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[Great Order]

Been and read a few new books. Project Hail Mary, Children of Time, and The Mercy of Gods and its associated novella, Livesuit.

Hail Mary was interesting but... I dunno if it's one I'll revisit. It was missing something for me that made it properly memorable and enjoyable.

Children of Time was good, I enjoyed the speculative evolution aspect but the ending did leave me feeling underwhelmed some. It was kind of anticlimactic.

The Mercy of Gods is my favourite out of them, which might be because it's the first bit of media I've read or watched where humanity is attacked by a technologically superior alien force and straight up loses. No ifs, ands or buts, the aliens arrive and immediately execute 1/8th of the humans, organised resistance ends within five days, and everyone is rounded up like sheep
I also like media that emphasises how alien an extraterrestrial's mindset could easily be. It's all too common to have an alien race be human, or human but trait X is exaggerated.

Livesuit wasn't as good as TMoG, but then it was a novella so it's not got as much depth. It did expand on it some though, which is interesting in and of itself.

[Travis Bickle 2]

I read The Definitive Guide to Catholic Fasting & Abstinence by Matthew R. Plese over the course of an airplane ride. Despite its title, several topics were covered very briefly and the text as a whole felt more like several blog posts cobbled together than a proper book; given that the author himself seems to primarily write for a blog, this is unsurprising. At some point after I purchased my copy, a second edition was published which—if the information listed on Amazon's website is accurate—is over twice as long in page count, hopefully making up for the deficiencies of the first edition.

On the advice of a friend, I read "The Bet" by Anton Tchekhov—as his name is rendered in the collection I read from. I found the story to be good enough to make me consider reading the rest of the collection.

[boredestry]

This was a while ago, but the book 'Pie' by Sarah Weeks absolutely opened my eyes to a universe of loving to bake, even if the books intentions weren't to do that. I recently baked a pie, actually. It was a custard pie and it was so good.
back to the topic of the book, I, at first, expected it to be a cheesy book, but as soon as I got to page 20 I was hooked. from then on during reading class I was reading it as much as I could every day. I hate to say it, but I even shed multiple tears while I read it.

[Il Palazzo]

Has anyone here read anything by Bukowski?

[delphonso]

Has anyone here read anything by Bukowski?

A lot of poetry but none of his novels/short stories.

[Il Palazzo]

A lot of poetry but none of his novels/short stories.

Alright. I had a question about his prose too, but this is also good.
I've just started to get acquainted with his writing. Got myself one of his novels, as well as a collection of poems - the You get so alone... one. While I liked the prose, I'm kinda bouncing off the poetry. I think I was expecting something like a bolder, more gnarly, plebeian Frost. But there's almost no structure here. Feels closer to a record of free-flowing thoughts, like unedited notes from a journal. A bit lazy and pretentious, tbh. I'm struggling to find an angle to connect.
Now, is this style typical of his poetry? If not, is there something more conventional of his you'd recommend? And if it is, do you have any advice on how to approach reading this?

Full disclosure, I'm not a particularly sophisticated reader of poetry. So if it all sounds to you like somebody complaining about jazz not being melodic enough, it'd probably be a fair criticism. Try and indulge me, though.

*typo

[DANNYX3]

I am personally into space and so I got a book for RLLY cheap and it is called "Merlin's tour of the universe" by Neil Degrasse tyson,so far its been good well to me 

[delphonso]

A lot of poetry but none of his novels/short stories.

Alright. I had a question about his prose too, but this is also good.
I've just started to get acquainted with his writing. Got myself one of his novels, as well as a collection of poems - the You get so alone... one. While I liked the prose, I'm kinda bouncing off the poetry. I think I was expecting something like a bolder, more gnarly, plebeian Frost. But there's almost no structure here. Feels closer to a record of free-flowing thoughts, like unedited notes from a journal. A bit lazy and pretentious, tbh. I'm struggling to find an angle to connect.
Now, is this style typical of his poetry? If not, is there something more conventional of his you'd recommend? And if it is, do you have any advice on how to approach reading this?

Full disclosure, I'm not a particularly sophisticated reader of poetry. So if it all sounds to you like somebody complaining about jazz not being melodic enough, it'd probably be a fair criticism. Try and indulge me, though.

*typo

If you read it in high school it'd have blown your mind. That's mostly his style, the poetry lies in his choices of words, the surprise and shock between lines, and the powerful imagery he can call up. Dinosauria, We is maybe his best and best known poem. The imagery there is great, but yeah, it's not following a rhyme scheme, but there is a musicality/rhythm still in the words.

