Wondering what’s your favorite self-help book, with the most practical, down-to-earth advice that maybe changed your life.
I’ll go first: I really liked Mindfullness in Plain English, removed all the myths around meditation and broke it down to very digestible concepts allowing me to practice the same on a daily basis.

Looking forward to hear yours!

You know the kind I'm talking about - a series of fiction novels (generally falling into urban fantasy/sci fi/straight fantasy) based around a main character (or small group of characters), nothing overly serious, though they may sometimes touch on serious topics. Fun, fluffy reads with engaging characters that leave you wanting more. The main drawback of a lot of these series is that the starring characters can turn into Mary Sues REAL FAST (Looking at you, Harry Dresden), but I'm ok with that.

A few examples:

• Jim Butcher - The Dresden Files
• Kim Harrison - The Hollows

What series have you enjoyed?

I read the book 'Municipal Dreams' a few weeks ago and really enjoyed the history of social housing presented in it. I picked up 'Living in Cities' by Ralph Tubbs which is like a modernist new town pamphlet style book about the futures of cities & towns. I also have 'Post-Modern Buildings in Britain' which is quite nice for a flip through and some history of these buildings.

I'd definitely reccomend Municipal Dreams for anyone even slightly intrested in UK social housing (and more) and I think the way it is presented is really nice.

I was wondering if anyone knew any particularly good books about architecture (specifically about social housing's architecture), I realise this is quite hard as little has been recorded around some of this stuff.

Further any books surrounding modernist ideals that lead to this would be nice to discuss as well as I've not seen much in the way of primary sources here.

tor.com/2018/06/06/meat-and-salt-and-sparks-rich-larson/

A futuristic murder mystery about detective partners—a human and an enhanced chimpanzee—who are investigating why a woman murdered an apparently random stranger on the subway

Found this today and read it for my morning break. I'm worried about spoilers, but I'm curious about people's thoughts on being a non-human intelligence and the subsequent integration into human society. Did this short evoke any particular emotions in you?

Anyone up for a weekly / semi-weekly reading group? Probably aimed at short texts, my experience is that groups that attempt long texts always fall apart as people get behind and can't participate anymore. Not just short fiction necessarily either, we could do poetry and philosophy and nonfiction too.

If you're interested, maybe comment with a text you think we should do.

Not exactly an original first post, but as a life long avid SF fan, I'm always on the lookout for recommendations.

According to Google Play, my reading (and re-reading) this year has been ...

Iain M Banks, Alastair Reynolds, John Scalzi, Dan Simmons, Neal Stephenson, Charles Stross, China Miéville, Vernor Vinge, Peter Watts, Neal Asher, Richard K Morgan, Corey Doctorow, C.J. Cherryh, Karl Schroeder, Ann Leckie, Hannu Rajaniemi, Yoon Ha Lee, Greg Bear and James S.A. Corey.

So I guess that sums up my current taste, which would seem to tilt towards space opera and "hard" SF.

The Paper Bag Princess was an awesome book for little girls that I read when I was a little girl. And now that a lot of family and friends are having kids of their own, I was wondering anyone have any recommendations for similar books but for both genders?

Hello to all!

Since I first read a Saramago novel (All the Names), I've grown to love Portuguese literature. Later I read Gonçalo Tavares and Pessoa, and I have some names to discover from their classics (illustrious ones like Gil Vicente or Eça de Queiroz), but because I don't know Portuguese yet, I have to make do with translations, which impedes me from following the current, less famous authors. So, I wonder if you could tell me about some of these ones. Which are your favourites, which ones would you suggest? Does not matter if translated or not, I can read in a couple other languages and will learn Portuguese soon too. Thanks in advance!

I've personally read The Silmarillion 3 times and have found comfort and connection with the book and its stories. Sure, the names are still intimidating and the geography confusing sometimes but all that is part of the enjoyment for me.

Irrational Exuberance is a seminal work on market valuations.

First published in March 2000, it compared the US stock market valuations to historical market valuations using both the tradition price earnings (PE) metric as well as a cyclically adjusted price earnings (CAPE) measure. The conclusion was the US stock market was overvalued compared to earnings.

A few months later, the dot com market crashed.

Revised in 2005, it compared US housing prices to historical prices using Shillers' own inflation adjustments as well as by comparing housing prices to housing rents. The conclusion was the US housing market was overvalued compared to historical inflation adjusted prices and compared to current rents.

A few years later, the US housing market crashed.

