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No. 160853
Recommend books or ask for recommendations, share what you're currently reading or what you want to read, discuss favorite genres and authors, share reviews, etc.
What have you been reading, farmers?
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>>>/m/8561 No. 160858
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Currently I'm reading the secret language of butterflies and the selfish gene. Also about a third through Charles Darwin's autobiography but I've been taking long breaks with it. Earlier this year I finished American psycho, gone girl, do androids dream of electric sheep and how to change your mind.
I really like reading non fiction but it usually takes me longer to get through, so I end up finishing more fiction titles. I wish I read more often but I'm still happy I've put aside the time to finish at least a few books this year!
I wonder if it's normal to forget books quickly after reading them? I love the experience of reading and being in the middle of a book but I feel like I hardly retain much of the contents afterward, like I can remember ideas that struck me, the tone and certain imagery I imagined but not much beyond that. Basically if I wanted to have a conversation about a certain book it would have to be right after I read it or else I probably wouldn't remember it enough to discuss it. Anyone else feel this way?
No. 160872
>>160858I definitely get what you mean, I found that taking screenshots (for ebooks) has helped me memorise the parts I want to remember (or just taking pictures of the pages/bookmarking for physical books)
Also since I started a Goodreads account I love to catalogue my books and read the reviews by other people in order to get somewhat of a conversation/opinion about the books I've read.
No. 160893
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I know a lot of people in these threads aren't fans of young adult novels, and usually I'm not either. But damn, this book really speaks to my cringe, younger self. Only about 25% through but would recommend if you want a book about a dorky introverted college girl.
No. 160894
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>>160893Oh my god, it's by that bitch who only writes cringe ya about fangirls or hot yaoi bois. i cannot imagine being a grown woman skilled enough to be an author and write this drivel.
Having said that, enjoy your book, anon. Nothing against you, but my reaction is visceral.
No. 160895
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>>160893>>160894I've one ever read one of her comics, Pumpkinheads its about a really fat girl who gets pairs with a handsome male MC
No. 160900
I'm reading the Hunger Games and I'm halfway through the third book and it's taking me so long I can't wait to be done with it to start reading something else.
I liked the first two, read them in less than a week, though the second gets a bit boring at times, but this one is taking me a while because some parts get so tiresome that I just skim through it, regret, go back to properly read it just in case I missed something important, but the only things I'm missing is Katniss overly dramatic internal monologue that she keeps repeating and repeating, giving me nothing of value.
I'm starting to dislike her. She has no personality, or at least none that I can feel, if that makes any sense. She doesn't feel like growing, just the exact same person she was in the first book. Feels like nothing about her changed even though everything changed in her life.
I guess I'm too far in the book to expect anything to change now.
No. 160902
>>160896I know. There is a local (Polish) author that is like this and she writes bullshit YA about a girl who discovers she's trans or an enby because she's always been a tomboy or something. Of course she's being praised to high heavens.
>>160895OP of
>>160894 to be clear. I'm conflicted about voicing my hatred for this type of shit because I know that girls and women hardly get media pandering to them (I remember watching My Mad Fat Diary years ago and rolling my eyes at how people were outraged that the heroine gets a realistically attractive guy in love with her), while scrotes get bashed in the head with 'your personality is all that matters!!! you DESERVE a supermodel gf throwing herself at your feet!!'. But I personally really dislike the post-fanfiction writing.
No. 160946
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Does anyone read Neil Gaiman? I read 2 children's books by him (Coraline and The Ocean At the End of the Lane) and was quite happy with them. I thought I liked him as an author. Cute whimsical childish writing with a hint of horror.
However, I read some adult oriented works by him (Neverwhere and now going through Stardust) and it made me lose a lot of respect for him. Manic pixie dream girls, awkward sex scenes, boring doormat male protagonists. Why is it like this?
No. 160980
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>>160893>>160894>>160895I think I would have agreed with this disdain a couple of years ago, but now, tbh, I think it's ridiculous. What about any of this is cringe? Men write about geeky teen protagonists based on their young selves all the fucking time. Fandom and fanfiction are a big part of a lot of young girls' lives. What exactly makes us so uncomfortable with art that reflects that, and is aimed at those same young girls? What is actually, specifically "cringe" about that? Why don't men feel embarrassed when their most earnest, dorky high school shit is looked at, even though it's a lot more gross, violent, and creepy?
I'm not a big YA person, and I actually do find myself irritated now and then by authors who "feel" fanfic-y. But I read Fangirl years back, and it was a charming, breezy college romance about a girl who is like a whole lot of real world girls. Carry On bored me, because I don't find gay male romances interesting, but it was a solid little fantasy story with an interesting origin. What makes it drivel? That we know yaoi/slash/whatever is something a lot of girls find hot? That the boys are depicted as attractive? We are literally constantly living in the fetid cave of What Men Find Hot. And Carry On writes its characters with 500% more care and thoughtfulness than almost any male authors give the women they create. Who cares if these female authors are coming from yaoi fandom? Literally every man working in any kind of genre fiction spent his formative years huffing balloon-titted bro shit that is one thousand times worse in literally every respect.
