What are you reading right now?

[Sayer of the N-Word]

I just finished The Player of Games, one of the earliest of Ian M. Banks' books about the Culture and apparently one of the most liked. I can't say if it's better or worse than any other because it's the only Culture book I've ever read. It was a breezy read and Banks did a great job of making the act of playing complex board games something interesting to read about, but after the initial setup, which I really enjoyed (

Spoiler

an expert at board games is blackmailed into joining his civilization's foreign service by a robot who was kicked out for being erratic

), there were absolutely no surprises. It was also incredibly preachy, so if you don't want to read a novel with a strong anarchist POV then it definitely isn't the book for you.

 

[Juan Números]

I'm taking advantage of the quiet holidays to break a reading dry spell by starting to read Downbelow Station by C. J. Cherryh, wish me luck, kiwis.

 

[Organic Eggs]

I'm currently reading The Gone World by Tom Sweterlitsch. A bit if Sci-fi mixed with murder mystery. Its really instresting. Considering it has a lot of sci-fi elements with science that is created solely for the book, it's really easy to pick up the concept (time travel).

 

[80's Dad]

Am I allowed to say that I'm reading the new popular-but-basic-bitch book without getting booed? I'm listening to Iron Flame while I knit and I'm having a lot of fun. It's like having to work for hits of dopamine instead of just scrolling TikTok.

I got a new library card today as well! Now I have even more books I can access digitally and I reserved a telescope to take on a camping trip here in a few months. Just thought that was neat.

 

[Womble of Wimbledon]

T

I'm almost finishing the most worthless waste of digital space I've ever had the displeasure of touching - "Nothing but blackened teeth"

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I had hopes I finally found a good horror book by the look of the cover and the summary at the back, but holy shit was this a complete waste of 2 hours - Imagine grabbing the concept of a Chinese mansion that needs consistent sacrifices to feed the dying warmth of the dead, dead who can never feel anything so need to leech off the energy of the living, and having them be represented by the amazing cover variations, and scooby-doing that premise with the most sjw stereotypical characters imaginable - I shit you not, it has the "Brainless Jock that has sex with his friend's wife"; "Spineless fat retard who is a beta to his abusive wife"; "Strong black wife who cheated on the beta cuck with jock and knows how to read minds because woman power";" Rich marvel tier "Erm, that just happened" Chinese guy that predicts the plot"; and the worst character of them all, a "depressed, live is meaningless soy woman main character, obese of course, shut in, meant to be a self-insert of the writer".

At no point did it get better, legit thought this was a parody of horror books, but the more I read, the more I realize this author who writes mostly just horror, is just shit at writing.

That's a shame because that cover is fucking awesome

 

[glass_houses]

I've decided that my new year's resolution is to beat my tbr into submission. So I'm finishing off the year with something light, Mercedes Lackey's Mage Wars trilogy, a precursor to her Valdemar series, before I start 2024 with something that takes a bit more effort.

Am I allowed to say that I'm reading the new popular-but-basic-bitch book without getting booed? I'm listening to Iron Flame while I knit and I'm having a lot of fun. It's like having to work for hits of dopamine instead of just scrolling TikTok.

I read basic bitch shit all the time. Sometimes you want an elaborate, three course meal with nine different dishes that took two days of solid work to make. Sometimes you want a bag of microwave popcorn.

I spent my professional life reading legislation, technical documents, reports, procedures and guidelines for just about every and anything you'd care to imagine. I am a great believer in that recreational reading should be entertaining, regardless of what you are entertained by.

 

[Jewthulhu]

Finished Neuromancer. Good ideas, interesting plot, but I feel Gibson's writing isn't that great.

Read through and Finished The Big Sleep. Basically identical to the '46 movie (minus a bit of censorship) until it wasn't. Without spoilers, the movie seems like the plot was rewritten towards the end to give the main actress more relevance/screentime, changing the ending (and probably making it a bit more confusing). Would recommend it as a fun light detective novel.

Currently reading Gaddis' "The Cold War: A New History." Decent so far as an overview and a piece of political theory, but I think I'm going to get the Cambridge History of the Cold War (a massive 3 volume work) to properly scratch my longform history autism.

