this post was submitted on 08 Feb 2026
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Instead of directly answering the question I'm gonna suggest some books/series that helped form my own love of reading. These should not be taken as a list of unproblematic books whose messages I wholly endorse, but simply as a list of books that kept teenage me up all night completely immersed in reading.
The Warrior's Apprentice (and the rest of its series, The Vorkosigan Saga) by Lois McMaster Bujold
Redwall (and its series) by Brian Jacques
Animorphs series (starting with The Invasion) by K. A. Applegate
Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (and the rest of its five book trilogy) by Douglas Adams
Discworld series by Terry Pratchett
The Moon is a Harsh Mistress by Robert Heinlein
On Basilisk Station (and its series, Honor Harrington) by David Weber
Ender's Game (and its sequels) by Orson Scott Card
But don't bother with anything else by Orson Scott Card. His writing fell off the rails after the Ender series. His fantasy is especially terrible. Plus he's a racist rightoid and apparently stopped listening to editors after a while.
Ender's Game and Ender's Shadow I can personally vouch for though.
Edit: okay to be more specific, the Pathfinder series is the one that made me upset with how bad it was, especially in the third book. The guy has written a lot of books and I can't necessarily assume they're all bad because one series got up its own ass. Although his politics became so bad that he probably lost the ability to write well at some point.
Yeah, Card is a Mormon, one of the worst types of KKKri$$tian, and a virulent bigot. But the Ender sequels especially are beautiful books about learning to understand and even love people who are completely alien to you.
How he managed to write Speaker for the Dead is a great mystery.
EDIT: David Weber's politics are also extremely bad but Honor Harrington is still fun. The biggest suspension of disbelief is a functional monarchy.
I should read speaker for the dead, I think I bounced off of it at one point but it has been long enough that I'll try again.
It's the high point of the entire Ender series/setting, imo
is that the one that's basically a detective story about the strange tree people?
that's the one
Yes, but instead of the typical detective story whodunit, the questions are why did they do it and what is it that they actually did