I can't speak for everyone, but honestly, when I sit down and examine my "ugh fanfic/fandom-centered lit (especially ya lit)" reaction, I can't find a lot of decent basis for it that isn't just internalized embarrassment over liking cringe girl shit that is only cringe because it has nothing to do with irl men and is incredibly, nakedly earnest. Some of these books are poorly written, I'm sure. And I think a lot of like, attempts to "legitimize" fandom are stupid (as in, everything Aja Romano writes). But those are separate conversations.
Also, jfc, the Pumpkinheads girl looks fine. And women could churn out a pile of books pairing female characters who aren't conventionally attractive with hot dude mcs every day for a hundred years and not come close to the male equivalent. Who fucking cares if a fat girl reads this and enjoys it? Does it make you feel better to know that irl men are definitely going to keep making her feel like shit?
No. 160981
>>160980I'm OP who posted about reading Fangirl, and I think these are actually some great points.
I still think the protagonist of Fangirl is "cringe" (she's nice but socially awkward, afraid of drinking/party culture/growing up, prone to emotional outbursts and feeling excluded, likes yaoi) but that's why I find it refreshing right now.
I think it's great that a lot of female authors are writing cool, powerful, effortly badass heroines, but it's a breath of a fresh air to read about a protagonist who's just NOT cool (and hasn't done anything particularly Mary-Sue at this point in the book, aside from talking to 2 attractive boys.)
She spends a lot of time moping around in her dorm while everyone goes out to party or overanalyzing social interactions with other people, but damn, if that wasn't me at many points in my life. It feels nice to see it expressed in words.
It's not "high literature" but it still strikes something in me that many authors wouldn't be able to. I can still 100% understand that it won't be everyone's cup of tea.
No. 160985
>>160980I haven't read those books but I love this post anyway, well said anon.
>We are literally constantly living in the fetid cave of What Men Find Hot. This particularly resonated with me kek.
No. 161017
>>160980You have a point (said almost the same thing
>>160902 here, idk why you have only quoted my first post), but I will never like those books. I hate YA and I hate this kind of wish-fullfilment, #relatable crap. But if other women enjoy it, more power to them.
No. 161087
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>>161041A lot of these involve animals… Maybe because autumn always evokes the image of those quaint pencil illustrations of animals in children's books to me for some reason, but also included some horror and classics:
>BUNNICULA by Deborah and James HoweFun children's book about a cat and a dog who try to figure out if a newly-adopted rabbit is a vampire.
>NORTHANGER ABBEY by Jane Austen A girl visits an old abbey, expecting it to be just like her favorite Gothic novels, to hilarious expect.
>WATERSHIP DOWN by Richard Adams A group of rabbits look for a home, but it's not easy!
>REDWALL series by Brian JacquesComforting, warm read with delicious descriptions of food. Nostalgic feeling.
>FRANKENSTEIN by Mary ShelleyA classic that still holds up, and is actually quite short! Definitely read it if you have the chance. If you really want to get into the mood, you can also read some poems by Shelley's husband or other contemporaries. Keats is definitely my favorite.
>WUTHERING HEIGHTS by Emily Brontë Another classic. The Kate Bush song is also good.
>TAILCHASER'S SONG by Tad WilliamsA cat goes on an adventure. Sort of like a more sophisticated version of the Warriors books.
>THE CORN MAIDEN by Joyce Carol OatesSome teenagers abduct a classmate for a bizarre ritual. Haunting imagery and prose.
>THE TURN OF THE SCREW by Henry James Essential horror! A governess cares for two children at a remote country home that may be haunted. Coincidentally(?), this one also has a Kate Bush song written about it.
>THE BEAR by Andrew KrivakComforting, post-apocalyptic story about a father and daughter.
>HANGSAMAN by Shirley JacksonStrange book that is rather different than her other works. Her other novels have been recommended a lot in these threads for good reason and are also good reads for autumn.
>MOOMINVALLEY IN NOVEMBER by Tove JanssonLast book of the Moomin series. Even though it's a children's novel, it's startlingly melancholy and very beautiful.
>GOBLIN MARKET by Christina RossettiJust a fun poem about two sisters.
No. 161088
>>161087Awww, thank you!! Definitely going to check some of these out in the upcoming months! Bless you
nonny :) others, feel free to drop autumn favorite recommendations as well!
No. 161130
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>>160892>>161064go for it, nonnies. i use picrel (the brown one, they're from a brand called newestor) but once it's full i wanna get a cuter one. flame tree publishing has really cute moomin notebooks.
>>161088might be very obvious but i find harry potter books very fall season-y, probably because that's when the new school year starts at hogwarts.
No. 162643
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>>162235I gotchu
>The Sharing Knife by Lois McMaster Bujold>A couple from N.K. Jemisin (Inheritance & Dreamblood Trilogies)>The Faded Sun Trilogy by C.J. Cherryh (more sci-fi than fantasy)>Twelve Houses by Sharon Shinn>Sevenwaters by Juliet Marillier>The Winternight Trilogy by Katherine ArdenNot series but good:
>Circe by Madeline Miller>The Goblin Emperor by Katherine Addison>The Winged Histories by Sofia Samatar >Deathless by Catherynne Valente>The Hearing Trumpet by Leonora Carrington No. 162646
>>162235I'm seconding
>>162362 and recommending Priory. It can be a bit of a slog to get through at times but I loved it. Two of the main characters are cool warrior women and there's even some lesbian romance thrown in there.
