I read both normal books from my gigantic pile I’ve acquired working in a bookstore for years, and audiobooks I check out from the library (which have the advantage of my being able to “read” them during work at the aforementioned bookstore.) My tastes trend towards older and weirder books and I mostly avoid popular bestsellers, but I recently made an exception for Cixin Liu’s Remembrance of Earth’s Past trilogy (perhaps better known as the Three Body Problem books).
The Three Body Problem is famous enough that many people here have probably read it or are familiar with it, as one of Obama’s recommended books if nothing else, but I wanted to encourage anyone who has read only the first book to keep going. I thought the first one was all right, certainly imaginative, but things really picked up in the sequel, The Dark Forest, which made the entire story of the first one feel like reading an instruction manual to get the proper context and background info necessary to enjoy the actual story. I’m now about two thirds of the way through the third book, Death’s End, and finding myself continually awed by the astounding amount of creativity, scientific knowledge and world building that went into this story. Every turn of events feels like a new surprise I didn’t see coming and every detail of humanity’s future is entertaining and thought-provoking. I feel like anyone who stopped at the first book is missing out, so if you put in the “work” of reading that one, you owe it to yourself to enjoy the reward of finishing the trilogy.
ETA: On the opposite end of the spectrum, the non-audio book I’m currently reading is Matt Kracht’s A Dumb Birds Field Guide to the Worst Birds Ever, which consists entirely of the author writing about how deeply and personally he despises birds and giving them humorously insulting nicknames and ratings. It’s the third such book doing so (I haven’t read the other two and got this one as a free advance reader’s copy) and isn’t in any way inspiring, deep or thought-provoking, but it’s silly, short, and may accidentally teach me some actual bird facts, so into my brain it goes.
That’s actually the craziest part of how they grew up, just how fondly they remember, other than the white supremacy. Highly recommend it, as it gets at the heart of some of the things we’re facing now. It’s a timely read.