[Loud Whispers]

Finally got around to finishing the Eisenhorn & Ravenor series. 40k space detectives in space. There's a pretty cool generational quality to the series that I think books can do that other mediums struggle with. Just being able to show how someone started off at point x in life and ended up on the last page. There's also something hilarious in that in the setting, the main characters are really anxious about remaining pure, by the book, righteous. But they start making compromises, start learning more about the world that nudges them in different directions. There is a very funny moment where both Ravenor and Eisenhorn reunite and consider the other one to be a little too radical for their own good, whilst considering themselves a puritan who just knows better.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

But Eisenhorn is easily my favourite. Guy keeps having to ask himself "have I gone too far?" After being hunted down by colleagues, killing colleagues, utilising ever darker and forbidden lore for his own ends, going completely rogue. By the time you get to Eisenhorn: Magos, he's just accepted he is a completely rogue element, and there's no going back. When Ravenor's boss asks him to reign in his enthusiasm, he reluctantly agrees, becoming something like a philosophy teacher. When Eisenhorn's boss asks him to reign it in, the whole proceedings could be best summed up as maniacal laughing with a sword in hand, if the character was one to laugh at all. Whole thing is very comfy, like a TTRPG campaign

[Yoink]

Inns, Ales and Drinking Customs of Old England, by Frederick Hackwood.   

Probably gonna start reading The Sex Lives of Siamese Twins concurrently, since I picked up a copy the other day and I find it very difficult to hold off on reading anything by Mr. Welsh. Plus, one fiction and one non-fiction at the same time ain't so bad.   

[brewer bob]

So, I've been having this project of reading old TSR Forgotten Realms books from the 80s and 90s. Most of them I've read as a kid/teenager back in the day, so I've been interested to see how they hold up. Some have been decent or even good (for pulp fantasy novels, that is), but then there are some that make me ask, "Why the hell am I doing this?"

Just finished reading Pool of Radiance by James M. Ward and Jane Cooper Hong and, uh, yeah... I've read it once when I was nine or ten, I think. I was impressed by it then, but dear God it was terrible. It's got to be one of the worst books (if not the worst) I've ever read.

I'd rather read furry fanfic for the rest of my life than that one again.

[Cthulhu]

Finished Blood Meridian, third reading, still transcendent, still my favorite book.  Some books feel eternal, like they came to us from a higher place and the author is less author and more prophet.  Blood Meridian is one of them.

Looking to give it some competition though, next up is Moby Dick, long overdue.  I have high expectations for it.  From everything I've heard it's another one of those transcendent books.

In between I read A Short Stay in Hell, a novella where a Mormon finds out Zoroastrianism is the one true religion, and for his punishment he's sent to a library containing every permutation of the ~95 valid symbols in English writing that can fit in a 410 page book.  All he has to do is find the book perfectly describing his own life and he can go to heaven.  Starts out fun, almost silly, everyone's very sanguine about it, then slowly morphs into profound existential horror as you and the narrator together come to understand the size of the library.  Longer than you think, dad, longer than you think!

It's real good.

[Pwnzerfaust]

Finally read Project Hail Mary after having seen the trailer for it. Was good, though not my favorite book. Some of the writing felt stilted, and there was a lot of exposition on certain things that felt forced and took me out of the book. I suppose I can say I prefer the concept behind the story rather than the execution itself.

[brewer bob]

Still working on reading all the TSR Forgotten Realms novels. There's "only" 15 left, but seriously, I don't think I'll be able to finish this project. The books are just getting worse and worse the nearer I get to TSR's doom, and I just find hating myself for starting the whole damn project.

I just don't want to know how many hours of my life I've wasted on this crap.

[Telgin]

I've read the first three books of the Galaxy's Edge series now, and I'm even less sure what to make of them at this point.  In a lot of ways it feels a lot like store brand Star Wars, which is fine, and some of the characters are a little weird and unlikable, like the little girl training to be a bounty hunter, whose name I've already forgotten.  If I had the rest of the books I'd read them, but won't go out of my way to find them.

More recently, my sister in law lent me her copies of the Fourth Wing series, and... it's... eh.  I'm absolutely not the target audience since it's romantasy, but it's also not total trash like I've seen a lot of people on the internet claim.  The romance parts do nothing for me and I don't like the designated love interest Xaden much at all, but the main character Violet is honestly fine.  The fantasy elements are fine too, if I'm not entirely sure I understand the motivations of some of the overarching plot yet despite being halfway through the third book.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

I don't really get why hiding the venin is such a conspiracy, and it also stretches belief that it would be possible to hide them given how numerous they appear to be by the third book.  It's implied that the king was in on the conspiracy, but... I still don't really get it.  Guess maybe he's a secret venin too.  I dunno.

I'm also confused on why Violet is able to kill venin with lightning when the books are very clear that only magic daggers can kill them.

The books would probably be better without the romance aspect, since it really doesn't feel like Violet and Xaden have any chemistry at all.  She just loves him because he's an obsessively protective beautiful man who could kill everyone with a flick of the wrist if he wanted to, and he loves her... because... she's the main character I think.  I think he mentions he loves her intelligence at some point, which is something I guess.

I like the dragon characters at least.