No. 162663
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currently reading lolita for the third time. i first read it at age 13 (thanks lana del rey) and reread it again in my final year of high school for english class.
this third time reading has been the toughest. i think as a teenager i was unable to appreciate how messed up the situation was. like i understood on an objective level that pedophilia is messed up. but just thinking about dolores as a 13 year old, with no one to turn to just fills me with dread. it’s hard to get through the book this time round because i just feel so horrified. it’s almost too much to contemplate.
words cannot express how much i detest how the book has been immortalized in pop culture and how it has been adapted to screen. hollywood is full of creeps and i can’t believe so many people were just like ‘this book about a pedophile raping his stepdaughter is actually a forbidden love story and the 13 year old was actually the seducer.” any adult who thinks this after reading the book either has piss poor reading comprehension or is a pedophile or pedophile sympathizer. or all three
No. 162681
>>162649I couldn't read it. Gave up after 10 pages or so. I feel like this is an idea that would need a genius to execute properly simply because the reality is much more interesting than a fanfiction about it with a normalfag OC added to it. Or maybe it would work if Cline wrote her novel about a fictional cult.
>>162663>>162676IDK how people can say that the book is sympathizing with Humbert or that it's a love story after the part where he almost rapes a 10 year old pimped by her mother, but only stops because she's fat AND the part where he admits to planning to breed Lolita for endless suply of the next generation of Lolitas. How the fuck is this supposed to be love???
No. 162682
>>162681yeah if you go into the book knowing that humbert is trying to manipulate the reader it’s so incredibly obvious what he’s doing. he mentions multiple times lolita crying when she thinks he’s asleep, the fact that she had nowhere else to go, the fact that she struggles in sex ed class at school etc. there’s even a scene where he makes her give him a hand job in her classroom after he just had a meeting with a school principle about how she struggles in sex ed class and he says he did it because he knew that opportunity would never come around again. he’s a horrible horrible man and this story reads more like a horror story and a love story.
i think dolores’ conduct at the beginning of the story when he picks her up from summer camp is the most misleading. if we are even to believe what humbert is saying at all, she was essentially playing at flirting because she believed she was going to go and see her mother. he deliberately waited until he had raped her and she was in physical pain the next morning to tell her that her mother was dead and then that kind of began dolores’ hopeless situation with no one to turn to for help.
No. 162771
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has anyone read priory of the orange tree? i've heard good things about it but the the fact that its 600+ pages kind of overwhelms me. not sure if i want to dedicate the time to it
No. 162906
>>162771Personally, I thought it was very underwhelming. It tried to be an epic fantasy with multiple POVs and locations like ASOIAF but fails to explore many of them in a satisfactory way making the whole worldbuilding feel rushed and bloated. The characters were really flat and I thought their inner lives and interactions were predictable and boring.
I also thought the romance had no chemistry at all and was overtly sanitized, giving me a bit of a "uwu unproblematic lesbians" vibe. The main character and her love interest also massively got on my nerves for the whole book, I think I liked one single character in the whole thing.
I was expecting a good, long epic fantasy with worldbuilding and a complex lesbian romance but by the end I was really disappointed. Maybe it's more for a YA audience, but I wouldn't know since I don't read YA.
This is just my grain of salt, take it as you will.
No. 162910
>>162906>>162819thanks for the feedback anons! i think i'll give it ~150-200 pages before deciding whether to keep reading or not. i like fantasy and w/w pairings, but i think the longest book i've read in the past 3 years has only been 450 max.
(also i am just now seeing other anons talking about it in earlier posts, sorry for not using my eyes)
No. 162918
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I finished the hunger games. Fucking finally.
I think there was no need for 3 books. Some monologues katniss give feel like wordcount boost. It seems like she is repeating the same thing over and over again, while some scenes aren't descriptive enough.
The ending was disappointing. I didn't really expect anything different from the movies, it's just the way it's written, it felt very rushed when most of the book was so slow paced, make the movie seem a lot better.
Anyway, I'm glad I'm done with it but I'm also feeling kinda empty now it's over.
No. 163219
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currently reading pic related. i like it a lot so far, super easy to pick up and get sucked into. i've never read anything by this author, but might check out some of her work after i'm done with this! the writing is really good imo
No. 163231
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>>163219Looks interesting. I'm about to start reading Vicious by the same author.
No. 163249
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currently reading picrel because i'm a basic bitch.
No. 163259
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>>163219>>163231I honestly loved reading Shades Of Magic by the same author, I’m obsessed with the characters and my best friend also loved the whole story.
I wish they made a movie of these books because I think it would be really nice, I want to see Rhy in action.
No. 163401
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>>160853I read this in like one day. It has odd wording at times but overall is pretty good. It has a really beautiful aesthetic. Has anyone read anything else by the author? Or know any books similar?
No. 163467
>>163288imo it was better for me that i watched the movie first because all the terms are so confusing and barely explained
like the mentat thing, i don't think leto ever told paul that he was a possible mentat in the movie that i would have dropped the book a few pages in. i do like it so far, even though it's kind of dense and i'm going through it very slowly.
No. 163592
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What are your thoughts on The Book Thief, anons? I was gifted the book but don't know if I want to commit to reading the thing since it's quite long and I'm not really into YA.
