yearly necro
what books did u cunts get for christmas

also

Listened to The Narrow Road Between Desires audiobook a few weeks ago, it's by Rothfuss as well & while it's not either of the Kingkiller books, it's written in the same way & hearing Kote speak for the first time in over a decade was something special.

I've super given up hope on Rothfuss releasing book 3, I've literally been waiting since TWMF came out.

I didn't get any books for christmas but I read the Southern Reach trilogy this year by Jeff VanderMeer, Annhilation was fucking amazing, it was an incredible read. Authority and Acceptance were very diffferent in atmosphere and not what I was expecting. Still good but they just weren't the same.

Annhilation, the book, is very different from what I remember the film being, with the book being vastly superior imo.

I also started Lord of the Rings again for the first time since I was a kid, it's going to be hard to not think of the movies the whole time.

This may be out of place here as I struggle to latch onto novels or fiction books, but for my undergrad thesis I've been really enjoying reading Martin Hägglund - Radical Atheism: Derrida and the Time of Life. It is probably the most lucid explanation of Derrida, an extremely pleasant read.
Giorgio Agamben - Remnants of Auschwitz is another text I'm going through, though I struggle to say much about it. Agamben's philosophy has been piquing my interest recently. Refreshing and somewhat sobering.

Some books I've read since last time:
Hyperion series - Book 1 was really great. Listened to the audio book version which was really cool with great performances. Book 3 I didn't really enjoy that much.
I Am Legend - Pretty neat book.
Rendezvous with Rama
Carrion Comfort - Pretty enjoyable but gets a bit wacky.
The Terror - This was a very cool book. Loved the format.
The City and The City - This was a hard read for me at first but I got engrossed in how bizarre it was at points.
Perdido Street Station & The Scar - These were also a tricky read for me personally (I'm dumb). Mainly because I struggle to concentrate whilst reading sometimes and the weird as fuck names and concepts threw me off. But I'm really glad I stuck with it. The world building and concepts are incredible.

Also on book 8 of WOT. Was struggling to keep going on the last couple of books, I was getting tired of having a detailed description of what people were wearing all the time.

If you like science fiction and haven't read the Dune series yet, then you are making a mistake.

It looks like we gave a lot of book commonality. I've also read those China Melville books. I wasn't as wowed by Perdido Street Station as I was The City and the City.

To weigh in on WOT, you are basically prime SLOG. WOT is at it's most tedious from books 8-10. Realistically best to keep this in mind and just practice speeding thru dull chapters and characters (cough Elayne chunks). It picks a decent amount in book 11 and then is class for all Brandon Sanderson books. Also the prequel is really good so if you haven't already read that, I'd recommend.

For me, I've most recently read On Such a Full sea which was good but I wouldn't recommend it other stuff. It is compared to Kazuo Ishiguro who I think clears it. I would however recommend Barney's Version. I've described it as a drunken version of the World According to Garp, not as purely wholesome but still touching and paints a picture of a character that one is taken with. I would also wholeheartedly second the Perfume recommendation that I saw elsewhere in this thread.

necro!!
i havent been reading with the same frequency that i used to but here u are

The Emperor of Gladness by Ocean Voung is one of the best books I have ever read. The writing in this book is unreal. I think the first chapter of this book might be the most perfect, well written 8 page description of middle america I've ever seen. I finished this book on the train the other day and had to accept that I just kinda had to ball my eyes out in public. Read this. Ocean Voung is so unreasonably articulate (like listen to this interview with dua lipa, what the fuck???) I could listen/read to this guy talk forever. He even somehow manages to make his Oprah interview a genuinely pleasant and interesting experience.

Playground by Richard Powers had me hooked from start to finish. The Overstory is another of my most favourite books, and in Playground Powers manages to play with the format in such a unique and creative way that I think it might surpass The Overstory in quality.

Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow by Zevin Gabrielle feels like a book my mum would have bought me cause she saw that its about video games. I think this book does a perfectly adequate job at telling its story, but I can't get rid of my inner edgy 16 yearold self that felt really pandered to, and ultimately also misunderstood as someone who likes video games. Maybe this book isnt actually for me.

Fish Have No Feet by Jón Kalman Stefánsson is another banger from one of my favourite authors. Although this is originally written in icelandic I find that his work translated to danish is still some of the only danish literature that manages to not sound like shit. I found the story in this book to be less compelling than it's twin novel (About the Size of the Universe), but a very nice emo read while going through some personal shit earlier this year.

I love the way that Benjamin Labatut has decided to carve out this strange niche of writing historical-semi fiction about scientists, and The Maniac feels very much like a natural successor to the proof of concept that was When We Cease to Understand the World. John von Neumann is such an interesting character, and this book does such a cool job building and working with the mythology surrounding him.

I also read This Other Eden by Paul Harding like 2 years ago and I remember vaguely enjoying it, but I left like no notes on my goodreads besides a 4 star review so idk lol. It was good (i think).

I've read a few books since my last post, my main highlights include:

House of Leaves: Highly rated and lived up to the hype imo, a little weird to begin with but it just keeps on giving. I did read it on kindle so I believe I missed out on a lot of shit regarding the physical layout of the pages and text.

A Short Stay in Hell: Amazing novella that I really do wish was longer, but that would probably defeat the purpose.

The Portrait of Dorian Gray: A very enjoyeable read and timelessly relevant.

If you enjoyed House of Leaves, I highly recommend giving it a re-read but reading Johnny's part aloud in Branslams voice. It adds a lot of nuance that otherwise would go unappreciated.

Did anyone read ANTLERS???????????

DUNE: Read the first one, was pretty decent, unsure if I'll continue with the others in the series as yet.

