Starting a thread about the ancient and mortal enemy of videogames - books
We can talk about what books we're reading. Impress your fellow posters by bragging about reading chapter books, and books with zero pictures, etc
4 Likes
To begin,
I just started (as in read the first sentence) Hurricane Season by Fernanda Melchor. Been hearing about this novel for a good little while now and have been looking forward to it. Going to read it in esp so it will take a while. Published by new directions in the USA which is probably a good sign it's not some MFA crud. Thank god this lady ain't american
http://www.latinamericanliteraturetoday.org/en/2017/october/temporada-de-huracanes-fernanda-melchor
[āBooks and writing that youāre readingā,āthe mortal enemy of videogamesā]
I only just started with my first China Meiville novel, The City and the City. After that, I'm finally going to read DUNE.
@yeso#16760 no one can stop me, it is in my possession.
@3SuspiciousTurtles#16759
Don't listen to the nay sayer, freakin read Dune! It's my favorite book series of all time. It's very heady and thick with tons of subtext under subtext and it's got great characters and a crazy-go-nuts story.
Also I'm gonna recommend The Dying Earth by Jack Vance. Its very sci fi fantasy and reads like a DnD adventure novelized.
@3SuspiciousTurtles#16762 https://youtube.com/watch?v=r0lx2GUqFkg&feature=share&t=227
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@milo#16769 Iām gonna recommend The Dying Earth
this is a good rec indeed
the recommendation tic I've developed is: if neil gaimen writes the introduction, I keep a movin
hard to avoid that asshole though
@thiccnick#16773 you're nba jam-style on fire
if you'll allow me to make a couple of suggestions
take a look at "the confidence man" by Melville, and "always coming home" by uklg. Overlooked high-points in my opinion
Totally down for book chat but I would argue that the true mortal enemies of video games are these guys:
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Iām revisiting a lot of stuff i enjoyed a decade ago. Nearly finished with the wind-up bird chronicle by Murakami, this time Iām enjoying just letting all of the uncertainty/opacity wash over me. Easier to do than when i was 20. Also I love Murakamiās extremely boring prose. Iām gonna re-read 100 years of solitude next
I haven't read really any fiction in years. Most of the last few years I was on a big poli sci kick so I finally got through Capital, reading a few pages every morning on the toilet. I read David Harvey's companion to Capital which was really nice. I read the John Locke treatise about why it's ok to hoard land (lol), I read about halfway through Leviathan but that one I feel like it's ok to just stop once you get it
Dune owns although i only listened to the audiobook. It's funny that Jowy from Suikoden II literally just has Paul's last name lol
Iām reading at a weird intersection of a few posts on here already, Iām reading Railsea by China Mieville, which is a re-imagining/satire/somethinā alright of Moby Dick but instead of the ocean itās a post-post apocalyptic wasteland of rails on which trains and trainspersons traverse, and instead of whales itās giant moles. Itās a real fun good time so far.
I think after that I want to stay in Mieville mode and read his non-fiction book _October: The Story of the Russian Revolution,_ which I dipped into a bit and found it novel-like in execution, in a good way. So once _Railsea_ is done that's what I'll read. Mieville is a fun writer in the sense that even when I don't really _like_ the book he wrote, I'm real glad that he chose to write it in exactly that way. I kinda felt that way about _Kraken,_ it was a bit too big and dumb and loud for me, but I just can't argue with it because it's clearly all very intentionally so. Like, good for him.
I don't read all that fast these days, I mostly read for a bit before bed and that could mean I'm reading for 30-60 minutes or it could mean 5-10 minutes. That's fine for me.
I want to read more Strugatsky brothers books, the few of which I have read were recommended by Icon of the Forums Tim Rogers. I greatly enjoyed _Hard To Be A God, Roadside Picnic_ (aka the book that loosely inspired _Stalker_ and _S.T.A.L.K.E.R.,_ sorry Russian film fans, the book is better than the movie), and _Monday Begins On Saturday._ Also before that I had read _The Master and Margarita_ by Mikhail Bulgakov which was just a real good time. I would love any more recs for Soviet era science fiction.
@billy#16778 give him a copy of dune, he'd like it
I was reading several novels made by contemporary Spanish authors and both were fine, although I hope some day you can enjoy Endo as much as I did at the start of the year. Cosmic horror is more interesting than I thought before. Now Iām reading a book made by Mani Kaul and not enjoying that much even if it is grounding my perspective in cinema.
Once Iām done with all of this, I'm prepared to read Ulyses. Good luck to meā¦ :S
Hey @yeso cool thread.
I will share an anecdote experienced yesterday with the author of cosmic horror which was in itself, very cosmic horror-like.
I was reading The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath, one of the few "good" stories by HP Lovecraft that I had yet to check out.