No. 163595
>>163592Didn't read the book, tried the movie but dropped it halfway as it seemed as cutesy wannabe tearjerker about WW2. No thank you, I'm tired of takes on the topic like this or The Boy In The Striped Pajamas.
YMMV, many people think that the novel is a heartfelt masterpiece so maybe read the first 10, 30 pages and decide if you should continue.
No. 163608
>>163596i liked norwegian wood well enough but i had to roll my eyes that the main character had sex with like every female character. murakami really wanted us to know that he tears through pussy. it was just unnecessary.
i’ve read norwegian wood, kafka on the shore and 1Q84. i enjoyed the first two but i don’t know if i want to keep reading his books because i don’t enjoy the weird sexualisation of women.
No. 163637
>>163624I didnt read your spoiler. I was about to start reading it (literally just bought all 3 Mayfair witches books at a thrift store). Since you said pedo now I am afraid lol. But I have I heard several people say that IWAV was way too pedo-y for them.
Im afraid to read it now lol.
No. 163655
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>>163624IDK what to tell yo except I found picrel interesting.
https://i-want-my-iwtv.tumblr.com/post/144133263902/has-anne-rice-ever-confirmed-officially-thatI've read ITWV 10 years ago, and couldn't really get through any other of the Vampire books. The were too slow for my taste and it was hard caring about all those scrote characters, of which there are too many. I barely acquainted myself with Lestat and Louise, and now I'm supposed to also be invested in Marcus and Armand??? WTF
No. 163662
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I want to read something as good as The King in Yellow, by Chambers again. I liked HP lovecraft but after a while all his stories started to sound similar. I LOVE TKIY so much. I never had a book blow my mind that way.. Thx..
No. 163676
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>>163615not at all anon. don't be afraid to look up notes if you need it for context. from what i remember (had to read dante's inferno for a medieval euro history class), having some sort of background knowledge of medieval euro history helps a lot because there's some name dropping and references to what were current events
No. 163688
>>163637yeah sorry I should have spoiled almost all of that but I was one benadyrl in and sleepy lol. I will say, outside of the pedoy shit, the book isn't what I thought it was going to be, though it is well written. If you were wanting a lot of really spooky, cool witch shit, it is NOT in those books. It's very history dense. I'm sorry for being a spoil-sport anon, but trust me, it's egregious and unless you want weird sexual undertones mingled in with a history lesson, it's probably not the book for you.
>>163655I am filled with new disgust! Thank you anon. I seriously question the woman, she's written underage erotica before (I believe the book is Belinda) and I read somewhere it was because Anne herself was I guess interested in sex at a young age? But she glorifies it, it seems, instead of having any nuanced thought about it. And yeah, I pushed myself through Vampire Lestat and Queen of the Damned. There's great story in there, especially about these two spooky ye olde women, but Anne focuses so much on the fucking scrotes it's insufferable. I see now why she focused on Lestat (a simply awful character that I did not give a singular shit about) instead of Louis who was at least interesting imo.
No. 163694
>>163608 I pretty much ignored the final scene with
Reiko . Completely unneccessary and I would have vastly preferred they had just
shared a final tender kiss kek
No. 163850
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I've been reading a lot of Ligotti lately, picrel was pretty good. A lot of people recommend him to fans of Lovecraft, especially "The Last Feast of Harlequin," but after reading this I think a more apt comparison is to Kafka, which I actually prefer, with a bleak criticism of capitalism and bureaucracy, combined with tongue-in-cheek humor.
Does anyone have "dark fiction" recommendations? Gothic, horror, whatever is fine, but I prefer female authors and I'm just looking for something gritty and eerie in atmosphere. Gillian Flynn sort of has the tone I'm looking for but I'm usually not that interested by her plot/characters if that gives a rough idea.
No. 164258
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I recently read picrel and I really liked it. It's in a similar vein to books like My Year of Rest and Relaxation and The New Me which have been brought up in here a few times. If other anons enjoyed those and other books with unlikeable female protagonists then I recommend this one.
No. 164366
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Just finished this.
No. 164436
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Reading my husbandos autobiography. It's really funny. He talks about how weird gay sex is and that he was told to stick a toothbrush up his ass to expand the hole.
No. 165094
File: 1634594532986.jpg (27.15 KB, 348x499, 41BS4tWFVRL._SX346_BO1,204,203…)
So I just finished listening to this book. A little bit disappointed tbh.
The basic premise is that there is a group of 7 friends who are Shakespearean acting students at a fictional school. A character gets murdered and the protagonist, Oliver, went to jail for this murder. He's getting out after 10 years and the detective who put him there is quitting and asks what really happened so Oliver is telling him the story.
It was kind of pitched as like this dark academia murder mystery, but the ending was very predictable to me and there was a lot more focus on the relationships between the characters/bromance than any mystery or plot. I think I would have enjoyed it more if I had known that and not been expecting a really good mystery. Also the character that got killed was such a POS that I didn't really care who killed them. Another thing I didn't like was how this book felt kind of pretentious in the first half, and I'm not sure if that was more the writing or the narrator (or both) and had a lot of ridiculous flowery descriptions of things. And one of the characters has an English accent and the narrator did not do it very well in my opinion lol.
