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Comment by tsujamin | Hacker News Reader

A pair of books I’d recommend for 2024, which I didn’t get the chance to reread this year, would be:

- The Ocean at the End of the Lane (Gaiman), which is beautiful in a way I can’t quite describe

- Century Rain (Reynolds), which is best described as a hard boiled 1930’s noir hard science fiction novel.

Books I read this year which I really enjoyed:’

- Exploding The Phone (Lapsley): Super engrossing description of the phone phreak scene almost from its start to its end

- Hyperion and sequels (Simmons): Probably one of my favourite science fiction series now, and I’ve already felt the need to go back and re-read passages from it. Also really enjoy how each part of the series (Hyperion, then Fall of Hyperion, then the Endymion books) re-invent the style and the story.

- The Annotated American Gods (Gaiman, Klinger): 1000’s of footnotes is a great way to revisit the story :)

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Author of Exploding The Phone here, thanks for the mention and glad you enjoyed it! One thing I did that I'm pretty proud of is that I put almost all the research documents that I dug up (FOIA, newspaper articles, etc.) up on my website, where you can dig through them. E.g.: http://explodingthephone.com/search.php?q=blue+box&sort=rele... (please pardon the lack of https!) And to the other commenter about Evan Doorbell's excellent tapes about phone phreaking: I was lucky enough to get Evan to narrate the Audible version of my book!

Hyperion was a big surprise for me this year as well. I expected it to be good, but the way the first book unfolds a larger universe is incredible. I'm not sure I've read science fiction that feels quite so... planned, and intentional? Especially the way it incorporates Keats' poetry.

Thanks for tipping me off about the Annotated American Gods! I read it ages ago, and I've been yearning to get back into Gaiman lately. This sounds like a good way to do it.

Not to spoil too much of the rest of the Hyperion Cantos if you’ve not read it, but I found the way each book brought into question the “reliability” of previous parts of the story super interesting. On the one hand - it can feel like a lazy rewriting of history to suit later stories, but I think it actually works super well because you pretty much have to re-evaluate the entire story multiple times. I came away feeling like I’d experienced 3 different, but equally-compelling versions of the story by the end!

I love that first Hyperion book so much but haven’t read it in close to 2 decades. The individual stories of each traveler were so interesting.

> (Gaiman), which is beautiful in a way I can’t quite describe

I feel this way about all the Gaiman I've read. I really didn't like some of the plots and finales (looking at you _American Gods_) but I still walk away with very warm feelings towards the books.

>> - Exploding The Phone (Lapsley): Super engrossing description of the phone phreak scene almost from its start to its end

Haven't heard of this one, sounds right up my alley too!

I need to check out more Gaiman too, I really enjoyed Neverwhere

Ocean at the End of the Lane is a great 2nd to read if you enjoyed Neverwhere!

I was also listening to Evan Doorbell’s telephone tapes [1] as I read Exploding the Phone, which was super interesting because you can see the events of the book line-up with some of the comments Evan and other phreaks make on the tapes (like phone company security agents harassing them at their schools)

[1]: https://www.evan-doorbell.com/

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