What are you reading right now?

[Cave Johnson]

Dune. I've owned it forever but it always got pushed back by other books. I'm a little over half way through and am surprised by how much I'm enjoying it. I assumed that since so many other books have cribbed from it, it would lose some of it's appeal but it holds up really well.

 

[Commander X]

Beauty by Brian D'Amato, a 1992 novel that was also nominated for the Bram Stoker Awards "Best First Novel" - the (to use a later term) aggressively metrosexual and increasingly neurotic narrator is Jamie Angelo, a former Yale student of medicine who has become a famous NYC artist and has a very illegal sideline providing cosmetic surgery to Manhattan's rich and famous - two of his Yale pre-med classmates have developed a synthetic skin - the long term effects are unknown but in the short term Angelo can use it to strip away unsightly flesh and replace it, restoring youthful looks - he sees his patients as artworks; he brings his painter's eye and aesthetic senses towards transforming them into flawless masterpieces but it's not enough. He is obsessed with completely reinventing someone as his ideal of ultimate beauty, his "Perfect Face". He sees his actress/performance-artist girlfriend as a potential canvas for the Perfect Face, preying on her insecurities about her acting career and being passed over for roles by younger women. She in turn is drawn to him but at what cost? Especially when Angelo finds out an unpleasant secret about the artificial "skin"...

"People will do absolutely anything for youth...If they can risk horrible infections with face-lifts, and worse things from liposuction, then they can accept the risk of a little plastic."

 

[HodgePodgeRogerDodger]

Plato’s Republic and The Secret History of the Mongol’s.

 

[Sergeant Major Buzzkill]

Finished War and Peace. Now, I'm re-reading 1984. Each time I get older, I like to revisit that and Brave New World just to see if there's new shit I notice that I haven't before or how the world lines up with current Western society.

I would also like to get into other (preferably older) sci-fi books. Anybody has suggestions?

 

[Banana Cat]

Currently reading a son of the circus by John Irving, so far it's okay but I'm struggling with the motivation to read at the moment

 

[Chump]

Reading a book that is to kind of longer short stories called the willows and the wendigo. Just finished The Old Man and the Sea. Thinking about reading through lotr.

 

[glass_houses]

The Minotaur by Barbara Vine. Vine is a pseudonym of Ruth Rendell, who I'm not a fan of, but she did another book under the Vine name called The Chimney Sweeper's Boy that I enjoyed, so I thought I'd give The Minotaur a go. So far it's okay. Slow burn.

In Broad Daylight by Harry N. Maclean Ever hear the one about this town bully who got shot in broad daylight in front of two hundred witnesses and not a single person saw a thing? It's a true crime story and it's making for decent reading. Not the best I've ever read, not the worst.


Those are the two I'm actively reading. At any one time I have dozen half read books strewn about. Maybe I'll get back to them, maybe I won't. But I seriously need to rearrange and sort my shelves, and get the stacks of books I have in piles up off of the floor. I bought a bulk lot of Ian Banks off of eBay, so that will be interesting.

 

[Jonah Hill poster]

Getting ready to read this when May starts. Looking forward to watching old and new versions of the movie soon.

 

[NekoRightsActivist]

Weapons of the Weak by James C. Scott, it's commie shit but quite insightful and relevant even today.

 

[Hugbox Kommissar]

Currently reading Days of Rage by Brian Burrough. Chronicles the "militant left" of the late 60's/early 70's: the Weather Underground, the Black Panthers, Symbionese Liberation Army, etc. Weird to see the same themes and group DNA show up again in Current Year with Antifa and BLM probably because commies in academia never went away.

I would also like to get into other (preferably older) sci-fi books. Anybody has suggestions?

For really old sci-fi, check out Jules Verne and HG Wells. Fairly slow paced and dry by modern standards but considered classics for a reason. For classic "atomic rockets and slide rules" sci-fi, try H Beam Piper or Saberhagen. For something a little different, try C S Lewis' Space Trilogy, which is basically a planetary romance in a Christian cosmology. For Vietnam-influenced mil-scifi, try David Drake's Hammer's Slammers series.

