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3D Megadoodoo

I totally guessed correctly :smuggo:

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Dr. Yinz Ljubljana

"Mister Magic" by Kiersten White - hey, you know "Candle Cove"? Well, what if that but in a novel form. There's some great characterization, but the whole haunted TV show no one remembers bit is a touch too familiar. She goes interesting places with it and I've been devouring it and sometimes just riffing on an existing idea can be enough, which just so happens to be the case here


baka of lathspell

tolkien: lost tales vol.1


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Finger Prince


OK Bear Head was a really, really excellent book. Really, scarily dystopian that, I think, really shines a bright light on/holds an unflattering mirror to the kind of world we live in now and where it is going.

databasic

Can we pause to expound on what "colonizing millions of words" means in a century where information is money and data is king.

Asking for a friend.

Ass-penny

finished Aparna Nanchurla's book. it is funny and insightful

itty bitty baby boy

how do you do that thing with colored text in this box

SPIRIT HALLOWEEN SALE posted:

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.

real good book! I liked the ending too. Real spooky vibe, good main character. I picked it up after a rapper I like recommended it, lol

ulvir

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.

swedish gender is so strange to me, because they only have common and neuter, yet somehow retains a wide range of declensions that contain remains of feminine/masculine distinctions. and this is speaking as someone whose language has retained all three genders

baka of lathspell

i finished 'one more year', the meg mogg and owl novel/compilation, which dealt with addiction, had amazing indicial & editorial work especially the weird verso page, was a super good read, stories were real af. also meg is definitely a v abusive figure which i think the text strongly highlights. idk who picks up on that element. she can be a little too relateable, in scary ways


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Dr. Yinz Ljubljana

Camp Damascus by Chuck Tingle. Really impressive for someone mostly known for a series of books about getting pumped in the butt. Very YA in some places, but that's not a bad thing


3D Megadoodoo

Contemplating becoming a Chuck Tingle pastiche writer. I truly believe I could make money writing like.. Dick Pringle. Chuck Tingle only gay. Er





baka of lathspell

3D Megadoodoo posted:

Contemplating becoming a Chuck Tingle pastiche writer. I truly believe I could make money writing like.. Dick Pringle. Chuck Tingle only gay. Er

its too late/impossible because hes already a pastiche of a patiche. probably. forget it dick, it's tingletown


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Ass-penny

I have never read Chuck, but I watched a video review of one of his books and it sounded pretty amusing

SPIRIT HALLOWEEN SALE

itty bitty baby boy posted:

real good book! I liked the ending too. Real spooky vibe, good main character. I picked it up after a rapper I like recommended it, lol

who was the rapper? lol.

i've been looking for more books with that vibe, lots of people recommended "The Warhound and the World's Pain" by Michael Moorcock

Dr. Yinz Ljubljana

I doubt it'll count but the Pinocchio adaptation by KC Green is very cool. Also picked up The Fetishist by the late Kathrine Min


xcheopis


I'm giving consideration to buying a collection of short stories and essays by Lu Xun on account of a couple of minor quotes mentioned in a drat comic, of all connections to make.
Anyone here familiar with his writing?

Fifteen years taking prescriptions
Now a shrink like, "I dunno, maybe get a kitten"

Prurient Squid

Tiddy cat Buddha improving your day.
I've started reading little women.

3D Megadoodoo

Prurient Squid posted:

I've started reading little women.

Are they better than books?

Prurient Squid

Tiddy cat Buddha improving your day.
I guffawed unsensibly.

baka of lathspell

lmao

also:

i finished a mrs. dalloway by virginia woolf reread & then finished lotr unfinished tales. im working thru the unconsoled by kazuo ishiguro right now which i relate to deeply. it's like the protag's whole problem is just losing track of what's going on because a million things keep happening in reality & meanwhile they are drawn into subcultural conflicts. but what's universal about that book is that there is never enough time for the protag to accomplish what they need to; they are thrown around by fate and happenstance like a leaf in the wind.

good book ishiguro's pretty good.