Click for major spoilers the friend in the group that gets killed, Richard, was a huge jackass who had been getting more and more violent/aggressive towards the friends. It was really obvious about halfway through who really killed him. The other friend, James, killed him basically in self defense. Oliver takes the blame for this because he loves James so much. Then James supposedly kills himself 4 years before Oliver gets out of prison, but leaves Oliver an ambiguous note quoting Shakespeare, and it's revealed that no one ever actually found James' body, implying he might still be alive. I almost DNF'd it because I was bored, but I did really like the ending.
No. 165188
>>165094i really liked the ending too and i thought it had the potential to be really good but i didn’t super enjoy most of the book. it seemed like a discount secret history by donna tartt lol.
when the bromance thing got introduced i had to roll my eyes because homoerotic elements are a staple of the dark academia genre. i can’t remember if they actually kissed though. i hope they did though.
No. 165325
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Has anyone read All Systems Red by Martha Wells? I have not read it but am on hold for it at the library. (Please spoil spoilers.) It is a sci-fi series by a woman, which is cool!
Also, silly but wholesome tangent, I just love choosing library books. I use an online public library, and I love browsing through books and choosing which ones to read. It's like online shopping, except I don't use money kek. I also get a small dopamine rush when I mark a book as "Read" on Goodreads.
No. 165369
>>165325I feel the same way. I had a library card when I was a kid, but fell off after going to college and moving a bunch. I'm so happy I remembered libraries are a thing and got my first adult card – it's such a joy to walk down to my branch on a pretty day and pick new reads. Totally the same feeling as shopping, but without spending money and supporting something really great.
Haven't read Wells yet, but I'm so happy to see her succeed and always hear good things about her books.
No. 165434
>>165414The Warmth of Other Suns is really long, but the structure – it's three life stories from the Great Migration – makes it very engaging. Really interesting way to learn about a historical phenomenon I didn't know much about.
Dearie: The Remarkable Life of Julia Child is really sweet – if I remember right, the author admits to being a little in love with Child (not romantically, just really enamored of her as a person) and it honestly works really well. The whole book has this really wonderful wamrth.
I'm in the middle of The Heroine with 1001 Faces rn, and though it's a little dry, it's pretty interesting. It's a Harvard scholar's response to Joseph Campbell's Hero's Journey – basically her attempt to see if there's such a thing as a Heroine's Journey, and what it looks like. She's a major expert on fairy tales, which is making it a really rich book so far.
No. 165542
>>165489Nta but I love shit like this, since I've been actively working on my mental health my life is so much better (go figure right). Thanks for sharing!
>>165480These are some I've liked:
>Mind Over Mood by Dennis Greenberger & Christine Padesky>Self-Esteem: A Proven Program of Cognitive Techniques by Matthew McKay & Patrick Fanning>Becoming Bulletproof by Evy Poumpouras >The Gift of Fear by Gavin de Becker (not only useful if you're actively worried about someone, discusses why you should trust your instincts and how to reduce general anxiety) No. 165716
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I rewatched this recently and the pseudo-sequel Wiener-Dog which I liked a lot. It might be a long shot but do any anons have recommendations for books that are similar? I like the dysfunctional suburban setting and dark comedy that’s bleak but weirdly comforting at the same time.
No. 165814
>>164372Unironically one of the best books I have ever read. The guy was fascinating a real life robin hood but also a ruthless cold blooded psychopath capable of slaughtering entire villages of people.
>>164378More like a Mexican Teddy Roosevelt.
No. 165828
File: 1634889376403.jpg (32.15 KB, 313x500, 1631925315120.jpg)
I've just read Things Have Gotten Worse Since We Last Spoke. I'm not the anon who has recommended the book, though
>>>/m/8561 I absolutely DO NOT recommend this if you have weak stomach – and even if you don't, I'm not convinced it's worth it. Content warning below because from OP descriptions you really don't know what you are getting into (not her fault, though – even from description, it's hard to imagine it's that bad). The book is not relatable unless you are a deranged psycho of an Armin Meiwes caliber. Also, YMMV on how believable the whole story is, since
the relationship never becomes an IRL one.
>Full-on BDSM Master/Slave relationship over chat. I realize this is a dealbreaker for most farmers. Even if you are ok with that for whatever reason, it's a far cry from 50 Shades of Grey type kinky romance.>2 detailed scenes of animal cruelty and murder/death. One features a cat>a detailed scene of child torture and murder>Nemu tier depiction of people decomposing after radiation exposure>tapeworm infestation>What TV Troped defines as Eye Scream – very predictable from the beginningThe fact that men are 'raving' about this makes me feel sick, since I don't trust them to see the story as a nightmare fuel. Also, there was no fucking reason the story was about two lesbians. The story might have been about a scrote and a woman
provided the scrote was infertile. It would be much more believable. It seems like a fetish/shock value thing.
No. 165832
>>165828>>165828a cherry on the shit cake is what I've just read in a Goodreads review:
>Also, the author is LGBTQ and nonbinaryNon-binary really is a convenient excuse for scrotes being scrotes, isn't it? Reposting my comment since he is actually gay, IDK if it changes something in my perception.
No. 165843
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>>163850>LigottiThe Conspiracy Against the Human Race sent me into a mental breakdown. I still have a couple chapters left only because it's such a brutal book I need to mentally prepare. I struggle with the fact that it's all true.
