- Joined
- Sep 28, 2020
The Mill on the Floss by George Eliot. It's been on my reading list for a long time and it's a fine enough book so far. The images described of the rural English town in the 1860s are very evocative at times.
What are you reading right now?
- Thread starter AtroposHeart
- Start date
Womble of Wimbledon
kiwifarms.net
- Joined
- Dec 13, 2022
Can't remember who said this first but if three books was enough for Lord of the Rings, no fantasy series has any right to be longer than that.
- Joined
- Feb 27, 2018
There's a new WWII series coming out from the same folks as Band of Brothers and The Pacific so I dug out Major Dick Winters' memoir and it's just as good as I remember it being. Very comfy read for a war memoir, he's got a way with words and a memory like a steel trap.
endexperiment
kiwifarms.net
- Joined
- Jul 21, 2020
I finished reading 'Everyday Saints' by Archimandrite Tikhon a couple of days ago. It wasn't a particularly enlightening read, but that wasn't the goal to begin with. Instead, the stories he told about life in a monastery, his travels and the people he met along the way evoked a sense of calmness in me, while also making me laugh and think about the values represented by the people he talks about. The main point that he was trying to make is that, looking at all the things that happened to him and those he was close to, he senses the role that God's Providence played in them.
Right now I'm reading 'Master and Margarita', cause I feel a tad bit embarassed I haven't read it already. I actually tried to a year ago or so, but ~150 pages in I realised I completely lost the plot a couple dozen pages earlier. This was caused in large part by my inadequate grasp on the russian language coupled with impatience. Now I feel a lot more confident and from what I've experienced so far, not without reason.
Next I'm going to read a book which talks about the history of Russia from its beginning to the XXIst century in around ~500-600 pages. I've already read one on the same topic and of comparable length, but before that I only had scraps of knowledge about Russia before the Napoleonic Wars, so that read I treated moreso as a way to become vaguely familiar with the most important themes and events. I'm also going to try reading Karamzin's History of the Russian State alongside it, I'm hopeful because from what I know he was a big advocate along Pushkin of not writing in a complicated way for its own sake. However, if my hopes are illusory, I am not going to whine. Instead I will read Bunin's "Village" which I have been meaning to for a very long time. It sparked my interest because of its very grim and depressing atmosphere. Funnily enough, that's also why I've been avoiding it, as I'm the type of person that, while taking a lot of liking to bittersweetnes, cannot stomach despair.
Right now I'm reading 'Master and Margarita', cause I feel a tad bit embarassed I haven't read it already. I actually tried to a year ago or so, but ~150 pages in I realised I completely lost the plot a couple dozen pages earlier. This was caused in large part by my inadequate grasp on the russian language coupled with impatience. Now I feel a lot more confident and from what I've experienced so far, not without reason.
Next I'm going to read a book which talks about the history of Russia from its beginning to the XXIst century in around ~500-600 pages. I've already read one on the same topic and of comparable length, but before that I only had scraps of knowledge about Russia before the Napoleonic Wars, so that read I treated moreso as a way to become vaguely familiar with the most important themes and events. I'm also going to try reading Karamzin's History of the Russian State alongside it, I'm hopeful because from what I know he was a big advocate along Pushkin of not writing in a complicated way for its own sake. However, if my hopes are illusory, I am not going to whine. Instead I will read Bunin's "Village" which I have been meaning to for a very long time. It sparked my interest because of its very grim and depressing atmosphere. Funnily enough, that's also why I've been avoiding it, as I'm the type of person that, while taking a lot of liking to bittersweetnes, cannot stomach despair.
The Third Wright Brother
kiwifarms.net
- Joined
- Sep 2, 2023
I'm currently reading Areopagitica by John Milton and I have to say that the prose is far more refreshing than I thought! I think this change is more prominent than it should be due to just coming off of reading St. Augustine's Confessions, which gets far denser at the end due to Augustine shifting the text from an Autobiography to a Philosophical Treatise on a wide variety of subjects, from memory, time, and even differences in exegesis and how different interpretations can still be considered valid. I think he was trying to assert the idea that he was not a man with answers than was he more so a man simply asking questions. His numerous prayers to God throughout the book pleading with Him to dispel his ignorance would signify this. It was deeply intriguing, but it gets to a point where Augustine's writing style can get extremely heavy at the end.
