Community for asking and answering any question related to the life, the people or anything related to the USA. Non-US people are welcome to provide their perspective! Please keep in mind:
Eve - 200 million years of evolution using a female perspective
Actually finished feeling happy to be born female which working in a male dominated industry (engineering) and enjoying male dominated hobbies (skiing, climbing, backpacking) often leaves me only surrounded by guys and feeling 'wrong' to not be able to match their ways of doing things instead of able to focus on my unique abilities.
In the middle of The Way of Kings in anticipation of reading book 5.
It's not just gender - introvert vs. extrovert, biology vs. computer, science vs. project management, anyone can be excluded without effort to create a welcoming atmosphere. At least you are able to keep up in their area
(that notably many men themselves couldn't do), which already speaks highly to your capabilities and temperament!:-)
You Like It Darker, by Stephen King.
Another collection of short stories and the label is correct, these are darker than normal King fare, very much reminded me of Bachman books. And a character from Cujo makes an appearance that's just great. 5/5 good shit
Last book I completed: The Conquest of Bread by Pyotr Kropotkin
Currently reading: Stormlight Archives book #5 by Brandon Sanderson
Now that I type that out, this is so avg lemmy user reading interests.
Last big story I read was The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath by HP Lovecraft
Currently reading The King in Yellow by Robert W Chambers as well as a collection of short stories by various authors called Shadows of Carcosa
Been reading Honor Harrington books on vacation.
Good: political and technological world building, factions that are flawed but easy to root for, compelling action sequences.
Bad: eye-rolling 90s neocon chicken-hawk posturing, Mary Sue vibes from Honor herself, some very clumsy historical parallels, well beyond what “Horatio Hornblower in space” strictly needs, and I think Weber was maybe literally in love with her.
I never really was able to get into the honorverse much; but the march upcountry series, by the same two authors who wrote some of the honorverse, I liked a lot.
Upcountry was some of the best military science fiction I ever read. And here, for some reason, they struck the right balance for me, cancelling out both their negative ( for me) traits .
It starts with a total loser of a prince and over time he finds his stride to be more of an Alexander the Great character.
The battles range from medieval weapons to space battles with real time communication constraints, in the four books
Last book I read was Twilight. Working on the 2nd book in the series now. It's just a junk food of a book in the best way possible.
I wouldn't choose Twilight, but I get the same feeling when I'm reading any romance novel. Not much substance but my mood is ten times better.
Yeah! Sometimes you just need a brain-off good time.
I'm a bit surprised by Twilight - it has a couple of moments that are surprisingly gut-punching, like "The familiar smell of my shampoo made me feel like I might be the same person I had been this morning." That hit me hard.
I halfway wanna joke and say like "I'm sorry to hear that", but you're so right: the different types of stories each serve their own roles - not every book needs to be a brain-twister or expander, sometimes we just need to veg out and relax a minute and a great book can get us there!:-D
And it's not like the books are completely devoid of deeper meaning heres a video of some analy of twilight that really got me thinking
Last book was Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula K. LeGuinn
Current is Wind and Truth by Brandon Sandseson
I haven’t read an actual book in ages. If reading fanfiction counts, the most recent one I’ve read is “Shrouded Destiny” by GladiusX, set in the universe of A Song of Ice and Fire.
It’s currently updating, and has been updating once per week for over a year. The narrative has nearly reached its conclusion.
I don’t necessarily agree with all the plot choices the author has made, but it is overall very well written, with far more realistic consequences and less plot armor compared to canon.
I just finished The Spine of the World, reading the next one, Sea of Swords now. I decided to finally read all the DnD books last January so I’ve been working my way through them. I read hella fast, a trilogy a week is pretty normal, so having such a ridiculous amount of books to get through is awesome for me.
I took a break over the summer and read all the Vlad Taltos books by Stephen Brust, holy Dinah that series is so good!! I think when I need another break from DnD I’ll read that series recommendation below, This Quest is Broken. Another series I quite liked was NPC’s by Drew Hays, the audiobooks are really well done.
And hitchhikers guide is one of my favourites, glad you enjoyed it!
This quest is broken by JP Valentine
Lit rpg
I liked all four books, I think the first book is best, as normal for such series.
The Questing Stones have come to Nowherested, and Evelia Greene is finally ready to receive her life's quest. Perhaps she'll be a great warrior, or a wealthy merchant, or a brilliant mage. Perhaps her quest is simply to live a quiet life, constantly honing a craft to the heights of perfection.
Or perhaps the Questing Stones will grant her the Legendary mission of popping over to the next village to pick up a loaf of bread.
Thanks for the rec, this looks like a super fun series!
Oh wow, I've never heard of those but from what you quoted I already think I'm in love with that writing style. Such wit!:-)
Just finished Black Powder War, two chapters into The Tombs of Atuan.
Most excited about Harrow the Ninth, which is a couple down in my queue.
Theoretically Straight was the last book I read. I'm reading the sequel Theoretically Perfect.
Lord of the Rings: the fellowship of the ring
Finally getting round to reading them all..
Oh my, you are a braver soul than I - that's daunting.
Nah, those are easy reads. The Silmarillion? Now that's daunting 😈
Isn't like the entire first half of The Fellowship Of The Ring devoted to the birthday party? 🎉
Tom Bombadil and such almost enticed me to read it but that party though... 🥳
Yeah it totally isn't easy reading lol. Just compared to The Silmarillion it feels that way.
I have only read the prologue to The Silmarillion, but most of the lore I know from LOTR is just from reading Wikipedia for the specific topics I was wanting to know about. How cool is it that the knowledge has passed from being available solely in book form to becoming part of the basic culture of the Western world:-).
