A relatively obscure book: Ransom, by David Malouf, which is a rewriting of the last parts of the Iliad - specifically, the events of the Trojan king, Priam, travelling to Achilles to buy his son's body from him, and give him a proper burial. It's a plot I wish I came up with first and darn you Homer, you sneaky git.

It is easily my favourite fantasy (if, er, that's correct to call it?) story of all time. It's as beautiful as I remember having read it (read it for school, in fact, as a set text!) and even better, being that I understand the whole thing more clearly.
It is a sad, brilliant story, and it all goes into exploring the relationship of death and life, and of mortality and what being mortal means, and so on and so forth.

Achilles and Priam are both greatly detailed characters - broken, flawed men, in different ways, but ultimately more similar than either of them realise. It has such a bleak tone and feel and conclusion, but, at the same time, is incredibly uplifting, as it were. It's one of the only fantasy stories I've read that's touched me, in that sort of manner.

Also, it is a tiny book. Only 200 or so pages.



And for poems, I am deeply in love with the works of Coleridge, and also T.S. Eliot. I recommend the Rime of the Ancient Mariner, which feels like a fantasy story before everyone started ripping off Tolkien, and Kubla Khan, which feels just as surreal and fantastical, if a lot shorter and easier to ingest.

T.S. Eliot took me a bit to get into but, man, is he brilliant. I consider his Preludes to be some good stuff - it's basically just a series of descriptions of scenes in a city, but he creates such a fantastic mood and tone and symbolism with it. It's some of the best descriptive prose I've seen, and it's not even a prose story!
The Lovesong of Alfred J. Prufrock and The Hollow Men are similar.
It's all pretty bleak though so, iunno, maybe play Kirby or some such after reading it.

I see someone's already suggested All The Sanderson. I will second that. Because Sanderson. Especially Mistborn, which is excellent.

Also, Ciaphas Cain is a good time. So if you like 40k (or want a good way in), check those out.

Since we're talking what I've been reading recently, I'd be remiss not to mention webcomics. Because I have been reading/watching/playing/listening to the insane multimedia phenomenon that is Homestuck. Sadly... I really can't recommend Homestuck. Yes, it's FANTASTIC, but it has outrageous pacing problems. If your are not a patient person, Homestuck isn't for you. If you are a moderately patient person, Homestuck may still not be for you. And don't get me started on the problems with Hivebent that make me want to ask Andrew why he thought it was a good idea and if I could somehow travel back in time convince him to do something that doesn't break all the rules of good narrative pacing. As if the rest of the story wasn't already doing that.

For something more solidly recommendable, I go to Order of the Stick, which is funny and heartwarming and cathartic and amazing and way easier to get into than the mess that is Homestuck.

Oh, and I will once again suggest that you familiarize yourself with 1/0, AKA quite possibly the greatest piece of metafiction ever written. It is cleverly-written, with some of the best actual exploration of metafictional concepts that I've ever really seen. It also has better narrative chops than you have any right to expect from a daily four-panel gag strip, with a genuinely smart ending and a set of well-developed characters who all have their own arcs over the course of the story. And by the end, you'll be able to identify with all of them. Yes, even the eyeball.

And over this entire thing, it still manages to be a fairly consistantly funny daily 4-panel gag strip. I cannot recommend it enough. In what other story can you ebbg sbe gur ybir orgjrra n yvgreny fgenjzna naq na rnegujbez jub pnzr bhg nf fgenvtug va qrsvnapr bs gur nhgube? (rot13ed spoilers for 1/0)

If you can get your hands on a copy of Rolfe Humphries' translation of the Aeneid, it's a very good epic poem.

Also, a new translation of the Odyssey by a woman (which is the first thus published) just came out and it's lovely and a little more critical of Odysseus than usual.

In terms of contemporary poets, I love Nikki Finney, who is a queer Black woman and writes about this. You can find a few of her poems on the internet but she's also published a few collections.

And if you like comic books, I've always had a special place in my heart for Batman The Long Halloween and Batman and Robin -- both of them are pretty quick reads and very good.

Some of my favorites:

"Ready Player One" by Ernest Cline
Yes, in know, but if you like video games and 80's pop culture then this is a book for you! (I can't wait to see the movie, and forget all the haters.)

"Soon I Will be Invincible" by Austin Grossman
An somewhat different take on the superhero genre, with interesting characters and concepts. Shame there's no sequel, the universe on display is worth another look.

If you like superhero comics, I highly recommend the novelization of "Kingdom Come", which takes an already good story and adds more to it. The only downside is a lack of Alex Ross' gorgeous artwork.

Enjoy!

I'm reading Dune, Mr. Flood's Last Resort, (those are the books) and Paranatural, Kill Six Billion Demons, and lots of other webcomics.

But when it comes to 'actual' books, the ones I'm reading at the moments are Sanderson's. Warbreaker and Stormlight more recently, but I received pretty much all of them (sans the Mistborn ones I already had)... and have to find the time to read them, despite usually being able to read quite fast.

I also been thinking about reading a trilogy from a certain Justin Cronin. If I got it right, it would be 'zombie apocalypse, except the zombies are replaced with vampires'.

(And to discreetly feed your videogame distraction problem, did you heard about this mod of FFVI with its own story with Ponies, aptly named Filly Fantasy VI?)

*flying tackleglomp*

I haven't read anything new lately—all rereads—but I'd recommend the Last Apprentice series by Joseph Delaney. It's about witches and boggarts and things that go bump in the night, and the people who fight them. It's also genuinely scary at some points, so if you like horror lite I'd recommend it. :)

I've been reading a whole lot of great sci-fi lately. I recommend the Keiko trilogy by Mike Brooks, the ongoing series The Expanse by James S. A. Corey, and the Remembrance of Earth's Past trilogy by Cixin Liu (you may know it by its first book, the immensely popular The Three-Body Problem).

Also, anything by Brandon Sanderson. That's always a good recommendation.