Back to my main point, Areopagitica is a small, powerful moving text about how we should have little to now restrictions about how we should not restrict any form of communication that is deemed supposedly harmful. I think this protest against censorship would resonate deeply with us as we are probably the last baston of true free speech on the Internet. I would implore anyone advocating for the existence of the farms to read this book, as it will only strengthen your free speech convictions and the credibility of your arguments! That's all I have to say. Stay Holy!!!✞
Back to my main point, Areopagitica is a small, powerful moving text about how we should have little to now restrictions about how we should not restrict any form of communication that is deemed supposedly harmful. I think this protest against censorship would resonate deeply with us as we are probably the last baston of true free speech on the Internet. I would implore anyone advocating for the existence of the farms to read this book, as it will only strengthen your free speech convictions and the credibility of your arguments! That's all I have to say. Stay Holy!!!✞
cold comfort
kiwifarms.net
- Joined
- Jul 20, 2023
Spooky stuff I read in October:
The Crooked God Machine, by Autumn Christian: I don’t know if I had an old version or something but this was full of typos, vocab errors, grammar errors (“I got out up bed”, “my mouth and noise”, “so many girls’ virginity’s”, “bolstered” instead of “bolted”, “capitol” instead of “capital”). Tortured metaphors, some of which work because the universe is so odd, some not so much (“His voice sounded like the voice of a wounded car”). Some really cool bizarro religious horror ideas but it didn’t come together at all, should have been a novella or a short story collection. Wasted potential.
Starve Acre, by Andrew Michael Hurley: Beautifully written little folk horror story about a couple who’ve lost a child. Nothing really groundbreaking in terms of plot, but it gets right into it and doesn’t outstay its welcome. Very much enjoyed it. They made this into a movie recently, with Matt Smith and Morfydd Clark. I’m curious to see how well it works in that form since the novel’s writing was such a big part of the appeal for me.
PTSD Radio 1 & 2: Was ok, didn’t really grip me enough to read on though. There’s some kind of hair ghost that got wronged and is now messing with people. I liked that it was told in little non-chronological episodes. There was a part where the hair spirit ate a dude’s chonmage which was pretty comedic.
The Beauty, by Aliya Whiteley: Post-apocalyptic story about a world where all women died from some disease, that opens with a boy noticing mushrooms growing on the women’s graves. It’s clearly about the relationship between men and women, gender roles, power dynamics, openness to change vs principled conservatism, all that. But it doesn't take an explicit stance on the events and lets you make up your own mind. Thought-provoking but a little underwhelming. Also contained a separate short story about an alien-language translator who is stuck in quarantine and starts talking to what might be a gurgling pipe, but he believes to be a water-based alien lifeform.
Helpmeet, by Naben Ruthnum: The author quoted in the blurb calls this 'first and foremost a love story’. I'd go with 'a story about an utterly dysfunctional, degenerate relationship which is then symbolically translated into body horror'. Really liked it.
Weird Horror #6: Magazine issue with thirteen short stories by different authors. I liked four of them, with my favorite being The Healers by Alexander Glass.
The King in Yellow, by Robert W. Chambers: The first four stories are gothic horror, loosely connected through references to the King in Yellow mythos (as memed back into popularity by True Detective). I quite enjoyed these. The other six are more romance-y, which isn’t my thing.
Starve Acre, by Andrew Michael Hurley: Beautifully written little folk horror story about a couple who’ve lost a child. Nothing really groundbreaking in terms of plot, but it gets right into it and doesn’t outstay its welcome. Very much enjoyed it. They made this into a movie recently, with Matt Smith and Morfydd Clark. I’m curious to see how well it works in that form since the novel’s writing was such a big part of the appeal for me.
PTSD Radio 1 & 2: Was ok, didn’t really grip me enough to read on though. There’s some kind of hair ghost that got wronged and is now messing with people. I liked that it was told in little non-chronological episodes. There was a part where the hair spirit ate a dude’s chonmage which was pretty comedic.
The Beauty, by Aliya Whiteley: Post-apocalyptic story about a world where all women died from some disease, that opens with a boy noticing mushrooms growing on the women’s graves. It’s clearly about the relationship between men and women, gender roles, power dynamics, openness to change vs principled conservatism, all that. But it doesn't take an explicit stance on the events and lets you make up your own mind. Thought-provoking but a little underwhelming. Also contained a separate short story about an alien-language translator who is stuck in quarantine and starts talking to what might be a gurgling pipe, but he believes to be a water-based alien lifeform.
