What book(s) are you reading?

[HardcoreRetro]

I think this book is giving me cancer.

Keep on reading, I'd say.

[Crash Dummy]

I wouldn't say it's outdated; we still suffocate slowly in a postmodern hell. It's just a plodding read. There's still a chance I end up liking this. I know this is his breakthrough novel and he has his fans, so I'm sticking with it.

ah ok, i look forward to hearing your final thoughts as dfw once called him the most important living writer in america or something to that effect

[kingv]

Listening to more popcorn audio books lately and have some good ones. They probably all carry the Young Adult label, which always kind of annoys me, but that’s where all the moderately popcorn sci-fi is these days :-/

1) Arc of the Scythe series by Neil Schusterman: takes place in a future earth where a computer has solved all of our problems, including death. The last human institution is basically the one that controls who lives or dies. People that make those decisions are called scythes. A couple of young bucks become scythe apprentices and kill for a job. Shit goes down. First two books are out, but the last in the trilogy is yet to be released. The audiobook performance is really good.

2) superpowereds series by drew Hayes:  basically it’s superhero college in a world where there are superheroes. Each book is one year of school and there is a fifth book that is basically a side story. I’m on the last book now and the series is really good, as a ton of stuff happens each year. Each book is really long (30+ hours on audio book) so you really get to know each character well, and it’s fun to see how the characters develop. Their powers develop, people die, and there are a number of sub plots that go multiple books.

Only thing weird is that the books were published pretty recently but they are kind of anachronistic. I feel like he may have written them like 10 years ago and then found a publisher. It’s nothing too crazy but just feels odd that the characters are going to video stores and stuff knowing the first book was published in like 2014.

I’ve noticed this series is cheap as shit on kindle, if you prefer to read your books, like $4 each.

If you like cheap Kindle/Kobo books, Nightshade Press' mailing list has weekly stuff at US$1.99; it's where I picked up my first Laird Barron books.

I’m almost entirely audible now. It just really fits my lifestyle.

Cooking dinner: put on a book
Doing dishes: put on a book
Shoveling this god awful amount of snow we have had this year: more books

It’s been a huge quality of life improvement for me while doing mundane shit.

It’s probably why I listen to so many books that are really easy to listen to, because I’m doing it while doing other stuff.

I was happy to find that public libraries now "lend" digital audiobooks in the USA. I have one now, and am borrowing audiobooks from California while living in Tokyo. It's esp. nice because I've limited my Audible account to a credit every other month, and now I just put a hold on any library books they have, which are automatically borrowed when they become available.

My library has that too, but I haven’t 100% figured out how it works yet. Their selection looks kind of weird though, so I haven’t looked too deeply into it.

[Joe Molotov]

https://www.humblebundle.com/books/horus-heresy-2019-warhammer-book-bundle

[Madrun Badrun]

Are those books complete in some way or will I need to buy a bunch more to read in order?

[Joe Molotov]

Are those books complete in some way or will I need to buy a bunch more to read in order?

I think there's roughly a thousand Horus Heresy books that are only loosely connected. Kara would know more.

[Snoopycat_]

I'm nearly at the end of The Shining. King has been buttflapping about Kubrick for 40 years now, but his version isn't better than Kubrick's, it's just slightly different. In the book Jack takes longer to go mental and the hotel is the source of evil. In the film Jack starts off on the edge and he's the source of evil. Kubrick's biographer claimed that King wrote an entire screenplay for Kubrick, but Kubrick dismissed King and didn't bother to read it. That would probably explain why King has been bitching about it since 1980

[Joe Molotov]

King is a little bitch. Has his ass seen The Tommyknockers or The freaking Langoliers?

[Potato]

https://www.humblebundle.com/books/horus-heresy-2019-warhammer-book-bundle

(Image removed from quote.)

I picked up the last bundle they did. Only read the first two books so far, but both are legitimately good sci-fi.

[Dickie Dee]

Are those books complete in some way or will I need to buy a bunch more to read in order?

