- Joined
- Jul 7, 2022
I'm a big Sherlock Holmes fan.
What are you reading right now?
- Thread starter AtroposHeart
- Start date
- Joined
- Aug 23, 2020
I like all of WW. I don’t remember what comes after The Engineer, but I’ve read all of them now, and I think the series gets more fun as it goes along.
I strongly believe that 95% of why fantasy works is wish fulfillment. You can have a gritty, morally grey story—but then you need sword fights and dragons. If your characters don’t actually do stuff, then the guy has to get the girl and kill the monster. Otherwise, you may as well have published a PowerPoint slideshow.
I often think the cure to stuff like this is to lean into the trope. Like, don’t just make her have DID: she doesn’t; she has actual people living in her brain that she kidnapped and is slowly torturing as they can’t return to their own bodies, and she doesn’t even know she’s done it! Or whatever.
Another trope that’s overdone is for the 20 year old ingenue female to get with the 2000 year old, perfectly smooth Elf. I want (or want someone else) to write a story about an actual love story between a 20 year old and a guy who actually looks 2000 years old. Make it absurd so it’s interesting again.
Last edited:
- Joined
- Nov 12, 2024
I haven't read his one trilogy, but the Cradle series was really enjoyable. I'm pretty sure the target demo is like 12-to-17-year-old-boys and I was a few books in when I realized there was a complete lack of swearing, which I found interesting and weirdly wholesome. I'd definitely let my son read those books when he's older, they're fun. The Last Horizon series is growing on me, too; haven't read the third one, (The Knight) but I will later, when I let myself buy more books.
God, yes. Either give me demonic possession or go super weird like Being John Malkovich. Alternately, do an honest exploration of the kind of person who would claim to have DID and headmates, or write a mystery where you the reader are trying to figure out if this character is legitimately multiple people in one body or just insane. I'd read any book with one of those premises.
"Timeless/ageless" could be interesting to use in a horror context... But GGGGGGGILF would be hilarious also.
I was able to locate the copy of Robinson Crusoe on my shelf. Thought it was from the '70s... Nope! 1946 edition, illustrated by Lynd Ward, as part of the Junior Illustrated Library from Grosset and Dunlap. Probably start reading it tonight.
- Joined
- Aug 23, 2020
Wight writes a blog (ew, gross) that’s really interesting because he talks very directly about why he makes the choices he does. To wit, a lot of it boils down to marketability and then, secondarily, his interest. So, he publishes shorter books twice a year because that means ALL of his books sell more frequently. He wrote Cradle because it’s what he likes reading, and he hates reading and writing romance, so those plots don’t feature heavily. I wouldn’t be surprised if the lack of cursing was because (1) books with swear words can’t be sold to kids and (2) use of curse words in books has, historically, been considered bad writing.
Anyway, I like his books. The first trilogy is the weakest, but it was also his freshman effort, so.
I don't like this time of year so I'm binging Andre Norton right now. Guns, Germs and Steel when I get the urge to doomscroll.
- Joined
- Jul 22, 2020
where do you recommend one starts with Norton? I got the time traders vol 1 from baen.
argopilled
kiwifarms.net
- Joined
- Jan 12, 2023
I just finished reading Mixtape Hyperborea by Adem Luz Rienspects and absolutely loved it. The book follows the main character over the course of their senior year in the class of '08. I found myself connecting the book to my own life as a teenager right before social media really took over. Walking around malls purposelessly, getting baked before the most mundane events, endlessly calling my best friends faggots and having "deep" conversations about life. Without even realizing the nameless main character is already at the last day of school and then at a bonfire hooking up with a girl. He doesn't feel any different, there was no fanfare; just acceptance that time has passed and that he has now reached a new precipice. He feels like he is the only one noticing the present because everyone else is so focused on the future. The book also has a subplot of two faculty that share short conversations with each other. Mr Andrews and Mrs berry who are both into one another but she is trapped in an increasingly suffocating marriage. Just like the main plot they grow close to one another but then without fanfare the school year ends with her revealing to him that she is done being the schools psychologist and is returning to private practice and that's the end. No finale, no big event, just the endless passing of time.
The book also has a gimmic of having a Playlist that you are meant to listen to while reading. I think it's a nice little extra on top of an already phenomenal book. Seriously I cannot evangelize this book enough. Maybe I'm a nostalgiafag but it left me longing to see people I haven't thought of in years just to relive those days for just a moment.
I'm not in a rush
If anything im in the opposite of a rush!
