Escapist reads

[jinjin]

What are your favorite escapist reads? Things that are super immersive, vivid, fun, and take your mind off whatever else is going on in your life? Looking for the Fast & Furious franchises of literature please.

My contributions:
Six of Crows/Crooked Kingdom by Leigh Bardugo
A heist set in a rich fantasy world, funny emotional and fast paced with lots of good characters.

Carry On by Rainbow Rowell
A Harry Potter parody/sendup…Chosen One struggling with some stuff at his last year of wizard school. Adorable and super funny with a great romantic plotline.

Crazy Rich Asians trilogy by Kevin Kwan
Gossipy, juicy, trashy, fun, like watching reality TV or a soap opera.

And I know a ton of people have read these already, but His Dark Materials always delivers.

Bonus questions…

• Do you have books that you reread for comfort? What are they?
• What are the essential ingredients to an escapist read?

[Brendan]

Nice, I will note I’ve also read and enjoyed all the above except Carry On, which I’ll prob check out at some point…great escapist reads list so far!

I really enjoy sci-fi, a few fun and immersive faves include:

• Remembrance of Earth’s Past trilogy (The Three Body Problem, The Dark Forest, Death’s End)
• Dune is a classic for good reason (though I’d say only the first is a must-read)
• The Discworld Series is hilarious…I particularly enjoyed Going Postal and Making Money

Great nature writing, while not exactly super gripping thrill ride page-turners, can be a really pleasant escape of a different sort:

• The Trees in My Forest, about…just what the title says!
• Pilgrim at Tinker Creek, slow attentive experience of the seasons
• Underland, about exploring all sorts of interesting underground spaces

[Brendan]

Some more great recs from this Twitter thread. Summarizing many of em here! —

• Embassytown (I have this one on my shelf — might read next!)
• Severance
• Wolf Hall (first in a trilogy)
• Station Eleven
• Oona Out of Order
• The Broken Earth trilogy (The Fifth Season, The Obelisk Gate, The Stone Sky)
• Red Rising series (first one + four others in the series)
• Ted Chiang stories (Stories of Your Life and Others and Exhalation; former is better imho!)
• A Song for a New Day
• The Count of Monte Cristo
• Asimov’s Foundation trilogy (first one; several others in the series, but a core trilogy)
• Shantaram
• Neal Stephenson novels (many…faves I’ve read are Cryptonomicon and Seveneves)

[tomcritchlow]

Discworld is a great shout in these troubled times.

Robin Hobb’s farseer trilogy (starts here) is truly magical and wonderful.

The Culture Series from Iain M Banks

Raymond Chandler!

[Brendan]

Nice, hadn’t heard of the Farseer trilogy, will have to check it out.

And yes some good classic mysteries would be a lot of fun here! I need to read more of those… The Moonstone was a favorite I’d def recommend, and @jinjin has convinced me I should get into some of the Dorothy Sayers mysteries. (see also: Mystery book recommendations?)

Also might be some overlap w/ some of the “centireading” suggestions here: Centireading: what books would you read 100 times? — pure escapist fun & favorite classics you return to again and again aren’t always the same thing, but frequently driven by a similar impulse of seeking something comforting.

[Brendan]

Nice list here of comfort read picks from a variety of authors!

Celeste Ng, Ann Patchett, Min Jin Lee and Others on the Books That Bring Them...

[Brendan]

A couple more good book lists from Boze Herrington’s Patreon

• Quarantine Book List with Joy and Boze
• Ten Favorite Long Reads for a Lengthy Quarantine

The Gormenghast Trilogy is definitely one I’d like to read at some point. Also I should really dig into some more Agatha Christie at some point.

Also, I had not heard of the Flavia de Luce mystery series…they look like a lot of fun!