@[deleted] Ah I’ve had Shadow of the Torturer sitting on my shelf for years. After I finish Three Body Problem I think I’ll finally dive in.
Wrote this reply up earlier and forgot to post it lol. Now several books I’ve mentioned have appeared elsewhere in the thread!
@yeso As a matter of interest, where do you hear about this novel and other things you read? I like to know where others get their recommendations/info/dirt from. Surely it cannot be a simple matter of looking up everything Neil Gaiman doesn’t like.
Anyone have recommendations for contemporary Francophone literature? I like 19th century literature written by aristocrats as much as the next person but want to expand my palate (palette? is this a metaphor about painting or taste) a little and read something more reflective of the times we live in (and maybe a little more experimental). I saw in other thread “someone” ;)))) recommended Morel’s Invention in French instead of English, which is not Francophone in origin, but which recommendation I promptly wrote down.
Books in the queue are Left Hand of Darkness, Giovanni’s Room, Wind-Up Bird Chronicle (I read Hard-boiled Wonderland and think I should read the popular one now), Kitchen (Yoshimoto), and Underworld (DeLillo). I don’t know which of those I’ll read next but I don’t need to worry about finding more books for a while. Speaking of aristocrats, 100 pages into Anna Karenina right now. I’m enjoying it! It has a lot of really short chapters! My attention span is appeased! I wish there were pictures 
I’m like 99% certain this is the 50th anniversary edition of Left Hand of Darkness. Or if that is not the exact foreword you’re thinking of it at least mentions this idea of speculative fiction vs. science fiction as labels.
@Gaagaagiins UKG is maybe my favorite writer ever and I consider her pretty foundational to just like how I look at the world. I feel very lucky to have started reading her at a point when I was most malleable lol. It’s extremely hard to physically hold and read but I love love love the illustrated collected Earthsea that came out a bit ago. It was the last thing she worked on before passing.
Like I mentioned above too, I’m currently reading Three Body Problem. It’s a pretty gripping book but I also maybe expected more from it than it has given considering the incredible praise it has received. The translation also very much reads like a book that was not written in English. I feel like it must have been a difficult thing to translate. There’s some really cool imagery in it though, I’ve enjoyed myself the most with it when it’s asking you to picture what some of the scenes it’s describing look like. It’s good enough that I’ll at least give the second one a chance as well. I’ve heard that this first book is the most straight forward and predictable of the trilogy which is good, that’s one of the main problems I’ve had with it.
I’ve also been reading Know My Name by Chanel Miller. She was the woman who Brock Turner assaulted at Stanford. She’s a very good writer and it has been an emotionally draining read.
Michael DeForge is my favorite cartoonist atm and I read a few more of his books recently. Leaving Richard’s Valley and Ant Colony both get A+ full recommendations. Incredibly funny and politically engaging without being annoying. Stunt and Familiar Face were both good but not worth owning imo.
also jut generally libraries own go get stuff from a library. all of the above books provided by the sexy cool library.
I think you’re right in the sense that it is often included as a foreword to Left Hand of Darkness, and that it was likely included in the 50th anniversary edition as well. But I think it must be a good deal older than that, since I read it more than a few years ago (it’s half centenary would have been 2019!), and I think I also just found a blogpost that quotes it from 2012. It was the first book of hers I read and it stuck with me because of that.
Three Body Problem trilogy is good. My favorite book is the second one. The first is mostly just set up and the third… kind of escalates things in a ridiculous way.
The “wallfacer” and “dark forest postulate” ideas are two concepts I frequently find myself ruminating on, long after having read the books. [Edit: particularly the way the dark forest postulate is used to “cast a spell” on a neighboring star, obliterating it.]
After reading the trilogy I also picked up the novel “Ball Lightning” by the same author. A novel written before Three Body Problem but only translated after the success of the trilogy. I didn’t think it reached the heights of Three Body Problem but I did kind of enjoy how how nearly every character didnt really matter as a character, but instead was almost transparently a representation of particular political/technological/military lines of thought. Sci-fi in general has long had problems with putting setting/ideas before characterization, so tbh I dont really mind when a work kind of leans into that.