The book also has a gimmic of having a Playlist that you are meant to listen to while reading. I think it's a nice little extra on top of an already phenomenal book. Seriously I cannot evangelize this book enough. Maybe I'm a nostalgiafag but it left me longing to see people I haven't thought of in years just to relive those days for just a moment.
I'm not in a rush
If anything im in the opposite of a rush!
- Joined
- Nov 12, 2024
I feel like I may be the exact target demo for this one. I'll look it up sometime.
Few chapters into Robinson Crusoe, taking it at a casual pace. The narration style is readable yet charmingly old-fashioned. I love that the narration will go on for a bit, then summarize itself with "in a word, ___."
Also, I had completely forgotten that the titular character was captured and spent two years as a slave to Muslims. There's actually a ton of stuff that happens to him before the part everyone remembers the story being about, it's fascinating to revisit.
- Joined
- Dec 12, 2022
I read/listened to this nonfiction book yesterday.
Narrative of the wreck of the 'Favorite' on the Island of Desolation [Kerguelen Island]: detailing the adventures, sufferings, and privations of John Nunn; an historical account of the island, and its whale and seal fisheries
Chapter 9 interrupts the story to become an encyclopedia instead of leaving that for the end so you might want to skip that chapter. It's an old timey book so the descriptions tend to be long winded but I guess that was the writing style of the time. I rate it 9/10 pretty good.
It's a true story of an English sailor who visits Kerguelen Island, known to them as Desolation Island, a large very remote island with an arctic climate in the southern Indian ocean. They are sealers, hunting elephant seals for their blubber and fur seals for their furs. On their way to the island they have to outrun a pirate ship. Once there they disembark their ship in boats, splitting up into small crews to go about their business hunting seals. The sailor's first boat is damaged when they turn into the wrong bay and hit some rocks, sinking the boat in deep water forcing the sailors to escape to a rocky shore and seek refuge from the antarctic winds in a cave. They manage to work their way to the shore and write in chalk on a beached boat where they are staying. Their ship mates eventually find them and rescue them. This is a false start to the meat of the story. Their second boat springs a leak and sinks in shallow water. This time there is no rescue. With much hardship they manage to survive on the freezing island for two and a half years and are picked up by another English sealing vessel.
Narrative of the wreck of the 'Favorite' on the Island of Desolation [Kerguelen Island]: detailing the adventures, sufferings, and privations of John Nunn; an historical account of the island, and its whale and seal fisheries
Chapter 9 interrupts the story to become an encyclopedia instead of leaving that for the end so you might want to skip that chapter. It's an old timey book so the descriptions tend to be long winded but I guess that was the writing style of the time. I rate it 9/10 pretty good.
It's a true story of an English sailor who visits Kerguelen Island, known to them as Desolation Island, a large very remote island with an arctic climate in the southern Indian ocean. They are sealers, hunting elephant seals for their blubber and fur seals for their furs. On their way to the island they have to outrun a pirate ship. Once there they disembark their ship in boats, splitting up into small crews to go about their business hunting seals. The sailor's first boat is damaged when they turn into the wrong bay and hit some rocks, sinking the boat in deep water forcing the sailors to escape to a rocky shore and seek refuge from the antarctic winds in a cave. They manage to work their way to the shore and write in chalk on a beached boat where they are staying. Their ship mates eventually find them and rescue them. This is a false start to the meat of the story. Their second boat springs a leak and sinks in shallow water. This time there is no rescue. With much hardship they manage to survive on the freezing island for two and a half years and are picked up by another English sealing vessel.
Last edited:
- Joined
- Oct 17, 2023
This place feels like the best bet to ask but does anyone know anything about this, in my opinion, lost media?
I like the cover and the ideas, but I found it a couple of years after the Kickstarter was successful so couldn't purchase a copy
All there has been for years is people asking if there is a version online to no availe - It was meant to be a physical print with a limited number, but let's not kid ourselves and pretend digitization isn't a thing
If anyone has managed to find this book online, has a pdf copy, or even less likely has the actual hardcover, would you mind sharing?
I like the cover and the ideas, but I found it a couple of years after the Kickstarter was successful so couldn't purchase a copy
All there has been for years is people asking if there is a version online to no availe - It was meant to be a physical print with a limited number, but let's not kid ourselves and pretend digitization isn't a thing
If anyone has managed to find this book online, has a pdf copy, or even less likely has the actual hardcover, would you mind sharing?
ChampFantana
kiwifarms.net
- Joined
- Jan 7, 2021
One of you guys turned me on to Anna's Archive, so I'm re-reading Deadstock by Jeffrey Thomas.