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Ass-penny

has anyone read the earth sea series? I got the second one at a book party and I haven't read the first, wondering how much I'm going to miss out on


thank you so much to nesamdoom for the scurry fall sig!

(┛◉Д◉)┛彡┻━┻ #YesNutNovember - add this to your sig if you love and support BYOB's own nut

xcheopis


rear end-penny posted:

has anyone read the earth sea series? I got the second one at a book party and I haven't read the first, wondering how much I'm going to miss out on

Reading the first book is essential.

Fifteen years taking prescriptions
Now a shrink like, "I dunno, maybe get a kitten"

Leraika

Luckily, I *did* save your old avatar. Fucked around and found out indeed.
earthsea is very good and you definitely want to read the first book first

Dr. Yinz Ljubljana

Didn't quite know how to parse "Plastic" by Scott Guild. It seemed to be on the surface a kind of "what if Barbie had terrorism" thing but It goes deeper than that and I'm grateful for it. Still a bit of a head scratcher but a worthwhile read

Picked up "Rouge" by Mona Awad and it's enthralling. A skincare-obsessed woman deals with her mother's death but also maybe a cult or something supernatural? Intriguing.


Ass-penny

Dr. Yinz Ljubljana posted:

It seemed to be on the surface a kind of "what if Barbie had terrorism" thing but

my interest is piqued

Dr. Yinz Ljubljana

rear end-penny posted:

my interest is piqued

It's good, but it's also presented in a way where it takes some getting used to the style. Lots of camera directions, characters talk in this broken English so instead of "that's awesome!" They say "much wow wow " and you are constantly reminded that they're plastic figurines. Worth a read, at very least.


baka of lathspell

finished secrets of the vinyl cafe by stuart maclean. with adorable dressage by iconic canadian graphic artist Seth this book is blah blah blah. It seemed like a cool conceit until i looked at the back and realized Stuart stretched the concept into 5 books. Anyway the frontloaded theme is the secrets we keep from each other and our secret lives. However the book is pretty trad-anxious and refrains from exploring in any well, explorative way just how deep the well of human secrecy and privacy goes, instead electing for seinfeldian plots mixed with like idk antics similar to those in the movie with the red ryder BB gun. i think 3 different subplots were predictable in that they ripped off well known and cliche by now arcs for their characters. the language was charmingly straightforward and what i found most interesting was mclean's exploration of time through his tensework. the characters in this book are always arranged between their words as frozen tableaus. change will come, we are assured, and we are even given the details, but each of these massive upheavals is set in paper as "years off yet, some time off yet," etc. in this way stuart tries to wrestle some optimism in the enduring beauty of life from his weird psychological lookbook of a trad-family-friendly hijink anthology.

i read it cuz i happened to have it for some reason & now im done :woop:


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Finger Prince


I read Rivers of London by Ben Aaronovich. First book in a long series. Have you seen that SNL skit The Californians with Fred Arminsen and Bill Hader? It's like that only a modern wizard cop hunting ghosts instead of a soap opera. The entire book is half Google Maps directions. Not going to bother with the rest of the series.

3D Megadoodoo

Finger Prince posted:

I read Rivers of London by Ben Aaronovich. First book in a long series. Have you seen that SNL skit The Californians with Fred Arminsen and Bill Hader? It's like that only a modern wizard cop hunting ghosts instead of a soap opera. The entire book is half Google Maps directions. Not going to bother with the rest of the series.

Putting actual magic into a crime story instantly ruins it, for reasons that were obvious to everyone except Ben Aaronovich. e: And Stephen King.

