What are you reading?

[Rydeen]

Permanent Record - Ed Snowden

It's not as technical as No Place to Hide by Glenn Greenwald, but that's not really what it's for. It provides context, the personal story. I like his writing so far. His way of thinking and personality is very similar to my own. I read over a hundred pages in a few days without realizing it.

 

[Erotic Materia]

I just finished Watership Down.

I gotta say, I was steeling myself for a gut-punch, considering how much I've heard. But... I feel that I was mislead. I love me some bunnies, and the story was good, but nothing amazing.

 

[Clement Rage]

The Last Wish, the first witcher novel. Kinda disappointing, they're mostly 'fairy tales with an edgy twist' rather than something particularly new.

 

[Roger]

The Last Wish, the first witcher novel. Kinda disappointing, they're mostly 'fairy tales with an edgy twist' rather than something particularly new.

The greater story takes off in the subsequent books.

 

[Dee]

I've finished it already, but Joe Abercrombie's A Little Hatred. I can hardly wait for the next installment. This whole series has been one of my absolute favorites.

 

[Prism]

Permanent Record - Ed Snowden

It's not as technical as No Place to Hide by Glenn Greenwald, but that's not really what it's for. It provides context, the personal story. I like his writing so far. His way of thinking and personality is very similar to my own. I read over a hundred pages in a few days without realizing it.

Fun fact that you may already know: Edward Snowden was on anime sites in the '90s and had this as his profile for a while.

I'm reading a couple of things now - Norwegian Wood is something I'm finally glad to open up, seeing as Murakami is pretty well-regarded. I'm also reading Myths and Legends of Ancient Greece and Rome by E. M. Berens to brush myself up on historical culture. (Antiquity has been a big influence on me)

Then I have a copy of Dandelion Wine I've been meaning to read for a while...I really want to get to that...

 

[Lord Noctis]

My latest read is Imaginary Friend, by Stephen Chbosky. Actually got an auto graphed copy for half price, super nice. Book itself was a really damn good read. It feels a lot like a Sephen King novel in terms of it's tone and style. But unlike most Stephen King novels, I actually liked the ending

 

[Rydeen]

I'm currently reading: Your Patient Safety Survival Guide: How to Protect Yourself and Others from Medical Errors. It caught my eye in the library since I know that this is unfortunately a huge issue in the medical field. I've read about a fifth of the book so far and it's well cited, so I am interested in what she has to say. We'll see how long it takes for me to finish it now that school has started again.

A few weeks ago I read Consciousness: Confessions of a Romantic Reductionist by Christof Koch, neuroscientist, who was a close colleague of Francis Crick, a luminary in DNA research. A rare credible read on the nature of sentience. At its heart, it's a neurology book. It's almost 10 years old, which is kind of an eternity, but we actually knew quite a bit on this topic (albeit still with huge gaps, obviously). He hasn't written his next major book on this, but I would like to see in depth what he thinks about all these strides in AI deep learning.

I read exclusively non-fiction. If I want a story, that's what a good anime or game is for.

Fun fact that you may already know: Edward Snowden was on anime sites in the '90s and had this as his profile for a while.

Heheh, yeah, I'd seen those articles, but I felt bad because it was definitely a violation of his obviously strong love for privacy. He really is kind of a modern martyr.

 

[Cthulhu]

Finished err, one of the Witcher books recently, I had paused it for over half a year because it was getting kinda tedious - lots of names and locations and family trees being yeeted around.

Currently reading Ignition!, a book by an old rocket scientist telling the history of rocket fuel development. It's kinda tedious as well, I mean sure the guy has a funny tone, but he also bombards you with pages upon pages of chemistry terms that I'm not really familiar with. Hypergolic RFNA hydrazine anilines. Also, kerosene.

 

[Russell]

HG Wells collection, got it for Xmas.

I've read The War of The Worlds, The Island of Doctor Moreau & The Time Machine and I'm currently reading The Invisible Man.
Doctor Moreau was a disappointment. Not much happens, I was expecting more since they make a film out of every few decades.

I really want to see a faithfull adaptation of War of the Worlds now i've read it. The recent BBC three parter was a huge disapponitment, this was the best part & the only part worth remembering:

 

[Ghost X]

Not sure if this should belong here or in the comics section, but I marathoned the manga of Akira last weekend. I enjoyed seeing what the animated movie kept and left out, and thought it made some creative choices that were superior to how some things were handled in the manga. I was already aware before reading that the movie largely borrowed only from the first third of the story, with some elements from other parts, so it was interesting to see the rest of the story. If I had it my way in making the movie I'd have still done some things differently. Would make a good trilogy of films, but some work would need to be done on the middle section of the manga, which I found not that engaging. Will be interesting to see what the upcoming American Akira movie does with the source material(s), though I suspect it'll be shit like the GitS live adaption. Granted, Taika Waititi is apparently at the helm, so shall have to wait n' see. Hard to beat one of the best movies ever created though . If I were him, I'd just do something completely different with it.

