Books - What are you reading? - General

https://cdn.waterstones.com/bookjackets/large/9780/1987/9780198788607.jpg This is more liberating than I thought it'd be. I can kinda understand why there's so many assholes, now.

Its funny, I read half this book and then listened to the whole thing, and I had a similar thing where I didn't really remember how they got places or when they left / arrived. I thought it was probably because I was listening to it in broken up chunks and might not listen daily. In the end, it didn't stop it from being really enjoyable. By the end of the book, I found it didn't really matter whether I understood everything contextually, it was great anyways.

Much of the story is presented as accounts read by the main character in his investigations; that part was the Norwegian sailor's experiences.

I literally just got to that part, and I agree, some of the jargon gets hard to follow (or makes the story hard to follow), but the idea of a Russian space station retrofitted by a bunch of expat Rastafarians is really interesting visually.

A lot of people say that it is kind of a difficult read. I thought it was mostly fine but it did feel like it jumped between scenes and locations without much notice.

Reading "PoC Or GTFO" book about the wonders of reverse engineering and "Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs" which is pretty self explanatory. I'm looking for some space-opery type books like the 2001 series and/or a lore as deep as the Ender's Game series. Anyone have any suggestions?

God damn. I just finished Imajica by Clive Barker, and I can definitely see why he considers it his favorite of all his books. It was a trip, and my girlfriend got pretty into it as well whenever I gave her occasional summaries of what happened as I read. Definitely one of my top favorite books now. If anyone can recommend anything on a similar level I'm all ears. But fuck, that shit just left me feeling a strange mix of content and empty inside.

Sounds a bit like Gattaca.

TRIGGERED

https://files.facepunch.com/forum/upload/236967/7ba6e5f9-1fa3-4eb3-841e-72c009f81f4e/9780385263481.jpg Really enjoying this one despite the fact that I got it spoiled for me a long time ago.

It only took me three months but I finished Neuromancer. I wish I didn’t take so many breaks from reading it (when I’m home in the Summers, I tend to read less since I feel like I should be more social, unless I’m reading during my breaks at work), because jumping back into it every two week so or so was like playing catch up and a lot of the suspense of the last act was kind of lost on me. But still, a good read. I really wanna check out more of Gibson’s stuff.

Anyone else looking forward to/ dreading, Tiamats Wrath the 8th book of The Expanse series?

Started reading Crazy Rich Asians cause the movie was dope

Just finished Dune on audiobook, gonna get the next two the same way.

Been listening to Starship Troopers. Gotta say, it quite often feels like propaganda

Love that book. It's my go to book when I'm camping. I'm going on a 4 day camping trip in October and hope I can read the entire thing

Dune was amazing. Absolutely loved it. Now onto reading something mildly different: Beast Arises series. Just finished the first book I am Slaughter, its setting the stage and it seems its going to be a really good read.

Finished J R by William Gaddis a few weeks ago. It's a good read but it's one of those books that takes you a hundred pages or so to figure out what's going on, it does become both amusing and depressing on how you can tell who's speaking by how many phone calls they make, how many times someone says goddamnit or just plain how little they are able to talk, if at all. What prose is there is excellent: —Boys and girls? yes look at the tombstones some of them are over two hundred years old oh look, look at that one with the weeping cherub carved on it isn’t it dear . . . and they gaped obediently at the bird dropping coursing down that weathered angel’s cheek until the light changed and released them across Broadway and down Wall in disheveled Indian file staggered seriatim by a stench rising from the sidewalk grating at No. 11 until George Washington’s extended hand flung their attention fragmented round the corner into Broad where the lofty pediment at No. 20 threatened to spill its stone comedy of naked labor yoked, high above their heads, to the lively dominion seething within, buffeted by the anxiety of lifetimes’ savings adrift in windbreakers and flowered hats toward the visitors’ gallery where football field hyperbole addressed them in a voice strategically boxed along the rail. https://files.facepunch.com/forum/upload/183/fca7184c-d5b7-4b5b-869e-43ffb504835b/image.png I'm almost halfway through this book and so far I love it. It has a bush full of dead babies and is completely able to get away with it.

