[Books General]

[Hornet 114]

- What are you reading?

- How acquire?
- What do you generally read?

- Where you find out about books and that?

 

Read this one called "Botchan" recently that was good, by this suave looking fucker

 

 

 

A few of his novels are set in and around schools and universities during the Meiji period. So; people in education or teaching during a time of very dramatic social change, which is something I never even thought about before but leads to hella compelling books. "Botchan" is basically about a hard-headed, basically simple Tokyo guy, black sheep of his family, who moves to the absolute sticks after Falling into teaching as a profession, attempting to stay above the weird internal politics of the school he's been placed in.

 

I'm now about halfway through this book about the antivax movement by a pediatrician called Paul Offit. It's called "Deadly Choices - How the Anti-Vaccine Movement Threatens us All". Some interesting parts so far include the National Vaccine Injury Compensation Fund in the US giving out substantial awards for whooping cough vaccy injuries at it's onset, and all those "vaccine injuries" later proven to be due to the same genetic condition; and an expert in a vaccine injury class action being shown to not know when questioned on the study he was citing; what the age range or the gender balance of the children involved was... and then the lawyer examining him rugpulling and revealing that the study was on RATS. (Which the expert didn't know! Dude hadn't read it). It's sad and scary as fuck but shows epidemiologists and paediatricians doing what they do, which is cool. Offit also wrote the excellent "Autism's False Prophets" and I feel like keeping up on counter-antivax and autism-woo stuff is kinda work-relevant, kinda-interesting. 

 

Places I get books: Amazon (bleh), one excellent pain-in-the-ass bookshop that is just a big, old school heap of books with no decent POS machine so you gotta use cash, which is annoying, and charity shops (solike; the British version of Goodwill).

 

I find out about books through friends, distance learning, sometimes /lit/, and sometimes lucky dip.

[Lucy 108]

Last book I read was technically 4:

 

Ursula K. Le Guin - Earthsea: The First Four Books

 

I really enjoyed them! I don't read as much as I want these days but I enjoy it when I can. Next I should get on and read Philip Pullman's The Book of Dust (Part One: La Belle Sauvage), I bought it ages ago but never got round to reading more than the first chunk of it...

[webhead 518]

Let's see, last real book I read (and I actually cheated and listened to it), was actually the Ringworld books or maybe Protector?  Larry Niven has this entire series called Known Space.  I'm sort of into it though the second and third Ringworld books got really fucking weird.

 

Main idea around the Ringworld is that an alien race built this fucking massive Ringworld and this guy crash lands on it and is trying to get off of it.  There are all kinds of weird "indigenous" people there (as much as you could call it that on an artificial world) and the thing that was particularly interesting was just how much attention this guy pays to explaining all the crazy science behind everything.  It was a cool book just for the massive scale of everything and all the interesting aliens and stuff.

[Darkce 13]

I have ringworld in one of my many books piles somwhere....

 

Right now I'm reading the first book in the Mist Born series by Brandon Sanderson.

 

I enjoy his works for their vast world building, their character progression and the unique systems of "magic" that he employs in his worlds.

 

I mostly read fantasy series or sci-fi but I have the awful habit of buying whole series if they look neat and not actually reading them so I have stacks and stacks of books that I haven't read yet, its actually starting to look like my steam library now lol

[Hornet 114]

Ringworld was neat. The hard scifi aspects were fun, good adventure romp... Some of the imagery got lost in that same hard scifi minutae though, to the point that I couldn't picture some of the space-stuff for it being over-explained.

 

I liked the campy zapp-brannigan-ness of the romance stuff too. made me lul. And the species were all cool, esp the pierson's puppeteers. 

 

@Lu funny enough a bookstore near me had the first 4 books of Earthsea for sale in the window on sale so I have that! I might expedite reading that one, then so we can shoot the shit about it.

[webhead 518]

The Puppteers are fucking cool as shit.  I'm going to try and go through one of those books too.  I think there's one about one of their wars maybe somewhere?

[Tassifox 413]

Currently reading Asunder from the Dragon Age series, will need to add to my books soon.

I usually have Half Price Books for my go to, especially since my work is right next door to one. Otherwise if I dare enter Barnes and Noble I splurge at once in a blue moon. (especially for certain manga series)

I read a lot of fiction/fantasy/sci fi and the like but every now and again I'll have a non-fiction in my collection here and there. Sometimes I'll just look at book covers. If it peaks curiosity I'll open to a random page and read and see if the writing style catches me. Or the synopsis. I like to be random because it's surprised me at times.

Sometimes I'll find out about series from going to Cons or seeing a friend recommend one but otherwise it's if I step out in the sunlight sometimes.

[Jane 100]

On 3/21/2019 at 12:59 PM, Lucy said:

Next I should get on and read Philip Pullman's The Book of Dust (Part One: La Belle Sauvage), I bought it ages ago but never got round to reading more than the first chunk of it...

