@“sabertoothalex”#p27187 i have this book in my to read list. reading those fragments made me put it in a lower place in my to read mental ranking
margaret killjoy does have [a really cool podcast ](https://forums.insertcredit.com/d/190-podcasts-that-nobody-knows-about/48)imo though
Finally finished the fourth book of The Legend of the Condor Heroes by Jin Yong. I went into these without any real expectations, but I sure did come to love them a whole lot. I‘m a bit bummed though because I’m not confident the rest of the series is going to get translated since these translations don‘t seem to have done that well commercially. But I’d probably be fine reading about these characters for years.
Also, my research into successful selfpublished authors has led to interesting results. Will Wight's Cradle series is basically a novelization of Dragonball Z, which sounds like a terrible idea, but it turns out this was a great idea. He sure has made a lot of money writing it anyway! Like Dragonball Z, it has many of the same problems but also strengths.
Read Philip Roth's The Plot Against America, which might be my second favorite Roth book. The books of his I've read are so often so caught up inside Roth's narrators and their endless neurotic internal monologue that I forget how he's an incredible observer of human behavior. He captures and creates such strong characters so effortlessly that I wish all his books were more outwardly focused. I do have some issues with the ending of The Plot Against America. I think it both captures exactly how stupid politics are but I also think it's sort of a cowardly way out he takes after constructing an entire novel to address something very real about America's rightwing.
@“edward”#p85661
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Will Wight’s Cradle series
why does this sound like something i need to read...!!?? said me, but also probably millions of other people who have read these books and five-starred them on Am*zon and Goodreads.
speaking of books with problems but also strengths... hey so uh, if anyone on here was thinking of reading Fairy Tale by Stephen King... maybe don't do that! i've read nearly every novel that guy has published, and like some of them a great deal. Fairy Tale is all-time bottom five King for sure. the first third is promising, if a bit King-to-the-point-of-self-parody. after that it's a bit of an aimless romp for a while, but you stick with it because it's King and he has a way of stringing you along. but then, just past the halfway point, it surprisingly becomes a shitty (literally!) prison story _and_ martial arts tournament? none of it particularly succeeds, and like someone on Goodreads said, the 17 year-old boy protagonist reads _exactly like_ an 80 year-old man pretending to be a 17 year-old boy.
The Hate U Give by Angie Thomas had really likeable dialog and characters! the themes presented probably would have been more thought-provoking had i read it back in 2017-18.
My Sister, the Serial Killer by Oyinkan Braithwaite didn't do much for me, unfortunately. DNF'd it.
Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn. i guess everyone else on planet earth who ever had any inclination to read this book has already done so, but holy shit, it's sensational! both of the main characters are completely unlikable, yet manage to remain consistently compelling all the way through. i cannot remember the last time i was so purely hooked through the nose by a narrative, through every single twist and right up until the conclusion, which itself felt like a punch in the face (in a good way). wow this book surprised the heck out of me.
...and now i'm _fiiiiinally_ reading Leviathan Wakes, the first Expanse book, which has been on my to-do list for nearly a decade. it's super enjoyable! just snappy and tropey unadorned character fiction that happens to be set in space. digestible and consistently paced, in a sequential narrative way that very much appeals to the comics/manga portion of my brain. i'm already daydreaming about binging the entire series, but do not intend to watch the show (i don't really like tv shows, lol).
It’s the 100th anniversary of the appearance of the best book published in 1922. A book that was somehow transported to planet earth from an alternate dimension. That’s right, you guessed it, I’m talking about Trilce by my hero César Vallejo.
Happy 100 years of _Trilce_ everyone
First Ed
https://www.loc.gov/item/24010378/
translation
https://archive.org/details/trilce0000vall
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@“yeso”#p85674 the best book published in 1922.
Take that, _Ulysses_
@“yeso”#p85674 well shoot that‘s a heck of an endorsement. guess i’ll have to read Trilce!
@“whatsarobot”#p85673
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why does this sound like something i need to read…!!?? said me, but also probably millions of other people who have read these books and five-starred them on Am*zon and Goodreads.
Something hilarious about these books is that one of the books takes place in what can best be described as a hyperbolic time chamber where the narrator does a year's worth of training in a short time period in order to prepare for a Very Important Fight!
