What are you reading right now?

[AnsemSoD1]

Bad Kitty Takes The Test

 

[Alexander Thaut]

been doing the Sci-Fi Hall of Fame because I wanted short stories. Finished the Heinlein one just now.

But, I finished the Lester del Rey "Helen O'Loy" tale and it just felt kinda unsatisfactory compared to the rest of them. Is Lester del Rey known for anything beyond being a good editor and for his publishing?

Finished the Heinlein and Sturgeon stories. Consider me an active fan of both now. Onto Asimov's Nightfall! Well, maybe tomorrow.

 

[argopilled]

Finished houellebecq's "submission" and I really enjoyed it. I know it's almost a decade later but I really don't get how this book was considered controversial. It's main point, in my opinion, is that the upper echelons of society will continue to function as they already do no matter what. When the Muslim party wins the election and starts enacting change in France it hardly affects the main character and in the end his life is arguably better off than it started. I also dropped serotonin by him to read this and I think that was for the best as serotonin is dragging on ( I get that that's the point but still)

 

[AnsemSoD1]

Star Wars Jedi Search, the first book in the Jedi Academy Trilogy by Kevin J. Anderson and a fairly nostalgic one for me, as it was the first Legends novel that I ever dipped into and fully read all those years ago in middle school. Unfortunately my old copy along with my old copy of Dark Apprentice, Labyrinth of Evil, and a multitude of other Star Wars novels were lost or damaged between moves, so I had my mom order me newer versions off of Amazon recently. Anyway, I'm 4-5 chapters in and having a decent time so far.

 

[cold comfort]

Finished An Altar on the Village Green by Nathan Hall. This is a self-published book that I saw recommended as being similar to Dark Souls. It’s about a land that is slowly being made uninhabitable as pockets of Horror are springing up, trapping people in nightmarish time loops and killing them all. The only defence is a declining religious order dedicated to the Chained God. The main character is part of this order, and armed with the last remaining weapon, a healing estus ichor flask, and the ability to set a respawn point at the Anchors spawned by the Chained God, he goes out on his first mission – to cleanse one of the affected villages. I thought this was really fun. The plotting isn’t the most elegant but the lore is cool and there are several unresolved threads that I hope will be picked up in the sequel.

Also read Shirley Jackson's Hangsaman which was great as usual.

Someplace Strange by Ann Nocenti and John Bolton was a bit disappointing. It's a graphic novel about two young brothers and a teenage girl dealing with childhood and Cold War anxieties as they're transported to a fantastical dreamworld. Felt short and undercooked.

---

Really, why 3rd? After the pure static of the 2nd it felt atleast more dynamic to me lol

Dunno about the next one, writing a prequel 10 years after the trilogy ended doesn’t feel right to me, even if there’s great potential in the concepts

It's been so long I only have vague memories of them but I seem to remember the second one being a nice creepy slow burn, and the third one being annoying and losing me completely. No, I don't have high hopes for the new one either. I feel like I should complete the series though. At least if it sucks we can all complain about it together

 

[Jonah Hill poster]

Since Julian Assange is finally home free, I‘m going to read these books out of tribute to him. The former was one that I actually wanted to read back in 2019, but it was nearly sold out due to at the time of his WikiLeaks operation still being popular after Assange was getting extradited to a different cell in the UK.

 

[Ughubughughughughughghlug]

Little Big Man, but it falls in the category of so mediocre that I keep putting it off and dragging it out. It's disappointing because the movies is a wonderful picaresque tragicomedy. The book just doesn't feel anything like what makes the movie good.

It's about a White man who is kidnapped by the Cheyenne as a child. Throughout his life he wanders through all the professions and roles of the Old West, flip-flopping between American and Indian culture, and the big events leading up to the Battle of the Little Bighorn.

 

[Commander X]

Titan Comics' Flash Gordon Dailies: Radium Mines of Electra, collecting the first two years of the Flash Gordon daily comic strip, illustrated by Austin Briggs, running while Alex Raymond was still working on the Sunday strips.

