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yo baka, out of curiosity what was so boring about expanse for you? the gravity talk? |
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Apr 26, 2024 12:28
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| # ? Sep 1, 2024 01:09 |
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fuggin yikes whata snipe. 
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Apr 26, 2024 12:28
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rear end-penny posted:yo baka, out of curiosity what was so boring about expanse for you? the gravity talk? IDK i think it was the revolving door of plots they had to foil like kind of ramping from like zombies to forerunners or what have you and in the beginning it felt tied together and there was a deeper depth to the problems they had to solve each unveiling new problems upon solution while a whole social web of people reacted via both trying to help and take advantage of each other while not knowing much. but like it kind of felt like theyd dealt with anything interesting when they were just fighting space nazis was the last book i read. like i guess that could happen but idk. i liked robo-zombie amos but it disturbed me to think like, thats not the same dude. i think the show was really good and i'm glad it ended before it could get to either the end of my attention span or the end of being interesting whichever the problem was
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Apr 26, 2024 17:58
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oh that space nazi thing happens in the last two books doesn't it? I feel like you're talking about the Laconia plot... I guess I have hit that part. it isn't as good as the beginning stuff but I'm still interested if the crew gets back together or what. only about half of that left.
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Apr 26, 2024 18:15
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i finished dashiell hammett's the thin man. wow that was a really good book lol. i'm gonna see the movie next can't wait to see how they handled it
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Apr 30, 2024 00:36
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Until he was four years old, James Henry Trotter had a happy life. He lived peacefully with his mother and father in a beautiful house beside the sea. There were always plenty of other children for him to play with, and there was the sandy beach for him to run about on, and the ocean to paddle in. It was the perfect life for a small boy. Then, one day, Jame's mother and father went to London to do some shopping, and there a terrible thing happened. Both of them suddenly got eaten up (in full daylight, mind you, and on a crowded street) by an enormous angry rhinoceros which had escaped from the London Zoo. Prurient Squid fucked around with this message at 11:12 on May 15, 2024 |
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May 15, 2024 11:09
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I'm reading Kurt Vonnegut's Breakfast of Champions. I feel he'd probably fit in well in BYOB. |
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May 20, 2024 13:15
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Catching up on Batman. I can't help it, The Joker always gives me a thrill! I'm scared, too! It's why I edit my posts so much! Because they're so scary! ---------------- |
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May 24, 2024 17:53
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Any Malazan Book of the Fallen fans here?
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May 29, 2024 09:56
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I'm Glad My Mom Died by Jennette McCurdy. I give her a lot of respect for telling her story and putting it all out there. It's a pretty hosed up experience, but sadly not that unique, and I think it probably resonates with a lot of readers. Nearly finished with Babylon's Ashes, book 6 of The Expanse series. It's been kind of a slump compared to the previous books. There's chapters and chapters of characters being introspective, but very little character development or world-building. Clarissa Mao, who was a big deal in book 5, might as well not exist in this book despite joining the crew. There's also chapters and chapters of various factions having strategy meetings, but they don't amount to much and no one does much of anything until the end. I get that a theme of the book is that all the scheming of humanity don't matter much in the grand scope of the uncontrollable forces in the universe, but there are ways to explore that without feeling like my time is being wasted on page-filler. |
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May 29, 2024 19:59
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Just started Ninefox Gambit. This is some insane poo poo. |
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May 31, 2024 22:15
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Sean Michaels' "Do You Remember Being Born?" kinda feels old school in its lyrical, flowery language but it's also a very modern book about a poet being paid to co-create a long poem with a Large Language Model. I was absorbed and chewed this book up, highly recommended.
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Jun 2, 2024 13:40
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reread naked lunch reread all the pretty horses reread quentins section from the sound & the fury im almost done kafka's the Castle, characters talk for pages at a time, 3 chapters were one conversation. finishing it so i can say ive read it. klamm is a funny name to be so central to the book
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Jun 9, 2024 05:27
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i finished the castle and also finished faulkner's 'go down, moses.' this was a dense and sprawling tale that explored both race relations and man's relationship with violence & nature. the ending was very sad. with this book faulkner was establishing a fictional lineage and he did it very ambitiously with a plethora of settings and characters. the book slows down as it usually does in his books when characters spend an entire section just talking about family history and the nature of God which are always intertwining themes in his works. i would probably have to read it again or some poo poo to get the most out of it. the strongest section dealt with a 12 year old's self-appointed mission to kill an old bear who has resisted both time and gunshot to be a sort of sovereign of the woods. i liked the theme of hunting does, which is obviously a bad idea as we know now with what i'm assuming is a very shrunken deer population compared to when the book's action took place. he uses it as a metaphor for the things humans do that help to destroy themselves. it provides a central pivot to the closing sections. in summary Faulkner shows again that he was both ahead of and very much a product of his time, both questioning and unconsciously condoning some of humanity's most brutal facets.
