What are you reading right now?

[Newman's Lovechild]

The magic system for D&D was ripped off from that book.

I'm not that familiar with D&D but I see some similarities with magic in Warhammer, at least around 5th-6th edition. Pick which spells to take with you; spells with exotic names, often with the name of the discoverer tacked on; maybe take passive magic items that can turn enemy spelling aside.

There's also the maudlin, slightly insane mood of a decaying world that I thought Warhammer had only filched from Moorcock.

 

[BlackDragoons]

I'm reading two novels. Dune and Battletech: Heir to the Dragon. But once I finish Dune I might start reading the Dresden Files again.

 

[Pomniman]

Alternating between Faust, The Poetic Edda, and The Malleus Maleficarum. Will probably finish Faust first.

 

[le boucher]

just finished: Confession of a Serial Killer: The Untold Story of Dennis Rader, the BTK Killer, by Katherine Ramsland. I got it cos it was written by the woman who was supervising Bryan Kohberger (Idaho killer, currently in the news) in his Phd degree and because I like reading books that are written or partially written by serial killers. Very gross and repetitive book about BTK's extensive bondage fantasy world and his real life fucked-up murders. If you don't know about BTK, the most interesting thing to the public was that he was a seemingly normal family man and waited years between murders. From Wichita, Kansas. Interesting book if your into the topic, disgusting and repetitive if you're not.

 

[The false copy of Sunder]

Oh yeah, it's ironic TradCath larping time.

 

[Retard of the Month]

I don't read books that often.

That said, I read a chapter out of House of Leaves a few nights ago.

 

[Florence]

Picked up a couple more Douglas Reeman novels the other day and I’ve been working my way through them. Still got a while to go before I have the complete set, though.

 

[glass_houses]

I don't read books that often.

That said, I read a chapter out of House of Leaves a few nights ago.

I have to go back to that one. Great book, but halfway through it I realised that I was missing half of the plot because I'm an absolute drooling retard when it comes to puzzles. Half of them I didn't even realise were puzzles until I started reading a HOL guide. At some point I'm going to go back and read the book with the guide straight from the beginning, so I know what's going on. Otherwise the whole book just comes across as a generic psychological horror that was printed by a schizophrenic typesetter.

 

[admiral]

I really think Du Maurier's Rebecca is one of the greatest novels in the English language. The writing is so beautiful, so artful and melancholic. I've read it before but reading it again is easy because it pulls you in. The description of Manderlay in the opening chapter is a masterpiece of descriptive writing.

I came across a 'retold' version of it the other day- obviously written for high schoolers- and it was just absolute garbage. Rebecca isn't a complicated book, and the language isn't too difficult for a teenager by any means. How patronising! No wonder kids don't want to read the classics if we're treating them like this- acting as if older writing is somehow inaccessible and must be suffered through like a chore or modified. If I read that bastardised copy of Rebecca as a teenager I'm sure I would have found it terribly dull and wouldn't have been interested in ever reading the real thing.

 

[AbyssStarer]

I tried to read "Freedom" by Jonathan Franzen and it was so full of bloat I got pissed off at it and deleted it less than 100 pages in. I can't believe it was over 1,000 pages long, the author was basically repeating himself 2 pages into the damn thing.
I'm not going to make brick-sized books my firsts with an author anymore. Most of my favorites are under 300 pages long for a reason.

 

[Hugbox Kommissar]

The Jakarta Pandemic by Steve Konkoly.
One of those prepper/TEOTWAWKI novels that tries to tell a story and also educate people on how to prep for a disaster, in this case a devastating flu pandemic. Mostly succeeds at both goals, although it does commit two disaster novel cardinal sins by 1: having the protagonist be ex-military special forces and 2: having the protagonist just so happen to have an advantage to surviving the crisis (in this case by being a sales rep for a major pharmaceutical company that just so happens to specialize in producing flu vaccines).

Does a good job of providing a realistic narrative that's tightly focused on a single surburban neighborhood and it's residents. Also shows how prepping can be a double-edged sword as law and order start disappearing (do you share food and supplies with your neighbors? how much do you share and with who? how do you judge who will pull their weight and who will just be a leech?)

I liked it, especially the overall theme which was basically "community is the best prep, you and your gucci AR15 won't be able to solo the apocalypse".

 

[glass_houses]

The Jakarta Pandemic by Steve Konkoly.
One of those prepper/TEOTWAWKI novels that tries to tell a story and also educate people on how to prep for a disaster, in this case a devastating flu pandemic. Mostly succeeds at both goals, although it does commit two disaster novel cardinal sins by 1: having the protagonist be ex-military special forces and 2: having the protagonist just so happen to have an advantage to surviving the crisis (in this case by being a sales rep for a major pharmaceutical company that just so happens to specialize in producing flu vaccines).

