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I gotta skip the misogyny/alt-right crap today. So here’s a question for you all: what are you reading?
I’ll start: in addition to reading way too many news stories about Donald Trump, I’ve been reading about meditation. Here are a couple of books I especially like:
Mindfulness in Plain English, by Henepola Gunaratana (An older version is available for free online!)
The Mind Illuminated, by Culadasa (John Yates). Website here.
How about you?
As an added bonus, here are some words of wisdom from my unconscious mind:
"Pickles don't just CAUSE hippies. Pickles ARE hippies." — Someone said this in a dream of mine last night. #PicklesAreHippies #TrumpTail
— David Futrelle (@DavidFutrelle) September 30, 2016
It didn’t make any more sense in the dream than it does in the real world.
And a Pledge Drive capybara reading a goddamn book!
I only just started reading Enlightened Sexism by Susan J Douglass for my Psych class right now.
I’m currently reading “Free Speech Isn’t Free” by Roosh V.
At this moment, I’m on book 6 of the Wheel of Time series. The whole series leaves me kind of conflicted – the story is rather compelling, and it is clearly compelling enough to keep me reading through this far, but I often get frustrated by the amount of redundant description and exposition. The way that Jordan continuously reiterates information (I get it, the weather is unnaturally hot! I don’t need every scene to include a paragraph or two about how hot and sweaty the PoV character is) makes me feel talked-down-to, as if I’m unable to remember things that he wrote earlier in the same book. But I keep reading, so it must balance out somehow!
In between WoT volumes, I tend to do a quick Discworld book or two.
Also, to veer on a slight tangent, can anyone suggest me some good epic fantasy? I know I’m not even half-way through WoT yet, but I’d like to start looking ahead of time for what to move on to when it’s finished. If anyone is familiar with Stephen Erikson, he basically set the standard for me with the Malazan series, so anything similar to that would be fantastic. Otherwise, I’m primarily interested in interesting worlds, so non-tolkien stuff is great.
Tomorrow I’ll catch up on a big stack of Science. I also want to go through Rossignac ’98 (the edge-breaker algorithm) this weekend.
Books rarely grab me anymore. I’m not sure what exactly happened — maybe it was grad school?
I’ve been at university for the past month and only just got internet again, so I’ve mostly been reading books for classes — currently The Iliad and a short fiction anthology, in which our most recent short story was “The Yellow Wallpaper” by Charlotte Perkins Gilman.
I didn’t bring all of my books from home with me, unfortunately, and all of this reading has made me want to go through some of the ones that I did have so I ended up re-buying George R. R. Martin’s A Dance With Dragons, which I’ve also started reading now, and T. H. White’s The Once and Future King. I also finally managed to get my hands on Mark Z. Danielewski’s House of Leaves, though I have so much else on my platter that I think it will need to wait until after I’ve read some of my other things.
Reading Demon World, of the warhammer franchise. Any warhammer fans here?
I got three books with my new NC library card.
(There’s actually a funny story there. I got my library card, and they scanned the books and let me check them out, but the books don’t show up on the system, so when I went to renew them, they weren’t there to renew. So I have accidentally stolen library books. Don’t worry though, I called the library, and explained to them, and the lady on the phone was like “Nah, don’t worry about it, go ahead and keep them for two more weeks.”)
Blood and Kin by Claire Humphrey – A young woman’s Russian grandmother, who was a witch to her community, dies suddenly, and leaves her granddaughter to the task of serving her community in that capacity. Meanwhile, a man who has had his “kin” nature held back by a spell by her grandmother is weakening, and he has infected another person.
Renfield: Slave of Dracula by Barbara Hambly – The classic story of Dracula as re-told from the perspective of Renfield, the zoophage inmate at the insane asylum.
The Scandalous Sisterhood of Prickwillow Place by Julie Berry – A group of young girls at a boarding school witness their headmistress and her brother die at the dinner table. The girls figure out they were poisoned, but instead of going home, where they were also miserable, they decide to cover up the murders by using their individual talents to work together as a “sisterhood”, all while investigating who among them murdered their headmistress.
I’m not reading anything all that interesting at the moment; dry textbooks on UX and cognitive psychology and the ever-present algorithms and math faff. So, not much excitement there. Lots of diversity here, though!
Unrelated to books, but since this is an open thread, just wanted to say – I mentioned some time ago about a family member here who had throat cancer, removed by surgery and radio. He’s had a heck of a time recovering, and still can’t swallow, even after nine months – eating is a terrible chore for him, and it’s really hard to watch. Well, he went in for a checkup with the surgeon today, and it looks like they have a procedure to help him recover much faster now, and it’s not invasive – it’s a day surgery! It’s been really depressing around here lately, and this was just the thing to help turn it around. So, I’m still buzzed on cold medications and sick as heck, but that was some really nice news that I wanted to share. Hooray for socialized medicine!
@Roger,
pahahaha, oh, you little rabble-rousing scamp, you. Other conversation was too much for you, so you decided to come here instead? Can’t blame you, really. Don’t worry, I’m not gonna hassle you here unless you start askin’ for it. Why don’t you tell us what you read *other than* the works of MRAs? Maybe there’ll be some sort of common ground we didn’t realize, that might be nice.
Hey, that’s great news! I’m real happy for you!
@WWTH
That is an awesome gif. What is that from?
Delving back in to Château de Bordeaux now. :3
Just re-read Naked Lunch, and it keeps getting funnier every time.
@weirwood: where’s that Alan Rickman image from?