 

Oh man, you have to read it. It gets pretty weird and scary (though if you're a Stephen King fan it'll be tame stuff, lol) but it's still a must-read. You should read it before the end of the year since I think that's when the HDM TV series starts. (I think the 2nd of the new books is out sometime in the autumn too.)

I've really not read much lately - when I have, it's been re-reads of Austen and Pratchett and so on. Over the winter mental health stuff and deadlines have left me like a crab just after it's shed its shell - too tender and sensitive for much, so I haven't felt mentally ready for anything particularly new or intense. I'm starting to itch to read something new, though, so I might start reading the Elena Ferrante Neapolitan series of novels - everyone (including my partner) seems to highly recommend them.

 

On 3/21/2019 at 7:58 PM, Hornet said:

@Lu funny enough a bookstore near me had the first 4 books of Earthsea for sale in the window on sale so I have that! I might expedite reading that one, then so we can shoot the shit about it.

Ahhh! Lucy's going to lend me her copy next time I'm up - then we can all talk about it.

[Olly 39]

Reading "Moby Dick", lord help me.

It's got, if possible, even more whaling in it than you might think.

But also more stealth gay, which is a nice diversion when half the chapters are about stuff like the precise volume of oil in a sperm whale's cerebellum.

[Hornet 114]

Charp clocked Moby Dick recently and said the same thing about it being very in-depth down to the specific obscure maritime knots used on var. bits of rigging; and also lots of Very Gay cerumen-kneading. 

 

I really ought to sit down and read a Tome, but I tend to be limited to reading books the size of my pocket. (reading being smn I do on public transport and pubs and only very rarely in the house, which is where my PS4 and laptop live.)

 

I shud probably dig my 2011 kindle fire out of the cobwebs it resides in and actually use the thing. For the 100% truth in physical books being tangible and pleasant and probably better for retention; an ebook enables you to discretely walk around with a thousand-pager without people going "Pff."

[Hornet 114]

Some of the most savage parts of the Offit book, that he presents with some tact;

 

- Jenny McCarthy tilts at various toxins alleged to be in vaccines with a face full of botulinum toxin (This was a masterclass in parliamentary language)

- The anti-vaccine movement existed when vaccines were invented, in p.much the same form

 

Just finished Grey Eminence by Huxley... Which is legit making me want to switch majors to PPE

[Hornet 114]

Coming to the end of I Am A Cat (Soseki again). Was good. Wasn't sure how a book of cat-observations managed to be so big, but as it turns out it's split between cat stuff and observed conversations and actions of a schoolteacher and his mates and family, with the cat-observations becoming less and the teacher stuff coming to the fore. It's not unlike Salinger, just trending a bit sillier. (Not a bad silliness).

 

Since everyone in this topic bar me is either reading Earthsea, or has read Earthsea, next book is going to be first four books of Earthsea...

 

Or; The First Socialist Schism - Bakunin vs. Marx in the International Working Men’s Association. Going to flip a coin about it.

[h2ojunkie 87]

Title	Author	Date Read
The Crimson Vault (Traveler's Gate, #2)	Will Wight	4/27/2019
House of Blades (Traveler's Gate, #1)	Will Wight	4/19/2019
Underlord (Cradle, #6)	Will Wight	4/12/2019
Ghostwater (Cradle, #5)	Will Wight	4/9/2019
Skysworn (Cradle, #4)	Will Wight	4/9/2019
Blackflame (Cradle, #3)	Will Wight	4/8/2019
Soulsmith (Cradle, #2)	Will Wight	3/30/2019
Unsouled (Cradle, #1)	Will Wight	3/26/2019
On the Shoulders of Titans (Arcane Ascension, #2)	Andrew Rowe	3/23/2019
Xenocide (Ender's Saga, #3)	Orson Scott Card	3/1/2019
Speaker for the Dead (Ender's Saga, #2)	Orson Scott Card	2/14/2019
Children of Dune (Dune Chronicles #3)	Frank Herbert	2/8/2019
Ender's Game (Ender's Saga, #1)	Orson Scott Card	1/27/2019
Dune Messiah (Dune Chronicles #2)	Frank Herbert	1/23/2019
Dune (Dune Chronicles, #1)	Frank Herbert	1/14/2019

 

 

Audio books I have listened to o far this year. According to goodreads that is about 49 pages/day. Last year's average was ~60 pages/day.

[Hornet 114]

Reading's slowed to a crawl. Last year I read:

- Haruki Murakami's "Underground", about the Aum Shinrikyo subway attacks in 1995. A Buddhist cult gassed the Tokyo subway using Sarin. This is a collection of interviews with victims, and uninvolved cult members.

- Haruki Murakami's "Hard-Boiled Wonderland, and the End of the World" - Scifi/Fantasy novel. Don't want to say much more than that. It's a good idea to go into that one blind

- Aubrey Wood's "Bang Bang Bodhisattva", A queer cyberpunk mystery. Underrated.

- William Gibson's Bridge and Sprawl trilogies entire (Again). Old favourites. I love them.

- Started but haven't yet finished "Noli me Tangere", the first novel by Jose Rizal, second president of the Philippines and revolutionary martyr.