What are you reading right now?

[Absolutego]

Found a really interesting book about all the presidents who were installed due to the executive dying. Accidental Presidents is what it's called.
My main takeaway so far is that both Calvin Coolidge and Harry Truman were surprisingly based and should probably get more credit for the shit they pulled off.
Truman especially essentially fought against an entire government built for someone else and relentlessly interfering in his decision making at every moment.

 

[Alexander Thaut]

He literally wrote more than 500 books. It would be a very huge set.

Even if we narrowed it to just fiction, that's probably still a 20+ volume set methinks.

I tried to look up a list of books to get that'd cover as much of Asimov's short fiction as possible, without overlap, and it came to like 25 of his short story collections. Christ.

 

[Gilgamesh]

I've been meaning to get a copy someday, but I'm waiting to find it in the wild or get lucky in an ebay lot that gets me a bunch of good asimovs like this at a deal.

So far I've got the Foundation trilogy, The Gods Themselves, and the first volume of "The Collected Fiction of Asimov" that's got Pebble in the Sky/Ends of Eternity/The Earth is Room Enough in it. I'll read the Foundation trilogy this year, at least.

I wish they published all of Asimov's works in a set. I'd totally buy them.

The Gods Themselves is one of the most beautiful novels I've ever read.
Robots is really good, and I think the detective stuff is fun and campy. I'm not a big fan of linking Robots to Foundation and all that though

 

[Alexander Thaut]

The Gods Themselves is one of the most beautiful novels I've ever read.
Robots is really good, and I think the detective stuff is fun and campy. I'm not a big fan of linking Robots to Foundation and all that though

I feel like Asimov's biggest move might have been the whole branding of his name on top of just ensuring that a LOT of the sci-fi/fantasy writers of his generation would be remembered in some fashion.

Not a bad move tbh. I'd love to read his guide to the bible or one of his history/humor books. He's just solid.

Hell I keep seeing copies of Winds of Change around for cheap and it's tempting to grab them, but idk if it's worth 5 bucks. I hear it's a middling collection of Asimov's.

 

[Susanna]

View attachment 6276336
Finally getting around to reading Earth Dreams, the third Book in Janet Morris's Kerrion Empire trilogy. It's a difficult read not only because it uses obscure terminology, but because the epub is a OCR transcription of a scanned pdf and it has multiple errors, like typos and extra line breaks in the middle of sentences - and even words. Trying to fix my copy as I go

Don’t do this work manually, feed it into an LLM and have that correct the errors for you.

 

[Biggie Smalls' Taint]

Reading Annihilation. About halfway through and GAWD DAMN is it some of the most reddit-ass shit I've read in a bit.

I've had to take so many cringe breaks and this shit isn't even 300 pages.

"By the time we were ready to cross the border we knew everything... and we knew nothing"
Oh great turn of phrase there, /u/Vandermeer. Love the use of dramatic ellipses. Really makes me feel like I'm reading something made by a teenaged girl, for teenaged girls.

"The beauty of it cannot be understood, either, and when you see beauty in desolation it changes something inside you. Desolation tries to colonize you."

I bet the author wrote that last sentence with one hand. Whenever he brought the draft to the editor he must have kept referencing that line. "Yeah, what did you think of this version? Did you see that line? The one about deso- yeah that one. How it colonizes you. I know I keep bringin it up but man, isn't that a great line. Did you read that part? Powerful, eh?"

The overuse of ellipses, constant questions about the mystery (that should be left implicit and for the reader to ask, not spelled out) and the "le science" tone that comes off as someone trying to write smart people is all very offputting.

I can't put my finger on it, but the descriptions used have a very YiiK-like quality to them. The novel vibrates with motion.

I will keep reading to further torture myself. It has been a while sonce I've read something I dislike.

 

[AnOminous]

Even if we narrowed it to just fiction, that's probably still a 20+ volume set methinks.

Even if you just stuck to novels, there were 40.

 

[sarna]

Zodiac is...meh.

It's a pocket book crime story and pretty good by those standards. Also it's very funny. If nothing else it won't take up too much of your time.

 

[Alexander Thaut]

Reading Annihilation. About halfway through and GAWD DAMN is it some of the most reddit-ass shit I've read in a bit.

I've had to take so many cringe breaks and this shit isn't even 300 pages.

"By the time we were ready to cross the border we knew everything... and we knew nothing"
Oh great turn of phrase there, /u/Vandermeer. Love the use of dramatic ellipses. Really makes me feel like I'm reading something made by a teenaged girl, for teenaged girls.

"The beauty of it cannot be understood, either, and when you see beauty in desolation it changes something inside you. Desolation tries to colonize you."