No. 165844
>>165828I hated this too. I thought it would be interesting because of the premise (two women form an unhealthy relationship over the old internet) but it failed in every way. Totally agree with
>>165841 about the pregnancy angst, it was so funny to me that a lesbian who has been rejected by her family, is poor, is totally alone, etc., when she’s asked by her rich gf what she wants more than anything says she wants a baby, almost right after they start talking. Then of course her gf is so very sad because she can’t give her that. Is the horror the result of her not being a man? Because I honestly think the author just had no other ideas as to what would compel female horror. When they sexted I remember laughing at how it was so obviously written by a man, it immediately devolves into BDSM and is overwhelmingly cringe.
It’s just a bunch of edgy gore with no purpose and both the protagonists say pseudo-philosophical things to justify it. At some point
a salamander is killed by the protagonist and one literally says that a salamander is a symbol of rebirth. Like no shit. No. 165856
>>165841>>165844I agree with the lesbian pregnancy thing. It escaped my attention because to me so many things were even worse, and the plot was insane (in a bad way). That's why it's vital to read literature analysis by other people. I can give one thing to the author: he can write truly visceral descriptions of violence and disgusting things. I almost vomited when reading about the meat. IDK if this is what I would like to be known for LOL.
>You can never trust a guy to write good female But he's LGBTQ and non-binary, haven't you heard??? Totally same as lesbians!
>>165851>Also as always, lmao @ anyone who gave this a book 5 stars on goodreads and wrote a "to be honest you have to have a high IQ to understand this novella" type of review.Someone suggested that crushedmarigolds was a man. Sure, headcanon it if you want, but I didn't see anything in the text that was suggesting it. HM, except from scrote shit like the panty thing.
If anyone has better recommendations for stories about online relationship and psychological power struggle in relationships, please recommend it to me. So far I found My Tiny Life about the first topic and a few non-fiction books about World of Warcraft. Plus one anthropologist one about Second Life.
No. 165866
>>165828I'm original OP who posted it, haven't read it yet but uhhh
might still hate-read it because I have a strong stomach and it sounds trashy and entertaining Plz forgive me nonnies.
No. 165868
>>165856Doesn’t the crushedmarigolds being a man theory
fall apart since the opening talks about a woman named Zoe being arrested after Agnes dies? It would have been more interesting though. I thought the Internet setting would be cool since there’s more ambiguity as to if people are who they say they are or if they’re telling the truth. The Sluts by Daniel Cooper is an interesting example of this being used for horrific effect, but it seems like in this book it’s just window dressing. I really thought that when
Zoe was telling Agnes to do things that there would be some reveal that she had just been lying or something like that. Even if Agnes lying at the end or it being more ambiguous with the possibility that she hadn’t died and Zoe had just been left to wonder and feel guilty the ending would be better than what it is. No. 165869
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>>165832>>165856So is the author an actual gay man or is he the tumblr kweer type?
Also, went back to read more of the reviews. Lots of passive aggressiveness (and just plain aggressiveness) in this woman's replies. This chain of comments in particular gave me a hearty kek.
No. 165938
>>165828>>165841>>165844>>165851>>165856Haven't read this book yet, and I'm thinking now I probably won't. But reading this discussion is making me ponder a question I wanna put to the thread at large: what do you think this kind of super out-there horror looks like from women? Does it exist yet?
I ask because I feel frustrated rn in a way I hope some of you might recognize. I've always been drawn to horror like this, but I'm pretty much always disappointed. When I was younger, this really confused me, because I felt simultaneously bored AND upset by books like this. And I knew I wasn't upset by them out of like, purely shocked disgust – I was interested in reading dark shit, but what I found was never actually what I wanted. Now I understand that this is largely because horror is often really gendered, and male horror is really fucking tiresome and mundane and exhausting a lot of the time. But I still hear about books like this and think "!!! maybe this time!" Does anyone else feel like that?
For female avant-garden ultra-intense horror/dark lit like this….I'm struggling to think of many examples, but I feel like there must be more out there than I realize. I'm the anon who first brought up Lisa Taddeo's Animal last thread, and I think that definitely counts. I'd also say Kyoko Okazaki's Helter Skelter, and Sayaka Murata's Earthlings. But everything else I can think of is less edgy – like, I love the Haunting of Hill House, but I want some primal scream stuff, you know?
No. 165948
>>165873I usually drink water or coffee. If I feel like it, sometimes I will make an iced breve sweetened with honey.
>>165325The Murderbot novellas are very fun but also overrated imo. As long as you ignore the hype and don't have your expectations set super high, I think you'll enjoy them.
No. 165974
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>>165966Same, really enjoyed it.
Can I get some
nonny-reviews on Zadie Smith writing? I finally gave White Teeth a go because my literature professor couldn't stfu about it. I was disappointed, found the book really boring and arrogant
No. 166036
File: 1635012869908.jpg (39.26 KB, 318x467, 636223.jpg)
>>165938I don't know if I'd necessarily call it horror, but Ice by Anna Kavan is an interesting one. Apocalyptic, unnerving, and dreamlike.
No. 166171
File: 1635044325223.jpg (30.8 KB, 333x500, 41j-OosgwoL.jpg)
Since we are talking about horror by women, this is an indie book I just read. Very short, 34 pages. I don't want to spoil too much but it's about lost media. Not bad! I really like the cover.
