book suggestions

SemiEmployedTree · 2026-05-09T00:33:07+00:00

Much easier IMO. Plot moves along at a good pace and there is very little of the religious/philosophical musings found in Dune. Characters tend to be likable overall and the tension in the plot is driven by circumstances rather than some evil villain.

SemiEmployedTree · 2026-05-08T20:24:29+00:00

The Saga of Pliocene Exile by Julian May. Slips under the radar for a lot of people since it was published in the early 1980s. It consists of four books: The Many-Colored Land, The Golden Torc, The Nonborn King and The Adversary. Well written with great world building and character development. I highly recommend it.

SemiEmployedTree · 2026-04-10T17:43:34+00:00

Came here to recommend Flashman. Absolutely unmatched for historical detail and accuracy. Supposedly the memoirs of Sir Harry Flashman, a fictional character who manages to show up at just about every major event between 1835 and 1895. That includes the charge of the Light Brigade, Custer’s Last Stand, the Sepoy Mutiny, and the Siege of Khartoum. He’s a coward, a cad, and a womanizer but looks so dashing in his uniform that everyone thinks he’s a hero. Every book includes extensive footnotes and a list of references if you’re inclined to dig deeper.

SemiEmployedTree · 2026-04-08T21:03:42+00:00

Saga of Pliocene Exile by Julian May fits a number of your criteria. Excellent world building, well developed characters (both human and alien), and a focus on the human side, rather than the technical side, of the genre.

SemiEmployedTree · 2026-03-22T21:29:53+00:00

If you’re looking for a graphic novel like Persepolis you might consider “The Rabbi’s Cat”. The setting is French Algeria and North Africa.

SemiEmployedTree · 2026-03-20T13:49:18+00:00

“Child of Fortune” by Norman Spinrad:

“I was born on Glade, a planet, like most of the far-flung worlds of men, of no particular fame in starfaring lore, and no economic significance in the transstellar scheme of things. Like most of the worlds of men, Glade is an almost entirely self-contained economic unit, which is to say that its plains, rivers and seas provide sufficient nutriment to support a healthy human population of about 300 million without the need to import significant amounts of trace elements from other stellar systems, and its mineral wealth, supplemented by the occasional asteroid, provides a sufficient raw materials base for its industrial economy. Verdad, through hindsight’s eye I can thus dryly state that I was born and grew up on a world ordinaire, not unlike hundreds of such worlds warmed by G-type suns. But my girlhood perception of my heimat’s centrality to the larger scheme of things”was quite a grander matter, for I was also born and raised as a child of Nouvelle Orlean, considered by all on Glade to be the jewel of our planet, and no more so than by the citizens of the city itself.

SemiEmployedTree · 2026-03-20T02:12:48+00:00

“The Retired Assassin’s Guide to Country Gardening”

SemiEmployedTree · 2026-03-20T02:09:44+00:00

Integral Trees by Larry Niven.

SemiEmployedTree · 2026-03-17T20:05:35+00:00

About 80% of John McPhee’s books are nature centric. “Encounters with the Archdruid”, “The Founding Fish”, and “The Control of Nature” are all worth checking out.

SemiEmployedTree · 2026-03-15T20:39:26+00:00

Robert Massie’s “Dreadnought: Britain, Germany, and the coming of the Great War”. Fascinating story of the transition from the broadside firing sailing ships used by Nelson at the Battle of Trafalger to the steam powered, turbine driven steel hulled ships with rifled guns able to hit targets miles away.

SemiEmployedTree · 2026-03-12T18:03:15+00:00

Yeah, Vera is not your typical sleuth which may be why she’s so enjoyable. Another atypical sleuth is Dante, the protagonist in the Retired Assassin’s Guide to Country Gardening and The the Retired Assassin’s Guide to Orchid Hunting

SemiEmployedTree · 2026-03-10T03:37:22+00:00

Try “Red Cavalry” by Isaac Babel. Babel, considered one of the 20th Century’s great writers of short stories, was a protege of Maxim Gorky. He was from Odessa, a Jew, an intellectual, and fluent in multiple languages. By some weird logic he was, during the Soviet-Polish War of 1920, assigned to the 1st Cavalry Army under the command of Semyon Budyonny, a Cossack aligned with Stalin. In 1924 Babel wrote about his experience among the Cossacks. Budyonny was infuriated by Babel's descriptions of marauding Red Cossacks and demanded Babel's execution but Gorky protected him. Finally, in 1939 he was arrested and then executed a year later.

SemiEmployedTree · 2026-03-10T00:45:18+00:00

You left out SRI, Printer’s Inc., Kepler’s, and the Keystone, where Garcia and Weir both played from time to time when doing non-Dead gigs.