The books are addictive like a fighting anime but the weirdest thing that happens is...the 9th book is actually really good. Like, these sort of popcorn novels that are hilarious for sometimes unintended reasons gradually develop into something pretty interesting while remaining sort of silly and awesome like a fighting anime.
@“edward”#p85680 i like what you‘re describing here, and it’s a fun and recognizable phenomenon that sometimes happens with these long-running series.
i think it's a combination of: 1) if a creator consistently does something for a long enough time, they eventually get quite good at it, perhaps even in spite of their worst traits; 2a) the joy that can only come with investing time and mental effort into getting attached to characters over many, many words; 2b) Stockholm syndrome.
@“whatsarobot”#p85682
2b just caused me to bark with laughter.
Very accurate!
Hilary Mantel died. Her trilogy on Thomas Cromwell was pretty great! So was the TV show adapting the first two books.
Probably her other books are good too.
@“edward”#p85886 always feels weird clicking “like” on a post announcing someone's death, but, thank you for bringing this to our attention.
Wolf Hall is the book i have started more times than probably any other. i really like that first chapter, so i wonder why i am never able to progress very far beyond it... your endorsement of the trilogy might be what finally gets me over that hump.
@“whatsarobot”#p86057
It may just not click right for you.
Cromwell, to me, has such a commanding presence on the page that I was hooked so powerfully from the first page, I couldn‘t imagine not finishing it. I think the third book is the weakest and it’s also the length of the first two combined, and I think the actual history gets a bit in the way here (always the trouble with historical fiction!), but I'll always remember it as a towering achievement that continually impressed me.
I've been meaning to check out the early novels about working in an old folks home. Not personally interested in the cromwell subject matter enough but obv a real talented writer
okay i finished that first Expanse book, and what began as a fun adventure story with an intriguing world and well-realized characters ended up being that as well as a novel full of extremely intriguing big-picture ideas, both scientific(ish) and spiritual. i mean i don‘t want to oversell this thing, but i haven’t enjoyed a novel on pure-entertainment merits this much since i was a young and impressionable junior high school idiot. perhaps that's why, as i read
i'm also halfway through The Revenge of Power by Moisés Naím, which explores the ways in which recent "three-P" (polarization, populism, post-truth) autocrats have risen to, and remained in, power around the world. it's compelling in the way it traces a historical trajectory for this phenomenon, and draws connections between folks like Trump, Berlusconi and Duterte, beyond what you already know about them. good read, powerfully important topic, and not overly demanding.
This is the first description of The Expanse that has made me want to read it!
I finished Liu Xinwu's The Wedding Party, which is maybe too panoramic and too polyphonic and too diffuse to really work for me as a novel. It's a fascinating exploration of a city during a very specific time period. Liu seems mostly concerned with explaining the context of 1980s Beijing than in really delving into his human characters, which can be quite effective. For me, I think I just wanted more of a throughline. The novel feels very scattered, I guess is what I mean to say.
And I'll gently plug my own book which released today. It's available in paperback, ebook, and audiobook. I also put the [first 12 chapters up at my newsletter for those who want a taste](https://radicaledward.substack.com/p/glossolalia-out-today).
Oh, too, been reading Sofia Segovia's The Murmur of Bees, which is oddly identical to Liu Xinwu's The Wedding Party in various ways, despite being continents and decades apart in setting and writing. I think Segovia's novel is, so far, more successful. But they both seem to be about a very specific location during a very specific time with a backdrop of revolution, violence, and suspicion.
I'm about halfway into Ubik and that one is extremely cool and goes down real smooth. Just feeling very entertained and engrossed by it. Decent restraint on corny passages describing women! Nice!!
I've been in a bit of a sci-fi mood, anyone have any recommendations along these lines? I've never read some of the famous ones like Pattern Recognition or Snow Crash. I assume they're worth reading but wondering if anyone here has something a bit more niche they'd recommend :)
Samuel R Delaney!
and some classics that are now kind of overlooked:
_Rogue Moon_ by Algis Budrys
_The Stars My Destination_ Alfred Bester
the "human instrumentality" stories Cordwainer Smith
@“yeso”#p86297 I actually totally forgot that I have a copy of Dhalgren sitting on my shelf lol. Would you recommend Babel-17 over that or just read them both eventually
Babel-17 is (really really good) genre SF and Dhalgren is experimental/literary fiction and extremely great but may not meet the current appetite you have for SF.