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/8/80/TomClancy_TheBearAndTheDragon.jpg Just finished this yesterday. Really interesting take on a war with China. Written in 2000, so it's outdated, but interesting none the less to see how perspective and Chinese warfighting ability could be different in the late 2010's like you see in another great war fiction, Ghost Fleet which paints a terrifying picture of what a conflict with China would be like today.

And shockingly enough, that’s far from the most insane shit in that book. Blood Meridian is great.

Atlas shrugged is pretty good, though I preferred the Fountainhead. I found the best way to read them is to skip the extended, on-the-nose monologues from the characters (especially that 30 page one- you know the one). As long as you've been following the story you understand her and her character's points anyway. I just finished reading 'The Man Who Was Thursday' which was pretty good but unfortunately, like most older works, has been copied by mainstream culture quite a bit so the plot was sadly opaque.

if you have to skip extended parts of a book in order to arrive at a favorable opinion of it i'm skeptical that it could be called "good" and if we're being honest that's not even really reading either... recently finished/recommend: https://files.facepunch.com/forum/upload/290401/531f3e0e-b6f8-4c79-923c-43089e33f5aa/books.png open to recommendations of further bleak realism along the krasnahorkai line

https://files.facepunch.com/forum/upload/58261/5a866012-2d4b-4eb5-bd5e-2917cda0c245/51gHsudGXsL._SX306_BO1,204,203,200_.jpg Just started reading this about 75 pages in it's pretty good so far. Blood Meridian is one of my favorite books it's a fantastic read. I don't know how much you like country music but if you do check out the album "The last Pale Light In the West" by Ben Nichols. The entire album is based on characters/situations in Blood Meridian it's great you may of heard the title track on the walking dead.

https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/518WlL4gqHL._SX321_BO1,204,203,200_.jpg https://www.amazon.com/dp/0812972155/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_rnnPBbJHAHJ9H Masters of Doom - David Kushner About id software. Primarily, john carmack and john romero. Really fascinating book about the founding of id software and the conflicts that led to romero leaving to work on daikatana at ion storm

Done with Blood Meridian, was an excellent read and the ending was fantastically executed. I was expecting something horribly visceral but instead it comes off as both triumphant and extremely cold at once, which feels somehow worse than some gory finale. https://files.facepunch.com/forum/upload/183/5333277c-a275-4c7b-a735-93a6de070b29/image.png Started this as soon as I finished Blood Meridian. I don't have much to say about it so far.

Currently reading Oathbringer by Brandon Sanderson, still waiting on the third book by Patrick Rothfuss in the Kingkiller Chronicle series.

Currently on "Stoicism and the art of Happiness" next book in line is "the village effect" then "global minotaur"

How are you liking it? And same to the latter, dude takes his sweet time with each instalment.

I am enjoying it a lot, I wish I had more to say but I'm very much a casual reader and I've followed this series for many years, started reading it as a teenager, so I haven't got many critical thoughts on it. How about you? And yeah, though especially with this one. Ofcourse I remember him saying he spent like 10 years on the first book so it's no surprise, I have no idea how he's gonna be able to close the series with the third book though, it's gonna be one hell of a long book if so.

A few weeks ago I finished The Rise and Fall of Ancient Egypt by Toby Wilkinson. It covers 2950 BC to 30 when Rome invaded, I thought it was really cool and readable. A few years ago I found that I really like books that cover a long span of history or regions that they aren't likely to teach about it US schools. I've read a bunch of James Michener's books which I highly recommend. He has a loose formula that he uses which is pretty cool. So for example, The Source is about archaeologists excavating a hill in Israel that they think will have ruins underneath it, and they find artifacts from 10 different time periods going all the way back to 10,000 BC and each of the following chapters is a separate story from each of those times leading up to modern day. When you finish one of his books there's this incredible feeling of scale.