 

[Erotic Materia]

Hard to beat one of the best movies ever created though

Are you referring to Akira here? If so, we have wildly differing opinions.
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In the vein of "Stuff I'm reading", I have been voraciously tearing through the web series Worm. The protagonist is Taylor, a 15-year-old girl in a parallel Earth where superpowers exist. She develops powers of her own (unbeknownst to anyone else, secret identities are a very big thing in this universe), which manifest as controlling any and all bugs in the area (range varies depending on the circumstances). She has dreams of becoming a superhero, which doesn't go entirely as intended; on her first time out using her powers in a "heroic" sense, she succeeds in taking down a particularly powerful local supervillian. However, another group of supervillains mistakes her for a new, solo villain, and they promptly invite her to join their group (since she inadvertently saved their asses). She agrees, in the secret hopes she'll gather valuable info she can feed to the local hero group to secure herself a place among their members. Although you quickly learn that things aren't so black and white as "good vs evil". There are some real stand-up "villains", some morally bankrupt "heroes", and a few who aren't easily categorized.

Superhero novels are not typically my thing, but the author is a phenomenal writer, crafting a supremely engaging cast, in a world that artfully manages to suspend disbelief, despite the physics-breaking supernatural powers so many of the characters possess. Much of the story is spent in the minds of the characters, rather than just the "pew-pew, LASERBLAST" aspect (although there is a lot of that, and very creatively utilized). It also touches on some pretty dark themes on occasion. Definitely not all sunshine and rainbows.

A few things to note:
A - It's not a book, it's an online web series. Which is great for me, as most of my reading lately I do on my phone.
B - It's free to read.
C - There's a LOT of content. Approximately 1,680,000 words. For comparison, the entirety of the A Song of Ice and Fire series is 1,736,054 words. And this guy wrote it in two years.

Anyway, I recommend this series 150%. It's well-written, it's the most creative use of powers I've seen, and it's addictive as hell. I can't stop.

 

[Ghost X]

Then... we have wildly different opinions .

 

[liam8525]

Yesterday I started reading "Argate Online" (https://mangazuki.me/argate-online/) manga because I like reading mangas.

 

[Clement Rage]

Read about half of Worm years ago and gave up.

Slowly trying to get through John Stewart Mill's "On Representative Government". It was my emergency lockdown read that I didn't get finished.

 

[Clement Rage]

So, I uh, I read Troubled Blood, the new Cormoran Strike novel.

Spoiler

The internal monologues get weird, it starts out with Robin and Cormoran's oddly jeering perspectives on the people they meet, which given that it largely includes grieving and very stressed people comes off kind of like both our leads secretly hold all their friends and relatives in contempt, which makes them kind of unsympathetic, at least to me.

The draw of the earlier books was how unusually compassionate the writing was towards people for a crime novel, so this is a stumbling block early on. I noticed shades of this back in Lethal White, but it ends up being stepped up a gear in this one, gradually fading as the book goes on.
Cormoran and Robin's romantic plot was usually the weakest part of the prior books, it improves a bit here but still isn't a highlight.

Spoiler: Elephant in the room

There are no trans people in this book. An opportunistic serial killer uses a woman's coat as a disguise sometimes, because people are less suspicious of a woman. He also unconvincingly lies to the police that he cross dresses when they find clothes belonging to his victims in his lair.

He is not trans, he is not a cross dresser, and he is

Spoiler: killer

not the main focus of the book, he's a red herring. The killer is a cis het woman, who is much more successful than he was.

The theme, such as it is, is nothing like 'never trust a man in a dress', it's more like 'men are dangerous, but do not assume that because someone is feminine or a woman, that they cannot be dangerous'

The book could lose 200 pages, and I would say it's a step down from its predecessors, but still a pretty good read.

 

[Wol]

Read the entire trilogy of "Leyendas de Poniente", by author X. F. Moix.

The characters are amazingly charming, and while its mostly a misterious story about a priest and a group of bandits discovering legends related to the catalans, it knows how to be epic and funny.

It was an immersive read, and it felt like I went into a big and memorable journey by the end of it. More than recommended.

 

[thelastmagus]

I'm currently diving back into Clive Barker by going through his YA series Abarat, and man, it's incredible. Almost like a bizarro, weird fiction Narnia in a way.

I also just finished Joe Abercrombie's First Law trilogy, and just last year I finished Brandon Sanderson's Mistborn trilogy and I am really looking forward to maybe picking up The Stormlight Archive sometime soon.

 

[crazyrabbits23]

"Oryx and Crake" (for a Lit class--apparently, this novel has been quite popular, but I hadn't heard about it at all until I was assigned it. Loving it)

LTTP, but it's a solid read. It definitely requires you to have read Year of the Flood/MaddAddam, and the concepts are a little out there (the trilogy can be seen as a dry run for the fantastical YA-like elements Atwood injected into The Testaments), but I generally enjoyed the series overall.

I guess you could say I'm a bit of an Atwood fan.

Shake Hands With the Devil, the book by the head of the peacekeeping force in Rwanda. Painful but valuable reading.