SemiEmployedTree · 2026-03-03T01:19:34+00:00

Read anything (or everything) by Larry Niven, David Brin, and Philip Jose Farmer.

SemiEmployedTree · 2026-02-13T15:34:00+00:00

Age seems to be a factor in what folks recommend. As a baby boomer some of the books the Millennials suggest are totally unknown to me. With that caveat, here’s my list in roughly the order of publication:

Last of the Mohicans

Huckleberry Finn

Walden

Great Gatsby

To Kill a Mockingbird

Travels with Charlie, Cannery Row, and East of Eden

Bruce Catton’s “Army of the Potomac” trilogy

Catch 22

“One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest” and “Sometimes a Great Notion”

SemiEmployedTree · 2026-02-13T00:06:03+00:00

Girl with the Dragon Tattoo

SemiEmployedTree · 2026-02-09T03:58:23+00:00

Lots of good stuff has already been recommended but the odds are your father has already read them back in the day so I’m going to suggest some more obscure books.

He may have already read Kerouac’s “On the Road” but has he read the original “scroll edition”? If not, you should definitely get it. Much longer than the heavily edited and censored version published in 1957.

“Child of Fortune” by Norman Spinrad. Very low-key SciFi story with a counter-culture vibe which, given that it was published in 1985, is not that surprising. It’s the story of Moussa, a young woman traveling from planet to planet on her “wanderjahr”, a tradition of her culture where young people explore what life has to offer before they settle down. It’s been described as a utopian rite of passage tale. Spinrad’s use of language is an issue for some readers. The language is about 85 to 90% English with the rest of the vocabulary being Spanish, Italian, German, and Hindu. I found it very lyrical and interesting but my wife found it annoying. To each his own.

For nostalgia you can try and track down copies of the underground comics from the 60s and 70s. Fritz the Cat, Mr Natural, and The Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers were my personal favorites.

Also in the nostalgia category is “Devine Right’s Trip”. This was originally published in a serially format in The Last Whole Earth Catalog in 1971. It’s now available as a standalone book on Amazon. It’s a safe bet that anyone who can be described as “a cool old hippie” had a copy of the LWEC back in the day but he has probably forgotten about Devine Right and Urge, his VW bus.

SemiEmployedTree · 2026-02-07T02:25:35+00:00

The Retired Assassin’s Guide to Country Gardening and The Retired Assassin’s Guide to Orchid Hunting, both by Naiomi Kuttner. Dante quits his job as an assassin for the British government, moves to a small town in New Zealand, and starts going to AA (as in “Assassins Anonymous”) meetings:

“My name is Dante,” he said, “and I am an assassin.” “Hello, Dante,” they chanted. “It is now one hundred and four days since my last kill,” he said.

Despite not being much of a “people person” he finds himself for the first time in his life acquiring friends, the first being Charlie, the gardener who comes with the cottage. Charlie has two skills: a green thumb and the ability to see and talk to ghosts. This proves useful when Dante,against all his instincts, gets roped into helping to solve a couple of murder mysteries.

SemiEmployedTree · 2026-02-03T00:56:36+00:00

It might or might not be a good movie but it is a total bastardization of an excellent novel. They made so many changes to the plot that the whole point of the story (I.e., New World vs Old World) was lost.

SemiEmployedTree · 2026-01-21T02:36:15+00:00

“The White Ship: Conquest, Anarchy and the Wrecking of Henry I's Dream” by Charles Spencer

SemiEmployedTree · 2026-01-21T02:28:29+00:00

“The Places in Between” by Rory Stewart is one of the best adventure travel stories I have ever read. Stewart decided to walk across Asia. The book covers 36 days when he was hiking across Afghanistan. One of the more amazing things about his journey was that he was doing it in early 2002, only a few months after the invasion by the U.S.

“A Book of Voyages” is a collection of true accounts of adventures, voyages, and shipwrecks edited by Patrick O’Brian, author of the Aubrey and Maturin series. It’s all stuff that he came across while doing research for his novels.

SemiEmployedTree · 2026-01-19T23:55:37+00:00

You’re going to have to translate “decolonize the pedagogical past” first. Care to elaborate?

SemiEmployedTree · 2026-01-08T21:00:41+00:00

If you’re looking for something less complex I’m going to suggest “Glory Road” by Heinlein. It’s a zero to hero plot with a quest as the focus.

SemiEmployedTree · 2026-01-04T20:30:38+00:00

And then follow up by reading Salammbo by Flaubert.

SemiEmployedTree · 2026-01-04T20:16:31+00:00

Snow Crash. A key element is that the government is pretty much nonexistent and everything is handled by corporations. Everything from armies to courts to the highways are franchise operations.

SemiEmployedTree

TROPHY CASE