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confessions of a mask (yukio mishima) is good as hell
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Nov 17, 2023 17:43
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my Libby app has been filled up with Ursula Le Guin lately and she is now in my top five fantasy/sci fi authors of all time
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Nov 17, 2023 18:22
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shes great love her
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Nov 17, 2023 19:04
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HUSKY DILF posted:my Libby app has been filled up with Ursula Le Guin lately and she is now in my top five fantasy/sci fi authors of all time her non-fiction writing is really good too |
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Nov 19, 2023 03:24
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ive been reading a lot but the only one im near finishing is trainspotting again. im in the last 20 pages and by then its so bleak i might actually give up since i finished it before and like all these books and remember what happens. But they're pretty good im rereading a huge antho of pulp detective stories and novellas just finished the obligatory harlan ellison story who shows up in every compilation of everything as long as its genre somehow. beer pal posted:confessions of a mask (yukio mishima) is good as hell u mishimaing it up? according to this bookmark im approaching halfway thru forbidden colours. is that a good one by the end? its pretty weird but i like the tangents
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Nov 19, 2023 14:18
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Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy. Never read a La Carre book before and woo this one's dense. Loved the "retired spy roped in for one last job after their mentor dies under mysterious circumstances" plot. Trying out more China Miéville with "This Census-Taker" and it's a bit of a bumpy start with the narrator switching from 1st to 3rd person in describing the action. I'm sure that's intentional for some reason but it's not clear right now
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Nov 19, 2023 17:24
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I understand translating dialects is a loving tightropewalk but I think the decision to have a guy described as having an Egyptian Southern accent spout Ostrobothnian Finnish while talking about Foucault's dong just doesn't really work. (I'm reading a translation of Laurent Binet's "La Septième fonction du langage".) |
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Nov 19, 2023 21:09
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Dr. Yinz Ljubljana posted:Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy. Never read a La Carre book before and woo this one's dense. Loved the "retired spy roped in for one last job after their mentor dies under mysterious circumstances" plot. Yooo! Same here. Read The Spy Who Came in from The Cold before this and liked it a lot. His prose is so good. I had to backtrack on the early chapters of tinker, where Smiley meets with his cohorts and there is just soo much name dropping and flashes of background on what I hope are minor characters, cos drat that's hard to take in all at once. |
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Nov 19, 2023 23:49
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baka fwocka fwame posted:ive been reading a lot but the only one im near finishing is trainspotting again. im in the last 20 pages and by then its so bleak i might actually give up since i finished it before and like all these books and remember what happens. But they're pretty good i think this is my third mishima & probably my fave of the 3. havent read forbidden colours https://i.imgur.com/xQxnooW.png |
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Nov 20, 2023 20:37
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Just finished the plague by Camus, it was my second time reading and both times I was left rather underwhelmed coming off of the stranger. Something about it just never clicks for me. I like the characters and the idea he’s exploring seems interesting enough but I guess it’s that it’s placed in a broader war novel just doesn’t really gel with me. Then my partner got me to read carmilla. Don’t really have any notes on that one, besides the fact that it’s funny that when the lesbian vampire is flirting with the Victorian maiden she’s like “she must be a boy in disguise to act in such a way” Now I’m reading this book called Promicide I bought from this touring goth dance act that came through here, it’s a take on schlocky 80s horror novels. I thought it might suck but bought it cause I liked their set, but it’s actually pretty fun so far. The deaths are creative and the characters are stereotypical in a kind of clever campy way instead of just because they’re supposed to be. Excited to read more of it. |
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Nov 21, 2023 19:48
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Foobie posted:Just finished the plague by Camus, it was my second time reading and both times I was left rather underwhelmed coming off of the stranger. Something about it just never clicks for me. I like the characters and the idea he’s exploring seems interesting enough but I guess it’s that it’s placed in a broader war novel just doesn’t really gel with me. if u want more like the stranger i would highly recommend the gun by fuminori nakamura if you dont mind everyone being japanese
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Nov 21, 2023 20:15
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rear end-penny posted:finally started this shredded copy of Bully for Brontosaurus last week. I've had this drat book for years but have put off reading it, no longer. I only have the first half of the book. been a very long time since I read non-fiction I'm really enjoying this, and rapidly closing in on the last page I have. it has given me a lot to think about.
