EDIT (3/24/2024): Finished Player of Games, and it didn't win 2,000M, so I'm moving on to the Children of Time series. Schedule from there is We Are Legion (We Are Bob), A Wizard of Earthsea, and then Leviathan Wakes. All evaluated in the context of their series.

EDIT (2/28/2024): Finished Small Gods, and it didn't win 2,000M, so I'm moving on to Player of Games. My schedule from there will be:

1. The Children of Time series. I will be judging this as a series, so I will continue through these books before moving on in the schedule (there are three of them). That said, I may choose to stop early if I'm not enjoying them enough.

2. We Are Legion (We Are Bob). I will be judging this as a series along with the other Bobiverse books. As mentioned above, I reserve the right to stop early.

3. A Wizard of Earthsea. Again, judged as a series along with the other Earthsea Cycle books.

EDIT (2/17/2024): Finished Permutation City, and it didn't win 2,000M, so I'm moving on to Small Gods. Player of Games is next up after that!

EDIT (2/10/2024): I'm abandoning the Three Body Problem and moving on to Permutation City. Perhaps it will be the first to win!

EDIT (1/23/2024): To be clear, when I start any given book suggestion on the list, I'll be reading that series, rather than just that book before moving on to the next book. It's possible that I'll give up part way through if I don't like, though

EDIT (1/18/2024): I'm starting in on The Three Body Problem first, so it'll have the first chance to win. The next books will be read in this order:

2. Permutation City

3. Small Gods

4. Player of Games

I’m hoping Manifold can help me find a book (or book-length story) that I’ll love. As such, I'm offering large bounties (up to 15,000M) for book suggestions that I end up really liking.  See the bounty market for full details.

EDIT: The bounty market is now closed for new suggestions. All final contestants are in this market for voting on! (To be clear, this means "Other" will resolve NO upon market resolution. Either a book will be chosen or "No book wins at least 2,000M bounty in 2024 :(" will be chosen).

I'm going to try reading books in this list until I find something that I "really like". Obviously, that's a subjective decision, but I'll want it to fit easily alongside other books I've ranked that highly in this writeup.

The ranking here will be input into which book I decide to try first, but I'll use my subjective judgement to decide which to read first. This is the order of events for the market:

• Sunday morning: I’ll post my quick thoughts on all of the books (before I’ve read them - just doing research to see if I think I’ll like them).  Feel free to try to change my mind about the books in the comments.

• Monday morning: I’ll give my top 15 picks, along with what I’m thinking about them.  Again, people can discuss in the comments to see if they can change my mind.

• Tuesday morning: I’ll give my top 7 picks, which don’t have to be a subset of the 15 from Monday.  Probably they will be, but maybe people will have convinced me to change my mind.

• Wednesday morning: I’ll give my top 3 picks, which again could be any book from the list, but are more likely to be from the top 7.

• Thursday morning: I’ll announce which book I’m trying out first.  This doesn’t mean it’ll get the 2000M bounty and win outright, but I’ll be trying it out to see if I like it.

• Potentially there will be updates from there; we’ll see how it goes!

Resolution note on books in series: I'm taking the recommendations for books in a series as a recommendation for the series as a whole, rather than just the first book. For instance, I "really like" The Vorkosigan Saga, but I don't "really like" the first book in that series. If someone had recommended I try out that series and I got through the first book enough to get to the second and then liked the whole series and "really liked" it, I would resolve that option as YES.

I’ll answer questions in the comments about my taste, so feel free to AMA about books.  I’m slightly more likely to try out books that are part of a series, because I tend to like extended stories, though The Martian is one of my favorite books of all time, and it’s pretty short.

If you do leave a description of / pitch for the book in the comments, please do your best to avoid spoilers.  I tend to like to go into things pretty blind.

I won't bet in this market. Rather obviously, the resolution criteria is very subjective to my taste!

Some Notes on My Taste:

Fantasy and Science Fiction are my most-read genres, with a side of popular non-fiction.  I’ve done a write-up of some books I’ve read and what I thought about them in this doc. 

I’ve got a bad pattern with a lot of books that I’d ostensibly like where if they don’t grab my attention in approximately the first 20 minutes of reading I tend to lose steam and not come back to the book.  I’ve gotten lots of recommendations from friends for various books that I just don’t quite get started on (Lies of Locke Lamora, Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell, many others). So it's possible you'll want to lean towards things that start stronger, but then again maybe I'll push through slower starts because of the incentive in these markets!