It's a cyberpunk detective story with a bit of Lovecraft thrown in for good measure. I absolutely love it and haven't read it in years thanks to never finding a copy in my local bookstores.
Whoever you are that led me to AA, THANK YOU! My digital library has grown by leaps and bounds over the last few days thanks to you.
It's a cyberpunk detective story with a bit of Lovecraft thrown in for good measure. I absolutely love it and haven't read it in years thanks to never finding a copy in my local bookstores.
Whoever you are that led me to AA, THANK YOU! My digital library has grown by leaps and bounds over the last few days thanks to you.
Felis Meanis
kiwifarms.net
- Joined
- Feb 18, 2020
I didn't read this book recently, but roughly a year ago. Still, I was reminded of it when I recently revisited the work of Edgan Allan Poe in the TV Mini-series The Fall of the House of Usher.
It's really an excellent book which I can wholeheartedly recommend to anyone even remotely interested in the current opioid-epidemic, or anyone inerested in drama, for that matter.
The book details the life of Arthur-, Mortimer-, and Raymond Sackler, and the respective families which they reared. It tells of how this whole line of Sacklers have been instrumental in orchestrating the opioid crisis, which has mainly been caused by the medicine OxyContin, though it all started long before OxyContin was introduced to the market. The predecessor to OxyContin, i.e. MS Contin, was also intsrumental in orchestrating the current crisis, and was also a product created at the behest of the Sacklers, for example.
All of this was made possible by the wildly unethical and criminal behaviour of the Sacklers. The sheer corruption of man himself, but most certainly of its institutions, like the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, is staggering. Make no mistake: the current opioid-crisis is not "just" caused by people misusing the medicine created by the Sacklers. Rather, it's a direct result of the many not just unethical, but downright illegal activities of the Sacklers, such as their bribing of the FDA, for example.
The irony of Arthur's, Mortimer's and Raymond's father insisting on the importance of the family name having a good reputation is very much present throughout the book.
I very much recommend this book. It's full of interesting history which sheds light on how corruptible our societal institutions really are.
Last edited:
- Joined
- Jul 4, 2022
Patrick Radden Keefe is an excellent writer. Because you enjoyed Empire of Pain, you may also like his other book, Say Nothing, which delves into a murder in Northern Ireland during "The Troubles." FX recently adapted the book into a miniseries.
- Joined
- Aug 5, 2022
If you're still reading it, how do you like it? The prose is fantastic. It's one of my favourite books. The last few chapters had my heart racing as dorky as that might sound for an old book on whaling.
I recently finished Gilgamesh. When you think of an epic poem, The Iliad and Divine Comedy come to mind, both of decent length, but Gilgamesh was surprisingly short. Only about 150 pages, and reads as a simple folktale, making it an even faster read. It didn’t leave as much of an impact on me as say The Iliad or Odyssey did. I adore epic poetry but I barely know anything about ancient Sumer and the story itself is fairly simple.
I’ve started reading Paradise Lost and it's the complete opposite of Gilgamesh in terms of style and complexity. The first chapter alone took me several days. The Early Modern English forces me to reread verses multiple times. And even with an annotated version the few explanatory notes about incredibly specific biblical references aren’t always sufficent. So I also regularly look up events, locations and characters for context.
I've never had to read through a book this careful. It’s by far the most difficult English work I have read so far. I can already see it becoming one of my favourite poems and even books. You can pick a random chapter and get lost in it.
- Joined
- Feb 3, 2019
It only gets worse...
I'm about two thirds of the way through wind and Truth and I had to put it down for a bit and come here to post, due to the full-body cringe I was experiencing.
Not to get into spoiler territory, but 'based Mormon Sanderson's' inter-species gay romance between an autistic fag and a singer is coming to it's very awkward fruition while Shallan cheerleads from the sidelines squeeing 'go fags GO!
It's frankly embarrassing writing and I can only conclude that Sanderson has shoehorned this shit in an effort to pander to booktok and the woke awards crowd.
I'm also getting the sinking feeling that Kaladin's sprin Syl is becoming increasingly corporeal so that he can finger-blast her to pander to the 'she's not loli, she's a 2,000 year old sprin princess' deviants. *le sigh*
Don't get me wrong, I generally enjoy Sanderson's books (up until they inevitably, predictably and tiresomely turn every main character into a fucking god), but the last two books in this series have rubbed me up the wrong way with their anachronistic psychotherapy blather from 'Kaladin the therapist' and enby pandering that has gone as far as to include a fucking pooner in this book who has 'papers' to acknowledge her transition.