 

[Hinttitroniikka]

I'm close to finishing The Martian, but I'll have to reread it again later when I'm not so busy and can absorb better. I wish it were a bit longer because I'd like to see more emotions from each character than just sarcasm and steely resolve. I can forgive that to some extent because Mark doesn't want to share anything embarassing in his logs, but as a professional he has no reason to be embarassed by his emotional state and whatever valuable psychological data his introspection could provide. I like Bruce Ng but everyone else on Earth is a little too quippy maybe? I don't like the Hermes crew for the same reason. The back-up plan in case they miss their resupply before heading back is just too dumb. The third-person description of Mark's arrival to the ascent vehicle was really sweet and I'd have liked a bit more of that kind of thing. I think it would be a good book for secondary school reading lists as practical applications of not just math and science but general problem-solving skills.

I also read Planetes and some Asimov last year so I'm just on a big hard-scifi kick now and taking recommendations.

ETA: I do like the pure man-vs-nature angle without much interpersonal conflict. The cooperation is such a nice change of pace from stories about humans fighting each other.

 

[AnOminous]

I also read Planetes and some Asimov last year so I'm just on a big hard-scifi kick now and taking recommendations.

Larry Niven if you haven't already. Hard SF, with fairly good plotting, sometimes weak characterization, and lots of nifty alien races and cool gadgets.

 

[Jewthulhu]

I also read Planetes and some Asimov last year so I'm just on a big hard-scifi kick now and taking recommendations.

ETA: I do like the pure man-vs-nature angle without much interpersonal conflict. The cooperation is such a nice change of pace from stories about humans fighting each other.

Crichton is good if you haven't read his stuff already. Jurassic Park is a classic of course, but I'd recommend The Andromeda Strain, The Terminal Man, and Prey.
I'll second Niven, and add his collaborations with Pournelle. Lucifer's Hammer is half-hard scifi, half-post apocalyptic. I'd say until the last quarter or so of the book it's a really good "man vs nature" story.

 

[DJ Grelle]

Holy shit you're right, I got about half of that. Here's how I read it,

"Gaul is divided into 3 parts, 1st the Belgae, 2nd the Aquitani and the 3rd the Celtae, but named the Gauls".

Is that about right?

The perfect translation would be:
Gallia - in it's entirety - is divided in three parts; of which one is inhabited by the Belgae, another by the Aquitanii, and a third by those who are called Celtae in their own language, but Gauls in ours.

Caesar is relatively simple latin, and that's why he's read as the first real Roman author. The others like Cicero and Ovid are far more complex.

Simplest latin would be postclassical, since with the shift to the medieval era, postclassical Latin would also become a language where location of the word in the sentence is important, unlike classical latin where only the declension really matters.

Btw you can find all classical latin texts on www.thelatinlibrary.com
Fun to take a peek now and then.

More on topic:
I've started in the fortunes of Africa by martin Meredith.
Bit shallow (Africa is too big and the period too long) but it's a nice overview.

 

[MerriedxReldnahc]

Just started reading Treasure Island the other night, I found a copy in one of those Little Lending Libraries and I realized that despite seeing both the good Treasure Planet and the mildly cursed Bulgarian Treasure Planet I've not read the source material. So far there's a lot less cyborgs and aliens but there's plenty of pirates so that's still pretty fuckin cool.
The character descriptions have been fun, it's been a while since I've taken the time to sketch out book characters but I've been very inspired to do so reading this.

 

[Jonah Hill poster]

I’ve wanted to get this book back in 2018, but I never had the chance. Now, fast forward to today, I keep seeing him get more popular by the day on X/Twitter and earlier today, I bought it online for $15.

Plus, I wanted to show support for more indie book releases since most of the mainstream ones are not that great to me.

 

[Hugbox Kommissar]

New year, new books. Starting off with Night Dogs by Kent Anderson. Set in 70's Portland, it follows a former US soldier turned cop as he works the Portland ghetto. Pretty good so far, pretty loose plot, almost more of a series of vignettes.

 

[Zemblan Physics]

I’m reading a classic - Wittgenstein’s Vienna by Allan Janik & Stephen Toulmin. Makes me sad about the state of, um, “contemporary discourse” but it’s good.

 

[wtfNeedSignUp]

I'm reading The Road and they reached the bunker. Maybe I should just stop there and hope they spent the rest of the apocalypse in the bunker until they got out into a better world? I don't understand why they ran away from there so fast. Logically just staying until the spring and gaining body mass would outweigh nearly immediately going back to hard trekking in bad weather.