I bet the author wrote that last sentence with one hand. Whenever he brought the draft to the editor he must have kept referencing that line. "Yeah, what did you think of this version? Did you see that line? The one about deso- yeah that one. How it colonizes you. I know I keep bringin it up but man, isn't that a great line. Did you read that part? Powerful, eh?"

The overuse of ellipses, constant questions about the mystery (that should be left implicit and for the reader to ask, not spelled out) and the "le science" tone that comes off as someone trying to write smart people is all very offputting.

I can't put my finger on it, but the descriptions used have a very YiiK-like quality to them. The novel vibrates with motion.

I will keep reading to further torture myself. It has been a while sonce I've read something I dislike.

Oh, damn. I had some hope because Vandermeer was the editor of a big Weird fiction anthology and a few sci-fi ones that went through a fuckton of historical SF.

Even if you just stuck to novels, there were 40.

I had difficulty narrowing it down to a dozen and even then I think I'm missing something.

 

[Bogdandoff]

How are you liking it?

Very interesting old science fiction novel, introduced many concepts that i never could have imagined.

 

[Hweeks]

I finished Masters of the Air - really good read on the US air force in WW2. Then I read The Wasp Factory by Ian Banks (who also wrote the sci fi culture series) and it was meh. Now I'm reading Murder your Employer which I picked up from Costco because it was cheap and looked interesting. So far it's ok but I can tell it's going to have at least one gay love story.

 

[Bland Crumbs]

It's a pocket book crime story and pretty good by those standards. Also it's very funny. If nothing else it won't take up too much of your time.

It is by those standards. I might reread it. I remember it being a very quick read.

 

[Commander X]

Wolfpack Publishing has been printing up volumes of the Westerns and historical adventure fiction of Gordon D. Shireffs, which is good because he brought a gritty reality. rich with historical detail and suspense and mystery to his stories, and finding old paperback copies of some of these titles can be costly, like I'm supposed to pay 20 bucks for a copy of a Shirreffs novel like The Nevada Gun that's in at most fair condition, and went from $1.25 when it was printed? Fuck that.

Amongst the titles I've read is one I wanted to for awhile, Shireffs' 1980 novel Calgaich the Swordsman, set in the time of the Roman Empire. The titular character is a man caught between two worlds, the son of a "Caledonian" barbarian chieftain and a Roman noblewoman. When he forced with his cousin into a lethal duel over his supposed defilement of the woman Calgaich had claimed as his, once, his treacherous uncle arranged for him to be banished because of the "blood debt" incurred so that the uncle could be the tribe's new chief, now that thanks to tribal law he now had a greater claim on succession than his brother. After years of hiring out his sword, he is spurred on by the prophecy of a slave girl and Calgaich's search for his father, who he now believes is being held by Romans leads him on a chase that takes him into prison and the gladiator pits.

There's also his 1978 novel Captain Cutlass, set in the Age of Piracy in the 17th century, about the complicated relationship/rivalry between the titular buccaneer, a scar-faced blond swordsman feared across the Spanish seas, and lady pirate Kate Devon, whose prowess rivals Cutlass' but her feelings for him may have to take a back seat to business, since they are pirates and betrayal is part of the trade.

Among the 2-in-1 Western reprints I've read there's Renegade Lawman & The Lone Rifle. I'd read a falling-apart copy of Renegade Lawman years before, in the Arizona Territory Rowan Emmette, former law enforcer returns to the former silver boom town of Silver Rock. Some years before he was ambushed while driving a wagon of silver ingots and his deputy and friend was killed. He was accused of being mixed up in the robbery and now out of prison, he has various people who think he knows where those ingots are hidden - and the person most interested in making sure he never finds out who was behind the robbery and thus clearing himself. Part of the appeal of the novel was its depiction of what some of these boom towns of the era were like - when the silver mines were producing, Silver Rock was a place where even local fellows could get rich, many of the local saloons and hotels and restaurants could rival anything found in the big Eastern cities, luxury goods from abroad were imported, people from all over the world came to find their fortune one way or another and even an old desert rat like the one who helps Emmette out now, at the time, earned enough money to keep him in women and imported champagne for awhile before the cash ran out. Of course, the boom went bust than expected when the mining operation hit an underground river which flooded the mines and the experts all agreed, the expense of pumping out the water would far exceed the profits from any silver...so things are a little desperate in the town.