I think there's roughly a thousand Horus Heresy books that are only loosely connected. Kara would know more.

They've just finished up this month with book 54 - they aren't really sequential though. Better to think of it as a setting - it's basically Warhammer 30k.

They're now doing the Siege of Terra series which is basically the endgame of the Horus Heresy.

[HardcoreRetro]

Jij zegt het - Connie Palmen

Seems to be another one of those writers that gets literary genius stamped on her just because she knows the history of her own craft. Honestly feels like the writer is rubbing her own clitoris over the ammount of classical writers she knows.

Guess I should tell what it actually is. A fictional biography of Ted Hughes and his relationship with Sylvia Plath.

[team filler]

[EightBitNate]

Pleasantly surprised that you read, filler. Good for you.

[Bebpo]

I'm nearly at the end of The Shining. King has been buttflapping about Kubrick for 40 years now, but his version isn't better than Kubrick's, it's just slightly different. In the book Jack takes longer to go mental and the hotel is the source of evil. In the film Jack starts off on the edge and he's the source of evil. Kubrick's biographer claimed that King wrote an entire screenplay for Kubrick, but Kubrick dismissed King and didn't bother to read it. That would probably explain why King has been bitching about it since 1980

Yeah, I prefer Kubrick's version and I like most pre-2000s King books.

[Bebpo]

https://www.humblebundle.com/books/horus-heresy-2019-warhammer-book-bundle

(Image removed from quote.)

I've never read any Warhammer or played any of the games besides a few missions in DoWII. But for $1 I'll try reading one and see if it's fun.

[chronovore]

Finishing Uprooted now. It's great. Eastern Yuurope fairy tale, except the faerie woods are scarier than hell, and there are very few nice people except the protagonist and a few friends. It's wholesome but deviant and insightful and wonderful. She's the same author who did His Majesty's Dragon, which I'll be reading next.

[Great Rumbler]

Been rereading some fantasy from my childhood. Finished up David Eddings' Belgariad/Mallorean series, now I'm moving on to some RA Salvatore, baybee! 

Crimson Shadow Trilogy and Dark Elf Trilogy, to be specific.

[HardcoreRetro]

Read Kokoro by Soseki Natsume.

Best book I read this year so far. A calm rumination on human relationships and the changing of time from classical to the modern era.

[jakefromstatefarm]

[snip]

I was about to bring up Abu-Lughod’s Before European Hegemony but then it dawned on me that ‘wst’ stands for world systems theory. I’m generally for longue duree accounts that try to either provincialize Europe or are anti-realist about those received ‘common sense’ descriptors we use like nation, country, and culture when we try to explain stupidly huge developments like capitalism, how does it work? So at face this strikes me as good, though the blurb describes an uneven narrative, which, idk, might be merited with a topic this broad.

Similar accounts you could look at are Pomeranz’s Great Divergence and Morris’ Why the West Rules - for Now. And there’s that Acemoglu book (that I’m pretty sure someone in here’s read, can’t remember, please forgive me) for a more conventional (neo?-) liberal take/justification.

I took a detour,  lazily attempting Fourier and Saint-Simon. nope.

cant blame you

[Joe Molotov]

Picked up a couple of Chaosium's Cthulhu Mythos collections at a used book store a couple of months back. Started reading The Hastur Cycle. It covers some early pre-Lovecraft weird fiction from Ambrose Bierce, Robert Chambers, and Arthur Manchen, and then stories from Lovecraft and his acolytes that were inspired by them.

[chronovore]

That is probably a great collection, but that cover design is a Thing Man Was Not Meant to Know.

[Joe Molotov]

They all have really "special" coverart like that.

[Madrun Badrun]

Started Dancer's Lament today - halfway through.  God I missed Malazan.  This is easily Esslemont's first actually good book.  He also stopped trying to ape Erikson's structure and style with this one and I think that helps a lot. 

[Potato]

I'm still working my way through 1787 by Nick Brodie.

