The book thread.

[Tweed]

"To read too many books is harmful." - Mao Zedong

I didn't see a dedicated book thread, we should probably read books while we still can. I've been trying to catch up on all the literature I never bothered reading when I was young and foolish. The kind of junk everyone is supposed to have read. I read David Copperfield not too long ago and then moved on to Tale of Two Cities and I liked both. Now I'm going through Lovecraft which I'd been meaning to do for ages.

What about you? Do you read books? Do you like books?

[Rigwort]

I read David Copperfield when I was a lad, really influential. It was nice. Recently finished Brothers Karamazov, that one was very nice, really like Dostoyevsky's lighter stuff. Demons and The Idiot were too much. Have been thinking of re-reading Don Quixote, but putting that off for now. I fell off the Classical literature train a looong time ago, and have been meaning to try to get back on. I might read that book of Russian poetry that's been rotting away on my bookshelf.

[WhiteShark]

Haven't done much serious reading in a while. Few months ago I was working through C.S. Lewis' Space Trilogy. I'm paused about halfway through the third book. Last one before that was The Prince, which is surprisingly short and I highly recommend it. Actually, I'm paused partway through a bunch of books now that I think about it. I think I'd rather not think about it.

[Tweed]

Haven't done much serious reading in a while. Few months ago I was working through C.S. Lewis' Space Trilogy. I'm paused about halfway through the third book. Last one before that was The Prince, which is surprisingly short and I highly recommend it. Actually, I'm paused partway through a bunch of books now that I think about it. I think I'd rather not think about it.

I read Out of the Silent Planet and Perlandra, but I got stopped halfway through That Hideous Strength and never finished it.

[Emphyrio]

"To read too many books is harmful." - Mao Zedong

Did he really say this? When Mao was a boy and in university he read constantly whenever he had free time.

[Tweed]

"To read too many books is harmful." - Mao Zedong

Did he really say this? When Mao was a boy and in university he read constantly whenever he had free time.

Like the leader of a communist state wants his plebes to be educated or something.

[Gregz]

I sometimes read before bed. I do annual rereads of Dune, Neuromancer, The Exorcist, Pet Sematary, Shakespeare, Alan Moore comics, etc.

Just finished Dune for the millionth time, and now I'm rereading Preacher by Garth Ennis for the 5th? time.

[Tweed]

Still putting away the Lovecraft, it's amusing to read his funnier works and think that this is the guy who gave us an entire horror genre.
Added Bram Stoker's Dracula to my list and reading that now too.

[madbringer]

I sometimes read before bed. I do annual rereads of Dune, Neuromancer, The Exorcist, Pet Sematary, Shakespeare, Alan Moore comics, etc.

Just finished Dune for the millionth time, and now I'm rereading Preacher by Garth Ennis for the 5th? time.

I cannot read Dune anymore. I thought it was the best thing ever like 20 years ago but now it just bores me.

[madbringer]

I wanna recommend a series of books, "Galaxy's Edge", it's a scifi military fiction with a lot of political drama. Imagine Star Wars but not gay, basically

[Emphyrio]

I wanna recommend a series of books, "Galaxy's Edge", it's a scifi military fiction with a lot of political drama. Imagine Star Wars but not gay, basically

i think this and between two fires get recommended a lot mostly because theyre free on audible

[Kalarion]

I started reading the Sun Eater series by Christopher Ruocchio, I finished the first book. I'm probably going to just drop it, I absolutely loathe the protagonist. His mindset represents everything I despise about modern elites (hate their own people and culture, idolize foreign culture, idolize women in general and pick a single woman to worship particularly complete with nauseating paeans in her praise, etc). Someone in the Codex books thread, I can't remember who, said it turns out later the first book's setup gets subverted, maybe I'll try one more. We'll see.

[ERYFKRAD]

Reading Poul Anderson's Technic league series. Not bad stuff, but I think I like his historical/fantastic stuff better purely because of how dated the dialogue sounds. I hight X, son of Y really fell by the wayside.

[Tweed]

I started reading the Sun Eater series by Christopher Ruocchio, I finished the first book. I'm probably going to just drop it, I absolutely loathe the protagonist. His mindset represents everything I despise about modern elites (hate their own people and culture, idolize foreign culture, idolize women in general and pick a single woman to worship particularly complete with nauseating paeans in her praise, etc). Someone in the Codex books thread, I can't remember who, said it turns out later the first book's setup gets subverted, maybe I'll try one more. We'll see.