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Nov 21, 2023 21:15
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finished to the lighthouse again. this time ill remember the ending. such a good book tho
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Nov 23, 2023 18:01
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Recently, non-medical: The Trumpet Major by Tom Hardy. It's good. I also re-read Sapiens and 21 Lessons for the 21st Century by Yuval Noah Harari; I then started on Homo Deus but it seems to be the same topics and examples as the other two books. I don't know if I can recommend any of them. They're very fun. And the argument that agriculture was a mistake is very interesting. As well as the idea that rituals led to settlements rather than the other way around. But apparently there are a lot of errors and misunderstanding of scholarship. Part of Herodotus's Histories, specifically focusing on the emperor Cambyses. Very cool. Even though Herodotus implies that all his bad luck stems from how he treated a special cow in Egypt. The Dhamapada. I got the Penguin edition which is very poetic. Other translations might be more accurate but they're not beautiful. This one is embarrassing but I read one of the Sherlock Holmes anthologies. The Saga of Gunnlaugur Serpent-Tongue. Pretty okay. Some writings like Goethe. Disappointing. Like, 'we artists can learn from the rural poor because peasants are laconic and in tune with nature'. Maybe some more, I forget. |
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Nov 23, 2023 21:04
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fun fact about gunnlaugr saga is that it’s in some ways a bit of an atypical saga, in that Helga is such a passive figure compared to females in a lot of other sagas. there’s some speculation that it might’ve been modelled after chivalric romances |
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Nov 23, 2023 22:32
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Oh wow, it's been forever since I posted here. Most recently I've been reading Andrew Skinner, Steel Frame and sequel Origin Complex. First one's about conscript mech pilots exploring a megastructure built by long-dead aliens (and of course finding something horrible), second one I haven't finished yet but so far it's been digging more into the background of human exploration of the Eye and giving a look at some of the events of the first book from a different angle. They also both definitely have Thoughts about the relationship between body and mind, between flesh and steel, and between human and AI that I am vibing with extremely strongly. Also has me wanting to play a video game about mechs but I'm not sure that's anything that quite captures the same vibes. In the background, my wife and I are both reading Dracula (we started around halloween); reread for me, first read for her. We're just past the part where the whole crew gets together and compares notes and makes a plan of action and now, unfortunately, into the part where everyone except Mina is a blithering idiot. 3D Megadoodoo posted:I bought (what I thought was) the first Riftwar book by Raymond Feist because I liked Betrayal at Krondor back in the day. Turns out it's only ½ of the first book, and there's like 40 000 more. I... don't think I'll be reading them all. I got into Riftwar the same way, for the same reason. To make it a bit more manageable: it's not one super-long series, it's one setting with a bunch of individual trilogies/tetralogies scattered through it that can mostly be read independently of each other. Magician (both halves) actually stands pretty well on its own, and has a satisfying (if temporary) conclusion to the Midkemia/Kelewan war, although it does also very obviously foreshadow that there is more and worse to come. Silverthorn and A Darkness at Sethanon between them wrap up the first trilogy as a whole, including the stuff that's foreshadowed at the end of Magician, and if you read to that point you will basically have all the relevant context for the events of Betrayal at Krondor (which I love, but still need to finish one of these days); it takes place after Sethanon and before the rest of the books. If you want to keep reading, I strongly recommend the Daughter of the Empire trilogy, which was co-authored with Janny Wurts and takes place entirely on the Kelewan side of the rift. It covers roughly the same time period as the first trilogy, but gives you a perspective primarily concerned with Tsurani politics which only crosses over with the Magician timeline at a few points. If you still want to keep reading after that, I guess I remember the Serpentwar tetralogy being ok-ish, but honestly I'd just read the Magician and Empire trilogies and play Betrayal and stop there. |
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Nov 23, 2023 23:11
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That's good stuff to know; thanks. 
