I offered mcleodone some personalized science fiction and fantasy recommendation (which were requested to be posted here for everyone to benefit from), and got this as a cue: Hoping that I correctly interpret what you mean about worlds unfolding over several books, on the fantasy side of things, I'd recommend having a look at Steven Brust's Vlad Taltos novels (Jhereg, Yendi, Teckla, Taltos, etc; nowadays most easily found grouped in sets of two/three together in The Book of Jhereg e.a.) - They're short and swift moving standalone novels about a wise-craking assassin, but since that wise-cracking assassin turns out to be a bit of an unreliable narrator, who additionally might have the gods messing about with his memories, there's a lot more to these books than can be immediately seen on the surface level. As the series progresses, the scope gets quite a bit broader, with the history of the Empire (partily described in The Khaavren Romances, an homage to Dumas) becoming quite relevant.

Or, if you haven't read them yet, Roger Zelazny's Amber novels also keep revealing new layers to his world, and are deservedly counted among the absolute classics. Few authors since have managed to rival his originality.

If you prefer something more epic, Steven Erikson's Tales of Malazan Book of the Fallen certainly have enough books (10) for the story to unfold over. I wasn't too enamored of the last couple of those, but the first four or five are definitely worth your consideration if you haven't read them yet. The first one starts off as decent enough fantasy, notable for trusting the reader to be able to figure out his world without him explaining every little detail, but the second one reveals that everything you just read in the first one had hidden motivations and machinations behind the scenes, and really sets the stage for the entire world.

All three of these recommendations are for books which have a healthy dose of humor in them; curious - I wonder if there's some cause and effect there...

On the science fiction side of things I find it a bit harder to recommend things, particularly since it's easier to draw parallels to Hamilton, and I don't particularly care for most of his output anymore. Still, browsing my shelves, I think that you might quite enjoy - if you can track them down - Robert Reed's Marrow and The Well of Stars. If you do, also seek out The Memory of Sky and particularly The Greatship. This isn't really a series, but the books do have something of a central story arc underlying their tales, and are at least all set in the same universe, which is truly galaxy-spanning, with a scope few authors dare to contemplate.

More limited (purely solar system scale), but possibly even more futuristic and visionary would be Hannu Rajaniemi's The Quantum Thief, The Fractal Prince and The Causal Angel. Proper post-singularity SF, beautifully envisioned, and you never quite know what's what.

Finished the Commonwealth Saga by Peter Hamilton

After reading the Great North Road by the author I thought I took my chances with a bigger volume to enjoy even more the exciting plot twists and the grandiose style.
The Saga is cut into two parts (Pandora's Star and Judas Unchained) and about a very interesting civilization where trains are the quickest way of transport due to utilizing wormholes and many diverse society evolved on the inhabited planets during the two hundred years after inventing the technology.
The story has a very exciting start: a star disappers from the sky and the curious humanity is already researching for ways to find out what happened there. Then many other plot lines appears like terrorist groups and counter terrorist or political battles for controlling the government.

For me what really stood out the imaginative worlds, societies that can discovered throug the book. Not very striking but the author raises many interesting questions like the genes or the parents' care affects the personality more or how technology based can be the humanity. Someone more qualified can evaluate the tehcnological details more precisely, but from the aim of the story they are well placed and not too unbelievable.

What I did not like is the end of book. Similarly to the Great North Road the end was a bit heroic and unimpressive like a Hollywood movie. But up to that the two 1000-page long books are full of interesting ideas, numerous plot twists and thrilling action scenes.

Currently reading Dune. Its pretty interesting, so far.

Halfway into Water Sleeps from Glen Cook (Black Company series). It's an amazing fantasy series, comparable to The Malazan Book of the Fallen.

I'm reading that as well! This book is easily going into a favourites list. The world is very developed and the story is multifaceted giving it a sense of depth and realness.

I'm glad you're enjoying it. More people ought to check it out if they already haven't.

Today I started reading the German translation of "The Lazarus War – Book 1: Artefact" by Jamie Sawyer.

Was watching The Witch (it wasn't that great) but I found out there is a Satanic Bible I would kind of like to read. I would love to have that on my bookshelf, that would really piss everyone off.

There's also an ancient The Devils Bible mostly in Latin I would love to have as well.

Strangely a Baphomet is the symbol of the Satanic Church, who was originally a symbol of fertility I think. The pentagram also doesn't mean what everyone thinks it means.

To me, as a sci-fi fan, this is the choice everybody has to make:

a) You read Dune and Hyperion as soon as possible. This way, if the next day a truck hits you and you die, you won't have missed the best that the genre has to offer.

b) You read Dune and Hyperion as late as possible in your life, because if you choose a) and you go on living for a long time you risk being disappointed by every other sci-fi book.

Choose wisely :-P

(Obviously this is an exaggeration, but you get the idea :))

Has anyone found italian novels that haven't gotten translated yet to spanish? I wanna try having a read and translate them for a course in an academia as I am helping a teacher there

Right now I am presently reading this forum post. So far it's pretty interesting, I give it a 7.5 out of 10 and a thumbs up.

Finished reading this book about myths from around the "new" world, ie the Americas, Australia and Oceania. 4/5, a pretty wild and fantastic voyage that left my mind with a lot of names and weird stuff to process like Maui and Tawhaki, Ranginui and Papatuanuku, Tawhirimathea, Gucumatz/Kukulcan, Quetzalcoatl, Tezcatlipoca the Black, Xipe Totec the skinned god, and much, much more.

I fucking love mythology, so I fucking loved the book. Now I'm more than ready - at least readier that a good chunk of the world's moviegoers - to watch Disney's Moana :-P

Reading *101 Baseball Places to See Before You Strike Out* by Josh Pahigian, 228 pages in a hardcover edition published in 2008.

Jim

The second Elric book.

When I was younger, I had it in my head that these were dull, plodding, complicated novels. I don't know why. I probably read tried to read one in high school and didn't like it. But recently my library had a book sale and I bought a bunch of them; I read the first and was hooked.

Fantasy is still my favorite genre, but these days it seems like the cast of characters in any popular set of novels is way too huge; it's nice to read something a little more streamlined.

The book of Five Rings, by Musashi Miyamoto. This is a great, golden, classic book!

Walter H. Hunt "The Dark Wing".

Well, Military-SF is not my normal food, but after reading the "Odyssey" books of Evan Currie I decided to give it a try.
Not bad, although Admiral Ivan Marais is a bit like Hitler, he wants to wipe out the whole Zor race. Not nice!!!!