I read The First Law and The Age of Madness series (including the stanadlones) by Joe Abercrombie. Really enjoyed this series, the characters are really well done with each having a uniqueness to them, although one does seem to get a bit repetitive... It's pretty gory and grim with no real happy endings for anyone.

I finished WOT. Which was a massive slog, by the end I just powered through it like I was shitting my guts out after getting food poisoning. Some moments were really cool and enjoyable, others felt really rushed and suddenly cut off. I also realised that the guy(s) can't write romance or anything to do with women that well.

Finished the stormlight archive as well, which was alright, I think it's rather overrated. There were some great moments in the books, some interesting concepts that I wanted to read more of, but other than that some of the character progression just seemed really sudden and out of the blue. It also read like there was a bit of "fan service" going on as some stuff just seemed really out of place.

Currently reading Malazan Book of the Fallen. And it's really good but INCREDIBLY complicated sometimes, it's a bit like the China Mieville books but slightly more contained in universe and a lot more of them. At the moment I'm really enjoying the books, I'm on the fourth currently. Unsure if I'll read the spinoffs afterwards.

Want to read: House of Leaves
And some Adrian Tchaikovsky books seem really intersting.
At the moment I'm mainly reading fanasty and sci-fi books. I'd want to branch out a bit more at some point to other genres.

Man I was a huge fan of the series up until the last two books, book 4 wasn't the best, but I held faith for 5. I thought wind and truth ended up being a pretty big disappointment. I feel like the story and the universe are just getting way bigger than is enjoyable to read about in one series. I'm kinda checked out at this point after reading the stormlight archive since it first came out.

The books all have great moments, and I know you need peaks and troughs, but man they're so far apart that I barely cared by the end. If Sanderson cuts down the word count by like 30% I might read the next in the series, but it's Sanderson so that won't happen.

Didn't say in my last post but I'm currently reading The Library at Mount Char, it's been ok so far.

i think the stormlight archive is one of the most polarizing fantasy series i know about that people regularly talk about in the space. I'm one of the people that love it.

there's folks who might get tired of the series as it goes in the way kermit said, but i had the opposite reaction where i got more invested as i got further thru the series.

i really like all the characters, the silly and the serious, i really like all their little interactions. In particular I like the interlude POVs of otherwise irrelevant or only loosely relevant characters that still have a place in the world, as to me they really give the world more meat and make it feel more lived in. I can definitely understand the viewpoint of those who want more tightly focused writing and dont want nearly as much fluff. I remember reading a note written by one of his former classmates and friends who mentioned sanderson had an issue early on before his writing career where he'd write endlessly of character interactions and sort of daily fluff stuff without ever having some sort of overarching plot. perhaps his affinity to caring more about characters/interactions than keeping tightly scheduled pace just doesn't vibe with people and that's ok.

many stories/arcs, whether they're standalone short stories or only loosely relevant stories within the interludes of the main series seem to me to just give the world more character. However again I know there are people who prefer much more focused stories without all the fluff.

on the other hand i think he's gotten pretty good at planning big things and mixing small twists in the plots. I think sanderson has become fond of building big the reveals, and in particular i felt like all various pieces coming together from far reaching parts of the cosmere has been fun to watch unfold, both in the explicit references as well as the more hidden easter eggs.

after finishing oathbringer i went to go read elantris, warbreaker, and several of the stories and essays from the arcanum unbounded book and it only cemented more how much i like how disparate each world's magic system feels, each internally logical, while still feeling like they mix well with the underlying workings of the bigger picture.

In the end though i think one of the biggest things for me is that i just happen to be someone that vibes with his characters, their interactions, and the changes many of them have go through. I never got the same sense of a character development coming out of nowhere, but i've basically had an uninterrupted go at it all, having started the series later than most i think.

i'm currently reading through dawnshard since i never got to it and then i'm going to finish wind and truth, which i actually already got maybe 20% into before deciding i wanted to finish dawnshard first. what i've read so far i've quite liked.

I only ask because I was a big fan of the film, but the book, the 2nd half and the ending is so much different, the ending in the book is so insane. I’m not gunna spoil it, but I understand why they didn’t do it. It would had been so hard to film.

Maybe this isn't relevant if you only thought dune was okay... But the next few sequels are somewhere between fine and good. Sometimes people say "the sequels are horrible", but that's mainly because
1. the sequels are different than dune and get more and more different-er.
2. Herbert made some of Paul's character more obvious since a lot of people were misreading him as a Luke Skywalker-type character (and were probably expecting space fantasy hero story, not desert worm guy story).
3. I haven't read them, but the 17 books written after Herbert died seem to be actually awful. (but fwiw, the first 6 books basically conclude the actual dune story)

I think I read 1-4, and they're all fine. I may read five and six since I just learned those are apparently the Silmarillion, but weirder and deserter

If you're looking for a light fun book, cannot recommend The Bartimaeus Trilogy enough. The world building is pretty cool and the humor is pretty nice - loved the pace and character building the author inputs into the story.

Any Redwall fans in here?

i think sanderson kinda just needs harsher editors
hes just too big and popular now, so he kinda just writes and writes. and thats good for the diehard fans that want as much content as possible, but for the average reader it just becomes harder and harder to enjoy. wat is so controversial with how bloated it is

sandersons best traits are his worldbuilding and plotting
his actual character writing and prose are lacking in some regards, but the sanderlanche style is very enjoyable once you get into it, and his worlds are interesting and feel lived in

i actually really liked yumi and the nightmare painter, its a shameless cheesy ya book, and its a lot shorter and cleaned up than his normal stuff.

agreed, i think my favorite work by him that i've read so far might actually be his emperor's soul short story