Nick Brodie’s 1787 traces the history of Australia before the First Fleet. Usually treated as a preface to the main story – a brief interlude that starts 50,000 years before the present and ends as sails are seen on an eastern horizon – the time before European settlement is so much more. In 1787 the peoples of Australia were not simply living in a timeless ‘Dreamtime’, following the seasons, and waiting for colonisation by Britain in 1788.

Nick Brodie uses the sailors, writers, scientists, and other visitors to our shores to reassess neglected chapters of Australia’s early history. Brodie turns the narratives of ‘exploration’ and ‘discovery’ around to take a closer look at the indigenous peoples, the broader regional scene, and what these encounters collectively tell. This is the sweeping story of Greater Australasia and its peoples, a long-overdue challenge to the myth that Australia’s story started in 1788.

Really interesting book that presents the information in a dispassionate way, avoiding the majority of the emotion and hyperbole that often surrounds books and articles that take on this topic.

All Australians should read this book, just because it is a history that we very rarely hear or learn.

[benjipwns]

The history part of this, especially the inside Congress stuff is pretty great. (He was a senior aide on the Church Committee and sometime there after.) But some of the analysis is kinda odd, first it seems really like it's articles taped together, which is common for academic books but normally they're better edited because this is really looked out for, second he really puts too much faith in Congress, okay, the Senate, okay, Democrats to do proper oversight of the intelligence agencies. (The other two branches might as well not exist in his model's terms of exercising their own powers of restraint on the agencies. Which, fine, but it doesn't stop him from saying their interests should always be considered independently valid from said agencies by Congress...which what?) Lastly, whole parts of the book seem like it's just him reminiscing about the time he worked for Congress and got to talk to all kinds of important CIA type people and have literally nothing to do with the rest of the chapter.

Also, I think he's pretty much saying he thinks Snowden is a Russian agent because "it's well known there are protections for legitimate whistleblowers." Which is, kinda, way to miss the point buddy.

Here's the CIA's review of the book: https://www.cia.gov/library/center-for-the-study-of-intelligence/csi-publications/csi-studies/studies/vol-62-no-3/spy-watching.html

This discourse gives Spy Watching, in its eye-straining nine point font, a dense, meandering feel. The overview of the IC adds little to what is already known, while other parts of Spy Watching read like a memoir or a collection of lecture notes.

For example, the book includes a chart supposedly depicting the ebb and flow in covert actions from 1947 to 2015 (335) While it suggests ups and downs, the chart provides no insight on the number of CA programs—the Y axis ranges from “low” to “high” with no values in between—their cost, the number of people involved, or how many violated US law or were inappropriate missions.

At the same time, the approach would be likely to signal a sharp increase in partisanship on intelligence activities, which I think could have chilling effects on IC cooperation with Congress.

Johnson also seems to have ignored that we already have the President Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board and its advisory committee on IC oversight that serves to advise the president.

I did not write this review for the CIA. The text does not strain my eyes at all.

[Crash Dummy]

still working my way through passion of the western mind but finding if i read it for hours i completely forget what i read at the start so alternating between that and now this:

a well written apolitical analysis that is more a broader social critique than psychiatric. it's also appealing to my inner obnoxious child who thinks he is smarter than everyone else in that there's plenty of outrage and pointing out problems without really suggesting any solutions (but the fun for me is applying his writing, especially on companies and bureaucracies, to my own everyday experiences at a US corporation and the behavior displayed by management)

[Madrun Badrun]

 John Langan's the Fisherman.  Halfway through and I can't put it down. 

[chronovore]

John Langan's the Fisherman.  Halfway through and I can't put it down.

I was about to tease you with, "Then how are you typing this post?" and realized that the lack of misspellings means that you likely used speech-to-text.

[Madrun Badrun]

I can type one handed and read one eyed.

[shosta]

developing his skill over years of careful masturbation, arvie posses hand-eye dexterity unparalleled in the entire toronto metropolitan region

[HardcoreRetro]

Haruki Murakami's Killing Commendatore.