Helpmeet, by Naben Ruthnum: The author quoted in the blurb calls this 'first and foremost a love story’. I'd go with 'a story about an utterly dysfunctional, degenerate relationship which is then symbolically translated into body horror'. Really liked it.
Weird Horror #6: Magazine issue with thirteen short stories by different authors. I liked four of them, with my favorite being The Healers by Alexander Glass.
The King in Yellow, by Robert W. Chambers: The first four stories are gothic horror, loosely connected through references to the King in Yellow mythos (as memed back into popularity by True Detective). I quite enjoyed these. The other six are more romance-y, which isn’t my thing.
- Joined
- Dec 28, 2014
Raising awareness of Chambers and Thomas Ligotti would make True Detective good even if it hadn't been genuinely good on top of that.
Commander X
kiwifarms.net
- Joined
- Apr 6, 2018
Recent read: Pulped by Timothy Hallinan.
Back in the 1980s and 90s Hallinan wrote five novels about an LA PI named Simeon Grist. Grist was a modern day hip update on detective protagonists in the vein of Raymond Chandler's Philip Marlowe, a mostly amiable slacker operating out of Topanga Canyon, drives a clunker, and has a love-loathe attitude towards the City of Angels. Critics and mystery writers praised the books and their main character, but the publisher was disappointed with the sales figures so end of series.
So back in the late 2010s, Hallinan had already written several entries in a couple of other series that had done better than Grist's, the Bangkok-based misadventures of travel writer and amateur sleuth Poke Rafferty and a more humorous series about a professional cat burglar named Junior Bender, who has reluctantly gained a reputation as a competent off-the-grid private investigator for crooks and underworld types, and gets tapped (forced against his will rather) to help out with situations like helping prove a crooked has-been record producer's innocence in a decades old murder, or smoke out the shoplifting ring targeting a declining mall that's owned by a Russian gangster. Then he made a return to Grist with Pulped.
What happens to characters when people quit reading them? In this novel, the last of the paperback copies of the last Simeon Grist book are "out of print" and in some cases are being "recycled," that is ground up and made into other paper products, or "pulped." Grist in the meantime, has become aware he's a paperbook hero and now exists in a bizarre limbo world inhabited by all the other unsuccessful literary private eyes and cops, kept around by the readers who still enjoy their works. Living a monotonous, boring existence in this two-dimensional world, Grist is aware of the real world, “down there” and catches glimpses of it whenever someone reads a used copy of one of his books, and as soon as they close the book, he's stuck again. Then one day he catches a glimpse of a man reading one of his books just as he's strangled by someone he can't see, just a pair of hands. When the book lands on the floor, open, he also catches a glimpse of Madison, the woman and co-worker who finds the victim, and thinks she may be in danger. When “up here” begins to change around him, Simeon is convinced it’s all connected. Compelled to follow his instincts as his author wrote him, Simeon enlists the aid of other detectives languishing in obscurity “up here” to find a way to get “down there”, because he doesn't have many readers left and when someone has no readers left...plus he'll get into all sorts of thorny questions like "can a fictional person fall in love with a person in the real world?"
Back in the 1980s and 90s Hallinan wrote five novels about an LA PI named Simeon Grist. Grist was a modern day hip update on detective protagonists in the vein of Raymond Chandler's Philip Marlowe, a mostly amiable slacker operating out of Topanga Canyon, drives a clunker, and has a love-loathe attitude towards the City of Angels. Critics and mystery writers praised the books and their main character, but the publisher was disappointed with the sales figures so end of series.
So back in the late 2010s, Hallinan had already written several entries in a couple of other series that had done better than Grist's, the Bangkok-based misadventures of travel writer and amateur sleuth Poke Rafferty and a more humorous series about a professional cat burglar named Junior Bender, who has reluctantly gained a reputation as a competent off-the-grid private investigator for crooks and underworld types, and gets tapped (forced against his will rather) to help out with situations like helping prove a crooked has-been record producer's innocence in a decades old murder, or smoke out the shoplifting ring targeting a declining mall that's owned by a Russian gangster. Then he made a return to Grist with Pulped.
