June 2014 Media Thread

ArisKatsaris

This is the monthly thread for posting media of various types that you've found that you enjoy. Post what you're reading, listening to, watching, and your opinion of it. Post recommendations to blogs. Post whatever media you feel like discussing! To see previous recommendations, check out the older threads.

Rules:

Please avoid downvoting recommendations just because you don't personally like the recommended material; remember that liking is a two-place word. If you can point out a specific flaw in a person's recommendation, consider posting a comment to that effect.
If you want to post something that (you know) has been recommended before, but have another recommendation to add, please link to the original, so that the reader has both recommendations.
Please use the comment trees for genres. There is a meta thread for comments about future threads.
If you think there should be a thread for a particular genre of media, please post it to the Other Media thread for now, and add a poll to the Meta thread asking if it should be a thread every month.

Note for this month's thread: As per comment in last month's 'meta' subthread, the "Television and Movies" subthread has been split into two: "TV and Movies (Animation)" and "TV and Movies (Live Action)"

Rules:

Please avoid downvoting recommendations just because you don't personally like the recommended material; remember that liking is a two-place word. If you can point out a specific flaw in a person's recommendation, consider posting a comment to that effect.
If you want to post something that (you know) has been recommended before, but have another recommendation to add, please link to the original, so that the reader has both recommendations.
Please use the comment trees for genres. There is a meta thread for comments about future threads.
If you think there should be a thread for a particular genre of media, please post it to the Other Media thread for now, and add a poll to the Meta thread asking if it should be a thread every month.

Fiction Books Thread

I've spent the last few months following the recommendations from these and (for the most part) loving them, so thought I'd contribute back:

The Girl With All The Gifts, one of the few things I've read las month NOT recommended here, is a fresh, heartwrenching, intelligent and often rational take on the zombie apocalypse genre (not one I am normally fond of, either!)
Thief's Magic reads almost like a Lawrence Watt-Evans book; it is unfortunately the first in a trilogy and makes no pretence otherwise, so you get more of an introduction than a complete st

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7Punoxysm12y

Anathem by Neal Stephenson. Firm SF that focuses on the adventures of a mathematician monk. Science in the world of Anathem is still science, but it has a quasi-mystical culture built around it. It's a long, slow-building book but eventually has plenty of action and rationality alike. The ending is the highlight.

5Anatoly_Vorobey12y

Michael Swanwick's The Iron Dragon's Daughter. This is fantasy for adults: complex flawed characters, a world rich in detail, multitude of characters who live and do things for their own sake rather than to advance a plot point or help the hero. Utter disregard for conventions and cliches of the genre. A hero who is an anti-Mary Sue. Endless inventiveness of the author. To my taste, this novel is what books like The Kingkiller Chronicles promise, but then utterly fail to deliver. But if you're a fan of Rothfuss, try Swanwick anyway, and you might get a fuller and richer taste of what you like. I've also read a science fiction novel by the same author, Stations of the Tide, which won a Nebula in 1991. It's also very good. In it, a nameless bureaucrat of the interplanetary government is pursuing a self-declared magician (who's suspected of smuggling restricted technology) across the surface of a planet where half the surface is about to get flooded for many years, and a great migration of the populace is imminent. One of the themes is unfriendly AI - the Earth with its entire population had suffered a horrible fate in the world of this novel, which is discussed and explored in one of the episodes, although it's not a major plot device.