[Vizzys]

been reading the lightbringer series by Brent weeks

its a series of fantasy novels with a system of magic based on the color spectrum of light. basically if some people see a color of light they can craft stuff with it but at the cost of lifespan.
theirs this religion around light and stuff.  the morality of the various POV characters is questionable. Like one character saves a bunch of people but he also tortures his brother and owns slaves. And the bad guys goal is to free slaves even though he has to kill a bunch of religiously indoctrinated people to do it

its like 4am so im explaining it poorly but Its definitely on par quality wise as sanderson or rothfuss fantasy writing

[Madrun Badrun]

developing his skill over years of careful masturbation, arvie posses hand-eye dexterity unparalleled in the entire toronto metropolitan region

I took regionals by storm but a badly placed stoke resulted in an injury that meant my dream of nationals would forever be a dream. 

[shosta]

glen keeps trying to get me to read hyperion and I finally found something that convinced me to get started

[Transhuman]

I didn't realise Tiamat's Wrath was out already and I feel like an idiot for not reading it a month ago

[Potato]

glen keeps trying to get me to read hyperion and I finally found something that convinced me to get started

(Image removed from quote.)

Hyperion is genuinely great and you should read it.

[benjipwns]

one of them oral history/interview books (where it's minimal original writing, the content is all from involved subjects like the SNL/ESPN/MTV/etc. books) in semi-chronological but primarily topically organized, so like it'll start talking about the Celtics dynasty as that was early in the NBA but then cover a bit broader than that to talk about Red and Russell and Cousy a bit, it tries to cover the women's game semi-equally (and tries to compare it to racial issues) but like always it comes off as trying to push it too hard like literally asking the women and only women interviewees what they think about Title IX and all of them have some rote "uh yeah, it was good I guess" reply, but like all Nancy Lieberman wants to do is talk about all the men she idolized growing up and tried to steal moves from lol

Spensie Haywood is amazing, his stories are just absurd, I knew he was a "young, dumb, country boy" that fascinated others early on but not this much... also speaking of Lieberman, her stories are fun too because she's a little older than even like Cheryl Miller or whatever, she went to Rucker Park alone as an eleven year old because she heard that's where people played basketball in NYC and when kids were giving her shit for being a girl she asked them if "you Rucker?" and it always worked

lmao, the ABA wanted to patent/trademark the red, white and blue ball only they only did it with the ABA logo on it, anyone could still make a ball just couldn't stamp ABA on it, also they did no tests before hand, the first game they just painted a ball with regular paint

big chunk of the book is an ABA section because a huge chunk of the sources are people who had ABA roots, also related to that the now retired David Stern for the first time kinda actually admits what the NBA was doing in regards to that and other issues (Connie Hawkins, etc.) when he was just a lowly lawyer for the league, he didn't used to like to admit any of that when he was Commissioner and lifted up Larry O'Brien to heights

by comparison the entire section about the WNBA is five pages long...three if you remove Stern and Val Ackerman's comments about how amazing it was to start it...

also Bill Simmons is one of the interviewees because he's Bill Simmons and apparently that's legally required now even though he only has the same five stories about seeing the Celtics as a kid that he's told for twenty years, also he's the only person in the book to shit talk Wilt while like Bill Russell calls him the best player ever, others talk about how nice and understanding Wilt was to everyone or Larry Brown relays a story about when he was at UCLA and Wilt was in one of Magic's famous pickup games and Magic kept calling goaltends and fouls that Wilt did not feel were entirely accurate so Wilt got serious and wrecked everybody at age 45 or whatever and I may have fused that part of Simmons unnecessary contributions to the book to this simply to retell that story

here's Nancy Lieberman and Rashad McCants (edit: yes, I looked this up obv) on the Mavs D-League Team when she coached it

spoiler (click to show/hide)

STATUS

[close]

[HardcoreRetro]

De tolk van Java by Alfred Birney

It's about a Dutch-Indonesian family during and after the second world war.

[benjipwns]

I'm glad he's doing well, but now I'm stuck with him. First thing everyone still asks me is, "How's Magic?"