What happens to characters when people quit reading them? In this novel, the last of the paperback copies of the last Simeon Grist book are "out of print" and in some cases are being "recycled," that is ground up and made into other paper products, or "pulped." Grist in the meantime, has become aware he's a paperbook hero and now exists in a bizarre limbo world inhabited by all the other unsuccessful literary private eyes and cops, kept around by the readers who still enjoy their works. Living a monotonous, boring existence in this two-dimensional world, Grist is aware of the real world, “down there” and catches glimpses of it whenever someone reads a used copy of one of his books, and as soon as they close the book, he's stuck again. Then one day he catches a glimpse of a man reading one of his books just as he's strangled by someone he can't see, just a pair of hands. When the book lands on the floor, open, he also catches a glimpse of Madison, the woman and co-worker who finds the victim, and thinks she may be in danger. When “up here” begins to change around him, Simeon is convinced it’s all connected. Compelled to follow his instincts as his author wrote him, Simeon enlists the aid of other detectives languishing in obscurity “up here” to find a way to get “down there”, because he doesn't have many readers left and when someone has no readers left...plus he'll get into all sorts of thorny questions like "can a fictional person fall in love with a person in the real world?"
- Joined
- Oct 28, 2023
The Russians Among Us
If you doubt the lengths to which a foreign state will go to in order to influence others, listen
PIMP
If you want to hear the exploits of a nigger who goes by a variant of lettuce
Operation Paperclip
If you want to donate to Alex Jones
Cult of The Dead Cow
If you want to listen to thinly-veiled Beto propaganda
What It Is Like to Go to War
If you want to know how to u understand your friends over the course of the next 30 years or until they kill themselves
If you doubt the lengths to which a foreign state will go to in order to influence others, listen
PIMP
If you want to hear the exploits of a nigger who goes by a variant of lettuce
Operation Paperclip
If you want to donate to Alex Jones
Cult of The Dead Cow
If you want to listen to thinly-veiled Beto propaganda
What It Is Like to Go to War
If you want to know how to u understand your friends over the course of the next 30 years or until they kill themselves
- Joined
- Jan 22, 2022
I was a little delayed in continuing the Lord of the Rings, however I just finished the Two Towers. Unsurprisingly the quality is maintained from the first part, however a lot more happens in this one.
This one opens with the death or Boromir and then follows Aragorn, Legalos, and Gimli in their quest to recover Merry and Pippin. The Two Towers (like both other parts of the Lord of the Rings) is subdivided into two "books." The first book follows this quest and the second book follows Frodo and Sam. I'm not sure if I would have preferred the stories periodically shifting or two separate complete accounts as it is presented.
I still find that the Peter Jackson movies are very faithful to the best of my memory. Things like Legolas and Gimli competing in killing orcs is in both as well as Sam and Frodo musing about whether stories will be told of their adventure.
I really enjoy the interactions with Saruman. After he's defeated, the party confronts him in his tower and the whole while they're talking he's basically casting a charm spell to convince everyone the whole siege of Helms Deep was a misunderstanding. Treebeard's account of losing the entwives was surprisingly poignant and melancholy. The descriptions of Shelob and her lair are fittingly putrid.
One of the differences from the movies is that Sam and Frodo never split up which is nice. It worked fine in the movie but their loyalty to each other in the books is unbreakable. Also in the book Sam puts on the ring which I don't think happens in the movies. The book ends with Frodo captured and Sam trying to figure out a way to recover him.
I'm excited to finish the trilogy and get into Return of the King. Interestingly I think RotK is actually the shortest of the three. Overall continues to be a worthwhile endeavor and feel appropriate for the fall/winter season.
This one opens with the death or Boromir and then follows Aragorn, Legalos, and Gimli in their quest to recover Merry and Pippin. The Two Towers (like both other parts of the Lord of the Rings) is subdivided into two "books." The first book follows this quest and the second book follows Frodo and Sam. I'm not sure if I would have preferred the stories periodically shifting or two separate complete accounts as it is presented.
I still find that the Peter Jackson movies are very faithful to the best of my memory. Things like Legolas and Gimli competing in killing orcs is in both as well as Sam and Frodo musing about whether stories will be told of their adventure.
I really enjoy the interactions with Saruman. After he's defeated, the party confronts him in his tower and the whole while they're talking he's basically casting a charm spell to convince everyone the whole siege of Helms Deep was a misunderstanding. Treebeard's account of losing the entwives was surprisingly poignant and melancholy. The descriptions of Shelob and her lair are fittingly putrid.