in 1965's The Lone Rifle buffalo hunter Miles Flint reluctantly rides along with Jonas Carlisle's cattle drive, after Carlisle's longhorns cause a stampede of the massive herd of big woolies Flint was stalking with his Sharps rifle, and his camp is destroyed, and his four men are trampled to death. However, Flint's beef is not with Carlilse, who seems aggrieved at the damage his herd caused and appears to be a man of honor but with Beck, Carlisle's trail boss who is responsible, as far as Flint is concerned, with not sending out any scouts ahead. Despite thinking Carlisle is a bit loco for wanting to drive his massive herd to Montana right through Sioux-held territory, Flint ends up signing on - having been a meat hunter for another cattle drive before. There's other problems too, like Carlisle's younger wife, Lorena who was brought along on the drive. It may have been unwise, for Lorena, perceptive enough to know why Flint has signed on, attracts the wrong kind of attention from the wrong kind of people. Plus, while hunting just enough buffalo to keep the drive in meat for days, Flint comes across a rare "snowback" bull, an albino buffalo. The meat from it is fine enough, but after Flint takes the hide, there's another prize on the drive others will want. For many, a rare albino buffalo hide is worth a lot of money, and for a lot of Indians, such a hide means "big medicine" for whoever possesses it...

 

[Biggie Smalls' Taint]

Finished Annihilation.
Didn't like.

Spoiler: Long spergout

Nothing significant happened. It tries to be lovecraftian with the whole "inexplicable thing happened and it was really crazy and weird man you had to be there my mind was torn asunder" thing.
Lovecraft could make an interesting story out of that. Something thrilling with a beginning, middle and end that grips you and keeps you wanting to know more.
Annihilation fabricates that feeling by having the main character constantly stop to ask a barrage of questions that never get answered. "Uhhh what could be at the bottom of the mysterious tower? What secrets does it hold? Tbe mysterious mystery tower oooh what's in it?"
I don't know, you daft bitch, why don't you go into the tower and find out instead of halting the story?
These are questions the reader is already asking and they want to know the answer. You don't need the character to ask them or bring up other things to make the mystery seem more deep than it is.

"We saw a giant stone dick that had the number 3 on one of its balls"

Reader: That's weird. What could be the purpose of this penis? I will read on to find out.

"We saw the erect mineral phallus thrust into the sky as if the earth were fucking the sky with a giant rock cock. What could its purpose be? Who made it and why? Was it I dunno some kind of freaky alien with like, crab claws or something weird? How did they know what a human penis looks like? What is that creature's diet? Do they eat penises? Would this penis resist a blast from a cannon?..."

GET ON WITH IT!

There's a bit of text that keeps popping up, and it's the shittiest fucking try-hard doom prophesy shit. The kind of shit you'd see in a Dungeons and Dragons game your edgy friend wrote.

Where lies the strangling fruit that came from the hand of the sinner I shall bring forth the seeds of the dead to share with the worms that gather in the darkness and surround the world with the power of their lives while from the dimlit halls of other places forms that never...

That's not even the whole thing. Hand of the sinner bring forth the seeds of the dead in the darkness of death and doom evil the cursed death of dark shadow garden grown dark evil pack.

Every time that stupid passage popped up I cringed halfway to death. Ooh it's so ominous and dark. Spooooky.

Maybe the story continues in the next book. It's a trilogy, after all. No. fuck that. This stupid thing isn't even 300 pages long. This is barely a pamphlet, let alone a novel. If the author had bothered to have anything happen in this he wouldn't need two more books.

And get this: The next book is about the dark, shadowy government entity that sends people into the mysterious zone. I am so sick and tired of this fucking SCP "shadowy entity deals with supernatural monsters and tries to catalogue them but they're super unethical and weird and mysterious. Ooooo spooooooky" type shit.

I fell for the mystery box meme.

 

[Stargazer's Dream]

Rereading Neal Stephenson's Zodiac today since I thought about it when Just Stop Oil got jailed this week, and well, why not.

Is it any good?

 

[YHWH's Strongest Soldier]

Just started Clarice Lispector's Agua Viva and as expected, shit is weird. I was recommended it after finishing Virginia Woolf's The Waves and Agua Viva starts in a similar although significantly more incoherent stream of thought. While Woolf's book tried to show the life story of 7 different characters without ever affording them dialogue between each other (or maybe six different aspects of one person's personality in interaction with the "outside" character Percival), Lispector feels much less poetic and more like a histrionic woman speaking directly to the reader, but not in a bad way. I find her style extremely difficult to describe so I'll simply share an excerpt from the start of the book (which is without chapters). Honestly, I pity the translator who had to work with this.