[jakefromstatefarm]

The Age of... series is generally seen as his magnum opus, if you want a straightforward, long-duree, global history, that’s probably your best bet with him. The Invention of Tradition is at least as important to modern historiography though, and it’s a nice primer on anti-realism wrt folk cultural/social categories, a project I’m not unsympathetic towards.

Humanities/social sciences moved away from orthodox/political Marxism pretty hard starting in the 70s and esp. in the 80s and 90s and hobsbawm -to my knowledge- is a part of that old guard. His works, esp. the above two, get assimilated into and/or put into dialogue with later work that has a more nebulous, stapled together idea of its leftward politics (cf. Mann’s Sources of Social Power).

[Svejk]

On the second book of the Mistborn trilogy.  Man, these books would make such a great video game!

[chronovore]

On the second book of the Mistborn trilogy.  Man, these books would make such a great video game!

https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2017/08/05/mistborn-rpg-cancelled/

 

[BisMarckie]

Started The Possibility of an Island last night. I have never read anything Houellebecq has written and everything I have heard about his novels ranges from genius to boring pseudo intellectual garbage.

[Crash Dummy]

any good secondary texts on heidegger? all his german terminology is doing my head in

[Madrun Badrun]

Read the framing store to books of blood.  Damn.  Going to start reading that and Kings of the Wyld.

[Madrun Badrun]

10% in and Kings of the Wyld is both hilarious and touching.  "In stories, when a giant was slain, it toppled thunderously to the ground.   In reality, a giant died much the same way anything else did: screaming and shitting itself." 

It's set in a world where mercenary 'bands'  are treated like rock-stars.  Here the synopses  "Clay Cooper and his band were once the best of the best -- the meanest, dirtiest, most feared crew of mercenaries this side of the Heartwyld. Their glory days long past, the mercs have grown apart and grown old, fat, drunk - or a combination of the three. Then an ex-bandmate turns up at Clay's door with a plea for help. His daughter Rose is trapped in a city besieged by an enemy one hundred thousand strong and hungry for blood. Rescuing Rose is the kind of mission that only the very brave or the very stupid would sign up for. It's time to get the band back together for one last tour across the Wyld"--

[Madrun Badrun]

Kings of the Wyld was super fun. 

"At his shoulder walks a sorcerer, a cosmic conversationalist. Enemy of the incurable rot, absent chairman of combustive sciences at the university in Oddsford, and the only living soul above the age of eight to believe in owlbears."

"The entire front of the shrine exploded outward. Blocks of stone rained down on the plaza, bursting on impact into spinning shrapnel shards, and a dragon—a real live you-gotta-be-shitting-me dragon—came roaring from the ruin."

"We will speak of this later, his lower back promised. Oh yes we will."

"Behind him in the empty courtyard, the stones of a distant shore were piled neatly on the man’s grave. Because even a misspent life, he reasoned, was worth remembering."

"The mercenary murmured scant thanks and rushed off, only to be crushed a moment later by a giant’s pounding foot. Bob’s bard turned and fled, wailing and clutching his harp to his chest like a scholar saving a single book from a burning library."

[Madrun Badrun]

Bloody Rose wasn't as good as King's of the Wyld but a good sequel non-the-less and I'm looking forward to the next one.   

"Some people knew how to kill a conversation. Cura, on the other hand, could make it wish it had never been born."

"Tam scowled. “They eat bananas?” Moog shrugged his bony shoulders. “Everything eats bananas.”

“This doesn’t mean you’re off the hook when it comes to being our bard. If I so much as step on a lizard you’d better tell the world I kicked a dragon to death. Sound good?”

"The Giantsbane frontman hurled the chicken down and stomped it to death while the crowd cried foul."

[Madrun Badrun]

Finally started The Black Company after putting it off for years.  Did the first five chapters today.  It's very different.  I like it a lot so far.

[Potato]

Finally started The Black Company after putting it off for years.  Did the first five chapters today.  It's very different.  I like it a lot so far.

The Black Company is pretty amazing. I've read the first three and enjoyed every bit of it.

