I loved the series as young teen but rereading the first book was a disappointment. I'll be checking out Foundation after I finish Silo.

Space opera is my favorite genre but I've failed to get through the Foundation series probably 20 times now so this may be terrible advice but it's recommended to not read them in publication order by Asimov himself.

This has a good breakdown: https://www.reddit.com/r/Asimov/wiki/seriesguide/

edit: Somehow I got Foundation mixed up with Banks' Culture series. I think I have gotten through most of Foundation if not all but I've had a hard time with the Culture series, there I usually start with Player of Games..

The Culture series is good but I've struggled with getting through it all as well. If you like space opera I can highly recommend the Honor Harrington series, the first book being On Basilisk Station [0]. This has held up for me for well over a decade and I've reread the entire series (~14 books IIRC) at least 4-5 times. I've heard it described as "Horatio Hornblower in space" but I never read that series so I can't speak to that.

[0] https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/35921.On_Basilisk_Statio...

Incidentally, On Basilisk Station is a free e-book at the publisher's website [0]. They also have an online HTML version [1]. So you can try the first book in the series to see how you like it before purchasing any of the others.

[0] https://www.baen.com/on-basilisk-station.html

[1] https://www.baen.com/readonline/index/read/sku/0743435710

I'm a big fan of the audiobooks for this series as well, the narrator does a very good job IMHO.

I accidentally read the 2nd book first, and going back to read the first afterwards was kind of a struggle. You could totally just skip the first and read the other two.