 

[SFWA Person of Interest]

I finally started reading the Elric series. I've been out of fantasy for a bit, and it's nice to pick up a series with books you can easily read in one sitting. I really hate that fantasy is the designated "trilogy(+) of doorstoppers" genre. If the books become doorstoppers later in the series, I will at least consider it earned.

 

[AnOminous]

I finally started reading the Elric series. I've been out of fantasy for a bit, and it's nice to pick up a series with books you can easily read in one sitting. I really hate that fantasy is the designated "trilogy(+) of doorstoppers" genre. If the books become doorstoppers later in the series, I will at least consider it earned.

I really like Moorcock even though he is a giant commie, and even though I got razzed a bit as a kid because "you're reading a book by some guy named MORE COCK!"

 

[SFWA Person of Interest]

I really like Moorcock even though he is a giant commie, and even though I got razzed a bit as a kid because "you're reading a book by some guy named MORE COCK!"

I'm enjoying it a lot so far. I think I avoided it for so long because More Cock is such a fag. I didn't know what to expect, but after reading a couple of books, I have concluded that writing a softie like Elric who also destroys peoples' souls could only be pulled off by a deranged leftie.

I started reading it because I also started reading Cerebus last week and the Foghorn Leghorn/Elric parody makes me laugh out loud every time he's on the page.

 

[Arthur Morgan]

Been re-reading the Mistborn series and am going through The Lost Metal for the first time. Unfortunately, Sanderson has decided to start doing crossovers between his series.

A quick explanation, Brandon Sanderson is an author who is currently working on a fantasy shared universe called The Cosmere. The premise is that a long time ago, sixteen people banded together to kill God and succeeded, and then took a fragment of his power each, becoming gods on their own planets with different goals and motivations. Each series is in this universe, but not on the same planet. However it has recently been revealed that there are ways characters from each planet can travel to another through magical means, and in The Stormlight Archive, there was a lot of crossover, especially from one book called Warbreaker.

What I liked about Mistborn was that, for the most part, it was standalone outside of a few references. Also, it was a fantasy series that didn't stay locked in one technological era. The first three books are medieval, with some tech like canneries and pocket watches sprinkled in, but then books 4-7, the second era, are about turn of the century, where the protagonist is a sheriff in the old west who goes back to the big city and is surprised to see how much electricity, cars, and newspapers have become part of city life.

Book seven, however, has two side characters getting involved in the grander narrative Sanderson is building. And one of the gods comes in to mess with the god on this planet, which screws with the lower stakes stories Sanderson was telling with this era, which I personally liked.

I'll keep reading them, but there's so much about this grander universe I've forgotten over the years, I just know in a few books some big event that was hinted at twelve years prior will happen and I'll have no fucking idea what's going on.

 

[kosmikulduzbok]

The wind up bird Chronicles

 

[thog]

The Art of War was way shorter and much less interesting than I thought it might be. I thought I was gonna get some ancient Chinese wisdom or some shit but it was just stuff like "do not fight the enemy head-on when you are outnumbered". At least I got to read all the iconic quotes.

I'm going to read The Prince by Machiavelli next, it seems a fair bit more interesting.

 

[Commander X]

Bond Unknown, from Canadian publisher April Moon Press, which wasn't the first book to take advantage of Canadian copyright law that appeared to have made James Bond public domain in Canada. This collection contains two novellas by notable horror authors Edward Erdelac and William Meikle. The premise of both stories involves having Bond go up against something more potent that enemy agencies or shadowy criminal organizations.

Scottish horror author Meikle's tale, "Into The Green", starts in the early 1960s. Going undercover as, well, his own self, Commander James Bond of the Royal Navy is dispatched to investigate a joint US/UK energy experiment in Alaska, where there's been some unseasonably warm weather, and people behaving strangely, afflicted with a malady similar to sleeping sickness. Among them is a researcher who happens to be the nephew of the Prime Minister. Soon Bond uncovers what's going on is much more sinister than espionage.

"Welcome, Commander Bond...be one with the one and dance with us here."

