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Kart Barfunkel posted:Okay, thread. You guys really helped me last time, got me to finally jump on Dubliners which was excellent, so I’m gonna try again. (Seriously, Dubliners reminded me how great a book can be, and it really helped reignite my passion for reading.) Here are 5 books in my TBR pile that I intend to read. What should I read first/which do YOU think is the best? Roadside picnic is great and poignant as hell.
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Apr 8, 2024 03:36
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Selachian posted:Bill Bryson's A Short History of Nearly Everything. Just keep in mind Bryson is a lovely hack, and probably most of the stuff in all his books is just made-up poo poo he Altavista'd in 1998 and then forgot the details.
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Apr 8, 2024 11:04
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I just finished the Annihilation trilogy and I’m looking for something similar to that. I guess I’m looking for “anomalous zone” sci-fi, similar to Roadside Picnic or the STALKER series of games.
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Apr 8, 2024 20:09
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Combatace posted:I just finished the Annihilation trilogy and I’m looking for something similar to that. I guess I’m looking for “anomalous zone” sci-fi, similar to Roadside Picnic or the STALKER series of games. American Elsewhere is a really great spin on this sub genre.
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Apr 9, 2024 02:36
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Building on that, if I loved the Southern Reach trilogy but think the premise of Borne sounds incredibly dumb, might I still enjoy Borne? I really wanna read more of his stuff, but none of it sounds particularly interesting to me.
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Apr 10, 2024 03:24
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Slugworth posted:Building on that, if I loved the Southern Reach trilogy but think the premise of Borne sounds incredibly dumb, might I still enjoy Borne? I really wanna read more of his stuff, but none of it sounds particularly interesting to me. i enjoyed it, though admittedly the setting is more campy than it is mysterious in comparison to the southern reach trilogy. regardless, the central relationship is well realized emotionally and the way he humanizes a non-human character feels authentic and interesting.
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Apr 10, 2024 03:34
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Slugworth posted:Building on that, if I loved the Southern Reach trilogy but think the premise of Borne sounds incredibly dumb, might I still enjoy Borne? I really wanna read more of his stuff, but none of it sounds particularly interesting to me. I loved Southern Reach and enjoyed Borne a lot! They’re not really similar though, beyond the latter’s environment being vaguely oppressive in a sort of similar way. Got a much closer vibe to the Area X stuff in, say, The Stars Are Legion, Embassytown, or Ligotti short stories (The Town Manager is a great example). The Jeff Vandermeer work that helped me find the most similar works was The Weird, and big recommend on that, it’s a huge anthology of the last 100ish years of “weird” short fiction.
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Apr 10, 2024 14:29
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Any recommendations for a ‘fun’ math book? My 14 yo daughter is very interested in math and I’m trying to find her something that’s more interesting than a textbook, but maybe still on the technical side. She’s more math-minded (and probably more talented) than me and I have a PhD in biology.
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Apr 10, 2024 23:48
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newts posted:Any recommendations for a ‘fun’ math book? Flatland by Edward Abbott?
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Apr 10, 2024 23:50
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Really Big Numbers and Gallery of the Infinite are awesome.
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Apr 10, 2024 23:57
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I'd just get one of those big number puzzle books
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Apr 11, 2024 00:52
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newts posted:Any recommendations for a ‘fun’ math book? The Number Devil by Hans Magnus Enzensberger The Code Book by Simon Singh (he also wrote Fermat's Last Theorem) Logicomix Alex Bellos's maths books are fun: http://www.alexbellos.com/maths Martin Gardner's books (at her age I really enjoyed the Annotated Alice which has a lot about the mathematics and logic of Alice In Wonderland) fez_machine fucked around with this message at 01:29 on Apr 11, 2024 |
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Apr 11, 2024 01:23
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Thank you, all! I will pick a couple and report back.
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Apr 11, 2024 01:35
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Larry Gonick's Cartoon Guide to Algebra, Cartoon Guide to Geometry, and Cartoon Guide to Calculus.
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Apr 11, 2024 01:42
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Action Jacktion posted:Larry Gonick's Cartoon Guide to Algebra, Cartoon Guide to Geometry, and Cartoon Guide to Calculus. oh yeah these!