Revised a third time in 2015, it concluded that bond yields were globally unattractive, the stock market was overheated, the global housing market was frothy, and only the US housing market seemed reasonably priced.

The penny has not yet dropped, but that doesn't stop the media trotting out Shiller whenever the market drops a few percentage points.

This book has created the Case-Shiller housing index, and has generated substantial debate about the usefulness of CAPE vs PE.

Since it doesn't look like @basicbaconbitch is around (or they just intended it to be a one-time thing), I guess I'll post this!

What have you been reading? What do you think of it? No need to do a big review if you don't feel like it, but I think we'd all love to hear your thoughts! Recs or discussion of each others' reading habits is encouraged!

--

Quick question: Do we want regular threads like these? Personally I think ~books is lacking a place to just drop in and talk about something that isn't news or a specific discussion topic, but maybe I'm alone on that.

I'm wondering what all the different ways people read here are! Do you always buy a new hardcover, or do you get everything from your library on your e-reader? Feel free to share both format and when/where/what you like to read.

So I am currently reading books to pass time but they aren't fictional books; rather they are books on philosophy, religion, politics, state formation and history. They do require some level of concentration as they contain concepts of varying complexity and most content is invariably causally linked to the previous content but I just can't concentrate. Like at all. I'd read a sentence four or five times and still wouldn't know what's in it because I lose concentration mid sentence. This not only slows me down considerably but is also annoying and causes me to lose interest. I have a bachelors in EE and didn't have considerable problems (only an year ago) reading course books and understanding what was in them and applying the concepts so I don't really understand what's wrong with me. Can someone kindly help me? Thanks.

I am shamelessly stealing this from the front page of /r/Books, where it has been locked due to shallow and uncivil discussion. I assume we can do better here.

"Laura Ingalls Wilder’s name stripped from children’s book award over ‘Little House’ depictions of Native Americans"

I'd have to go with The Long Walk, personally. It's quite haunting, the way they had every choice to sign up, but chose to anyway. The way they never quite get used to seeing their fellow walkers get shot. I love the ambiguous fascist state: what exactly happened to America in the Long Walk? There is an oblique reference to fighting Nazis in the 50s for instance, but the time period is never quite mentioned.

All in all, it's remarkable, but terribly sad. It reminded me of boys going off to war, and the truth behind all ambition.

Not the release date (last intel: not in 2018, that's all we know), but the content. What's going to happen? Who's going to die? Here are my brief guesses for some of the main characters:

Jon: Inhabits Ghost for a while after his human body's death (like Varamyr in the ADWD prologue), then gets resurrected by Melisandre. GRRM has said he always found it cheap that Gandalf returned hardly the worse for wear in LOTR, so I'm interested to see how Jon's different. In the show he seems slightly more carpe-diem, but it also seems like the show has mostly forgotten about it.

Stannis: Takes Winterfell (look up the Night Lamp theory if you're not familiar with it) from the Freys and Boltons, and holds onto it against an eventual siege by the Others.

Bran: The show has probably disproven this, but I still think he becomes a prisoner of the Others next to his uncle Benjen, because the Others can't kill a Stark for some reason.

Sansa: I think Harry the Heir turns out to be a nightmare, but Sansa learns to deal with him and use the power of the Vale to help the Starks in their fight to retake Winterfell.

Arya: I think she comes back to Winterfell and gives the gift of mercy to her mother, after seeing what she's become.

Daenerys: I think she'll have a longer experience taking over the Dothraki than in the show, and she'll fly west across Essos, laying waste to the free cities and setting the slaves free. In Westeros it will be completely unclear to everyone whether she's mad or not.

Tyrion: I think he will continue to fall into moral decay and after becoming a close advisor to Dany will encourage her "fire and blood" side. (Especially since she's his aunt!)

Theon: Something about "what is dead may never die, but rises again harder and stronger" makes me think he's coming back as a wight.

Victarion: Blows the horn and dies from it.

Cersei: I think Jaime will kill her, and fairly early on. I think Aegon will have the role she had in the most recent seasons of the show.

Jaime: I think he survives the confrontation with Lady Stoneheart and, disillusioned with both her and Cersei, leaves high society to lead the Brotherhood Without Banners.

Brienne: Someone has to die with Lady Stoneheart, right?

Aegon: I think he successfully conquers King's Landing. He'll eventually die by foolhardiness, but probably not for a while.

What do you all think? Anyone I'm forgetting?