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nuclearshill gau/cho :marseypinochet: aweonao  11mo ago (image post) 208 thread views #248334

Weekly “what are you reading” Thread #41 :marseyreading:

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!bookworms

To discuss your weekly readings of books? Textbooks and papers.

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I just finished John William's Stoner which was as good as it was hyped to be. The section of the book involving a student he fails is one of the best things I've ever read.

Last week I read Derek Kunsken's House of Saints which is a fun scifi book with a positive representation of trans and down syndrome people. I feel like I'm on the right side of history of history for once :marseyexcited:

I also feel bad as I've read three of the book club books but kept forgetting to post here. Sorry neoconshill :sorry: I know it's a pain to make all these threads and would have given up too

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Stoner is great, seems to be pretty divisive in people's interpretations though. Did you find Stoner to have succeeded in life despite the hardships or was he just a failure all the way through?

Love how John Williams can write with a real terse style and still convey a ton of emotion and depth. The introduction is the best IMO; it felt completely recontextualized (at least in how I read it) after finishing the story.

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Yes, I loved reading William's perspective on Stoner. I do kinda wish I had read it after finishing the book as the intro gives a play by play of the entire book. Not that it was dependent on twists, but still.

On Stoner: Evaluating whether he succeeded or not is tricky because in so many instances he capitulates to the circumstances around him and resolves to suffer(his awful marriage, being bullied by Hollis)

Yet in other situations he displays bravery (his affair, refusing to join the army, challenging Hollis in the first place)

I think this combination of complacency and heroism so defining for the lives of most people (maybe a little too relatable for me :marseyemojismilemouthcoldsweat:) .

I think when you look at his life overall, he seems to have spent most of it doing what he loved. For most people, having an alcoholic daughter, miserable marriage, career stagnation, would be marks of failure. But these things never seemed to be how Stoner defined himself or critical to his self worth.

I agree with Williams when he says Stoner ultimately had a better life then most people..

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I agree with you and the author. I think the initial decision he makes to be something more than a farmer, to defy his father's wishes and be his own man put him above most people. I think we as people are all victims of complacency, in some aspects of our lives.

Reading Stoner put me through a bit of a crisis because I am letting complacency run my life. I couldn't recall any point where I had truly gone my own way, and it put me in a state of serious contemplation about my future.

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I had a similar crisis reading Silverburg's Dying Inside years ago. Such a different book, but it really makes you feel bad for living like a spectator

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Does anyone ever read light novels? I wonder if light novels as a format would ever take off in America? :marseyclueless: By that I mean ones written in America not imported translated ones.

I guess we have YA already but light novels keep themselves, you know, light. Classic short story publications aren't as healthy as they used to be. Young adult novels being as long as they are bothers me whereas light novels aren't pretending to be anything else.

And maybe this is the weeb in me but they don't seem to be written just with foids in mind. :marseyfoidretard:

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I think if you intermixed it with manga and comic graphics in parts, it'd sell well. You could have 3 pictures a chapter detailing the action and have it be some shonen bullshit, some kids would like that.

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Is a light novel just a novella?

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Maybe :marseyclueless:

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I mean, does it have to have some weird anime plot, or does it just to refer to like a 75-150 page book? Cuz we got plenty of those.

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I guess novellas are the same :marseyclueless: but in my mind I was comparing them to YA novels that target the same audience but are a little too proud of themselves. Also it doesn't seem like novellas of that genre get the same kind of attention.

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I think there's a few things comparable.

There's a book series called The Murderbot diaries which is now 7 part novellas.

It's pretty lighthearted scifi

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No, LNs are longer than novellas. Wiki says novellas top out at 40k words. That's where I would say LNs start. Most are in the 60k to 120k range. The vast majority is also part of longer series containing 10-30 volumes of overarching story. And lastly LNs contain illustrations, ~5 to 10 per volume.

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I could see it only if the fantasy market shifts heavily towards world building as a replacement for narrative. Sanderson, and the popularity of D&D, could have an effect on that. Lots of isekai LNs rely on world building but usually lean on a weird sort of a priori set of fantasy rules and tropes to craft a world and story. In the west this would probably materialise as D&D fanfiction, essentially. I don't know what other genre of LN would really work in the west.

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Most of the LNs I've started have been really really bad. Especially the chinese ones.

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As a kid I read a handful of the original Star Wars :soyjakwow: extended universe books, and remembered enjoying them at the time.

Since I was cleaning some things out of my parents' house after losing my dad earlier this year, I found a bunch of them and decided to re-read a couple before tossing/donating them.

Holy fricking shit, they're so bad.

Just wrapped the first couple X-Wing books, and jesus. Book 3 The Krytos Trap is literally on par with tumblr tier fan fiction.

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A short history of decay, cioran

i have tended to shun cioran on charges of being a whiney little cute twink

but after learning this book was sent, by the christchurch shooter, to his sister before he performed. well, I guess I'm in.

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Imagine how many symbols and dates and catchphrases he crammed into the margins

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Trying to finish Cryptono icon. It's not very interesting and quite long, so I force myself to read at least a chapter or two every day.

Thankfully I bought something more interesting (Stanislaw Lem) that's going to arrive today. Maybe I'll finish cryptono icon, maybe I'll drop it

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Had an itching for star slop so I read through the Darth Bane trilogy over the last couple of weeks. First book is a lot of fun even if Bane is so r-slurred he'd rather make the sith snatch defeat from the jaws of victory since he wouldn't be in charge.

Even though his apprentice is more or less an E-girl he is so unfathomably stupid in the next two books (especially the second) you end up rooting against him. He can't realize how his philosophy is more nonsense than the guy he overthrew.

At least Plageius has some quality for starwars standards since that's him and Palpatine girl bossing it up and they realized "hey loser of this game of beer pong dies" is way less likely to result in the collapse of your order rather than swinging at each other wildly and praying that the winner doesn't get crippled for life.

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Reading Tarnsman of Gor and it's giving me a real appreciation for passable B-tier schlock like 40k novels. I know it was written like 60 years ago but even back then "show don't tell" was known about and there's no excuse for such overly flowery prose.

Edit: I'm deeper into it and while it's not really better in quality, at least the story is reasonable. Maybe it'll grow on me.

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All that man is by David Szalay. The book is divided into small sections focussing on only a handful of distinct characters in each section.

I'm only 3 sections in out of 9 and I don't think I'll finish it. Each chapter, the character is some :marseyme: who goes on a holiday and ends up getting laid by some obese bong/czech foid. The whole story just feels very unlikely.

Gonna read No Longer Human instead, and maybe more :marseyjapanese: shit if I like it

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:#marseydisconcerting:

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