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Nov 23, 2023 23:49
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ulvir posted:fun fact about gunnlaugr saga is that it’s in some ways a bit of an atypical saga, in that Helga is such a passive figure compared to females in a lot of other sagas. there’s some speculation that it might’ve been modelled after chivalric romances All the men suck. Some do spit hot fire bars but that's about it. Gunnlaugr's dad might be the best of the lot but only by default. The thing is... Helga sucks too. Whether she's a damsel in distress or a shield-maiden who explores far off landlord, she'd still suck if she was the same Helga. I did like the poetry. And the dig at the Irish. Their king seems to have no idea how much things are worth. He's about to give Gunnlaugr two ships for his poem until someone stops him. I think that might be especially interesting because modern Irish readers might be proud of the generosity on display. Whereas the annotations I've read say it's meant to poke fun. That king dude might be the only chill guy. Bright Bart fucked around with this message at 15:41 on Nov 24, 2023 |
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Nov 24, 2023 15:37
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Question for the folks reading or familiar with the murderbot diaries series of books: Even though the character is explicitly non-gendered, does your brain subconsciously assign a gender to it? And if so, what gender? I don't mean like picturing or associating while reading necessarily, more like you catch yourself thinking of the character as her/him. I'm just curious. For some reason I associate the character as feminine/she, and I was wondering if that's subconscious bias, or if there's something there in how the character is written, and/or other people make the same association. Finger Prince fucked around with this message at 08:23 on Dec 27, 2023 |
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Dec 27, 2023 08:18
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Read the Jakarta method folks
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Dec 27, 2023 08:39
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Finger Prince posted:Question for the folks reading or familiar with the murderbot diaries series of books: it has been a year or two since I was reading one of those, I am not sure if I do assign them a gender mentally. I feel like the character is written pretty androgynous? I'm about halfway through Aparna Nanchurla's Unreliable Narrator and I'm liking it a lot. quick read too. also about 40 pages into the 7th Expanse book and juuuuuust started Anarchy Works by Peter Gelderloos, which I'm looking forward to.
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Dec 27, 2023 17:44
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Re-reading a collection of Clark Ashton Smith's works, this one The Abominations of Yondo, and has some of my favourite stories. He also wrote excellent horror science-fiction!
Fifteen years taking prescriptions |
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Dec 27, 2023 21:12
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the unabonger posted:Read the Jakarta method folks its really good https://i.imgur.com/xQxnooW.png |
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Dec 29, 2023 21:40
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Finger Prince posted:Question for the folks reading or familiar with the murderbot diaries series of books: For me Murderbot is very consistently an "it", but I also have prior experience using it-pronouns for people (both in books and IRL) so it is perhaps not as jarring for me. My daughter, who has just started reading them, tends to slip up and refer to Murderbot as "he". |
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Dec 30, 2023 04:18
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ToxicFrog posted:For me Murderbot is very consistently an "it", but I also have prior experience using it-pronouns for people (both in books and IRL) so it is perhaps not as jarring for me. My daughter, who has just started reading them, tends to slip up and refer to Murderbot as "he". in my experience people are fairly cool to being referred to as "it."
