!bookworms !dramatards @Redactor0 proven an r-slur once again.

Musk was right. Vivek was right.

We need less DC leeches and more Indians

The Troop by Nick Cutter. about a boy scout troop on an isolated island confronted by a terrible contagion

also because im a nut and can't read one book at a time, i'm also reading Lapvona by Otessa Moshfegh. about a fictional medieval town. holy frick this book is DARK. disgusting and disturbing. im having a hard time reading this

next up might be a rereading of A Little Life by Hanya Yanigihara. holy shit. don't ever read this. absolutely beyond disturbing. i have no words for what i have read. purely bleak, torment

Picked up Annihilation by @houellebecq

Finished Wicked. Last week I complimented the writing, but said it felt like the book was going nowhere. The latter problem is resolved in the second half, but after taking some time to chew over the writing, I've soured on it a lot.

For example, this book has very deliberately non naturalistic dialogue. Nobody talks the way a real person would in any of these scenarios. At first this feels interesting because the author has a lot of freedom to play with language and the weirdness of the setting. It's often a lot of fun to read, and it feels like you're "in" on some private joke. But the cumulative effect lowers the emotional stakes a lot because everyone feels like a literary construction first and a person second. Also, many of the "literary" things Maguire's people say are just not interesting once you scratch past the cleverness. I get the sense that many of the book's long philosophical discussions are ironic and deliberately vacuous, because of the insufficiency of language against the reality of blah blah blah blah blah--but you made me read it neighbor!

Early on, there's a sequence where a character defends a piece of poor art as (ambiguously) ironic. Obviously we are meant to join in roasting this character. But I can't help but feel like this scene is a key to the book. It's scared to be direct, out of fear that people would see it as dumb and lacking if it were unspooled in front of them. The author's literary talents are considerable, and there are a lot of interesting techniques applied very well, but I can't help but feel they're being used in the service of something fundamentally unworthy.

The story's original sin is that it has nothing to do with Oz whatsoever. It's neither the book/movie Oz, nor is it some alternate "real" or "realistic" Oz. It says nothing about either Baum's work or the MGM classic. But it also doesn't work as an original setting because it's an edgelord shithole that depends heavily on the reader's familiarity with other Oz's. The setting is a gimmick to make people read the book. And for all the art on top of it, I don't find that forgivable.

Still reading the Gor series after a hiatus because I got bored. I generally skip to the end of the paragraph every time the author goes on a digression about the setting and frankly I haven't missed anything. I swear only John Norman could interrupt an action scene or negotiation to muse at length on completely irrelevant worldbuilding details. It's a neat world that would be ideal for a low fantasy RPG campaign desu, but you don't need to go into the exact details of how someone's outfit compares to someone the next town over when the scene is supposed to be introducing the character.

Good to see the MC wises up slightly at the end of Hunters. Only slightly though, he's still thick as a bag of rocks, but at least in the next book he doesn't commit any grievous errors of dumbfrickery.

On that note, I found this hilarious review of one of the books where a sneeds over an account of a woman being kidnapped and forced into intercourse slavery isn't enough, whining about how the author doesn't understand "the submissive POV" even though the MC isn't a sub; she's a slave so her own gratification doesn't enter into it.

There's also this passage:

She's also incredibly uncharitable towards the other slave girls, constantly comparing herself in looks and in behaviour with them, at times resenting them for being more beautiful than she is, sometimes being angry with them for behaving as willing slaves, and other times considering them her close friends. In fact female cattiness and competition is a constant, and incredibly boring, recurring theme of the story, in how she sees both herself and other women. She's constantly bemoaning in her internal monologues how she, a rich and spoiled hot girl back home, could possibly be reduced to this, with the underlying implication being that women are vapid and stupid and need to be controlled to find their actual peace of mind.

as though that's not a completely realistic depiction of women

Inb4 the most and original rdrama comments of, "rdrama"

Ill-Made Mute

Seeli wights

Screwtape Letters

Need tips on how to be more devilish.

!edgelords

Hentai

Anyone want to shill me a good biography or nonfiction book? Idk my desire to read novels has kind of evaporated

Reading Kafka's Letters to Helena

I had forgotten how much non-fiction bored me

free on googz btw

Still chewing through The Expanse series. 9 books so will take a while. I'm a couple of series ahead on the TV show, it's interesting to see the differences.

I read of the great expedition of Agamemnon and Menelaus against the treacherous Troyans.

Just like the last week. I'll finish it soon I promise

The Flight of the Eisenstein (Book #4 of The Horus Heresy)

just finished Conrad's The End of the Tether.

I'm not even sure what your point is. Yeah I'd rather sleep with a dakimakura of my waifu Renge-chan than with some random 3D slut but that doesn't mean I'm desperate, it's the opposite, it implies that I have standards