I’ll start first: (bear in mind I usually listen to audiobooks)
- Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir |A guy finds himself stranded in space aboard an international space vessel where he has to remember who he is.
- The 57 Bus by Dashka Slater |A true story about how hanging with the wrong crowd can have life-altering consequences
- The Animorphs series by KJ Applegate |Young adult series in which a group of kids find an alien, get the powers to morph shape into animals, as well as uncover an alien takeover conspiracy (Plus, detailed depictions of how grotesque those transformations are!)
- Saga by Brian K. Vaughn & Fiona Staples (Comic, ongoing) |Following the story of Hazel, a baby born from an ex-soldier and an enemy combatant, Saga shows how gowing up and raising a kid in a wartorn universe can have highs and lows.
Edit: added pipes for better separation
The Odyssey by Homer, translated by Robert Fagles. My first time reading an ancient classic, and it’s much less scary than I thought. In fact I’m quite enjoying it, and might read The Iliad (Homer’s other epic poem) next. The humanness of the characters (well, the human ones!) is very relatable, even though it’s 2700 years old. I don’t know why I expected it to be crusty and boring. Maybe I assumed it’d be like the Bible.
The intro explains a lot of stuff about the original Greek poem and how it was written in dactylic hexameterwhich bards back then used to be able to improvise in, which is amazing to me. Reminds me of 8 Mile or something. 😅