Erdelac's "Mindbreaker" is the longer piece, and is also set in the 1960s, sometime after the events of *You Only Live Twice*, where he'd been captured and subjected to brainwashing and torture by Soviet agents. A supposedly refreshed and tended to Bond must crack a top-secret assignment. Princess Anne has been kidnapped from her school, supposedly by a boy attending the nearby posh boy's school, who was supposed to be the son of an Egyptian diplomat. The princess was snatched and spirited away via autogryo, and the kidnapper was rewarded with two antique bullets fired from an antique revolver. The kid has a weird tattoo of something like an ankh on his leg, oh and said Egyptian diplomat is a single, childless man. The Royal Family is helping keep the affair under wraps but time for the Princess is limited.

The SIS is tapped to figure out who the kidnappers are and what do they want, but to Bond's surprise and M's obvious displeasure, a branch of the SIS he'd never heard of before is going to be running him on this operation. A branch even M reluctantly defers to. A branch of the Service run by a man called D., who dresses like an "Earl Court dandy". The assignment to "Section O" will take him to Egypt where a Section O agent/archeologist named Petra Bottoms is engaged the search for the "Temple of the Black Pharoah". It's connected to the kidnappers, whose leader will make Bond question everything when he first encounters the "man", make him realize that he's dealing with an organization even worse than SMERSH or SPECTRE, and this mission may indeed be what the title says.

“The work of Dr. Bottoms and Dr. Sadat has been of a most sensitive nature. And as I said, you came recommended.”

“By whom?” Surely not M.

“Simone Litrelle.”

Solitaire. Bond had long wondered what had become of her. He leaned forward in his chair.

“She’s not here, 007,” D. said, with a hint of amusement. “She is assigned to one of our forward divinatory stations. She only half believed in her abilities when she was recruited, but O brought out her powers quite admirably.”

Bond blinked. Divinatory?

“In answer to your query, you were selected partly because you have a favorable birth sign. And your code number. 007. Did you know that 007 was how the celebrated magus and intelligence agent John Dee signed his secret correspondences to Queen Elizabeth? The double 0’s represented his eyes, which he dedicated to her. And seven. A very fortuitous number. A god number in ancient Egypt. Seven days, seven seas, seven heavens, in antiquity, seven planets.”

“Lineage aside, Bond. The death of your parents when you were eleven, your expulsion from Eton, your education at Canterbury and Fettes, and Geneva, all uniquely qualifying you for acceptance in the Special Service. Which brings us to your career thus far. Your encounter with Agent Litrelle in New Orleans, her subsequent recruitment and recommendation of you for this mission; the little bits of esoteric wisdom you’ve unwittingly picked up over the years from your first secretary Loelia Ponsonby and your housekeeper. The death of your wife and your subsequent brush with mental collapse. Yet through your reconditioning at the hands of the Russians and your unlikely recovery, you have proven yourself possessing of a remarkable mind, both malleable and resilient. All of these things have led you here. You truly are a blunt instrument, yet I believe you can also be attuned for more delicate work if need be. I have on occasion required the service of men of your ilk. Other 00 agents have sat where you are. I’ve never seen any of them again.”

“What is this?” Bond said finally, gesturing to his surroundings. “What is all this?”

“For as many years as you have been privy to the secrets of crown and country,” said D., “did you never suspect there were secrets even you, even your beloved M., weren’t told? Section O has existed in its present form since 1940, when my father convinced British intelligence that the war, like other wars before it, was being fought on multiple planes of perception, not only with modern technology, but with ancient tools which man has utilized since first he heard the word of God through His angels, and was tempted away by darker, older powers. This is Occult Section, Bond. 00 fights in the shadows. O fights the shadows themselves.”

Bond smirked and rose from his chair. He badly needed a cigarette.

 

[Hazel Motes]

The Art of War was way shorter and much less interesting than I thought it might be. I thought I was gonna get some ancient Chinese wisdom or some shit but it was just stuff like "do not fight the enemy head-on when you are outnumbered". At least I got to read all the iconic quotes.

I'm going to read The Prince by Machiavelli next, it seems a fair bit more interesting.

