The Book Lair - all book talk ITT

[Five_X]

And yet you read nothing about cheese?

[Cruor]

i prefer to imagine all food magically appears on my plate and in my fridge

[Trubo]

Picked up Good Omens again now that I have some time to read it. Loving it just as much as when I put it down.

Aziraphale was the first angel ever to own a computer. It was a cheap, slow, plasticky one, much touted as ideal for he small businessman. Aziraphale used it religiously for doing his accounts, which were so scrupulously accurate that the tax authorities had inspected him five times in the deep belief that he was getting away with murder somewhere.

Yes, I suppose we must. All we need to do is find some terrorists who are capable of taking an entire nuclear reactor out of its can while it's running and without anyone noticing. It weighs about a thousand tons and is forty feet high. So they'll be quite strong terrorists.

You could see the spokesman's mad grin, even on the radio

[RoydGolden]

Finished volume 1 of The Empty Both And The Zeroth Maria a couple days ago. It was a fun ride. Lots of crazy twists and events to catch me off guard. And by the end, it managed to wrap things up with a genuinely inspiring and heartfelt, albeit bittersweet, ending that left things open for future stories. The revelations later on also cleared away a lot of my worries regarding characters seeming 'off', since at least one particular one I felt that way about had a very good reason to be acting the way he did.

Spoiler:

Or rather, the sadistic wish-granting supernatural entity wearing his skin had a very good reason. Did I mention this series has crazy twists?

I could really see this being made into an anime. Preferably with Studio SHAFT at the helm, since the artistic and surreal style they displayed for the Monogatari franchise suits this one perfectly. It'd be a bit hard to arrange it into a series given how non-linear the narrative is (continuously jumping back and forth between different iterations in a massive time-loop) but I think it could be done with some effort and creativity. And some scenes at the end I imagine looking cool as Hell animated, like-

Spoiler:

Kazuki smashing Mogi's 'box' and breaking the time-loop.

Probably going to check out the next volume sometime soon. Heard that it wasn't quite as good as the first or later ones, but I'll see.

[Elthanes]

I've finally found the time to finish the Book of the new Sun tetralogy and I have to say it's probably one of my favorite book series.
The first person narrative does a lot to make Urth feel utterly alien and mundane at the same time and shows the gradual changes in his personality well.

[eddyak]

I felt like that series sort of lost the plot somewhere around the people-want-his-sword bit. I made it a little past that, but couldn't carry on afterward, it just wandered and didn't do much.

[Elthanes]

I felt like that series sort of lost the plot somewhere around the people-want-his-sword bit.

Do you mean the duel with the poisonous plants?
I wouldn't call what happened after that losing the plot.

[eddyak]

Before that. I didn't get to those. He just sort of wanders around through scenery porn, and it's... not exactly thrilling reading.

[Hermitfold]

It's been a long time since I participated in this thread!

Recently bought Gutenberg's Apprentice. Nothing like a good historical novel to get the blood pumping!

[RoydGolden]

Currently been reading Magnus Chase And The Hammer Of Thor. Pretty sure Riordan just snuck in a DBZ reference with Hearthstone's 'Uruz' rune. For those that don't know, when Hearth activates that rune he's surrounded in golden light/electricity, grows more muscular and his hair spikes up. In other words, exactly what the archetypal imagery for Super Saiyan transformation is. While reading it, it struck me so obviously that I was almost expecting a overt shout-out courtesy of Magnus.

To be sure, a lot of that is probably fairly universal imagery for 'powering up', but knowing Rick's love of pop culture references I wouldn't be surprised if he included that knowingly. Given Dragon Ball Z is at the cultural point where just about any geek-adjacent person is likely to have some knowledge of it, and especially since Riordan even described Hearth as 'looking like a manga character' back in his introduction from book 1.

[RoydGolden]

Still reading Magnus Chase And The Hammer Of Thor. So, where we last left off: Blitzen went Super Saiyan, Mr. Alderman is like Weiss's dad from Rwby played up to eleven and Inge is probably the most moe character Riordan's ever done. Seriously, think about it. She's a submissive, blushing and cheerful girl with a painful past, has a (cow) tail and a crush on one of the main characters since childhood (for bonus points, said character also happens to be oblivious to love). On top of being a literal maid. S-so moe!

I can only imagine if the book was ever (impossible as it may be) adapted into an anime, she'd be one of the characters that would get a significantly larger fan-following...

[MaHaL]

So, recently finished Sharpe's Tiger and it was definitely worth the read. My grandparents left a couple of the others ones that I've been thinking about reading, do they need to be read in order or is it more like the Drenai novels Gemmel put out where they're a series but you can read them individually?

[Seika]

Sharpe's pretty accessible no matter the order, I think, partly because Cornwell wrote them in a very asynchronous order himself. The bunch that comes as the first three in chronological order (though were actually written rather later) should maybe be kept together - Tiger, Triumph, Fortress - because they're relatively tightly bound and all deal with the same campaign with a similar cast of characters. You've started there, which I also did, so I'd recommend finishing. (Tiger and Triumph are also just very solid entries in the series generally; Fortress is fine but not up to their standards, IMO).

A couple of naval books follow, which could be read at any point you liked in any order you liked, as far as I remember. (I don't greatly rate them, though).

After that, you might well want to take Rifles, Havoc, and Eagle together, because they're big establishing books for the rest of the series, introducing Sharpe's general situation, and they're still pretty early chronologically. Then you can pretty much go wild, albeit I'd recommend to pick up Company and Sword soon enough, partly because they were some of the first published and so will introduce a couple more things while not demanding much of you, and partly just because I think they're some of the better ones in the series.

[In-N-Out Double-Double & Animal Fries]

I'm about 2/3rds the way through The Three Body Problem

As someone with a background in Physics and a basic understanding of modern Chinese history, the book is pretty damn good so far.

But fuck keeping track of all these Chinese names, at least there's only 3/4 named Chinese characters worth keeping track of.

[Sesto]

Finished reading Murakami's "Kafka on the Shore". It was something, I guess.

[eddyak]

Reading Martian. I never thought I'd have a good time reading about a guy sitting in a room by himself, doing not much at all. It's p. great.

[Kirby]

Genocidal Organ is pretty fun so far.

[Dantalion]

Does anyone have suggestions for books on visually impaired people, preferably memoirs?

[Bloble]

So I tried reading Foucault's Pendulum and bounced off of it a chapter in, because god damn this prose is impenetrable. Haven't dropped a book this fast since I cracked open and immediately closed Ulysses a few years back.

[RoydGolden]

Started reading book 1 of Riordan's Trials Of Apollo a few days ago. Meg is best girl.