I reached a part in which a literal army of organized cats butcher some aliens on the moon and rescue the protagonist. I thought "haha, this is cool I like it"
I went and shared with a friend, who responded very succinctly "do you know about his cat's name", then I proceeded to google "Lovecraft's cat name" and experienced my very own iteration of this meme:
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@JoJoestar#16790 too inappropriate, even for ārobloxgfā
@Syzygy#16771 have you read any of the later sun/earth books? Would be curious to know your impressions if so. I also read botns for the first time last year (the first 4+1) and yeah itās a real imagination starter as you describe. Kind of wish it was less catholic though but yeah cool stuff
@JoJoestar#16790
In fairness to HP Lovecraft, I hear that he was not the one to name the cat. Thp8gh the guy is still a creep, for sure.
I'm still working through the collected short stories of JG Ballard. Highly recommend you read some JG Ballard.
I'd recommend "the light brigade" by Kameron Hurley and "the space between worlds" by Micaiah Johnson. Two recently released sci fi novels I read last year that have a surprising amount in common.
Gnomon by Nick Harkaway was the last book I read that really blew my socks off. The whole thing is like a 5 part puzzle box designed to download itself into your brain as you're busy putting the pieces together. And I mean that more litterally than you'd think. I'd also recommend Harkaway's "The Gone Away World" for a jocular romp. It's a post apocalyptic kung fu epic and also a parable about the Iraq war. It features one of my favorite fictional conceits, "the reification of ideas", where thoughts are given form and potentially lethal power. I have a copy of his "Tigerman" but havnt gotten around to reading it. I didnt care much for his novel "angelmaker".
My favorite China Melville (I can never spell the dudes name right) book is Iron Council. I've read all the Bas Lag books and nearly all of his novels. "Last days of New Paris" is facinating and well researched, but unfortunately the story is intentionally left incomplete. I was burned by that because I wanted more of that world.
Heres my reading habit:
There came a point long long ago where I had read basically every novel by every author I liked. I was out of books. Exploration was required. I'd take my chances on recommendations or buying what looked good at the book store. I'd launch an expedition into these unknown books and if I liked them, I'd start working through the author's entire body of work. Eventually that vein would be exhausted, and the process would repeat again.
I asked for russian reading recommendations from a russian expat internet friend of mine a few months ago, and I picked up "homo zapiens/generation Š" and "everything was forever until it was no more". A fictional and non fictional (respectively) account of the collapse of the Soviet government. Shamefully, I have not finished these yet, but theyve been in my line of sight for a while.
One of my only skills is recommending sci-fi novels based on whatever criteria you want, if anyone here is looking for a specific recommendation.
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@thiccnick#16785 Gaagaagiins I bought October when it came out, but found the font size too small for the large pages of the book, which is a problem Iāve never experienced in any book ever! So I found a PDF (I bought the physical book, so I donāt feel bad) and plan to use my E-Reader for it and adjust the font size. Is this what getting old is like???
I would hope that Comrade China would understand if you had to pirate the book even without buying it! But yes, I would say that absolves you completely. I mean, even ROMs are at least sort of technically legal if you own a legitimate copy, right...?
If getting old means that you accept the e-reader is an exceptional bit of tech, then I am unequivocally an old person. Especially now that e-ink screens combined with backlights you can put low enough to read in a dark room means that you can get weeks of use on a single charge of its battery, and hold dozens if not hundreds of books, in something that fits in one hand.
As someone whose main method and motivation to read in a functional sense is to read until I am relaxed and sleepy enough to drop what I'm reading on my face, and who also has been primarily reading doorstopper sized genre fiction for the last 20 years, I will never, ever go back to reading physical books.
Also, I absolutely love Ursula K LeGuin. _Left Hand of Darkness_ is also wonderful, radical in a way completely different from _The Dispossessed,_ and fascinating in how it is science fiction but only just barely in many ways. _Earthsea_ is also an extremely good series, especially with how almost humble the first book feels and where and how the series develops from that starting point. She has a great foreword in the edition of one of her books that I'd read where she talks about the limitations of calling things "genre fiction" or "science fiction/fantasy" that I hope you'll come across if you read more, and how she felt "speculative fiction" was a more apt title in general, that I thought was very enlightening with how her works in those genres end up being like.
I think my favourite by her is the shorter novel _The Word for World is Forest,_ forewarning there is some heavy subject matter (cw: ||extreme sexual violence, torture, extreme xenophobia as stand-in for racism||) but in the way it makes sense because it's a thinly veiled allegory on colonization. Brutal, but also poignant, and direct in its messaging but in a way that is distinctly unashamed of saying what it says with directness. Sometimes you don't want things to be overly metaphorical, you know?
A great destination after you've read all you want of Le Guin's works is from also dearly departed Scottish author Iain M. Banks and his _Culture_ series, which has much more of a flair for post-scarcity utopia. The main point of interest there is how Banks thinks up ways in which a utopian civilization can still encounter interesting problems!