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Jun 17, 2024 20:34
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i bought a big book this week with a cover that imo has a p byob vibe. i mean check this https://nupress.northwestern.edu/9780810145702/divine-days/ |
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Jun 18, 2024 20:48
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Welp. New book to buy! I'm very into folklore and mythology and this is perfect for new reading. The concrete floor is cold; the walls are bare |
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Jun 19, 2024 17:38
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xcheopis posted:Welp. New book to buy! oh drat, gonna add this one to my wishlist for when it's back in stock |
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Jun 19, 2024 18:50
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Brimb You're Own Book
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Jun 20, 2024 15:43
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Children of Time. Enjoyed reading, look forward the rest of the series. |
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Jun 23, 2024 07:43
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Yeaaah! that book was really cool. |
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Jun 23, 2024 10:28
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Catchpenny by Charlie Huston. Let's say you want to make a fantasy book set in modern times, what's the big thing you gotta do? make your protagonist a washed-up detective! but in this magical modern day, they're called a Sly and mana isn't a thing here, no siree we call that Mojo. It's all very silly but the tone is like The Maltese Falcon smashed up with the Dresden Files books. Hard to deny it's got genre thrills, but it's not one that's gonna stick with you after it's done. I had to look up the name on Goodreads, so you know it wasn't lingering
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Jun 24, 2024 19:16
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You, Me, & Ulysses S Grant by brad neely. It's fine, but underscores how crucial Neely's vocal talents are to his success. A funny book, but the premise runs thin pretty quickly.
crimes |
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Jun 24, 2024 19:20
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I rarely do audio for books, however, I love the narrator for these Clark Ashton Smith, and this is my favourite. At some point, I should check the readings of Dunsany's work, too! The concrete floor is cold; the walls are bare |
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Jul 14, 2024 18:28
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I am reading claw of the concillator. at the part with the weird enochian play. I am deeply afraid of missing every little thing in these books, people say they have to reread them like 5-6 times, theres forums, im afraid of coming away completely missing the most important parts |
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Jul 15, 2024 05:10
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something like halfway through The Dispossessed, which is now my favorite Le Guin book.
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Jul 16, 2024 18:56
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LurchinTard posted:I am reading claw of the concillator. at the part with the weird enochian play. I am deeply afraid of missing every little thing in these books, people say they have to reread them like 5-6 times, theres forums, im afraid of coming away completely missing the most important parts i was reading the book of nu urth and im somewhere where he's gone past the galaxy's infinite point and is in some other dimension or something. everyone he meets is some kind of freak mutant. I read the first vol. of book of the new sun But i've basically skipped the 2nd i think. i finished rereading the buried giant by kazuo ishiguro. up with his best imo with the cool aesthetic flair
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Jul 16, 2024 19:21
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I found out recently that Jasper Fforde has finally written a sequel to Shades of Grey, titled Red Side Story. SOG was a fave of both my wife and I back when it came out, so I've just finished a reread of that to refresh my memory before we both launch into RSS. I have no idea, at this point, if RSS concludes the story or not; SOG originally was meant to have two sequels, but a lot can change in a decade. Unfortunately, my wife hasn't started RSS yet, and while I'm participating in the BSS thread for The March North that's only running at one chapter/day, so I need something else to read. After some rummaging I turned up a copy of Limbo System by Rick Cook. His Wizardry series was a perennial favourite when I was a teenager, and this appears to be his only foray into sci-fi, and based on the back cover, it has a premise similar to MIGE. I guess we'll see how well it's aged! LurchinTard posted:I am reading claw of the concillator. at the part with the weird enochian play. I am deeply afraid of missing every little thing in these books, people say they have to reread them like 5-6 times, theres forums, im afraid of coming away completely missing the most important parts I just finished BOTNS last month. I think what stood out to me most wasn't the puzzle aspect but the vocabulary; Wolfe absolutely loves using archaic or obscure words, or going back to Greek or Latin roots to coin new, etymologically plausible ones. The Latin-English