If you haven't yet, you should read "Waiting for Last Light," his memoir about PTSD and what it's like to live with it.

 

[Clement Rage]

I will look into that.

Right now I'm reading The Definitive Guide to Screenwriting, by Syd Field. It's a good read, but this dude is a big part of the reason that Hollywood is so uncreative and bad at adaptations, because they took his book as The One True Way rather than one of many.

 

[thelastmagus]

LTTP, but it's a solid read. It definitely requires you to have read Year of the Flood/MaddAddam, and the concepts are a little out there (the trilogy can be seen as a dry run for the fantastical YA-like elements Atwood injected into The Testaments), but I generally enjoyed the series overall.

I guess you could say I'm a bit of an Atwood fan.

Lucky! I could have gone to see a talk with her when I was at uni, unfortunately there was a huge traffic jam in the city so I wound up calling the ticketers for a refund and just walking back home from the bus stop on the outskirts with some fish and chips.

 

[crazyrabbits23]

Lucky! I could have gone to see a talk with her when I was at uni, unfortunately there was a huge traffic jam in the city so I wound up calling the ticketers for a refund and just walking back home from the bus stop on the outskirts with some fish and chips.

Yeah, I can sympathize -- there are a couple of experiences I wished I had been able to make it out to a big event. One of my biggest regrets in life (and there aren't many of them) was that I decided not to go to a private concert Gord Downie (The Tragically Hip) was holding in Toronto. I was told someone could get me in if I wanted, but I didn't have the time I wanted to get myself ready and go out. This was during his solo career, when he was making his own music away from the rest of the band. It would have been me and about 14 other people in a small club -- my friend (the one who invited me) said it was incredible.

In the case of Atwood, I've been fortunate -- I've been able to see her speak three times (you can see my head in the left-side aisle (I'm in the vest and white shirt), three rows back from the front, at 3:36 in this video). I can't say I completely like the way she speaks in public (she does this thing now where she pauses after almost every line during a reading and waits for applause; it's just become annoying), but it's countered by the fact that she'll often ask people for random names, concepts or ideas, and if it's good enough, she jots it down on a scrap of paper that she stuffs in her purse. It's kind of hilarious.

I'm a big collector of her signed works, though -- both from a literary standpoint (I consider her to be the most accessible literary/speculative fiction writer in the country, even beyond Alice Munro) and a collector's standpoint (she's got tons of varied works to choose from).

 

[thelastmagus]

Yeah, I can sympathize -- there are a couple of experiences I wished I had been able to make it out to a big event. One of my biggest regrets in life (and there aren't many of them) was that I decided not to go to a private concert Gord Downie (The Tragically Hip) was holding in Toronto. I was told someone could get me in if I wanted, but I didn't have the time I wanted to get myself ready and go out. This was during his solo career, when he was making his own music away from the rest of the band. It would have been me and about 14 other people in a small club -- my friend (the one who invited me) said it was incredible.

In the case of Atwood, I've been fortunate -- I've been able to see her speak three times (you can see my head in the left-side aisle (I'm in the vest and white shirt), three rows back from the front, at 3:36 in this video). I can't say I completely like the way she speaks in public (she does this thing now where she pauses after almost every line during a reading and waits for applause; it's just become annoying), but it's countered by the fact that she'll often ask people for random names, concepts or ideas, and if it's good enough, she jots it down on a scrap of paper that she stuffs in her purse. It's kind of hilarious.

I'm a big collector of her signed works, though -- both from a literary standpoint (I consider her to be the most accessible literary/speculative fiction writer in the country, even beyond Alice Munro) and a collector's standpoint (she's got tons of varied works to choose from).

That's awesome! I've read a few of her works - Handmaid's Tale, Alias Grace, and several of her essays on writing. Definitely need to read more of her stuff.

Today 'm reading Robert Chambers' 'The King in Yellow'.

 

[crazyrabbits23]

Yeah, she's got a lot -- I've recommended to a couple of friends that if they decide to get into her work, they should either go for the Myths series she did (Penelopiad/Hag-Seed), Journals of Susanna Moodie (which is basically just a bunch of short poems with accompanying serigraphs) or her newest book, Dearly (which has a number of poems focusing on aging, death and acceptance). Blind Assassin is fairly good as well. There's also a recent title I picked up recently from her, "In Other Worlds: SF and the Human Imagination," that goes into her thought process on writing some ideas and concepts that's quite good as well.

I've been relatively focused as of late on trying to get signed copies of a couple of her older titles -- just got a 4th printing copy of The Circle Game a couple months back for a mint. I consider her works great "investment" pieces as well.

 

[BlueCollarNerd]

My favorite book Arundel by kenneth roberts. Ive read it many times and always recommend it. I might be a little biased because the beginning of the book takes place in my home town during the 1700s. I love hearing of the relationships between the native americans(abenaki) and the settlers. Reading about areas that i still travel, swim and fish. The story then goes onto a describe the battle of quebec durring the revolutionary war, but its all the hardships and struggle on the way that i really enjoy. Its a good reminder of how easy everything is now.