdark but there's frequent wry humour as well. Start with The Blade Itself.

Scott I would say is not quite as dark, also wryly humourous, and very intricately twisty. The Gentlemen Bastards series starts with The Lies Of Locke Lamora. Warning if you get into them - Scott has only published 3 of his planned 7 books in the series, and the last one came out 12 years ago... He's been having some major anxiety issues, poor chap.

On a more contemporary ultra-violent military sci-fi, I greatly enjoyed the Joe Ledger books. A competent lead, interesting twists of horror tropes and a lot of laconic bone crunching action. They read a bit like the Jack Reacher books, but with zombies (in the first instance at least).

 Lathe Biosas wrote:

The_Real_Chris wrote:
Guards Guards is my favourite Discworld book...

Sci fi wise the lost fleet is average writing but a fun pulpy adventure.

I've read every Jack Campbell/John G. Hemry book (Even his fantasy novels).

Guards, Guards? I'll see if it's at the bookstore/library.

Often thought the lost fleet would be an easy conversion for netflix or similar. Limited sets, limited core personalities, ability to get rid of/get new people in the background roles.

If they got the level of quality from The Expanse I think it could be a real hit.

You would just need a lot of false advertising though, as all the ads would feature Black Jack in power armour wielding Rob Liefeld sized weapons.

 Lathe Biosas wrote:
You would just need a lot of false advertising though, as all the ads would feature Black Jack in power armour wielding Rob Liefeld sized weapons.

Hey! I think he uses power armor like once in the 15 book series

 Hulksmash wrote:

I'd add in Dungeon Crawler Carl as it's amazing. Though it might be one of the first books that's better as an audio book since they do a full production for it.

I second this, I originally read the series on Kindle but am now revisiting it via Audible because the audio version is astounding and definitely adds to the comedic moments!

There are times it gets into "heavy" concepts and may have a sad moment here and there, but overall it is a wildly entertaining ride that is a mix of several genres. My friend describes the series to others as Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy plus The Running Man.

 ikeulhu wrote:

 Hulksmash wrote:

I'd add in Dungeon Crawler Carl as it's amazing. Though it might be one of the first books that's better as an audio book since they do a full production for it.

I second this, I originally read the series on Kindle but am now revisiting it via Audible because the audio version is astounding and definitely adds to the comedic moments!

There are times it gets into "heavy" concepts and may have a sad moment here and there, but overall it is a wildly entertaining ride that is a mix of several genres. My friend describes the series to others as Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy plus The Running Man.

I'm stealing that definition.....it's perfect!

 Flinty wrote:
On a more contemporary ultra-violent military sci-fi, I greatly enjoyed the Joe Ledger books. A competent lead, interesting twists of horror tropes and a lot of laconic bone crunching action. They read a bit like the Jack Reacher books, but with zombies (in the first instance at least).

Thanks for mentioning this, sounds interesting so just got myself a copy of Patient Zero from eBay to check the series out.

I ordered the posh hardback Discworld collection.

Tomorrow they arrive, which means packing my wee trolley bag for a trip to the charity shop.

 ikeulhu wrote:

 Flinty wrote:
On a more contemporary ultra-violent military sci-fi, I greatly enjoyed the Joe Ledger books. A competent lead, interesting twists of horror tropes and a lot of laconic bone crunching action. They read a bit like the Jack Reacher books, but with zombies (in the first instance at least).

Thanks for mentioning this, sounds interesting so just got myself a copy of Patient Zero from eBay to check the series out.

I found the first 5 or 6 books to be absolutely top notch thrillers. After that the author runs out of ideas of where to take the series. Still enjoyable but feeling a bit samey at that point. However, up to that point an absolutely smashing time. I’d really like it to be picked up for a visual series in a Reacher style.

 Flinty wrote:
I found the first 5 or 6 books to be absolutely top notch thrillers. After that the author runs out of ideas of where to take the series. Still enjoyable but feeling a bit samey at that point. However, up to that point an absolutely smashing time. I’d really like it to be picked up for a visual series in a Reacher style.

Yeah some of the later Reacher novels also have that same issue of feeling bit too samey imo, however, I still enjoy them so it is likely I'll end up getting the rest of the Ledger stuff if I like the first one. Reacher + paranormal horror sure sounds right up my alley, so I expect I likely will.

 Overread wrote:
I second Discworld and I also say not only read all of it - read it in publication order.


This gives you the best experience because you see every single in-joke and world reference as they are formed. You also get a fantastic display of how the characters and the Discworld and its peoples evolve and change over time.


Most of the books do technically stand alone, and you get a good number of footnotes to fill you in; but honestly its not the same experience. The first time read them the order they came in. Once you've been through it once then you can dip back and forth between books at random as you want .

I third Discworld. Amazing series, bursting with Pratchett humour and gives a glimpse into this man's interesting worldview. May he rest in peace. I recommend starting from the VERY start, and take your time. You won't regret it, Sir Biosas.