Several users expressed interest in reading Roadside Picnic after I recommended it in another (now deleted) topic about the movie it inspired, Stalker by Andrei Tarkovsky, which in turn inspired the S.T.A.L.K.E.R. videogame series. So I thought this would be the ideal opportunity to create a Pop-up Book Club event about it to encourage others to join us in reading it, so that we can all discuss it afterwards.

My description of the book from a previous comment that enticed the others to read it:

The basic premise was really unique and interesting, too. Without giving too much away, it's a story of Alien "invasion" only when the Aliens visited Earth, instead of doing any of the standard scifi trope stuff, the event was basically like that of a Roadside Picnic to them. That is to say, they showed up, barely noticed the humans who were tantamount to ants to them, did whatever Alien travelers with incomprehensibly advanced technology do when taking a quick pitstop on another world, and left a bunch of trash behind when they left. The story is about "stalkers" that venture into the exceptionally dangerous wasteland left behind by the Aliens in order to recover their trash (also usually exceptionally dangerous, but also exceptionally powerful) in order to sell it on the black market.

IMO, it's a very good classic scifi novel, and also a relatively short one too (only 224 pages) which makes it ideal summer reading, and ideal for this sort of thing since it’s not a huge commitment. I think this could be fun, so if you feel like joining in, please feel free to. I will also be rereading the book to refresh my memory of it, and roughly a month from now I will make a follow-up topic so we can have the discussion.

The book is available on paperback at Amazon for $15, or on Kindle for $10, but your own local retailer or library might also have a copy. The Strugatsky brothers are both long dead though, so you can always pirate it relatively guilt free if you can't find it elsewhere.

p.s. If there is a decent level of interest, and this goes well, maybe we can even make this a regular thing. :)

I'm big on audiobooks and trying to move away from the Audible monopoly starting with the book "Chokepoint Capitalism" (which is about monopolies like that).

Unfortunately, the smaller library is hampered even more by the dodgy search (I just finished two books in a trilogy, why are you showing me the spanish translations of the author's other books?) and I'm struggling to fill my wishlist which has never been a problem on Audible.

So far I'm really liking Chokepoint Capitalism but looking for any suggestions once that's done. I've read a decent amount of mainstream fantasy (Stormlight archive, Wheel of Time, Robin Hobb, Tolkien), some popular scifi (Aasimov, w40k stuff, recently enjoyed "Armor" by Steakly), a lot of light nonfiction about finance, history and pop psychology ("The Big Short" or anything by Michael Lewis, "Debt: The first 5000 years", "Girt", "The man who mistook his wife for a hat") and have recently been on a big Ken Follett kick (historical fantasy?)

Any good listens that I should give a go?

PS. sorry for sounding like a shill post for audiobooks.com. I swear I'm not trying to drive clicks that's just the name of the company and recent Brandon Sanderson drama has made me aware of how much Audible controls the life out of the only way I consume literature nowadays

What were your highlights for the year? What were the best things you read? What surprised you? What let you down?

Reflect back on the year and talk about anything and everything related to the books you read in 2022. You do NOT have to limit it to 2022 releases -- anything you read this year counts.