I didn't go further cause I read that the quality drops off after that and honestly, the ending of the third is pretty satisfying as a conclusion.

I've moved on to The Hogfather. I've been slowly going through Pratchett's Discworld and he just gets better with every book.

So sad he's gone.

[chronovore]

Finally started The Black Company after putting it off for years.  Did the first five chapters today.  It's very different.  I like it a lot so far.

The Black Company is pretty amazing. I've read the first three and enjoyed every bit of it.

I didn't go further cause I read that the quality drops off after that and honestly, the ending of the third is pretty satisfying as a conclusion.

I've moved on to The Hogfather. I've been slowly going through Pratchett's Discworld and he just gets better with every book.

So sad he's gone.

I just finished reading his Wintersmith YA book. I honestly didn't know it was supposed to be YA until the closing voiceover said something about Harper Kids and "if you are interested in Young Adult Fiction, please visit..." I found myself laughing aloud repeatedly throughout the book.

[HardcoreRetro]

Wintersmith is also part 3 in the Tiffany Aching sub-series.

[benjipwns]

do you want just Napoleon or just France or Europe or something global? focus on the war?

on the subject of France, I just read this, which was fun, just fantastically written, I'm surprised somebody didn't think to put "From Gaul to de Gualle" as the subtitle:

[benjipwns]

lmao, holy shit, it actually has that on another edition:


 

[shosta]

https://www.amazon.com/Napoleon-Political-Life-Steven-Englund/dp/0674018036#aw-udpv3-customer-reviews_feature_div

Napoleon's theory and practice of governance. Aka a history of Napoleonic France without the wars, as an inheritor of the revolution and the prelude to Bourbon Restoration.

[benjipwns]

If you want to back up somewhat to the Revolution itself and the conditions it created (the eventual vacuum of which is arguably what created Napoleon's reign), these two are pretty good for that (first one is more modern 2016, latter is 1989), both stop just before Napoleon iirc, so you can get the state of France before Napoleon triumphed in Italy and the Directorate fell:


Both examine the conditions of citizens outside of Paris, especially the former delves into what was happening throughout the still rural and religious France and what eventually brought about the War in Vendee when the Paris-focused Revolution ignored that whole part where they should do more than send out broad statements like "ALL THE LAND IS NOW FREE, END THE CHURCH" and expect it to just be handled. Also what happened when they expected their draft calls for the war with Austria/etc. to be handled similarly. (Too much editorializing about the Revolution beyond the book itself, benji -Ed)

edit: scrounged up the two Napoleonic Wars books I was thinking of:

second one does less war focus and more impact of the war on everything else, especially back home, focus

Penguin's done a great "History of Europe" multi-part series that last few years, but they stupidly lumped 1648-1815 together as "The Age of Revolutions" even though they also put out books for 1919-1939 and 1950-2007, otherwise they would have put together a smart 1789-1815 book that'd be just what you wanted based on at least the ones they have put out in the rest of the series. (You'll also note that the 1848 revolutions are not part of the "age of revolutions" apparently.)

[chronovore]

Wintersmith is also part 3 in the Tiffany Aching sub-series.

Ooh, thanks! I had ZERO inkling that this is part of a series. Didn't even think to look.

[Madrun Badrun]

Up to book six in Dresden Files audio books.  So damn good. 

[benjipwns]

It was this class, and no other, that precipitated riot and bloodshed in Chicago, and it is a notable fact in connection with these communists, that their viciousness and desperation were largely caused by the rantings of a young American communist named Albert Parsons Karakand. [Kara posses] a strange nature in every respect, as he has for several years lived in Chicago with a colored woman, who he has at least called his wife. He is a young man of flippant tongue, and is capable of making a speech that will tingle the blood of that class of characterless rascals that are always standing ready to grasp society by the throat; and while he can excite his auditors, of this class, to the very verge of riot, has the devilish ingenuity in the use of words which has permitted himself to escape deserving punishment.

[HardcoreRetro]

Reading a book about the Red Dead Redemption 2 bad guys? 

What a nerd!