Which books have turned you off to science fiction specifically?
No worries, you guys!
I’m kind of at loose ends right now. There are several things coming out in the next few weeks that I’ll want to read, so I’m tempted to keep the deck clear. In the meantime, I’m grazing some of Rick Steve’s travel books in anticipation of an upcoming trip.
After the failed “read a print book at night” experiment, I’ve been floundering a little as to what to read on my Kindle next. I decided to finally finish What If?: Serious Scientific Answers to Absurd Hypothetical Questions, by the guy who created the xkcd webcomic. I’ve been reading a question/answer or two every now and then between books since it was released, and I was about 65% of the way through when I picked it up this time. I finished it Saturday night; fun book.
Last night I decided to continue with nonfiction: I finally started Garson O’Toole’s Hemingway Didn’t Say That: The Truth Behind Familiar Quotations. I’m a bit of an amateur etymologist, so I’m generally interested in word/phrase origins, and I thought a book about mis-quotes might be good. It’s much more academic than I expected, which makes it kind of dry, but I’m sticking with it because I still expect to learn some stuff. I might start skipping the research details, though.
Where ya goin’? 
London for certain (husband’s business trip), plus about ten days of destination undecided. Thanks for asking! 
Jealous! How lovely. I recommend Cambridge, it’s beautiful up there, especially if you’re a medieval architecture nerd like me.
I am extremely predisposed to like all British people and things. 
Finished** Sire and Damn** by Susan Conant. Not bad, but not her best.
Currently reading The Long Lost Home, by Maryrose Wood. It’s the sixth and final book in her series, The Incorrigible Children of Ashton Place.
Finished Doctor Sleep, by Stephen King. This sequel to The Shining details what became of the little son, Danny. He goes on to become a hopeless alcoholic like his father, but then finds redemption working in a small-town hospice in New Hampshire, where he helps the residents to the other side when the time comes. Then he meets a little girl whose shining is even stronger than his, and he must help her against a band of ancients who prey on children who have the shining and consume their essence. This is very good Stephen King. I read The Shining a few years ago and thought the Kubrick film was better. The film version of this one would have to be awful good to beat it.
Next up is Typee: A Peep at Polynesian Life, by Herman Melville, his fictionalized account of his own experience living among South Pacific cannibals for a spell in the 19th century.
I’m currently passing the time with Graveyard Plots:the best short stories of Bill Pronzini. It’s not bad, but the word that occurs to me to describe these stories is “workmanlike”. I would be proud to have written these stories; some would make a good episode of “Night Gallery”. However, this is a book I own, and given the high unlikelihood of my ever reading it again, I think the time has come for me to release it into the wild.
I thought Miss Peregrine would be more like a ghost/scary story, and The Magicians would be like Harry Potter (which could be considered sci/fi fantasy and if so, those are the only works of that genre I can tolerate).
Nothing specifically. I have no interest in science fiction at all. It has no basis in reality.
…huh.
There’s no point in getting in an argument, here, but I’m just gonna say, I’m having a hard time wrapping my head around this. You like what you like–but Harry Potter isn’t, IMO, anywhere near the best fantasy/science fiction out there on nearly any axis, and ESPECIALLY not on an “adjacent to reality” axis.
If you’re ever interested in some fantasy/science fiction that’s grounded in reality, I’m sure you can get inundated with recommendations. But again, you like what you like, and I’ve no intention of trying to argue you into liking what I like :).
If you want recommendations for sci-fi that’s fantasy we can do that. 
I have started Dark Days Club, which was recommended here, and I like it so far. I have also started Between Two Thorns, which is the first of the Split World series by Emma Newman. It’s about people who serve the Fae in a world with Regency-like sensibilities, and other worlds lie in layers nearby. It sounds like other books, but it isn’t. It it hadn’t be recommended to me, I would never have picked it up, but it is very good. I think if you like British things, or Fae things, or the man with thistle down hair, you will like this.
I read the last Kate Daniels book by Ilona Daniels, Magic Triumphs. It felt workman like, as someone just said. They are very good authors, so it wasn’t terrible. It just didn’t feel like the end of a 10 book series. It felt like a continuation, and not really their best one, to be frank. It was like visiting with old friends, and then things happened. Meh.
I just read Just One Damned Thing After Another by Jodi Taylor, which reads sort of like To Say Nothing of the Dog fan fiction written by someone who was disappointed that the time-traveling historians were never eaten by dinosaurs. This is the first book in a series and was originally self-published could have used a bit more editing, but it was a fun romp and I’ll probably read the next one someday.
I love that description of it. I think I liked it more than you did, but this description is perfect.
New Thread: Did I just see a leaf fall?