Read Camp of the Saints

[Emphyrio]

is clive cussler any good

[WhiteShark]

I torrented Alexander Scourby's reading of the King James Version for listening while walking now that the sun has shown its face again. His is my favorite reading of the ones I sampled. Generally I prefer reading over listening but since it's material I'm already familiar with I don't have to fret over missing anything. We were discussing recidivism and the death penalty in IRC yesterday so this part, which I had forgotten, struck me:

9:5 And surely your blood of your lives will I require; at the hand of every beast will I require it, and at the hand of man; at the hand of every man's brother will I require the life of man.
9:6 Whoso sheddeth man's blood, by man shall his blood be shed: for in the image of God made he man.

It seems that the death penalty, above all human considerations of crime reduction and reformation, is mandated by God.

[Tweed]

Been continuing my 19th century literature kick with Pride and Prejudice, a book that every normie is supposed to have read in high school. Of course I never bothered with most of the crap everyone is supposed to have read...it's kinda boring innit?

Anyone got some 19th century book recommendations? Also interested in Cyberpunk, Dieselpunk if anyone has actually written any, and stuff like Bram Stoker's Dracula which I enjoyed the shit out of.

[MadPreacher]

Been continuing my 19th century literature kick with Pride and Prejudice, a book that every normie is supposed to have read in high school. Of course I never bothered with most of the crap everyone is supposed to have read...it's kinda boring innit?

Anyone got some 19th century book recommendations? Also interested in Cyberpunk, Dieselpunk if anyone has actually written any, and stuff like Bram Stoker's Dracula which I enjoyed the shit out of.

Try Edgar Allen Poe or even Mark Twain.

[Acrux]

Of course I never bothered with most of the crap everyone is supposed to have read...it's kinda boring innit?

That's because Jane Austen was the original "chick lit" writer. She was a fine writer, but the Brontes were better.

Anyone got some 19th century book recommendations?

Robert Louis Stevenson - Kidnapped, Catriona, The Black Arrow, The Master of Ballantrae are his best.
Arthur Conan Doyle - not just Sherlock Holmes. His historical fiction is good, too.

Tim Powers's book "The Anubis Gates" is considered one of the first steampunk novels. Almost anything by him is great.

[Rigwort]

Been continuing my 19th century literature kick with Pride and Prejudice, a book that every normie is supposed to have read in high school. Of course I never bothered with most of the crap everyone is supposed to have read...it's kinda boring innit?

Anyone got some 19th century book recommendations? Also interested in Cyberpunk, Dieselpunk if anyone has actually written any, and stuff like Bram Stoker's Dracula which I enjoyed the shit out of.

Well you picked the worst of the lot. Only young, naive women like that garbage. Mark Twain is alright, I liked Tom Sawyer and I like Jules Verne's 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea. You may have already read that, but I think it's especially good. There's also Herman Melville, I liked Moby Dick.

Otherwise, I haven't read much is what I'm realizing right now... Maybe I should do it more.

[rusty_shackleford]

[maidenhaver]

Do I read it bros?

[Kalarion]

Graham McNeill. Hard N-O.

[Priest]

I wish my version had this cover, its a lot better than the generic red one.

[WhiteShark]

Progress report: I am about 3/4s of the way through That Hideous Strength now, and in parallel I've also been reading On Resistance to Evil by Force by Ivan Alexandrovich Ilyin. The latter is so far an excellent philosophical critique of pacifism. The author is mainly attacking Tolstoy, and thankfully there are abundant footnotes to give context, but I've found his arguments and conclusions quite broadly applicable. As for listening, I'm up to Numbers 29 in the KJV and halfway through the Gospel of Saint Mark in Japanese.

[Emphyrio]

I start reading 100x more books than I finish. I'm a picky reader and will drop something the second it bores me.

In the last week-

Started reading Josephus's Jewish War. It requires more attention than Plutarch, more attention than I'm willing to give at the moment.

Started reading Storm of Steel. It's fine but I'm burned out on modern war stuff for the moment.