 

[TurdFondler]

Rendezvous with Rama is an old scifi must read, same with Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep.

I also really liked Solaris and Roadside picnic, and honestly I'm not ashamed to say I really like Asimov's pulp books like Lucky Starr and the Pirates of the Asteroids. It's golden aged trash, but the retro futurism makes up for it.

Oh yeah!! One of my favorite old sci fi books is Starman Jones by Heinlein. Golden aged pulp again, but it's neat because Heinlein imagines a world of analog computers. It's super geeky and it's about space travel but we never got past binary switch interfaces and writing directly to bit registers. Like if the Altair ended up the pinnacle of computing.

 

[Cheerlead-in-Chief]

I'm also reading Ken Follett's "Fall of Giants", a hefty doorstopper not quite the level of Stephen King's "IT" but with a massive cast as it's historical fiction set in 1914. So far for the first 4 chapters it's dry, even the sex scene is dry; but there are funny moments from the 3rd Person Omniscient Perspective of Billy-With-Jesus Williams. (Context: First Chapter begins with him sleeping with his father Dai - not sexually and as soon as he wakes up for his first job as a miner laments his peter's size and how his best friend has a bigger peter and has hit puberty earlier. ) Within the same chapter, he gets pranked by a superior and sings Hymns repeatedly to calm himself and earns the nickname "Billy-With-Jesus" for stating, "I wasn't alone. Jesus was with me."
Some books/graphic novels/biography (21) that I must somehow speedrun or extend the due date.

 

[DJ Grelle]

I'm 300 pages into Don Quixote and - while sometimes slow-paced - it is actually is an engaging story, transcending the tropes of its era to tell something about the human condition. It is a classic after all.

 

[UselessPieceOfShit]

Dune. I've owned it forever but it always got pushed back by other books. I'm a little over half way through and am surprised by how much I'm enjoying it. I assumed that since so many other books have cribbed from it, it would lose some of it's appeal but it holds up really well.

View attachment 3194173

Getting ready to read this when May starts. Looking forward to watching old and new versions of the movie soon.

Good choice, you might want to read other five books in the series if you liked the first one. They get crazier and crazier, but it really worh it.

Personally I'm reading Sapiens by Yuval Noah Harari. It's a piece of shit book, dunno why I picked it in the first place. It's not a history of humankind at all, but rather the author's musing over random shit. And most of his ideas is some sort of atheist ramblings about Imaginary Sky Daddy, gotchas about how human rights are not real, and some other things, like how The Agricultural Revolution was a mistake for humanity (which is very debatable, but whatever). So yeah, don't read it. You wouldn't learn anything interesting about human past, and even if you pick up some interesting tidbits of information, you should know that this information is highly subjective.

I'm almost half-way done with this book, and honestly I want to drop it already. But I don't like to DNF books, so idk, I will grind through some chapters before bed.

 

[Hazel Motes]

Reading a book that is to kind of longer short stories called the willows and the wendigo. Just finished The Old Man and the Sea. Thinking about reading through lotr.

What did you think of The Old Man and The Sea? I'd say it is best thing Hemingway wrote. Could not get back into For Whom the Bell Tolls.

I'm 300 pages into Don Quixote and - while sometimes slow-paced - it is actually is an engaging story, transcending the tropes of its era to tell something about the human condition. It is a classic after all.

How long is Quixote? I keep meaning to buy a copy.

As for what I have started....

Gissing was considered by Orwell to the greatest English novelist so I was surprised I hadn't really heard of him (beyond Russell Kirk's The Conservative Mind where he is mentioned in passing). He fits into this mold of post-Victorian novel writing of a Dickens or Eliot- especially the latter- whilst touching themes and ideas later popularised by Modernism. The middleman of literature damned to obscurity. It is quite good however, and I think I may re-read again at some point. All about writers trying to catch a break in 'New Grub Street'.

