HP&TMOR is kind of terrible on many levels but it may have saved my life; I was mindlessly reading it in the depths of a long, gloomy Seattle winter when something it said about the way the Dementors work made me look up from my tablet and go find a garden shop, from which I got a two foot square sun lamp that kept the suicidal urges at bay for most of the rest of my winters in that grey, gloomy town.
I also really liked that scene you're talking about.
Not sure you think it's terrible though, I really liked it all the way through.
For people that don't know about it, it started off as a blog post on less wrong so the first chapter or so is a little different in style.
If you want to see if you'd like it I suggest people read Chapter 10 (the sorting hat chapter) and if that appeals to you to go back and start from the beginning.
To pick a couple though:
- The Nix (best novel I’ve read in a long time): https://www.npr.org/2016/08/31/490101821/the-nix-is-a-viciou...
- Lake Success
- Permutation City
- Harry Potter and The Methods of Rationality (https://www.hpmor.com/)
- True Names
- Any of the stories by Ted Chiang, but specifically “Liking what you See: A documentary” and “The life cycle of software objects”