Weekly "what are you reading" Thread #59

!ringbearers OMG! there's 9 of us

@cyberdick IS LITERALLY THE WITCH KING OF ANGMAR. More like Ringwraiths amerite?

Between Two Fires by Christopher Buehlman. Gothic horror set during the Black Death. It's like mediaeval post-apoclypse as Lucifer uses the plague as an opening salvo to besiege Heaven and Earth. Fair warning, it can veer into pulp horror sometimes.

I'm already salty and fat, the weather has been picking up, I'm just trying to score a sheet/vial of acid

Shitty, Amazon zombie novels and a schizo Alice in wonderland retelling that my girlfriend recommended.

Mostly slang related, but fairly interesting. It veers off on some strange tangents at points, but generally an okay read.

Picrel. The writing is pretty shit, but seeing the concepts written as Haskell code helps

I'm only reading seinen manga rn, so it doesn't count

I picked up a copy of Kafka on the Shore by Murakami and Oh What a Paradise it Seems by John Cheever at a used book store. I love Murakami and Cheever is one of those American greats that everyone should at least know of if they want to seem intellectual, so I'm pretty happy with what I've got.

Just read Blindsight. I really loved it! It felt like if Solaris took place in a plausible vision of our own near future. Pretty scary stuff, and reflects a lot of anxieties that seem more intense in 2024 than they would have in 2007. Nearly all the characters are some flavor of mentally expanded transhuman, but they still feel like real people. I also loved the depiction of ayylmaos, though I took some of the characters' ideas about them as POV statements based on incomplete information, rather than objective facts.

Decided to read the Culture series. I'm currently halfway through Use of Weapons.

I immediately took a strong dislike to the culture, and every book only reinforces it. The only redeeming feature of the culture is that the drones are neat, but I'd much rather read about them than the braindead socially r-slurred narcissists that universally make up the people of the culture. Also, Ian Banks isn't a particularly good writer. He's overly fond of similes, has never heard of a metaphor, and once used the word "eyes" three times in a single paragraph with zero context changes. I also called every plot twist so far about halfway through the books, usually immediately after the character or device that it hinges on is introduced.

Consider Phlebas is just weird. Based Bora bangs a catgirl, but it's largely pointless things happening for the sake of scatological prose.

Player of Games is a lot better, but also makes me hate the people more for allegedly being so smart they can learn and play extremely complex games, but not being able to understand the wider implications of anything. Maybe he should have made it clear the protagonist was a sperg or something. Oh and the protag is called "journo" so I also automatically hate him.

Use of Weapons is.. eh so far. He's trying to do something neat with the structure of the narrative, I'll give him that. Whether it really works I have no clue, and when I tried the audio book I found it doesn't even slightly translate and is just hard to track (although Peter Kenny's voice work is top notch). At least Zakalwe rejects the culture.

I do find it amusing that even in a supposedly utopian socialist system, it's actually still hierarchical with machines on top acting as guardian monarchs to allow the humans to play in their protection.

Another win for absolute anarcho-monarchism.

Nisemonogatari fake tale part 01

I think I might put down Grave Peril and try my first Steven King book. I was thinking either 11/22/63 or Mr Mercedes.

I'm finishing reading Science and Sanity by Alfred Korzybski, then I am start Gödel Escher, Bach by Douglas Hofstadter.