and Greek-English dictionaries on my e-reader got a workout, and I learned a bunch of new words too. On the puzzle side of things it's got everything from small hints at things that are explained a few pages later, like (first book spoiler) the painting of one of the Apollo astronauts, up through plot twists where once they happen you look back and realize there probably a lot of small things pointing to it, or events or natures that are implied everywhere but stated nowhere, and then right at the end implications that there's some sort of time loop underlying Severian's entire history. I'm guessing that last is what people end up re-reading and re-re-reading the books over. I am probably not going to reread them, nor the sequel series, but they were interesting books, and it was also neat to see how much he inspired other stuff I've read or played -- Numenera and Caves of Qud are both heavily inspired by BOTNS in their setting, he had a huge influence on Brust's plotting style (although not so much his writing), and if Saunders hasn't read at least some Wolfe I'll eat my own skull. |
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Aug 4, 2024 20:57
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I'm reading The Trial, and I like it a lot. I really relate to K having something lovely and incomprehensible laid at his feet and the struggle to somehow put it right when all efforts lead to surreal nonsense and people who are clueless/hamstrung. |
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Aug 15, 2024 15:46
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Started reading The Master and Margarita for the second time. All I can remember is that I enjoyed it so here's hoping that's still true
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Aug 15, 2024 22:23
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rear end-penny posted:Started reading The Master and Margarita for the second time. All I can remember is that I enjoyed it so here's hoping that's still true It's been more than 30 years since I read it; should also give it a re-read. The concrete floor is cold; the walls are bare |
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Aug 15, 2024 22:30
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I should read that book sometime, a lot of people have recommended it to me. |
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Aug 15, 2024 22:35
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I didn't like the post-ending very much. Maybe I was just too stupid to get it as a teenager. I did get a copy of my own a few years ago so I guess I should re-read it. |
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Aug 16, 2024 07:41
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read pride and prejudice because I love victorian era ladies
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Aug 21, 2024 18:32
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Ahundredbux posted:read pride and prejudice because I love victorian era ladies "Victorians" The concrete floor is cold; the walls are bare |
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Aug 21, 2024 18:43
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i read high-rise by JG Ballard and lemme see if i have a few thoughts -serviceable plot is the adjective i'd use -Otherwise the concept was so interesting, i love settings that are microcosms of a larger world and Ballard is explicit in describing how the high-rise is a fully contained city essentially with class distinctions -U can read a lot of class poo poo into this book -My favourite bit was with the reporter who leaves the complex every day to go on the news and everyone watches his reports to see if he'll slip and say "Hey there's this entropic war orgy combination going on in the building i live in" -CW: people get groped and assaulted in this book -Everything works out poetically, the antagonists get their comeuppance, but the protag's arc isn't really neatly wrapped up in a bow. You get the impression he's gonna die within a week this was my first ballard that i finished. i'm interested in reading more but i don't think he goes as hard as PKD does; or when he does it's kind of in this cruder more primal direction where PKD just trips out as hard as he can. sort of like poor man's PKD i guess, or if you're like me you've run out of PKD poo poo to read and need someone similar. However i understand he has his place as a critically respected and influential novelist. But i havent read a better slipstream book than ice by anna kavan yet which is my yardstick for the genre Well anyhoo
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Aug 25, 2024 20:19
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| # ? Sep 1, 2024 01:09 |
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i found high rise a little tedious, i remember feeling like ok thats a clever concept and then you get it but it doesnt expand on anything and the characterization isnt interesting and it just keeps doing the same thing until the book is over. i liked atrocity exhibition a bit more, but it's like a series of vignettes with no real plot, just like exploring a kind of nasty paranoid state of mind. i think dick is a good comparison for him, theyve both got that paranoid energy. but dick seems to want to give you a story, whereas ballard is just trying to get across a certain point or a state of mind and any plot etc is just a means of getting u there
https://i.imgur.com/xQxnooW.png |
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Aug 25, 2024 22:37
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