The Magicians

The Magicians, Lev Grossman A Wizard of Earthsea

A bunch of books: Leviathan Wakes by James S.A. Corey (as well as several of the sequels), American Gods by Neil Gaiman, The Windup Girl by Paolo Bacigalupi, The Magicians by Lev Grossman, Ancillary Justice by Ann Leckie, Harry Potter by J.K. Rowling, The Three-Body Problem by Liu Cixin, and a bunch of others.

Non-Fiction: - Thinking, Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman | book on human rationality and irrationality - An Astronaut's Guide to Life on Earth by Chris Hadfield Fiction: - Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality | Petunia married a professor, and Harry grew up reading science and science fiction. http://www.hpmor.com/ - Off to Be the Wizard (Magic 2.0 Book 1) by Scott Meyer | Reality is defined in a text file, making the protagonist a wizard when he discovers it while hacking a company. - The Magicians (series) by Lev Grossman

Man, the Magicians has to be the most controversial book, in terms of people either LOVE it or HATE it. I fall in the former camp and consider it my favorite book of all time.

I'll push back just a little and say that a lot of the first book was written from Quentin's perspective, so that's why it might have come off as clueless wrt how it handled sexuality. However, that might have been by design because in the rest of the series there's a lot of, "Expectations vs Reality." Meaning, "Here's how Quentin expects the women around him to exist," but "Here's how they actually exist." Plus, a big chunk of the rest of the series revolves around <spoiler> Julia healing from sexual trauma </spoiler> and it was both nuanced and satisfying. I won't go so far as suggesting that you give it another try, but it's not as terrible as it might seem :)

Wow, that's interesting. We must have approached Grossman from completely different perspectives. Last year (2017) I read the entire Magicians series and thoroughly enjoyed them because they made me uncomfortable. I was trash, in the same way that Quentin was trash, so following his arc was introspective. At the time I contrasted it to the optimism in "All the Birds in the Sky" by Charlie Jane Anders (if you're familiar) What was your experience like? For reference, my most recent fiction is: - "Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World" by Murakami - "Uprooted" by Naomi Novik - "God Emperor of Dune" by Frank Herbert

"The Magicians", "The Magician King", "The Magician's Land" - Lev Grossman. 4/5 "Inside Job" - Connie Willis. 4/5 "Norwegian Wood (Tokio Blues)" - Haruki Murakami. 4/5 "Old Man's War" - John Scalzi. 5/5 "Persepolis" - Marjane Satrapi. 5/5 Non fiction: "The 10,000 year explosion" about recent evolution. 3/5 ton of evidence for their thesis, but lacks predictions. "What if" well known by HN. 5/5 "The nurture assumption" about education, 2/5. Maybe a 4/5 when it was published, but now their ideas are in the water supply. "The man who mistook his wife for a hat", by Oliver Sacks 4/5. Several stories about neurological deficits.

Gravity's Rainbow - took 4 months out of my year, but and it's still mostly a whoosh, but every time I started reading another book after that, it was just amazing how much better Pyncheon writes. Will revisit it for sure, though not very soon. Anna Karenina - just a whole different level, Tolstoy's writing in a way I don't feel many contemporary writes could. Feels creepy how similar the people's lives in the 19th Century was to ours. Creepy but fun too. If On A Winter's Night A Traveller - Italo Calvino will just punch you in the face, this is a book for people who love reading books. The Magicians - adult magic fiction, and somehow it feels that if magic was indeed real, it would be like it is depicted here, not like anything in Harry Potter's (no matter how much I loved the storytelling, the magic theory was just so full of plotholes). The Casual Vacancy - JKRowling's not-Harry-Potter-book. It's very gritty, and feels very real. Still having my cold shivers thinking of small-town living after this. (Except for the last one the others are older releases, don't usually jump into the newest ones, I just take it casual)

The magicians + sequel. I found it interesting mainly because it's a fantasy book about fantasy books.