I found my first reading of The Prince rather disappointing, but on the second reading years later I realised that it is not about what is written, but what is inferred from it. It is one of the few philosophy books that seems to be involved in the world.

We have therefore to inquire what there is about Machiavelli to impress the mind of Europe so prodigiously and so curiously, and why the European mind felt it necessary to deform his doctrine so absurdly. There are certainly contributing causes. The reputation of Italy as the home of fantastic, wanton and diabolical crime filled the French, and still more the English, imagination as they are now filled by the glories of Chicago or Los Angeles, and predisposed imagination toward the creation of a mythical representative for this criminality. But still more the growth of Protestantism — and France, as well as England, was then largely a Protestant country — created a disposition against a man who accepted in his own fashion the orthodox view of original sin. Calvin, whose view of humanity was far more extreme, and certainly more false, than that of Machiavelli, was never treated to such opprobrium; but when the inevitable reaction against Calvinism came out of Calvinism, and from Geneva, in the doctrine of Rousseau, that too was hostile to Machiavelli. For Machiavelli is a doctor of the mean, and the mean is always insupportable to partisans of the extreme. A fanatic can be tolerated. The failure of a fanaticism such as Savonarola's ensures its toleration by posterity, and even approving patronage. But Machiavelli was no fanatic; he merely told the truth about humanity. The world of human motives which he depicts is true — that is to say, it is humanity without the addition of superhuman Grace. It is therefore tolerable only to persons who have also a definite religious belief; to the effort of the last three centuries to supply religious belief by belief in Humanity the creed of Machiavelli is insupportable. Lord Morley voices the usual modern hostile admiration of Machiavelli when he intimates that Machiavelli saw very clearly what he did see, but that he saw only half of the truth about human nature. What Machiavelli did not see about human nature is the myth of human goodness which for liberal thought replaces the belief in Divine Grace.

[...] It has been said, in a tone of reproach, that Machiavelli makes no attempt 'to persuade'. Certainly he was no prophet. For he was concerned first of all with truth, not with persuasion, which is one reason why his prose is great prose, not only of Italian but a model of style for any language. He is a partial Aristotle of politics. But he is partial not because his vision is distorted or his judgment biased, or because of any lack of moral interest, but because of his sole passion for the unity, peace, and prosperity of his country. What makes him a great writer, and for ever a solitary figure, is the purity and single-mindedness of his passion. No one was ever less Machiavellian' than Machiavelli. Only the pure in heart can blow the gaff on human nature as Machiavelli has done. The cynic can never do it; for the cynic is always impure and sentimental. But it is easy to understand why Machiavelli was not himself a successful politician. For one thing, he had no capacity for self-deception or self-dramatization. The recipe dors ton sommeil de brute is applied in many forms, of which Calvin and Rousseau give two variations; but the utility of Machiavelli is his perpetual summons to examination of the weakness and impurity of the soul. We are not likely to forget his political lessons, but his examination of conscience may be too easily overlooked.

- T. S. Eliot

 

[Alexander Thaut]

finished Simak's City and Cook's The Black Company.

Solid reads. City was amazing.

 

[CryptoHermit]

Going to start reading Between Two Fires by Christopher Buehlman. It's a horror story set during the Black Death in medieval Europe. I have a good feeling about it.

 

[AnOminous]

I found my first reading of The Prince rather disappointing, but on the second reading years later I realised that it is not about what is written, but what is inferred from it. It is one of the few philosophy books that seems to be involved in the world.

He didn't write it for his stated motives. He sarcastically dedicated it to Lorenzo de Medici, who had just the year previously had him chucked out of his job, tortured, and exiled after defeating the Florentines to whom he had been loyal. He also wrote it in Italian, not Latin, as he would have had he intended it for a royal audience.

It was meant as a work of political philosophy that actually told the truth for a change and intended for the public.

 

[wtfNeedSignUp]

Quarter way through The Three Body problem, it finally starts getting interesting but it really gives me the vibe of Physics Phd wanting to feel important as Mathematicians and Engineers are the ones actually doing shit.