Does a good job of providing a realistic narrative that's tightly focused on a single surburban neighborhood and it's residents. Also shows how prepping can be a double-edged sword as law and order start disappearing (do you share food and supplies with your neighbors? how much do you share and with who? how do you judge who will pull their weight and who will just be a leech?)

I liked it, especially the overall theme which was basically "community is the best prep, you and your gucci AR15 won't be able to solo the apocalypse".

Hey, cool, it's on Amazon Unlimited. Will definitely check it out.

I've bit the bullet and ordered Making a Monster: Jesse Pomeroy, the Boy Murderer of 1870s Boston. It'd better be good, it's costing me a small fortune to import. Jesse Pomeroy is a cypher. What he did is very well known, but he lived long enough to see many advances in modern psychiatry, and from what I read about him, no one tried to apply it to him whilst he was still alive. All the material on him that's widely available is basically an endless regurgitation of the same facts, so I've been very intrigued by this book for some time. It's just so horrendously expensive.

That said, the author of Making a Monster's bibliography does cause me a certain amount of trepidation. It's all pop culture essays and racism bad.

 

[deerPropaganda]

Unironically

 

[King Kiwi]

Whatever pops up in my news feed.

I sometimes will peruse books but nothing really catches my eye.

I guess I'm pretty hard to please reading-wise anymore.

 

[Pomniman]

I tried to read "Freedom" by Jonathan Franzen and it was so full of bloat I got pissed off at it and deleted it less than 100 pages in. I can't believe it was over 1,000 pages long, the author was basically repeating himself 2 pages into the damn thing.
I'm not going to make brick-sized books my firsts with an author anymore. Most of my favorites are under 300 pages long for a reason.

Franzen's a gigantic faggot in general. I don't mind doorstops in and of themselves but yeah, it's usually a good idea to dip your toes in with a shorter work if you're completely new to an author you're not sure of.

 

[Wampak]

I came across a 'retold' version of it the other day- obviously written for high schoolers- and it was just absolute garbage. Rebecca isn't a complicated book, and the language isn't too difficult for a teenager by any means. How patronising! No wonder kids don't want to read the classics if we're treating them like this- acting as if older writing is somehow inaccessible and must be suffered through like a chore or modified. If I read that bastardised copy of Rebecca as a teenager I'm sure I would have found it terribly dull and wouldn't have been interested in ever reading the real thing.

I felt the same way about those "Great Illustrated Classics" books that were everywhere in my elementary school library. I thought I was reading the real thing, only to find out later that it was some degenerated "kiddie-fied" version. They were stiff and boring retellings.

 

[Womble of Wimbledon]

Under the Skin by Michel Faber.
Pretty good so far, funnier than I expected, but I feel I would be more intrigued if I hadn't already seen the movie.

 

[Newman's Lovechild]

I'm going all in on the Dying Earth series. It's interesting, the first book of short stories was all about the melancholy and mystery of the setting, with a bit of sardonism and sarcasm creeping round the edges, but the second, with stories strung into one narrative, leans much more heavily into farce.
I had to laugh at the balls on Vance: the second book begins with Cugel the thief - both crafty and thick-headed - magically transported to the cold, long-dead northern kingdom of Cutz, and chronicles his misadventures on his way home to Almery. It ends with Cugel... magically transported to the cold, long-dead northern kingdom of Cutz. And that's where the third book picks up. And that's where I'm at.

Cugel is an utter shit, completely self serving, leaving a trail of broken and destroyed lives behind him - usually people who tried to befriend him - as he schemes to steal and scrape any little bit of wealth, power, poon, or ease on his journey home, and his biggest regrets are irritation that things didn't go quite to his plans. But you follow along to see what disaster he unfolds next, and it's hard to really hate him.

It's hard to know how to put it. It's not parody, at least not of the fantasy/science fantasy genre. It's like Blackadder, only not as satirical, or Discworld I could totally see Josh Kirby having illustrated this. only not as preachy.

I've read Tolkien, RA Howard, Lovecraft, and bits of Fritz Leiber and Michael Moorcock. I don't think I've read any early-mid 20thC fantasy prose - or the dialogue at least - as flowery and purple as this. But it fits. It's pretty artfully done, matches Cugel's highly inflated opinion of himself ditto the various wizards in the books, all potential candidates for the faculty at Unseen University and adds to the ridiculousness of the situations he finds himself in.

Recommend.

 

[Power Glove]

Also starting Carnage Vol 1 - In The Court of Crimson.
Giving the first Discworld novel a chance, not sure if I'll stick with that. I'm positive that a fair few expressions and phrases go over my head due to being non-British.

 

[Fungible penis]

Reading the Lockwood books, because the TV show was pretty decent.