World War Z

I just started The Hobbit a couple days ago. For the last 3-4 months I've been checking out library books on the Kindle and reading as a bedtime ritual to help get me to sleep. It's been working pretty well, I rarely lay there unable to go to sleep. I just finished Devolution by Max Brooks, it was good but not really in my wheelhouse. I didn't realize when I started reading it, but he also did World War Z, which I felt the same way about, and also recently finished reading Before that I finished Artemis by Andy Weir, good but not great. Read because I had recently finished The Martian and absolutely loved it.

"Off to be the wizard" is pretty light and fun. "John dies at the end" was fun, not really sci-fi, more buffy the vampire slayer esque. "Existence" by David Brin made me want to puke it had so many good ideas. A tiny bit dated, but very smart. "The Martian" I expect you've read it. Good romp, easy to read. Reminded me of a Michael Crichton. "World War Z" was good.

Oh, I love some good world-building, and especially when there is a set of rules that's followed to their consequences. [Ayuc sums it up nicely in this comment. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9056594 ] If you look at it this way, it CAN be done in fantasy. Check out Brandon Sanderson's Warbreaker (a great one-off), or the Mistborn series. (There are quite a few similarities between them.) Or Max Brooks' World War Z was great in this way, I think. Although it's been quite a while since I read that. (I know this is an older thread, so I hope you'll find this comment. Made a HN account for this. :D )

"Into Thin Air" (Krakauer) Journalist/Mountaineer account of an Everest expedition gone wrong. Read it, ponder, but know that there is some controversy. Very interesting look into expedition dynamics. "Mountains Beyond Mountains" (Kidder) An account of Paul Farmer's work in Haiti, and later in other parts of the world. If you are interested in public health it is a great read, and may provide a fresh angle on recent Haiti <-> world politics. "Three Cups of Tea" (Oliver, I think) Greg Mortensen starts building schools in Pakistan / Afghanistan. Adventure ensues. There's some definite political bias here but it's worth a read. Fun summer read: "World War Z". Unrelated, I use Shelfari [http://www.shelfari.com/] to organize my books-to-read, if you need an organization tool.

The print version of World War Z is very good as well.