2024 was the year I got back into reading and found myself unable to finish some books I started because they just didn’t grab me. I’d like to grab a shortlist of recommendations based on the books that I read in 2024 and enjoyed (plus maybe my all time fav author and book)! Those were/are:
The Pines series – Blake Crouch
Dark Matter – Blake Crouch
The Silo series – Hugh Howey
The Little Liar – Mitch Albom
I’m Glad My Mom Died – Jennette McCurdy
My favorite author is Mitch Albom and my favorite book is The Glass Castle by Jeanette Walls
EDIT: Realized the title is asking for Sci-Fi but after writing the actual post please feel free to recommend anything
by HeyNiceOneGuy
18 Comments
The red rising series for sure. Enders game is a close second.
Scifi for a person who doesn’t read scifi (hi it’s me!) – Project Hail Mary and The Martian – Andy Weir
The Sparrow and Children of God – Maria Doria Russel
I love The Glass Castle so much also, and think Half Broke Horses is also excellent because it really illustrates generational trauma.
The two books I always recommend to anyone (with or without being asked) are: The Thirteenth Tale (Diane Settlerfield) and Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine (Gail Honeyman)
The Passage by Justin Cronin
Angela’s Ashes by Frank McCourt
Gratitude by Oliver Sacks
Foundryside by Robert Jackson Bennett
Leviathan Wakes by James SA Corey
Some Desperate Glory by Emily Tesh
Binti by Nnedi Okorafor
Once Upon a Tome by Oliver Darkshire
Impossible People by Julia Wertz
The Princess Diarist by Carrie Fisher
Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal by Jeanette Winterson
The Art Thief by Michael Finkel
Being Seen by Elsa Sjunneson
The Collected Schizophrenias by Esme Weijun Wang
Hello Molly by Molly Shannon
In the Dream House by Carmen Maria Machado
Heart Berries by Terese Marie Mailhot
Recursion by Blake Crouch
Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir
Luminous by Silvia Park (pub March 11, 2025)
The Once and Future Me by Melissa Pace (pub August 2025)
Hyperion Series,
Robot series by Issac Asimov,
The Locked Tomb Series,
3 Body Problem Trilogy
The Broken Earth Trilogy
Stranger in a Strange World
God in Mote’s Eye
The Left Hand of Darkness
The Murderbot Diaries by Martha Wells! Mostly novella length books with one that’s full length and each one is solid!
I got into Sci-fi mainly through reading Philp K Dick short stories when I was in college. I’m not really sure why but it didn’t occur to me that I should read his novels till like 5ish years later. Here are some of my favorites:
A Scanner Darkly – probably my favorite. It’s one of the sadest and funniest books I’ve ever read.
Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep – often recommended for a reason. Great action-packed book.
Ubik – a total mind F
Valis – an extremely weird book. It’s kind of a UFO believers’ wet dream
Radio Free Albemuth- It seems like Dick took the themes of Valis and the Divine Invasion and reused them in a more coherent book.
Dune.
The Ancillary series by Ann Leckie.
It’s described as a space opera and holy shit. The world and culture building, and character development, all of it. It’s genuinely so good. You just have to make sure you go in order or it won’t make sense hahaha.
Just a generalized thing – AI is used to power military ships. Ancillaries are essentially people that were drained of their life, allowing the AI to take them all over into a large efficient army of sorts. Somehow a destroyed ships AI becomes sentient and is living inside of one ancillary, thus making it a moral conundrum. Is it now a person? A ship? An ancillary? There is a massive war brewing amongst a few cultures. The ancillary with its enormous vault of knowledge before becoming sentient begins to piece things together and learns of some wild treason. War breaks out. People begin to join sides. Things get even more complicated. You’re introduced to many different cultures and their traditions and how they all play together into this galaxy and I’m rambling because I LOVE this series so damn much.
I actually haven’t read a lot of sci-fi, but I really enjoyed everything from Edward Ashton.
I literally read everything back to back. I enjoyed his writing style. It was sci-fi without feeling like it was too far over my head.
V by AC Crispin. Aliens land on earth. Parallels to Nazis ensue. Probably my favorite.
2001 A Space Odyssey
Red Rising trilogy and Project Hail Mary, my faves!
Ted Chiang’s short story collections, especially *Story of Your Life* and *Exhalation*.
A few…
The Mote in Gods Eye – Niven & Pournelle
Cyteen – CJ Cherryh
Blackout/All Clear – Connie Willis
Burning Bright – Melissa f Scott
The foreigner series – CJ Cherryh
Grass – Sherri S Tepper
Plus, just an odd one I love rereading- ‘the way the future was’ the autobiography of Fredrick Pohl, classic Sci-fi writer… it’s lovely… super interesting… a ton of those golden age writers all knew each other and hung out etc..
I liked The Expanse Series. I’m currently reading the Destiny’s Crusible series and enjoying it.
This is two different questions to me. There’s my all time favorite, and there’s what I’d recommend. I don’t see Dune ever not being number 1 for me. And I’m talking about all the Frank Herbert books, not just the first one. The rest of the conversation starts below that for me. 2nd is probably tied between the Hyperion Cantos by Dan Simmons and the remembrance of earths past (three body problem) by Cixin Lui.
As far as more of recommendations to people fairly new to scifi, if you want good series with a lot of content but easy reads, The Expanse is fantastic. Definitely read more Blake crouch but I recommend not reading all his stuff at once and instead saving his novels as quick reads when you need to get out of a reading slump because they’ll almost always work.
I tend to lean towards series or at least trilogies just because I like when I can spend more time in a world, but there are plenty of great standalone scifi novels out there too. Anything Andy Weir, Ursula K Le Guin, Phillip Dick
Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy and the sequels, Stranger in a Strange Land