Recently I've been reading the Remembrance of Earth's Past trilogy by Cixin Liu. I've completed reading The Three Body Problem and The Dark Forest. I first heard about these books when The Three Body Problem won the Hugo award, I think back in 2015 or something. Back then there was a bunch of controversy about weather Hugo voters were unduly voting for authors that were not good ole white males.
I kind of understood some of the concern, but I was out of reading material and felt that it was a good opportunity to check it out for myself and form a real opinion.
Both books were pretty good. I havn't read The Dark Between the Stars, or any other of the Hugo nominees for that year, so I don't know if it truly deserved to win or not. I like Kevin Anderson, but I don't think he's superb. His Dune books were meh. Good, but not GREAT. Honestly, Michael Stackpole is better.
The Three Body Problem was good because it was different. It was mostly a mystery novel rather than straight up Sci-Fi. The Dark Forest was more sci-fi, but was so full of ChiCom gibberish that it was hard to handle until the very end, which was outstanding. Like Song of Ice and Fire level outstanding.
Neither book was exactly a work of art when it came to language, but sci-fi so rarely is. It had the handicap of being a translation, but so was War and Peace. Cixin Liu isn't Tolstoy, but he writes some good books.
I read Confessions by Augustine. It was good but I'm more of an Aquinas guy. I figure everyone should read it once if they want the full classics education, but I probably won't be digging into it again.
I read Nostromo last year. It was good. The language was much better of course. It was an interesting read since, much like Coriolanus, it can be read from either viewpoint from a marxist/critical theory point of view. It was better than Heart of Darkness and Lord Jim. Heart of Darkness requires much herb to appreciate fully, and Lord Jim is for a specific set. I'd say Nostromo is Conrad's masterpiece.
I read Blood Meridian, because it was supposed to be Cormac McCarthy's masterpiece. It was a page turner, but I found it to be more of a commentary on literature critics than anything else. The language was truly something. Maybe not Faulkner, but they both shared something. It appears to me that book critics have been overly enamored of language and style over plot and narrative, which in my opinion is much more important.