No. 166351
>>165873lately when i read at night i have a cup of hot coffee (decaf) and read on my couch.
if i have the day off i'll go to a botanical garden near me to read, stop for iced coffee and a sandwich to take first and walk around a bit and then read.
No. 166383
File: 1635097650035.jpg (144.16 KB, 1400x2159, 71oop90I3YS.jpg)
I read Everyone in This Room Will Someday Be Dead by Emily Austin a couple of weeks ago and I think a lot of anons would appreciated it.
The protagonist is a late twenties lesbian women that can't keep a job, too depressed and obssessed with death to show up, and ends up pretending to be a straight religious woman to work at a church.
The protagonist voice is great and there's even some murder mystery mixed in the plot.
No. 166389
File: 1635100856031.jpg (190.67 KB, 731x1200, 71wTYQOhpBL.jpg)
I'm trying to read more unique/lesser-known works, especially by female authors. Going to read picrel, it's by about a female psychologist researching near-death experiences. I like the vaporwave-esque art lol.
>>166381I think it's supposed to be kind of trippy/mindfuck-y, like Uncle Bob either predicted her future that she'd forget who she was in her chain of lies, or perhaps she just straight up invented Uncle Bob and everything happening in the story is a delusion since she's such a huge liar. Hope that made sense. I don't understand the significance of Uncle Bob being the hill, though. No. 166479
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They've both been recommended in this thread before, but Convenience Store Woman or Asleep are interesting, surreal-feeling books by Japanese women! A little more mainstream, but I've been hoping to segue into more indie stuff.
Also, a good way I've been discovering books recently is to look into different awards, like the Hugo Award for science-fiction/fantasy. It's helping me find high-quality books that aren't always super well-known. Vintage International seems to have a unique selection as well.
No. 166505
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>>166383read the first 50 pages and dropped it because i had other things i wanted to read at the time, but i might pick it up again. from what i remember the dialogue made me laugh out loud.
currently reading pic related. i like it so far. if you like japanese literature it has that sort of slow paced slice of life vibe, but also eerie. it's about a woman well known in a neighborhood and the mc wants to be her friend so she stalks her among other things
No. 167075
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i loved this one, i haven't finished the second part yet but i found it so beautiful and relatable
No. 167548
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>>167544picrel made me cry so fucking hard, it's hard for books (or any media, really) to make me cry but this one really got me. It's SO good, one of my favorite books tbh. It's been 2 years since I read it and I still think about it a lot. If you like quirky Japanese literature and magical realism you'll probably like it.
No. 168130
File: 1635788698993.jpg (23.16 KB, 316x475, 6514._SY475_.jpg)
I'm reading Sylvia Plath's The Bell Jar. Sometimes I feel bad that there's so many classics I haven't read, but honestly, there are so many books considered "classics" that you could probably spend a lifetime finishing them all!
Anyways, I think this is great for people who want to read something famous by a woman, but is still relatively short and has an easy to understand writing style. I find the writing to be breezy and enjoyable.
No. 168137
>>168130No offense to you but
I hate people who insist on "reading classics first" to be able to read any other book. I didn't read for so many years because pretentious book-bro men kept saying everywhere "READ THE CLASSICS FIRST". Ok genious what if I don't want to? Everyone has their own fucking taste. So yeah I only read stuff made by women in the last 40 years. Fuck them classics
No. 168142
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>>168137Good for you, but also, you should at least read the classics that were written by women. Djuna Barnes, Kate Chopin, and Virginia Woolf are all excellent feminist authors.
No. 168147
>>168130I still haven't read The Bell Jar, even though I've read and liked Plath's poetry, but I'm going to try and give it a go!
I feel you about how many "classics" there are, I like older lit for a couple of reasons but especially because it's always interesting to see me how much things change and how much things stay the same. When I first read The Picture of Dorian Gray I remember being surprised by how easy to understand it was since it's Victorian.
If anyone else has issues reading older writing but wants to read more of it, it might help to read it out loud or listen to an audio recording. The best thing about a lot of classic lit is that most of it has come into the public domain, so audiobooks are really easy to find online (e.g. LibriVox). When I was younger I had trouble reading Beowulf because it's Old English so hearing it read aloud was enlightening. English isn't my first language so that might have also played a part in how hard it was at first, but after awhile you start to get a feel for it so you'll just be able to read it normally.
No. 168148
>>168130I’ve also been interested in reading “classics” and it did lead me to reading bell jar, I’m so happy I did. As
>>168142 said, classics by female authors are really worth reading.
No. 168167
>>168137I never said that classics are better or more important, just that I think it's nice to read a few sometimes so I can be in the loop.
I'm actually the same anon who has been posting about supporting obscure/underrepresented female authors, posts
>>166389 and
>>166171 are by me.
Feel free to make recommendations about underrated authors but please don't put words into my mouth.
No. 168199
File: 1635828551292.jpg (25.32 KB, 331x500, 41LLfIr-i-L.jpg)
Sidestepping the classics discussion entirely, but wrt to Plath, I'm reading picrel and it's fucking amazing. I've actually never read Bell Jar and only some of her poetry – I picked this up b/c I read an interesting article about how different Plath actually was from the popular image of her and wanted to know more. She was this vigorous, insanely disciplined, genius person who prided herself on being tough and capable, 100% not the tragic waif briefly possessed by greatness teen girls are culty and hysterical over, as she was introduced to me. It's simultaneously such an invigorating AND tragic read: You know the end is coming, and you know how she's been mistreated posthumously, but at the same time, reading about her fighting tooth and nail every single day to develop her talent instead of lying down and accepting what the world wants from her is amazing. She was a really fucking hardcore craftswoman and it's fascinating to read about.
