Amazon?

A better book is The Fourth Horseman by Alan E. Nourse

That was my experience as well. Read it when I was in my twenties, maybe worth revisiting after a decade+…

If you think the “primary” purposes of fiction are entertainment and character development, your view is far too undeveloped and myopic to put you in a position to make the sorts of pronouncements in your post. You have a lot to learn. The “character driven” stuff is good but it is a slice of one kind of fiction. You don’t have to like it, but please don’t judge it by this incorrect thinking.

Thanks! I’ll check that out. I’ve tried termiticide sprays in the past but to no avail. I will definitely try out the powdered types!

Maybe try Emily St. Mandel’s Station Eleven.

It’s almost like people have different tastes and those tastes don’t translate to sweeping generalizations of what is and isn’t “good literature!”

https://www.finlandiakirja.fi/en/

Never read any of her stuff. Sounds like tripe.

There are some sci-fi that are written as novels, but there are some that are written as "alternate future". Much like Black Mirror they imagine a particular technology or event, and attempt to extrapolate what would happen to society based on that. When telling a horror/dystopian story, short-form works fine as there are any number of ways things can go wrong. When telling a hopeful story, as many of the alternate future works try to be, more time has to be spent on how the pitfalls of dystopia were avoided, the struggles and horrors overcame, etc. I think of Foundation as a parallel to the alternate history books, where they imagine something like, "What if Napoleon never invaded Russia?" and extrapolate from there. Such a story can't be told over one person's lifetime in any meaningful way, the effects are too far-reaching. I don't think anyone who is truly honest with themselves will disagree that portions of Foundation are boring. But Foundation isn't remarkable for the pacing or prose, but for the ideas it introduces and the scope of it's narrative. Comparing to Jules Verne or H.G. Wells is fairly appropriate, as they all were enthralled by the possibilities of human ingenuity and dazzled by the brightness of the future they saw. It's true the older writers wrote better stories, but that doesn't take away from the ambition Asimov had to try to share his vision entire. Doubtless if Wells had written further novels to explore how humans became the Eloi and Morlocks as well as what happened to the nations of his day, or even what else was happening elsewhere in that future time, portions of that would have dragged a bit as well.

I read this for the first time when I was about your age. It's stuck with me all this time.

Have you read The Stranger by Camus? Nowhere near as gory in its violence, but just as stark. The character is instead surrounded by civilisation. An interesting book to read in contrast. I would also recommend Man's Fate by Malraux. All studies in isolation, in varying degrees of social involvement.

Parable of the Sower was more horrific for me than the Road. It might be that I related to the characters more or felt it was more realistic. That being said, both are on my favorite books list.

Have you tried thriftbooks?

Dune I can read every few years and never tire of it.

It was devastating for me as a parent who had young kids at the time.

I’ve only read foundation but i remember being impressed by how much does in fact happen.

I had excellent results using diatomaceous earth (a fine powder made from fossilized diatoms that slices the exoskeleton and dehydrates bugs) when I had a bedbug problem. I'm not sure if it would damage the books, but if it does, it'll cause less damage than the termites for sure. Worst case scenario it leaves a light residue.

Worst book I’ve ever read … Colleen Hoover is wrong for that

You think literatures primary purpose is to entertain? I disagree entirely.

The purpose of fiction can be for a lot of things beyond just entertainment especially how you view it. Plenty of my favourite works are ones I wouldn't even call entertaining myself but which I appreciate their thematic elements or commentary that they provide. Coincidentally you mention Verne and when contrasted with Wells you find that even back then, when it was known as scientific romance before sci fi became an established genre, you could see differences in story telling and their emphasis on entertainment or making some sort of moral commentary. If you continue to read sci fi you may find a work that you didn't necessarily enjoy reading but which the themes or elements alone will strike an accord with you.

My translation of Verne's work like 20k made for a more fun read than Foundation, certainly, but I still prefer Asimov simply because the post-war world is an era I'm more familiar with so have a better appreciation for the elements and issues he explores beyond Foundation, more so with I, Robot, and the context to which they were written compared than the stuff from the 19th century.

And, while you have an appreciation for Verne that's shared with a lot of other readers, the Golden Age as a moniker is generally a well established period to be from the late 1930s to the mid century where there was an explosion of authors so you can rightly praise Verne but sci fi readers wouldn't generally acknowledge the mid 19th century to be a golden age, let alone The Golden Age, because, as mentioned, sci fi wasn't even an established or recognised genre at that point and beyond big names like Verne and Wells you don't see a profusion of writers expanding the genre to the degree you see in from the late 30s.

Imagine saying Foundation wouldn’t be published today while Chuck Tingle exists.

Tbh OP it sounds like you’re a bad reader

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I agree. If there had been multiple killers instead of one I would have liked it more

I loved it as a teenager, i'm re-reading the whole series, starting from the robots, and i'm really not enjoying it as much. The characters are pretty bi-dimensional and the few female characters are really badly written, sometimes even downright creepily (he later blamed it on having written it as a 20something virgin), the writing is a bit dull and the plots too often rely on deus ex machina or some plot armor. Probably some today wouldn't be published (one revolvs around a mistery of a "lemonade death" that's pretty ridiculous), but for when they were written they were absolutely revolutionary, some of the concepts introduced really amazing and they have influenced most of the scifi that followed.