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What are you reading these days?
What are you reading currently? Fiction or non-fiction or poetry, any genre, any language! Tell us what you're reading, and talk about it a bit.
What are you reading currently? Fiction or non-fiction or poetry, any genre, any language! Tell us what you're reading, and talk about it a bit.
Allie Brosh, the author of the rather famous Hyperbole and a Half blog, finally put out a new book after a 7 year hiatus called SOLUTIONS and other PROBLEMS. It only arrived for me last night but I have already been tearing through it, and lost a fair bit of sleep last night because of it. Thankfully it's a super thick book though, so I still have a fair bit left to read despite my pace.
As for how good is it? Well, put it this way... my face genuinely started hurting after a while from smiling so long/hard. So needless to say I highly recommend it, and her first book as well.
I got my copy in!
I was lying in bed reading it, with my husband playing his Switch next to me. I started chuckling at one of the stories, so he asked me about it, and I proceeded to verbally recap it to him. After getting him up to speed, I said "and it looks like this" and turned the book to show him the hilarious drawings on the page that I was currently on. He looked at it and started chuckling too, and when I turned the book back to me and was confronted with her pictures again, I just started cackling. Uncontrollably. This made him laugh harder, which made me laugh even harder. Soon I was coughing and crying from laughing too hard.
After everything calmed down, for the next five minutes or so I couldn't read a page or two without mentally recalling the drawing and that moment and triggering giggle fits for myself.
It's a fantastic book so far. Her artwork is so simple yet so incredibly expressive, and she has mastered whatever the comics equivalent is for comedic timing and delivery. I'm very excited to finish it.
The best thing I've read recently is Richard Brautigan's Revenge of the Lawn, which is a collection of short stories and flash fiction which is simply everything I want to be as an artist. I don't even know what to say, man. I wanna cry just thinking about it.
I'm also (regrettably) using Goodreads now (add me!), since I figure the reward structure there making me read more than something like LibraryThing is worth the sickening feelings that come with using an amazon platform. Here's hoping for Readlebee to happen someday.
Because Amazon.
I've tried out literally (scoured pages and pages and forum posts and forum posts) every possible alternative and they don't scratch that same itch that Goodreads (or letterboxd, rym, backloggd, etc for other mediums) does or they're lacking important features, which iirc was why this site never worked for me. I appreciate the attempt, though.
Embassy Town by China Mieville
Was recommended here a year or so ago, now I'm finally reading it. It's good, but hard, I've felt the need to reread a cheaper now and then. Not the easiest escapism read, needs proper thinking time which makes it a slow burn. Really interesting concepts though.
I've been meaning to read more Mieville since The City and the City a few years ago. I'll have to check out Embassy Town!
I've started reading Homo Deus: A History of Tomorrow by Yuval Noah Harari after just finishing his brilliant Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind, which I quite enjoyed.
I find Sapiens to be one of the most insightful books I've read in recent years if not ever. I know there are people who dislike some of the more "hot" takes the author has on our society, but to me that's absolutely no reason to dislike the book in general.
I’m reading the Chaosium’s Call of Cthulhu RPG 6th edition. I got it as a gift years ago and never really used it. I’m hoping to host a game in person as soon as covid subside.
Ah nice, I've recently gotten into the 7th edition. It's pretty fun, I downloaded a free solo adventure alone against the flames from chaosium website which was a nice way to learn some of the rules/mechanics.
AFAIK the 7th edition is an improvement since it simplify some stuff, but it’s not very different from the 6th.
The hard part on a horror game is maintaining tone and atmosphere, especially if you wanna be faithful to the Lovecraftian setting. Players like cracking jokes, and some narrators seem to completely misunderstand Lovecraft.
I mean, this is Eldritch horror, not Stephen King. The supernatural enemies are supposed to be lethal, mind bending, and rare, otherwise they become regular monsters. Evil will eventually prevail, you can only buy some time! Just my two cents!
Yeah I can see that, the jokes do help release some tension, there's nothing like nervous laughter, but also, it's an RPG, fun is the goal. I would say a smaller group helps keep things scary.
Sandy Peterson the original writer of CoC has a YouTube channel that talks about DMing strategies and specificallyfor horror games. Strong recommendation there.
Oh yeah I didn’t mean that jokes should be prohibited, that would be insane. But there’s definitely a balance to achieve.
I tend to read multiple books at once. Currently, it's Game Changer: AlphaZero's Groundbreaking Chess Strategies and the Promise of AI; Jennifer Egan's A Visit from the Goon Squad; Louis Penny's All the Devils are Here; and I'm re-reading Jim Butcher's Summer Knight.
A lot! I had a one week vacation last week, so I managed to get a bunch of reading done
What'd you think of Axiom's End? I want to check that out sometime.
I'm actually not quite through yet, forgot to mention that. But so far I've been enjoying it!
I've been working thru Land of Lisp, but I've kind of hit a wall since I (a) can't work on it at work (no SBCL) and don't want to at home (burnt out from work). So.
Proxima by Stephen Baxter. Enjoyable scifi. I like Baxter, he has great ideas and is a good enough writer to carry them to a good story. Characters were forgettable though, more of a trope than characters.
Sitting in Oblivion by Livia Kohn. This is split into 2 parts. The first is placing the sources and discussing them and the second is the translated texts. I skimmed/skipped most of the first half but enjoy the translated texts. I didnt know much about Daoism going into it and it was above my head at many points but i learned a lot.
I'm about half way through: Total competition, lessons in strategy from formula one by Ross Brawn and Adam Parr.
So far it has been interesting, as a lot of the strategies used seem like they would apply outside of formula one in business.
Where a lot of the annoyances I have at the software company I work at, are things Brawn did the reverse of to be more successful.
It's also interesting to me to learn a bit more about some of the history in formula one.
Even if its specifically his view point, so not really a general history.
Then there's also the references to Sun Tzu's art of war, which is something I've been wanting to read but it seems like a long read.