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Dec 30, 2023 04:28
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FUN FACT NO-ONE WANTS TO HEAR AGAIN: In Finnish real people are "it" but your dog/cat, athletes, babies, and your husband as well as other people you don't like are not. |
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Dec 30, 2023 05:00
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Between Two Fires by Christopher Buehlman. It's a Hieronymus Bosch hellscape come to life. Had little idea what the book was about going in, which made the wtf moments all the better. Bit of a slow buildup, and I wasn't a huge fan of the ending - but the rest of the journey was really fun. In a bleak and depressing kind of way. |
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Dec 30, 2023 05:26
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3D Megadoodoo posted:FUN FACT NO-ONE WANTS TO HEAR AGAIN: In Finnish real people are "it" but your dog/cat, athletes, babies, and your husband as well as other people you don't like are not. Interesting. My father in law originally spoke Yoruba, which doesn't have gendered pronouns, and he's always inadvertently getting he and she mixed up and interchanged when he's speaking English. |
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Dec 30, 2023 06:25
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Finger Prince posted:Interesting. My father in law originally spoke Yoruba, which doesn't have gendered pronouns, and he's always inadvertently getting he and she mixed up and interchanged when he's speaking English. Same. But not just pronouns. I don't think I'll ever be fluent in Swedish because of the dang genders. I can read (well, somewhat) because obviously the gender is right there, but trying to write or speak? Yeah nah my brain isn't retaining that information. |
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Dec 30, 2023 06:38
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3D Megadoodoo posted:FUN FACT NO-ONE WANTS TO HEAR AGAIN: In Finnish real people are "it" but your dog/cat, athletes, babies, and your husband as well as other people you don't like are not. here's the difference between my cat and real people/babies/the elderly/athletes/husbands of all kinds that no one seems to want to talk about : I actually like my cat |
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Dec 30, 2023 07:11
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3D Megadoodoo posted:Same. But not just pronouns. I don't think I'll ever be fluent in Swedish because of the dang genders. I can read (well, somewhat) because obviously the gender is right there, but trying to write or speak? Yeah nah my brain isn't retaining that information. hell, I had a similar experience in Deutsch klasse for four years. I can spell or say der/die/das/sie, but you ask me to gender a washing machine and my brain short circuits, every time. |
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Dec 30, 2023 07:13
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rear end-penny posted:hell, I had a similar experience in Deutsch klasse for four years. I can spell or say der/die/das/sie, but you ask me to gender a washing machine and my brain short circuits, every time. I'm guessing die. Like, I might be wrong but that's why it's just a guess. e: I only guessed that because I remember die Stereoanlage, and a stereo is basically a machine, too  ee: Well dang it was correct. But yeah it's all basically guesswork. 3D Megadoodoo fucked around with this message at 07:42 on Dec 30, 2023 |
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Dec 30, 2023 07:38
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my favorite "gender is fake even if it's in language" thing is that in Spanish a dress shirt, such as an Oxford is "la camisa", feminine, while a dress, such as a sexy little Donna Karin number is "el vestido", masculine
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Dec 30, 2023 09:57
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rear end-penny posted:in my experience people are fairly cool to being referred to as "it." In my experience most people are not, but I also hang out with a lot of trans people who are sadly used to having "it" thrown at them by transphobes as a way of saying "not only do I reject your gender, I reject your humanity and personhood" so it is often a bit of a sore spot. So I only use it for people who explicitly say they want it. |
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Dec 30, 2023 19:11
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I started reading Bear Head (second Dogs of War book by Adrian Tchaikovsky). He's just introduced a politician character who is clearly modeled after Trump. The way he unpacks the stump speeches, the language he uses. It's loving scary! The obvious, calculated manipulation and how and why it works. |
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Jan 5, 2024 23:07
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I'm reading The Goldfinch and it rules. Gotta get me some more Donna Tart after this. |
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Jan 7, 2024 01:30
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If you are into essays read The Primary and Secondary Colors by Alexander Theroux. https://www.kirkusreviews.com/book-reviews/alexander-theroux/the-primary-colors/ |
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Jan 7, 2024 04:02
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Jason Pargin's "Zoey is Too Drunk for this Dystopia" - a solid cap to the Zoey Ashe books, not his best but it has some more biting social commentary than I've read from him in a while. The Zoey Ashe books have always been about social media, surveillance, the wild reckless abandon of the rich, but in this one just feels more pointed Started Stephen Graham Jones' "Don't Fear The Reaper," the sequel to "My Heart is a Chainsaw" and I'm having trouble remembering the exact events of the first book. Jones doesn't exactly get you up to speed right away, so I'm trying to remember who characters are and such. And that's on me, I guess
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Jan 7, 2024 14:55
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I've been reading The Jungle Books by Rudyard Kipling. It's about and unstoppable destuctive force called Mowgli who obliterates his enemies and scoffs at all authority. |
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Jan 7, 2024 16:51
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| # ? Apr 28, 2024 15:55 |
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Can you guess what this book is about? You're wrong: 
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Jan 13, 2024 03:06
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