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Apr 11, 2024 02:09
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newts posted:Any recommendations for a ‘fun’ math book? Throw her into the deep end with Godel Escher Bach. I’m half joking but also I think if I’d read that book when I was in school I would have been way more into math.
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Apr 11, 2024 04:43
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Action Jacktion posted:Larry Gonick's Cartoon Guide to Algebra, Cartoon Guide to Geometry, and Cartoon Guide to Calculus. I didn't know he wrote those and now I have to buy them dammit
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Apr 11, 2024 18:44
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Gonick's editor was Jackie Kennedy. Just a factoid.
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Apr 11, 2024 18:51
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newts posted:Any recommendations for a ‘fun’ math book? These lists might be helpful: https://kasmana.people.cofc.edu/MATHFICT/readinglists.php https://kasmana.people.cofc.edu/MATHFICT/search.php?go=yes&genre=ya&orderby=title https://kasmana.people.cofc.edu/MATHFICT/search.php?go=yes&genre=chi&orderby=title fez_machine fucked around with this message at 02:43 on Apr 12, 2024 |
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Apr 12, 2024 02:23
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Prime Obsession: Bernhard Riemann and the Greatest Unsolved Problem in Mathematics is a favorite of mine.
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Apr 12, 2024 05:02
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Thank you again! These all look interesting.
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Apr 12, 2024 20:41
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UnbearablyBlight posted:Throw her into the deep end with Godel Escher Bach. I’m half joking but also I think if I’d read that book when I was in school I would have been way more into math. I'd heartily second that recommendation. I've read it at least a half dozen times, when I was younger I mostly read the story sections and as I got older read more of the actual stuff they were about. I also remember that I liked The Number Devil as a youth as was recommended above. I've recently gotten back into reading a lot more now I've unearthed my eReader. Most of what I read tends to be sci-fi, and lately I'm really craving sci-fi that specifically has novel treatments of genders, sexualities and relationship structures. I've got several excellent anthologies on those themes, I loved Left Hand of Darkness and I was recently started back on my bullshit with reading the middle section of The Gods Themselves. Any recommendations that might have flown under the radar? woke kaczynski fucked around with this message at 17:40 on Apr 15, 2024 |
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Apr 15, 2024 17:32
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woke kaczynski posted:
Jack Chalker's Well World and Philip Jose Farmer's Riverworld serieses (?) both deal with gender identity issues to a degree, in that people can get reincarnated into different genders than they were first born into. I haven't read them for 3+ decades and while my recollection is that they looked at such issues with more progressiveness then might be expected from their 60s / 70s publishing dates, I can't reliably vouch for their overall quality or sensibility.
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Apr 15, 2024 18:50
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woke kaczynski posted:I'd heartily second that recommendation. I've read it at least a half dozen times, when I was younger I mostly read the story sections and as I got older read more of the actual stuff they were about. I also remember that I liked The Number Devil as a youth as was recommended above. Can't go wrong with Triptree or the award that used to be named after her: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Otherwise_Award Delany's Trouble on Triton and Stars in My Pocket Like Grains of Sand Lisa Tuttle's Memories of the Body Paul Park's Celestis/Coelestis Izumi Suzuki's Terminal Boredom fez_machine fucked around with this message at 01:26 on Apr 16, 2024 |
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Apr 16, 2024 00:58
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woke kaczynski posted:I'd heartily second that recommendation. I've read it at least a half dozen times, when I was younger I mostly read the story sections and as I got older read more of the actual stuff they were about. I also remember that I liked The Number Devil as a youth as was recommended above. I've just finished re-reading Excession by Ian Banks, it has some novel gender roles and identities.
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Apr 16, 2024 01:40
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I want to read another Asian-American memoir, after reading part of Crying in H Mart (Nothing against the book, just my flighty interests). Or it could be a personal history about people living in the US after WWII written by a third party. I've marked down: Docile: Memoirs of a Not-So-Perfect Asian Girl Starry Field: A Memoir of Lost History Everything I Learned, I Learned in a Chinese Restaurant Last Boat Out of Shanghai: The Epic Story of the Chinese Who Fled Mao's Revolution Face of the Enemy: An American Asian's War in Vietnam and at Home Biting the Hand: Growing Up Asian in Black and White America Mott Street: A Chinese American Family's Story of Exclusion and Homecoming
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Apr 20, 2024 11:21
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