Started reading Terry Goodkind's Wizards First Rule, because I was told that it's about an army of blonde bondage babes. And good googley do I hate this writing style that is so common in modern fiction, where there are three sentences describing a character's thoughts for every one sentence where the character actually does something. Or very boring mundane actions are listed line after line. This is why I mostly read either old books, biography or history.

Started reading Robert Silverberg's Majipoor Chronicles. He also has way too much thinking, but he's a better writer. Except for the (((berg))) stuff, of which there is plenty. The book is five short stories on a planet called Majipoor. The first story is about a whore who goes to live alone naked in the jungle to find herself after a breakup. A big, black, smelly immigrant alien comes along and they fuck. She walks back into town with the black alien on her arm deliberately to offend everyone with what a disgusting whore she is. To her disappointment, nobody cares, not even her ex boyfriend, who is genuinely pleased to meet the big black buck. In despair the whore tells the alien to fuck off, and within three months he's found a mate and produced eight black hatchlings. In a few months she returns to town to find it crawling with new immigrant aliens, all different kinds, which the government has invited to live there. And nobody minds at all! In fact, everyone loves them! She marries her ex-boyfriend, who reemphasizes that he really doesn't care at all that she had reptilian BBC. This one seemed the most personal and inspired of Silverberg's stories, like it truly came from the heart.

Started reading Theodore Sturgeon's The Cosmic Rape because I thought it would be about rape. Surprisingly I was not disappointed, the rape happens in chapter 2. This one is fast-paced and only about 120 pages so I might even finish it.

[Emphyrio]

I dropped everything in my last post without finishing.

25% through The Iron Dragon's Daughter. I started reading it by accident, because there's no way I would have started reading this if I knew what it was about. Basically Artemis Fowl if the faeries were evil and forcing him to build dragon fighter jets. It's surprisingly good.

Radix- really good first half. I highly recommend the first half.

[Val the Moofia Boss]

A couple years ago I threw out fantasy books that were collecting dust on my bookshelf. Dragonlance, Icewind Dale, Warcraft, Warhammer 40k, Dune, etc. Books that I would never pick up again. I kept the books that I read multiple times and would probably one day read again (Chronicles of Narnia, The Hobbit, The Door Within Trilogy). Since then I bought the 7 book long Dragonriders of Pern series and overall quite enjoyed it (though Dragonsinger was rather boring and I stalled out on that one for a few weeks). I then bought the first Black Company novel. The idea of a fantasy series from the perspective of the bad guys sounds cool, but I found actually reading the book to be a chore. I got in 70 pages before I stalled out. I think the issue is that the book didn't really get me to care about the characters and want to turn the page to find out what happened next to them.

I like reading behind-the-scenes and making of books for films and videogames, though sadly only a few of them are good. "The Secret History of Star Wars" which documents the struggles of making the films, what happened in pre, during, and in post production, the reception to each film and how that affect LucasFilm, what happened in between RotJ and TPM, how Lucas established his own independent production company outside of Hollywood, etc. "The Frodo Franchise" which was about the financial side of the Peter Jackson LotR trilogy and how that affected the movies and the marketing campaign. "The Art of STAR WARS: Episode III" was really interesting, since the concept art was made before a script was written and inspired the script, so the ideas proposed could be really wild. Normally concept art is restrained since it is made after a script is written so it's just a blueprint for costumer and set designers. "The Making of Avatar" which was about the struggle of creating the movie and the creation of the creature and environment designs for it. "The World of Warcraft Diary". Etc.

[WhiteShark]

I completed That Hideous Strength, especially enjoying the depiction of the mindsets of the hellbound villains as they met their end. I also finally came back to Plato's Republic and, discovering that I only had 40 pages left to go, powered through to the end. I was surprised to discover that the penultimate section was on the immortality of the soul and the very last bit a story about the afterlife itself that was, barring the reincarnation aspect, surprisingly similar to the Christian understanding. I'm still picking away at On Resistance to Evil by Force but while staying at my uncle's house I found a book called The Confederate Reader, a collection of Confederate writings ranging from government publications and military orders to memoirs and personal letters, so I intend to work on that next.

[2factorauth]

i recently read teh swarm
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0808491/
its attrocious
1500 pages of horrible characterization
you can literally skip 5 pages after 1 page of content
it supposedly was a best selling book
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