 

[Alex Hogendorp]

I recently picked up The Cashless Revolution by Martin Chorzempa. What I got from it so far is that the author went to China, he learned Mandarin to understand the cashless system of society of China better. So far its a pretty interesting read. I got to learn the history of Alibaba and Tencent on the first chapter.

 

[General Emílio Médici]

Just at the end of November 2023 I finished reading Unintended Consequences. It's a 900+, almost 1000 page novel that is almost entirely summarized by "I fucking love the 2nd Amendment and I fucking hate the goddamned feds so much"

It's easier actually to think of it as 3 books into one. There is a description of many events, laws and their backgrounds, and technical issues in guns in the USA which makes up a portion of the first 2/3s of the book to explain how the USA came to have things like the NFA or Assault Weapons Ban. Interlaced with this you have the story of the main character, a boomer kid growing up and seeing the changes in society and the laws and expectations around guns. And the final 3rd of the book which is the actual story which is shown in the introduction to hook you in.

It's a very good book in terms of gun porn and explaining laws and fuckery around gun control, but I also found it a very nice book from a historical perspective. It was written in 1996, and it was published around then as well. The plot is set in the near future, assuming around 1998 or 1999 as the new millennium is never addressed, but it shows a very interesting snapshot of the libertarian right wing in the USA at the time and many things which are nowadays forgotten or changed. It is a 90s book and it shows in this, including something of a naive mentality that the government still had good people or that they would even think twice about simply wiping their asses with the constitution to fuck over someone who made them look bad.

It also features a bunch of ideas on how to prank federal agents, which I appreciate. Some really funny trolls. Real knee-slappers.

I give it 5 out of 5.

 

[Sincere Irony LLC]

Just finished Return of the King. The entire trilogy is fantastic and ends exceptionally well. As I said in my earlier posts, the movies continue to follow very closely and anything cut for time, like the Scouring of the Shire makes sense to me. The scouring is a nice epilogue victory lap for the four Hobbits. It's basically them returning home and ascending to power and influence by uprooting the evil of Saruman and his men who implanted themsevles in the Shire in order to loot and destroy in an act of revenge.

Every character has a very nice and fitting send off. Gimli and Legolas go off to visit each of the culture's most beautiful sites, Theoden has his funeral, Eowyn and Faramir fall in love and are married (Eowyn realizes she doesn't want to be a warrior or queen anymore and just wants to be a wife), Bilbo outlives the oldest Took, even the pony from the Fellowship of the Ring, Bill, is reuinited with Sam and more such. Tolkien utilizes the omniscient narrator to punctuate how important events are to beautiful effect. For example when the hobbits defeat Saron's man, Saruman's men he'll write the the effect of "This was only the second battle ever fought in borders of the Shire, and would be the last. The names of the fallen hobbits would be eternally kept in all of the Shire's history." These little glimpses into the future had a very emotional impact on me.

It's very refreshing to read a book such as this, as it depicts horrors of war or bad times of political strife or the failings of humanity but counters it with hopefullness and characters who although are shaken and despaired at times but ultimately remain steadfast and triumph. I grow tired of nihilistic gray morality sludge media. Heroes are heroes and villains are villians, yet neither are without their virtues and vices. I really loved the Saruman character, even though he is despicably evil, he is not irrational, he still feels like a real person. When Frodo decides to spare him he is moved and did not expect it. He is not redeemed but there's more depth to him than one might expect. I also was tremendously impressed with how Denethor was handled. He wasn't simply evil and covetous of the throne of Gondor. He started truly wanted to protect his realm, and he utulized one of the palantir to help collect intel to great effect, however it corrupted him over time.

Overall, well worth the time investment and probably wont take as long as you think as long as you don't take long breaks in between reading sessions like I did.

 

[glue eater]

Reading Beria's Gardens, one of the first books about inmates experiences of the Gulag system, published some 20 years before the famous Gulag archipelago. The author is an SS officer who was imprisoned first in Moscow and then deported to Siberia. Fascinating book.

I also was tremendously impressed with how Denethor was handled. He wasn't simply evil and covetous of the throne of Gondor. He started truly wanted to protect his realm, and he utulized one of the palantir to help collect intel to great effect, however it corrupted him over time.

My thoughts exactly, LOTR is one of the best adaptations of books into film I have ever seen, my only complaint is that Denethor is portrayed as an evil idiot.