I like Neal Stephenson’s books.
I like Stephenson too, but if cheese a concern, it might not be a good starting place. 
cheesecake, not cheese, dude.
Well, depending on your point of view.
Going down scifi I like that I wouldn’t say is for kids would be books like:
To Say Nothing of the Dog (which is more of a time travel mystery/historical fiction book. whups.)
The Stars My Destination (very cyberpunk… but from 1956)
The Time Machine (dated, but still has some great “views” in it)
Frankenstein (the OG)
The Dispossessed
Neuromancer
For Stevenson, Anathem is pretty serious, but it’s quite a lot to start with. Snow Crash or The Diamond Age is easier… but yeah, cheese(cake). I thought Cryptonomicon was a lot of fun. I found the “prequel trilogy” to Cryptonomicon to be eye-rollingly embarrassing, tho.
I’ve only read Snow Crash and Diamond Age, and they were clever and fun, but my goodness. He’s like an uncle who teaches computer science but needs to slip in potty jokes every hour or so.
I can get into what I found stupid in the Baroque Cycle, but I’d rather not think about it again. Anathem was really interesting to me, but I skipped over all the philosophical discussions (that I was already familiar with)
In the fantasy genre, I just binge-read all of the “Pen & Des” novellas that Lois McMaster Bujold wrote. I had read most of them previously, but it was different to read them all in order, together, still remembering all the details of the previous story and it’s main characters.
Um, that’s not meant as a suggestion for grown-up fiction. It’s pretty fluffy. That’s what I was looking for, though, and I enjoyed the experience.
Re reading the dark tower series by Stephen king. It seems like there’s a 4.5 book now as well.
Also re reading life contingencies. Always a good read.
The Map that Changed the World, by Simon Winchester
Winchester is one of those rare authors who can narrate their own audiobooks.
Finished “Born a Crime” by Trevor Noah. Pretty good.
I finished The Big Sleep and have started on The Postman Always Rings Twice. I’ve also got The Thin Man and The Maltese Falcon lined up.
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Any thoughts?
I’ve read The Thin Man, but not those others.
The Big Sleep was close to the movie - to the point that every little movement that Carmen does in the movie was in the book, for instance - but overall the book just made more sense as you’re reading along. I plan to add more Raymond Chandler to the list.
I’m about a third of the way through Postman. It’s very short and moves quickly. You’re a few pages in when already Frank bites Cora’s lip. Where The Big Sleep seems to give you a feel for the setting and time, there’s been much less of that in Postman. It seems more dated and is more “pulp fiction”-y than The Big Sleep. It’s been enjoyable so far, but I don’t think I’d read a series.
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Ha, I read The Big Sleep THEN watched it, and it was amazing how 1-to-1 it was. I also plan on reading the full series this year.
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My reading has cratered the past month (I’m at half of my target pace so far in 2021), but still moving.
Finished Tigana, If Beale Street Could Talk, NK Jemisin’s The Killing Moon, D.O. Fagunwa’s Forest of a Thousand Daemons (English translation by Wole Soyinka), and now reading NK Jemisin’s The Shadowed Sun.
I forgot how delightful Brothers Karamazov is. I gotta do Crime & Punishment after… which makes me laugh so much.
Huh. I hated both of those in high school. Well, hate is too strong. I was bored by then in high school. I wonder if I’d like them more as an adult.
A lot of books make more sense to me now than they did then.
I read BK as an adult, I do believe I would have had a hard time getting into it as a teenager. I think it got better as it went on, and I don’t think I would have given it a fair chance, after the first chapter
I definitely would not have enjoyed these books if forced to read them in high school… and also before I already had my stint in very long 19th century British novels.
In any case, I read the books due to Thug Notes:
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I’m reading Antifragile by Nassem Nicholas Taleb, he of Black Swan notoriety. Really enjoying it. Very glad I picked it as one of my 5 to read exclusively this year, which means I may end up reading it 6 times or more.