Non-literary thing– finished up a satisfying little DIY project this week, which has led to my first Instructables post and a certain amount of egoboo: http://www.instructables.com/id/DIY-Variable-Spacing-Multimeter-Probe-From-Draftin/
“Harry Potter And The Cursed Child” (it was at the library). So far I’ve managed to read ***SPOILER WARNING*** the first sentence, “A busy and crowded station”. Tomorrow I might have time to read another one.
I’m also on a poetry kick, for some reason. Mostly Mary Oliver and Jane Kenyon, with a little Rumi as a reminder that the world is a beautiful and beloved place in spite of the horrid things some humans do.
I have no idea. I just Googled “side eye gif” and that was one of the options.
I’m reading We Hunted the Mammoth, duh!! 😛 Same as numerobis! 😀 I haven’t read any books in ages (I still need to visit the local Brisbane library. I have been living here for almost 8 months and a walk past it several times a week! ^^;), but when I am not reading WHTM I am reading some online comics-Gyno Star http://www.gynostar.com/ , Crimson Dark http://www.davidcsimon.com/crimsondark/index.php?view=comic&strip_id=1 , Gone with the Blastwave http://www.blastwave-comic.com/index.php?p=comic&nro=1 and Romantically Apocalyptic http://romanticallyapocalyptic.com/
@dlouwe
Depending on your values for epic fantasy, any of NK Jemisin’s series, Max Gladstone’s Craft Cycle, and Throne of the Crescent Moon bySaladin Ahmed all spring to mind.
Now that’s it about to be October, I might have to read some short horror stories. I should probably look for some new stuff once in awhile but I have this huge anthology that’s really, really good and always fulfills my horror lit needs.
https://www.amazon.com/Dark-Descent-Evolution-Horror/dp/B000ZLPBM6/ref=sr_1_2?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1475285955&sr=1-2&keywords=the+dark+descent
It’s even the book that introduced me to Flannery O’Connor back when I was a teenager. Weirdly, the story of hers that’s in there is not A Good Man is Hard to Find but Good Country People.
TW: Roger’s post.
@Rodger
You will probably not enjoy this thread. I have read or heard very little by or about Roost V that summerizes to decent human being. He is a rapist guidence counseler.
I just finished The Family Plot by Cherie Priest. It’s a standalone, set in the present (not her steampunk world). It’s technically horror, or thiller — it’s a ghost story, set in an abandoned estate at the foot of Lookout Mountain, as an architectural salvage crew is taking it apart before demolition. I really enjoyed it, with caveat, and very much appreciated that everyone in the story was fairly genre savvy, nobody was particularly horror story stupid, they didn’t withhold information and kept working the problem together.
My personal caveat is that it made me realize that ghost stories are my OMG I am creeped out and can’t sleep, clowns will eat me kryptonite, so I had to only read it during the day, which made it slower going. I don’t have problems with most other horror, but there’s something about the cultural inability to combat ghosts and the way they’re basically entities that took gaslighting as their superpower that just makes me nope outta there after sunset.
I’m also reading a book about the Y chromosome called Adam’s Curse, by Brian Sykes, which has some interesting things to say about DNA analysis in general, and about the mutations specific to the Y chromosome in particular.
@Dlouwe: have you tried Mary Robinette Kowal’s Milk and Honey series? It’s a Regency setting rather than medieval with the serial numbers filed off — not quite Gaslight or steampunk, but with very strong worldbuilding and characterization — and the last two books are exceptional, even given the high standards set by the whole series. The series is complete, too. I can also recommend Guy Gavriel Kay’s alt-universe, starting with Lions of Al-Rassan (an almost Spain during Al-Andalus), then A Song for Arbonne (Albigensian Crusade), The Last Light of the Sun (almost Vikings in an Almost England before the Norman Invasion), and Children of Earth and Sky (almost Croatia around the time that Venice dominated the Mediterranean). Work the Sarantine Mosaic (two books, Sailing to Sarantium and Lord of Emperors) in before Children of Earth and Sky, but they can go anywhere. Each book is stand-alone, but occasionally, they very lightly touch one another.
And if those are already done… I’ve got a complete 5 volume series (I’m futzing with volume 4 to fix a continuity error I introduced, but 1’s online and 2-3 are just waiting for me to post) that could use beta eyes. The elevator pitch is The West Wing, set in Westeros, from the perspectives of the Varyses (who are trying to keep the civilization civilized at all costs) rather than the ones who give big speeches and poke others with sharp sticks. My very earliest concept for it was “what if the 79 CE Pompeii eruption was typical for the mountain and it destroyed the central Roman Empire — what would have happened to the Brittania colonies?” (Rome got lucky – that specific eruption was fairly mild as Vesuvius eruptions go.) And “What if, a thousand years later, using the best, most egalitarian interpretations of the Robin Hood stories, the band manages to win and defeats the Normans before they get established?” And then I went and played with fantasy tropes – inheritance, civil wars, lost heirs, an enemy at the gates, nefarious relatives, conflicting faiths.
@scildfreja @WWTH
I’m sure it’s for research purposes only… 😉
Second the recommendation for Huy Gavriel Kay, and you might also tahe a look at the Heirs of Alexandia series too, which is set i an alternate Renaissance with magic.
@Czanne
I’ll have a go at those.
IQ84 by Haruki Murakami
@eli
Just bought that! Loved The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle so much that I decided to go looking for his other books.
@Stephen Lawt:
I read Enlightened Sexism, but just for…fun? Not bad, I thought, though sometimes the writing could have been a bit sharper.
Currently reading All the Ugly and Wonderful Things by Bryn Greenwood.