Spoiler: Agua Viva: 1st four paragraphs

It’s with such profound happiness. Such a hallelujah. Hallelujah, I shout, hallelujah merging with the darkest human howl of the pain of separation but a shout of diabolic joy. Because no one can hold me back now. I can still reason—I studied mathematics, which is the madness of reason—but now I want the plasma—I want to eat straight from the placenta. I am a little scared: scared of surrendering completely because the next instant is the unknown. The next instant, do I make it? or does it make itself? We make it together with our breath. And with the flair of the bullfighter in the ring.

Let me tell you: I’m trying to seize the fourth dimension of this instant-now so fleeting that it’s already gone because it’s already become a new instant-now that’s also already gone. Every thing has an instant in which it is. I want to grab hold of the is of the thing. These instants passing through the air I breathe: in fireworks they explode silently in space. I want to possess the atoms of time. And to capture the present, forbidden by its very nature: the present slips away and the instant too, I am this very second forever in the now. Only the act of love—the limpid star-like abstraction of feeling—captures the unknown moment, the instant hard as crystal and vibrating in the air and life is this untellable instant, larger than the event itself: during love the impersonal jewel of the moment shines in the air, the strange glory of the body, matter made feeling in the trembling of the instants—and the feeling is both immaterial and so objective that it seems to happen outside your body, sparkling on high, joy, joy is time’s material and the essence of the instant. And in the instant is the is of the instant. I want to seize my is. And like a bird I sing hallelujah into the air. And my song belongs to no one. But no passion suffered in pain and love is not followed by a hallelujah.

Is my theme the instant? the theme of my life. I try to keep up with it, I divide thousands of times into as many times as the number of instants running by, fragmented as I am and the moments so fragile—my only vow is to life born with time and growing along with it: only in time itself is there room enough for me.

All of me is writing to you and I feel the taste of being and the taste-of-you is as abstract as the instant. I also use my whole body when I paint and set the bodiless upon the canvas, my whole body wrestling with myself. You don’t understand music: you hear it. So hear me with your whole body. When you come to read me you will ask why I don’t keep to painting and my exhibitions, since I write so rough and disorderly. It’s because now I feel the need for words—and what I’m writing is new to me because until now my true word has never been touched. The word is my fourth dimension.

I don't exactly know why, but this book and The Waves scratch some itch for literature that I've had for the past year. I sort off burned out on normal writing after reading Bulgakov's Master and Margarita and couldn't find any "normal" novels that match it. I can also really recommend that one since it tells the story of forgiveness for Pontius Pilate and the Devils' visit to Moscow in a veiled critique of the Stalinist regime. If anyone else feels burned out on fiction, I can really recommend to try something unique that is truly outside of your comfort zone.

 

[Hweeks]

Finished Annihilation.
Didn't like.

Meh I see your point but the first book is decent. Don't even bother with the other 2 they are absolutely terrible! Nothing gets resolved it's just more mystery spooky crap.

 

[isalaide]

Is it any good?

It's not Stephenson's best, but depending on how much you like him, that's still a pretty high bar. The execution is good if you fancy the plotline. It wouldn't be a waste of your time, certainly.

 

[Dragged Into Sunlight]

Just finished re-reading the Narnia series for the first time since I was a little kid.

What lovely, timeless stories.

 

[Empty Humidifier]

Reading "The Bloody White Baron" by James Palmer. It's a biography of Freiherr Roman Nikolai Maximillian von Ungren-Sternberg, the last Khan of Mongolia. Heard about him from a bunch of memes and short biographies on youtube, and he's more insane than I was lead to believe. Of course the author whines about things like "war-crimes" and "genocides", but over all a good book so far. The author actually travelled to Mongolia and went to a lot of the same places as Ungren so he does a good job really putting you there. Also I knew very little of what was happening in Siberia during the Russki Civil War so it's always great to learn more about that time period. Like apparently the was a Siberian Expeditionary Force of mostly American soldiers there. I knew about the Murmansk Expeditionary Force, but not this one in Siberia.

Spoiler: Spoiler

A few of my favorite quotes from the man himself so far:

"My name is surrounded with such hate and fear that no one can judge what is truth and what is false, what is history and what myth"

"In Transbaikalia I tried to form the Order of Military Buddhists for an uncompromising fight against the depravity of revolution. For what? For the protection of the processes of evolution of humanity and for the struggle against revolution, because I am certain that evolution leads to Divinity and revolution to bestiality "

"For the Order, I introduced the condition of celibacy, the entire negation of woman, of the comforts of life, of superfluities, according to the teachings of the Yellow Faith; and in order that the Russian might be able to live in tune with his physical nature, I introduced the limitless use of alcohol, hasheesh, and opium. Now I hang my officers and soldiers for even alcohol; but then we made toasts to the "white fever", delirium tremens. I could not organize the Order but I gathered round me and developed three hundred men wholly bold and entirely ferocious"