@Moon Good to hear that opinion about the second book echoed. I’m excited to get to it. It’s funny you mentioned Ball Lightning because there’s a reference to it in Three Body Problem and the footnote on it is something like “if you’d like to read more about this then read the novel Ball Lightning, out now!” Thought that was funny.
She’s also one of my favourites. I read her books for the first time well after my world view was, shall we say, firmly set down that direction, so I read it thinking I could have been way cooler earlier in life faster if I’d been reading it during more formative years!
That Earthsea collection sounds amazing… I’d probably have a hard time not getting emotional reading it knowing it was one of the last things she worked on before passing. What a titan.
@Gaagaagiins
Apologies if you’ve already heard of this but there’s a documentary from 2019 about her too. I enjoyed it, was nice to hear her thoughts on a bunch of things. Also nice to just…see her and hear her talk you know? I don’t know that it revelatory or anything but I had a good time with it as a fan. It’s not streaming free anywhere but you could maybe do a free trial thing at one of these to see it:
Worlds of Ursula K. Le Guin | About | American Masters | PBS
look at my shirt
suerte y recuerda: sí se puede
don’t recall specifically where I learned of hurricane season, but I personally learn about books by reading criticism (I’m a big jerk reformed lit student but I still like the stuff sue me), magazines lately nonsite and london review of books, new left review. I also check in to see what Dalkey has going https://www.dalkeyarchive.com/ and I’ve always really enjoyed the neglected books site that’s been around forever https://neglectedbooks.com/
have you read any mathias enard? I have not but been meaning to/ Have it on good authority that zone is cool
lol neglectedbooks.com keeps crushing it
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@yeso#16835 what the what!!!
Over in @Moon's excellent cyberpunk thread, I mentioned that I was going to read The Space Between Worlds over the new year break. Turns out that did not happen! However, I have just now started it - so not too far behind schedule I suppose.
Next in the list is another recommendation from the same thread, The Light Brigade.
Next next is something different, I have Sid Meier's Memoir! ready to go. I'm keen to read his stories of early Microprose.
I read Hurricane Season, not long after it got translated in english last year. She has a relentless writing style, that I wonder 1. How did the translator manage to translate. 2. How does it sound in its original written language (spanish).
Currently reading Drive Your Plow Over The Bones of the Dead, really enjoying it so far. Theres a briskness to the writing which makes it not a chore to read.
Sometimes I feel that I don’t care much for story, as long as what is written is written well, if that makes sense.
@thiccnick
Should also take a look at Bartleby, the Scrivner by Melville too, fun lil read
@yeso i’ve been reading “mapping the deep” with my daughter as part of homeschool, along with “peoples and empires”, which we’re using as a kind of follow up to “guns, germs, and steel”
Unless you would prefer not t-Doom_Shotgun_Blast.wav
@thiccnick wasn’t brave enough to buy the pants though
Ursula K. Le Guin — Pants – Boot Boyz Biz
bold claim here, that george lucas read a book
@downtonabbey watched the agnieszka holland film but really oughta read this book
@pasquinelli semi related tangent but I’ve been remembering 90’s kid “young adult” books and am thinking about re-reading a few because, at least in my memory, they go way harder in the paint than my impressions of whatever weird hive of enmity, resentment, backstabbing, and careerism and just totally bizarre (don’t know anything about this topic) transphobia encompasses current “young adult” writing
I’m talking about the good stuff: Ellen Raskin, Gary Paulsen, Julia Cunningham, anyone else know what I mean??
my understanding is that the harry potter lady and her cohort of YA authors have gone completely insane
also, I guess what I mean is: “back in the day” YA books didn’t claim to be morally instructive, didn’t pander or talk down to their audience, and weren’t trying to enforce an hermitic genre/market/audience boundary. I think this is happening with “weird fiction” too, but less gross. Maybe the result of noone being able to make any money in publishing any longer + social media feedback loop psychosis
Right now reading Murakami’s “Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World,” and have Philip K. Dick’s “Ubik” on deck. Also listening to William Gibson’s “Agency” on audiobook.
Anyone else ever notice how Hard Boiled Wonderland and Johnny Mnemonic share some key story elements? Weird.