Still a better idea than a book I read which had a clairvoyant solving crimes:

3D Megadoodoo fucked around with this message at 13:11 on Mar 25, 2024

Dr. Yinz Ljubljana

just finished a real weirdo one - a classic "book you read on a plane/beach" type of guy Bentley Little (think early Koontz) wrote a book under a different name called "Death Instinct" and it's pretty formulaic : in Phoenix, AZ a series of grisly murders have a community on edge, an everyman cop is on the case but the neighborhood bookshop worker has figured out that her neighbor might be involved.

the prologue has the most absurd and graphic "prank" where a young girl's older brother jumps out of a closet, fully nude and fully erect, riding a hobby horse and shouting "COME TO THE NAKED CIRCUS" -- a scene which has very little to no bearing on the book. you see, the setup is that you think the brother is the serial killer, given his weird sexual proclivities and abuse of animals and all that stuff. but no, the real killer is the neighbor kid who has Down's. But he's not actually mentally disabled (the book uses the R-word liberally), no he has Savant Syndrome (the book uses "idiot savant") and his specialty is murder. That is almost a direct quote from the book, btw.

By the end, the killer is constructing death machines and taking down cops in a hospital and just becomes essentially a slasher movie villain. Absolutely bonkers.


baka of lathspell

lmao kind of on that

i finished a reread of kazuo ishiguro's the unconsoled which i havent read since uni. banger book but it takes till the very end to realize the referent is the reader. with this book you are laughing, then crying, and then the ending just stings. left a bitter taste in my mouth that i didn't recall having on my first read so i must not have really understood that with this book ishiguro is either trying to or forced himself into bringing the reader way down.

there's this guy named hoffman who is a total bastard.

it stings because the humour is actually the funniest poo poo ever.


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baka of lathspell

Southern Reach trilo.

finished annihilation again moving onto authority. Control is funny af. I think his superiors believe in aliens but tell him not to. Good advices. believing in aliens will never solve your probs they'd be smarter than you if they made it here from space


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Ass-penny

I just finished the 7th Expanse book, about halfway through Maria Bamford's Sure, I'll Join Your Cult. I left S,IJYC at work in my locker, and I'm going to be on a plane tomorrow and Monday, thinking of starting the 8th Expanse book, or Thump, of the Disc World series.


thank you so much to nesamdoom for the scurry fall sig!

(┛◉Д◉)┛彡┻━┻ #YesNutNovember - add this to your sig if you love and support BYOB's own nut

xcheopis


rear end-penny posted:

I just finished the 7th Expanse book, about halfway through Maria Bamford's Sure, I'll Join Your Cult. I left S,IJYC at work in my locker, and I'm going to be on a plane tomorrow and Monday, thinking of starting the 8th Expanse book, or Thump, of the Disc World series.

Thud! was very good.

Fifteen years taking prescriptions
Now a shrink like, "I dunno, maybe get a kitten"

Ass-penny

xcheopis posted:

Thud! was very good.

all of the Disc World stuff I've read was very good! Vimes' boot theory of socioeconomic unfairness will live in my head until I die

baka of lathspell

have you reached a part with expanse where you start to get bored

i reached a part with expanse where i started to get bored


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Ass-penny

not really. I have quite enjoyed the series. I am kind of glad to put them behind me though


thank you so much to nesamdoom for the scurry fall sig!

(┛◉Д◉)┛彡┻━┻ #YesNutNovember - add this to your sig if you love and support BYOB's own nut

Dr. Yinz Ljubljana

baka of lathspell posted:

Southern Reach trilo.

finished annihilation again moving onto authority. Control is funny af. I think his superiors believe in aliens but tell him not to. Good advices. believing in aliens will never solve your probs they'd be smarter than you if they made it here from space

Your timing is pretty good - by the time you finish Acceptance, it won't be too long until Absolution - the 4th Southern Reach book - is out. (October 22nd, for the record)


baka of lathspell

oh my goodness he's dropping another one :supaburn:

but we're never gonna hear about how the Company dies i guess


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baka of lathspell

reading Taiyo Masamoto's Black & White and my god ... this is one of the greatest mangos ive ever read. i was seriously thinking they were out of good ones for me to read. apparently theres a movie i need to check out after.

everything happens with such rhythm its done so well


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