One of the differences from the movies is that Sam and Frodo never split up which is nice. It worked fine in the movie but their loyalty to each other in the books is unbreakable. Also in the book Sam puts on the ring which I don't think happens in the movies. The book ends with Frodo captured and Sam trying to figure out a way to recover him.
I'm excited to finish the trilogy and get into Return of the King. Interestingly I think RotK is actually the shortest of the three. Overall continues to be a worthwhile endeavor and feel appropriate for the fall/winter season.
- Joined
- Aug 25, 2023
- Joined
- Dec 17, 2019
Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six.
- Joined
- Dec 20, 2022
Who Goes There and Frozen Hell by John W. Campbell.
Who Goes There and Frozen Hell is the story of a remote Antarctica expedition discovering a crashed space ship and a frozen member of it's alien crew. Having taken the creature back to their base camp, they decide to thaw the creature out, and study it. Only to discover that the thing is very much alive and very hostile to mankind. What follows is their struggle with the creature as it kills, consumes and takes the place of the various expedition team. It is up to the few survivors to work out a way to not only determine who has been replaced, but to also stop the creature from making it out of Antarctica and dooming all life on earth. Led by the heroic McReady, and armed with ice axes and steely determination, can they do it?
If this sounds a lot like a certain 1982 classic film titled The Thing. That's because it the is blueprint for that magnificent film.
The difference between the two versions merely being the length of each work. Who Goes There is the shorter and more well know novella, which was also published by the title The Thing From Another World. Frozen Hell on the other hand is the lesser known novel version. The novel contains the parts about the discovery of the alien and the space ship. Which Campbell cut from the novella version to get it published.
Read both, and watch the movie. All around great works of fiction.
Who Goes There and Frozen Hell is the story of a remote Antarctica expedition discovering a crashed space ship and a frozen member of it's alien crew. Having taken the creature back to their base camp, they decide to thaw the creature out, and study it. Only to discover that the thing is very much alive and very hostile to mankind. What follows is their struggle with the creature as it kills, consumes and takes the place of the various expedition team. It is up to the few survivors to work out a way to not only determine who has been replaced, but to also stop the creature from making it out of Antarctica and dooming all life on earth. Led by the heroic McReady, and armed with ice axes and steely determination, can they do it?
If this sounds a lot like a certain 1982 classic film titled The Thing. That's because it the is blueprint for that magnificent film.
The difference between the two versions merely being the length of each work. Who Goes There is the shorter and more well know novella, which was also published by the title The Thing From Another World. Frozen Hell on the other hand is the lesser known novel version. The novel contains the parts about the discovery of the alien and the space ship. Which Campbell cut from the novella version to get it published.
Read both, and watch the movie. All around great works of fiction.
Phalanges Mycologist
kiwifarms.net
- Joined
- Sep 11, 2021
It's been years since I read it but the bit with the Communist Terrorist shooting the disabled kid gets to me.
- Joined
- Jun 7, 2021
Gotten done with the Aeneid last Friday, couldn’t say no to starting on the Iliad. I’ve been reading that non-stop with soothing jazz in the background since that night, both are excellent epics.
- Joined
- Dec 28, 2014
The Aeneid is probably the best of those epic poems (I read it during Latin class), but the Odyssey is definitely my favorite and most entertaining of the classic epic poems (I read the Iliad and Odyssey in English translations).
Arma virumque cano!
YourFriendlyLurker 2.0
kiwifarms.net
- Joined
- Dec 12, 2022
I wonder if you are Russian or are you just interested in the country? In both cases, a good set of books.
- Joined
- Feb 26, 2023
I'm reading several books right now: The Confederacy of Dunces, The Complete Fiction of H.P. Lovecraft, The Writings of Nichiren, and Dispatches by Michael Herr.
If he were real, Ignatius Reilly would be a lolcow IMO. He already reminds me of certain people.
If he were real, Ignatius Reilly would be a lolcow IMO. He already reminds me of certain people.
- Joined
- Jul 22, 2019
A great book. While I don't agree with her on everything, it is a good read. Her critique of capitalism is fucking stupid, and she directly contradicts herself later in the book, but it was still a book I wish I'd read years ago.
I'm considering sending a copy to my 18 year old niece, so she doesn't end up eggless and alone like so many of my female friends.