Share what youāve read and what you thought of it. Ask for recommendations and just discuss it all. Comics/manga included, I guess
5 Likes
Currently, Iām reading Les Miserables and itās quite engaging but very much bloated. Hugo goes into such great detail about backgrounds of backgrounds and just some irrelevant details. It kind of reminded me of Joyce with his dedication to description of routine and mundane little things but at least here itās not the main focal point and the narrative itself is substantial enough to dare skip the uninteresting parts(for me it was the Waterloo battle) and still continue reading. Overall, I definitely see why itās considered a classic but not sure if Iāll ever be revisiting it after finishing
1 Like
Slowly trying to get back into reading. Find fiction books to still be a bit troublesome honestly. I find non-fiction books to be a lot easier to read. Currently been going through a few different James Bond non-fiction books. I read all of Ian Flemingās Bond books years ago, would like to try and start getting all the non-Fleming books, which there are quite a number of.
Been reading the Yu-Gi-Oh manga. Itās very interesting, seeing something transform about a manga about games in general to something that would evolve into being about a card game it created. There are alot of books from the original manga and all the spin-offs, so just casually collecting them through sites like eBay. Havnāt read any other manga actually, makes me want to look into others.
As for comics, Iām subscribed to Star Trek: Year Five and the current X-Men run, but to tell the truth, havnāt kept up to date to them despite buying them. I need to catch up on them at some point, and get my small comic collection organised. Been reading IDWās Sonic the Hedgehog which I do keep up with since I like to talk about it in a thread on a Sonic fan forum. I really enjoy it, with the general derth of Sonic content right now, IDW is the only thing that really fills the void right now, and itās written by fans who know how to write the characters and give the fans what they want.
2018 : 66 books read
2019 : 77
2020 : 90
2021 : 92
I set myself a pages goal per day.
Fav authors : DostoĆÆevski, Proust, Zweig
5 Likes
Wow! I think Iāve read about 35 to 40 books last year depending on whether you count some short stories, tractates and what not. Before that I had never counted but it wasnāt that much anyway.
My favourite author is probably Kafka but my all time favourite book is Martin Eden by London. Not a huge fan of Tolstoy(I read War and Peace in school but not in full. And this autumn Anna Karenina which i found great except for the last third or so). Dostoevskyās style is not exactly my cup of tea as is the subject matter but Crime and Punishment was pretty good, definitely revisiting it in the future. I never finished Idiot though. The last two authors you mentioned are unfamiliar to me, could you recommend something by them?
3 Likes
goddamn right. i always go back to kafka, philip k dick and vonnegut.
with dostoyevsky, i liked everything in crime and punishment except the sweeping family histories. Iāve the attention span of a gnat and couldnāt figure what they had to do with anything. still, it gave us proto-columbo 
i never finished it, mind.
notes from the underground thoughā¦ i read it as a teenager and it freaked me out how much it captured the way i thinkā¦ only to later realise he was condemning it 
iāve got too young kids so i donāt get a huge amount of time to read, especially with lockdown, so iām not reading anything too strenuous at the monent.
iāve just started the city and the city by china whatshisface which has very intriguing premise. iām also dipping into the occasional story from gibsonās burning chrome and a chapter of ghosts of my past by mark fisher now and then.
comics-wise, iāve just finished the new hellblazer, which is a return to form for comicās best character. not many writers get constantine but si spurrier nailed it.
3 Likes
Oh yeah, totally forgot about him. I read Catās Cradle and Slaughterhouse 5. Loved both but couldnāt help but see the similarities between them. I hope his other works offer something different, got any recommendations?
I donāt remember it being a big problem for me. What I didnāt like was the naivete of the epilogue (not only because of the obvious religious message which couldāve been done much more elegantly) and some of the prolonged sequences where the main character walks around the city. Knowing Dostoevsky was a gambler (which lead to him being poor most of the time), I always feel like he wrote a lot of it only to get a little more money because the payment was dependent on the word count back then
1 Like
his later stuff gets very similar, with many personal stories being repeated. frankly, itās his voice that i love, so that didnāt bother me too much until timequake (not recommended).
i like slaughterhouse and cradle, but i personally think vonnegut really hits his stride (in terms of his āvoiceā) with breakfast of champions, mother night, and god bless you mr rosewater. mother night is particularly affecting.
his essays are great too. itās like being told a story by your funny, cynical and slightly depressed granddad.
you might like this:
ah, i never finished the last section so missed the epilogue. the whole ālet me tell you about this family in this prefecture that will now go on for 25 pagesā just got too much. i like the double a lot and iām looking to hit the idiot at some point.
that last bit about word count sounds like philip k dick, though he used to bang out tons of short stories amped up on amphetamines, so the quality can vary.