It's all so fucking tiresome and feels like all the worst of current year fantasy trends.
- Joined
- May 23, 2020
Have you read Sir Gawain and The Green Knight? It is a wonderful story, complex in its motives, and emotionally resonating. It is very much New Year's reading.
I read a lot this year, too much to fully appreciate the great stuff. The work that sticks out most for me is TS Eliot's Four Quartets. I have read it near a dozen times now since the first a few months back. Every new reading brings out some new emotion in me. I like The Wasteland, but the Four Quartets is the stronger work:
Wait without thought, for you are not ready for thought:
So the darkness shall be the light, and the stillness the dancing.
There are some other works I enjoyed re-reading: Thomas Mann's Doctor Faustus and his short stories; the Book of John (read 10 times while travelling around Bulgaria), and the first volume of Schopenhauer's The World as Will and Representation which I will be reading again once I have finished the second volume. I am also glad to have re-read Tolstoy's The Cossacks, which I had not looked at since my teens. It is as still perfect as I had previously felt. Tolstoy, like Flaubert, is the master of the simple and complex. I also realise now that my temperament has barely changed from my youth. Though I have grown, much of my interests and prejudices remain settled in my mind. They never left my mind, but I do question them more, so much so that the responses seem to be the dominate feeling, but I no longer think that is the case. We grow, we move ahead, we build, but there is a still a child, shallow and petty, meek and naïve, waiting to hear the right phrase, so he can reveal himself at the wrong moment.
Two books I enjoyed this year were The Way of All Flesh by Samuel Butler and Lost in the Cosmos by Walker Percy. The former justifies the reason we have novels. It was spiteful, punchy in its prose, and so honest and damning in its depictions that it was hard to disagree with it. Having the last word applies no better than here. I hate when people say this, but the novel genuinely changed a certain direction I was going in my life. It made me realise something about myself that I had yet to consider.
The latter was a very funny existential work disguised as a self-help book. I had thought about many of the ideas Percy writes about, but his humorous and blunt style knocked me a little that I was forced to think about what I previously assumed. Percy really wants you to accept that confusion over the self is a good thing and that certainty is often a paper mask. That to me is far better than someone telling how one should feel rather than how they actually do. Better to open the door for someone than to force him.
What am I excited to read next year: Ezra Pound's Cantos, Ford Madox Ford's Parade's End, the Seven Pillars of Wisdom, Carlyle's Sartor Resartus, The Faerie Queene, Aristotle, Bleak House, the rest of Austen, Huxley's Eyeless in Gaza, and Mann's The Magic Mountain.
- Joined
- Feb 1, 2023
Right now I'm in Saber & Scapegoat: J.E.B. Stuart and the Gettysburg Controversy by Mark Nesbitt. Basically the thesis is Stuart got a lot of the blame Lee should have because A) Lee became this untouchable symbol of the South and his subordinates could be attacked for their mistakes but not for Lee's and B) Stuart was dead and couldn't defend himself and C) Stuart was unlikeable so his surviving peers weren't going to go to bat to defend him. In short, Stuart got conflicting orders from Lee (scout AND grab everything not nailed down when cavalry can do one or the other but not both at the same time), Lee didn't tell Stuart where he would be so Stuart was left blind when he was cut off by Federal cavalry and didn't know where to go to reestablish contact, and in any event Lee still had the better part of a division of cavalry he neglected to make any use of.
- Joined
- Jul 7, 2022
Don't watch the A24 movie adaptation, it shits all over that beautiful work.
- Joined
- Oct 27, 2021
I just started Trust, by Hernan Diaz.
It's "a novel within the novel followed by an autobiography in progress followed by a memoir and finally a primary source." (from LA Times review).
Summary:
My favorite review quote:
It's "a novel within the novel followed by an autobiography in progress followed by a memoir and finally a primary source." (from LA Times review).
Summary:
My favorite review quote:
- Joined
- Sep 15, 2021
The Celtic Consciousness by Robert O'Driscoll
It's an ethnography on the Celts (Irish,Scots,Welsh,Manx,Britons etc..) composed of 55 essays concerned with art, music, myth, language, archaeology and more. I ordered a pre-owned copy recently and really hope to have in hand soon. It's rare in print now so hopefully it turns out good.
It's an ethnography on the Celts (Irish,Scots,Welsh,Manx,Britons etc..) composed of 55 essays concerned with art, music, myth, language, archaeology and more. I ordered a pre-owned copy recently and really hope to have in hand soon. It's rare in print now so hopefully it turns out good.