Also, I have to write an essay on Faulkner and Charles Chesnutt. I was going make a thread about this as I would like to hear what Americans think about Chesnutt saying he was African American when he was 7/8's white? I imagine people here learn early on about him in schools. I don't mind the stories at all, even if the whole being a bloke from Ohio writing about the South is slightly disingenuous to what he is trying to convey.

“Now, ef dey’s an’thing a nigger lub, nex’ ter ‘possum, en chick’n, en watermillyums, it’s scuppernon’s. Dey ain’ nuffin dat kin stan’ up side’n de scuppernon’ fer sweetness; sugar ain’t a suckumstance ter scuppernon’. W’en de season is nigh ’bout ober, en de grapes begin ter swivel up des a little wid de wrinkles er ole age, — w’en de skin git sof’ en brown, — den de scuppernon’ make you smack yo’ lip en roll yo’ eye en wush fer mo’; so I reckon it ain’ very ‘stonishin’ dat niggers lub scuppernon’.

Ha Ha. Nigger. Like when I read Of Mice and Men in year nine and Slim said "put that hoe down."

 

[DJ Grelle]

How long is Quixote? I keep meaning to buy a copy.

The copy I have is around 900 pages. But it's divided in tons of smallish chapters so its perfect to read one every evening before bed; if you read like that.

 

[Hazel Motes]

The copy I have is around 900 pages. But it's divided in tons of smallish chapters so its perfect to read one every evening before bed; if you read like that.

It depends on my mood and the book. Sometimes I read the Bible before bed (it's calm the brain) but it depends if I get hooked in with something. Thank you.

If you have ever read Sterne, his A Sentimental Journey is quite like that. Quite short as well. Cracking author.

 

[Chump]

What did you think of The Old Man and The Sea? I'd say it is best thing Hemingway wrote. Could not get back into For Whom the Bell Tolls.

How long is Quixote? I keep meaning to buy a copy.

As for what I have started....

View attachment 3201826

Gissing was considered by Orwell to the greatest English novelist so I was surprised I hadn't really heard of him (beyond Russell Kirk's The Conservative Mind where he is mentioned in passing). He fits into this mold of post-Victorian novel writing of a Dickens or Eliot- especially the latter- whilst touching themes and ideas later popularised by Modernism. The middleman of literature damned to obscurity. It is quite good however, and I think I may re-read again at some point. All about writers trying to catch a break in 'New Grub Street'.

Also, I have to write an essay on Faulkner and Charles Chesnutt. I was going make a thread about this as I would like to hear what Americans think about Chesnutt saying he was African American when he was 7/8's white? I imagine people here learn early on about him in schools. I don't mind the stories at all, even if the whole being a bloke from Ohio writing about the South is slightly disingenuous to what he is trying to convey.


Ha Ha. Nigger. Like when I read Of Mice and Men in year nine and Slim said "put that hoe down."

I have not read any other Hemingway novels before this, but to me it felt optimistically sad. I did really like the style of his writing to, but I having been looking for something similar to it and have not been able to find something.

 

[Roast Chicken]

The Bees by Laline Paull. Presents bee society as a totalitarian caste system with a dollop of religious fervence (the Queen is referred to as "Our Holy Mother") and while the cold insect discipline is present Paull adds a human layer to the creatures.

The hero of the story is a lowly sanitation worker called Flora 717 who seems to have a lot of unusual genetic benefits despite her lowly status. Thanks to a high death rate brought on by food shortages and other factors like pesticides she's reluctantly moved to different departments in the hive where she excels despite being deemed big and "ugly".

 

[Furina]

The Cardinal of the Kremlin by Tom Clancy.

I had a sudden urge for something thrilling and technical, so naturally I picked Tom Clancy. I'm just listening to the audio book this time and I'm enjoying it. This one is much more a spy-games kinda novel with all the CIA vs KGB fuckery you could hope for. I really wish there was an author like Clancy writing today about modern conflicts.