2 Likes
I recently read After The First Death. Itās about a group of terrorists that hijack a bus full of children and hold them and the driver hostage on an old railroad bridge. The story switches between the perspectives of the driver, Kate, one of the terrorists, Miro, and a teenage boy named Ben who has a role in the hostage situation later on in the story.
Would highly recommend. Excellent novel.
Get out of my head. 
This. I love all his work, but Slaughterhouse-Five and Mother Night are the ones that I keep coming back to.
1 Like
1 Like
Proust wrote In Search Of Lost Time, itās one of the hardest book to read. I donāt think youāll like it but you can try the first volume. It is a sum of intelligence and culture.
Zweig is one of the most famous Austrian writer who notably denounced Nazism. His style is refined, psychologizing, feminine. Twenty-Four Hours in the Life of a Woman, Letter from an Unknown Woman, Beware of Pity, The Royal Game, The World of Yesterday are some very good examples.
2 Likes
I have currently begun reading The Witcher: Baptism of Fire, I stalled half way through the first chapter back in the late summer and never really got around to pick it up again.
Itās mainly due to I only read on weekends in bed early in the morning, setting an alarm for 6 and using the morning light to read in. However here in the winter, Iāll have to wait until past 8 to get before the sun rises and I canāt lay in the bed past 7. So itās very little reading I get done in the fall and winter.
When Iām done reading Baptism of Fire, Iāll read a few of Lovecraftās short stories and then throw myself over The Poetic Edda.
1 Like
Some comics news. Apparently DC had a bunch of really good comic ideas and instead of just letting them all run they decided to let people pick one. But they donāt have creative teams so it is useless.
After a long pause from reading books Iāve started Stephen Kings āSalemās Lotā yesterday.
I remember enjoying it very much when Iāve read it the first time, so i think i will be entertained by it again 
I wish i had more spare time for reading.
Been a while since Iāve read anything other than fan fiction, although I did start to read 1984 about a year ago, but had to put it on hold as things came up. Last book I fully read a few years ago was 11/22/63, by Stephen King. Awesome book, caught hold of me pretty quickly, and is pretty much responsible for convincing me why Oswald probably did act alone in shooting Kennedy, and that there was no conspiracy, except perhaps a conspiracy to make it seem like it had been a conspiracy. Check it out, you might feel the same afterward.
Anybody ever read any entries in the Revelation Space series by Alastair Reynolds?
https://twitter.com/MckKirk/status/1541390130317066242
For many, video games are like magic. They hide in the dark and then appear from nowhere, fully formed. Based on over a dozen firsthand interviews that cover genre-defining games and the titles that inspired them - Metal Gear Solid, Thief, Deus Ex, Dishonored, Assassinās Creed, Hitman, Splinter Cell, Prey, The Last of Us Part II, and more - this book shines a flashlight into the shadowy corners of game development history, uncovering the untold stories behind these formative titles. These insider interviews cover development struggles, internal conflicts, changes in direction, and insight into the reasoning and challenges behind specific mechanics and development decisions. Thereās the story of how Thief was developed, in part, by an indie band. It covers Metal Gear Solidās localisation issues and the Americanisation of Hideo Kojimaās seminal stealth series, along with a page from the original Metal Gear Solid design document. Elsewhere, one of IO Interactiveās founders explains why Hitmanās Agent 47 is inspired by Coca-Cola, the creator of Assassinās Creed tells us his vision for the future of the series, and there are plenty of surprises besides. Rather than looking back at the genre as a whole, it traces a line through and connects the dots via personal stories and anecdotes from the people who were there. Foreword written by Arkaneās Harvey Smith.
5 Likes
ooo that sounds enticing.
1 Like
You will have to get back to us on how Coca-cola inspirer 47.
2 Likes