Fucking Hyperion. First book I've read where I didn't like a fucking character. Damn that book pissed me off. First book I would not suggest. Anyone else dislike Hyperion?
I honestly loved it even though all the characters were awful people. I kind of figured that was the point
I remember liking it, but I read it long ago so don't remember a ton of it. I might've liked it because it's Literature and you're obligated to like it.
I like the Shrike a lot, does that count as a character? I always imagined it as something cooler than depicted in a lot of art though, like something completely unreal, with angles and points that look like glitches in reality, like your GPU is trying to render something while its melting.
I was a prolific reader up to high school, then fell off a bit due to a combination of being busy with other things and not realizing my eyesight was going downhill in my early 20s.
I did reread Lord of the Flies a few years ago and it was even better than I rememebered. Helped that it was so short that constantly being interrupted didn't keep me from losing interest like a couple of the other books I tried around the same time.
We've all been there: reading uses a particular part of your brain and if you've already had to read another book for school, it's most often too exhausting to continue reading for pleasure as well. But don't worry, you won't forget your love for reading - even though you have to set it aside for a bit to focus your attentions elsewhere:-).
Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes. About to finish Leviathan Wakes, the first book of the series "The Expanse"
The audiobooks for HHGttG are quite good if that's your sort of thing. Stephen Fry does a great job on the first one. I didn't quite like the voices in the other ones, but they were still overall well done.
In the middle of reading Tress of the Emerald Sea, by Brandon Sanderson. I haven't read any of his stuff other than his completion of the Wheel of Time series. I saw that Tress is a good standalone book in the series so I figured I'd try that out. It's good so far, but seems rather YA compared to what I assume the rest of the series is like.
I haven't read his YA but I'm in the middle of Stormlight 5, and yeah it's not YA. His adult books are generally the sort that you'd be comfortable giving a teenager but they deal with heavy stuff like class conflicts, cycles of racial violence, and ethical questions.
If you're interested in a stand alone of his adult books I'd recommend Elantris or Warbreaker, though both will get sequels later, neither was written knowing that.
Don't forget themes of depression and deep emotional trauma!
And Mistborn dealt with systemically rooted sexual violence in a way that was shockingly well handled, including the way that it just demolished the mental health of everyone involved except the sociopathic
True, every book has a major character with major trauma.
"Schizoid Phenomena, Object Relations and the Self" by Harry Guntrip.
I've been reading all the Dune novels in publication order. The Guntrip book was an interlude in the middle of "Paul of Dune" which is my... 15th Dune book? I've lost count. Lol. But anyway, I'm back to reading that now.
After that, I'll probably start "Determined: A Science of Life Without Free Will" by Robert Sapolsky.
Including the ones by Brian Herbert? I've never heard anyone say a single good thing about those.
That's the ones. I had a friend who was a Dune superfan who convinced me to continue after I'd finished Frank's books. He expressed to me that he liked the Brian Herbert better and wished they'd started the recent Dune movies with Legends of Dune, the Dune trilogy by Brian Herbert and Kevin J. Anderson that's set earliest in the franchise.
(To be fair, it's ridiculously unrealistic to wish for that. And it'd only really be "better" than starting with Frank's book if they adapted basically... 11 to 14 novels worth to finish off the whole saga.)
Now, I'm not going to say I like Brian Herbert's better. Nor that there aren't things that I don't dislike about the Brian Herbert books. But there's a lot to love as well.
I'll talk about some of that in spoiler tags, but even in the spoiler tags, I won't give everything away.
Things I dislike about the Brian Herbert books:
spoiler
Things I like:
spoiler
Kevin J. Anderson holds a special place in my development as a young reader. His Star Wars books helped me understand that a book can be absolutely awful, and I don’t have to finish it, and that I haven’t failed by putting it down.
He is controversial: I've seen people describe him as "Good lore builder, pretty bad at actually writing."
He created the Maw and Kessel, purple and double-bladed lightsabers, Exar Kun, etc. that people liked, but you had to slog through long flowery dialogue to get through it. Meh, I am mostly okay with that personally, but yeah some people can't stand it.
Edit: I want to add that the vast majority of YouTube videos are so much worse in terms of blah blah blahbity blah I-want-to-make-this-video-just-over-10-minutes-long-so-I-can-sell-moar-ads. Books at least I can just go at my own pace and slow down or even skim a bit and speed up if I wish, while such videos (which are pretty much all of them?) are basically take-it-or-leave-it, so yeah I'm much more forgiving of such things when they appear in book form:-).
I really enjoyed Determined and Sapolsky's other book, Behave!
Yes! I've read Behave and Why Zebras Don't Get Ulcers already and both were amazingly informative. The premise of Determined holds particular interest for me, so I'm expecting even greater things from this one.
The last “adult” book I finished: Tai Pan by James Clavell (it was pretty good, but definitely some old fashioned ideas).
The last book I actually finished: Monster Blood by RL Stein. Great book and would love to go back and revisit other Goosebumps books.
Last was Revenge of the Tipping Point, current is Moonwalking with Einstein. Interesting so far.
2010 (the sequel to 2001 by Arthur C. Clarke).
Omg that one was amazing! And it continues onwards with 2061 and 3001 as well. Keep going!:-) 💪
Yup! I last read these maybe 20 years ago, and I'm enjoying them a lot. I'm about a third of the way through 2061 right now :)
He is such an amazing author and his works are so creative. I never recall much about the actual plotlines but the worlds that he constructs will live inside my brain forever:-).