Libraries

Two scifi book series I've enjoyed are the Imperial Radch series by Ann Leckie and the Bobiverse by Dennis E Taylor.

The former has a lot of names and history, but the thing that I really enjoyed about it was the concept of ancillary, a human that has been turned into part of a ship's AI. The idea of being just a piece of a being, what it's like to be separated from that, what the legal ramifications would be for an ancillary, and so forth, were absolutely brilliant. That premise was still handled with simple vocabulary. In the rest of the story, there were a bunch of names that were hard to get a handle on, but otherwise the world building was interesting and how the different parts of culture and history that were important to the story were presented. I don't remember many of the details, though, and only one name. It's the interesting concepts that stuck with me.

On the other hand, the Bobiverse is about a cryogenically frozen guy that gets brought back as a self-replicating probe. His name is Bob. All of his replicas are called Bobs until they start giving themselves other names to help differentiate the ones that drifted away from the original spec. There are several secondary plots that are easily summed up and I remember a lot more of them: fights against other replicating probe groups, how a being that can't forget can heal psychological trauma, the saving of a catlike sentient race from their dying planet, how an immortal being dealt with falling in love and the in laws that come with that, watching and protecting a primitive civilization without becoming a god, exploring a ring world filled with otter-like people, the weight of the differing opinions of all the Bobs and the schisms that happen. And aside from the names of the aliens, the language was pretty mundane. Some of the alien individuals are given handles that are easy to remember, like a smart one gets dubbed Archimedes. It was simply less work to store the details when they're familiar.

Radch series is by far the one I enjoyed more, but also the one that I don't remember nearly as much about. Radch also was much more literary, for lack of a better word, and I really enjoy the elevated writing in it, too, but the enjoyment of that sort of thing is usually much more fleeting.

As for non fiction, engaging with ideas I disagree with it text form is unsatisfying because I can't drill into any of the specifics or get clarification; it covers exactly the parts of ideas the author finds convincing, usually cherry picks citations, and goes at the author's pace. And if I find an issue with any of the fundamentals, none of what's build on that foundation carries much weight. So for being challenged, I prefer conversations with people that want to explore and test ideas as opposed to win an argument or defend their viewpoint as the right one. But finding that is very, very rare.

Most of the nonfiction I read then is usually pop science like Nature's Nether Regions by Menno Schilthuizen, about some of the weirder things sexual selection and evolutionary pressures have done to reproduction. I tend to avoid prescriptive non fiction as there's so much chaff. A podcast I listen to called If Books Could Kill tears into some of the type I'm thinking about with a focus on "airport books" like Blink or Omnivore's Dilemma. There are some less fun things I read, but I get the information I want from them and leave the rest.

Thanks for the interesting prompts!