I only ever read a few of her most famous poems before this, but I'm buying a copy of Ariel the minute I finish this.
No. 168200
>>168199Thanks for reminding me to read it. I've read a few Plath biographies, but this one is supposedly the best.
>She was this vigorous, insanely disciplined, genius person who prided herself on being tough and capable, 100% not the tragic waif briefly possessed by greatness teen girls are culty and hysterical over, as she was introduced to me. Yeah, it becomes clear as soon as one reads anything on her or her diaries.
I highly recommend you give Lover of Unreason a shot too, it's the only biography of Assia Wevill and it's quite fascinating too. Unless Red Comet somehow covers the ground too, but I doubt it. Hope someday we get her poetry too (I'm very curious about it).
No. 168237
>>168206Nta but to be fair even though I get where
>>168137 is coming from it can be read as overreacting too. Especially since the original post didn’t even say anything about how everyone should start with classics, it was just a book recommendation.
>>168200>>168199I had the same outlook when I was first introduced to her poetry funnily enough. I was expecting it to be romantic, airy because of that “tragic waif” image she gets, but I was struck by how clear-eyed and direct it is, even when she discusses darker subject matter.
I’m also really curious about Wevill’s poetry. I know it’s just the nature of things but if it gets published I hope it would be able to stand alone without too much comparison to Hughes or Plath.
No. 168414
File: 1635981758195.jpg (17.93 KB, 230x346, 51952418.jpg)
Little Free Library by Naomi Kritzer. A cute fantasy short story about a free library! Not the most amazing thing ever, but a nice light read.
No. 168552
File: 1636048900229.jpg (19.7 KB, 200x297, Warriorsbook3.jpg)
Sorta silly, but I recently got into reading Warriors. They're great to read as like a palate cleanser in between more complex books. It was really popular when I was in elementary school, but I was busy having a ~not like other girls~ phase and I refused to like cats. I got curious on what I missed out on, so one night when I had insomnia I decided to read it. I'm loving it so far. For a kid's book, I think got really good comparisons and examples of real world problems such as war and loyalty. The first book was really slow, but I think any introduction to a kid's series book will be like that. The third one (pic) I just finished and it was great! I feel kind of silly reading them as an adult, but you know what, if people my age can still spazz out over Harry Potter, I'm not going to feel guilty for enjoying some cat drama.
No. 168724
File: 1636114181238.jpg (66.81 KB, 648x1000, 61Jqm0WUkjL.jpg)
currently reading picrel, has anyone finished it already? i'm 2/3 through the first part (out of six, i think) and it's kinda slow and… not exactly boring, but uneventful. unfortunately i really like those dark academia books, if they don't trail into fanfic-y love story territory (like a touch of darkness).
No. 168815
>>168552Aww, I loved Warriors in elementary school, and I was actually in a Warriors roleplaying forum on Neopets lmao. I might get around to re-reading it eventually!
Reading books for "children" is already ahead of like, 90% of the population who doesn't read books. And I think all genres of books have something special to appreciate.
No. 168967
>>168130Update: I finished The Bell Jar and really enjoyed it. It was written in 1963 yet touches on subjects like womens' mental illness, virginity, and lesbians.
Don't be intimidated by it being a "classic," it's actually written in an easy style!
No. 169236
>>168724updated, i just finished the book and it was alright. like a solid book that i enjoyed reading. the twist at the end really surprised me because
i wish the author had given us more hints/backstory to the affair, it just came very out of nowhere and it did shock me, but i didn't have that 'oh, that explains so much' moment. but aside from that it was enjoyable.
No. 169421
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>>167553Kek oh nooooooo, just bought the book yesterday on a whim and I started it, it's ok so far, insufferable pretentious mains but I knew that before starting it
No. 169433
File: 1636567500820.jpg (25.84 KB, 314x475, normal.jpg)
Halfway through 'Normal People'. I don't really know what to say other than it's alright. I don't really get the huge amount of praise it's getting, but maybe the book'll get better
No. 169444
>>168562Oh gosh yes, the actual idea and formation of warrior cats is interesting. I haven't made it far enough in the series to watch it get messy idea-wise, but yes the naming of the cats is ridiculous and far too same-same. I actually think Warriors was hatched to rival Redwall? I can't remember if they were around in the same time period or if I'm thinking of a different series…I imagine it also started to get messy plot wise because the publishers wanted a new book like every three months. Even for kids books that's a super short turn around. I haven't read Redwall but I might look into it!
>>169427I never got into Animorphs but that was HUGE at the time…I'm interested to see the graphic novel, I had no idea they had those, but also kinda terrified now haha. I honestly kind of wonder if Warriors played into creating furies at all…
No. 169482
>>160854Don't know if anyone cares but someone uploaded a female narration of the book
https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLqyAw0eGo_LuLmp5glMLgizpCYDpqSIkXThe same channel also has the same narration with rain sounds in the background
No. 169581
>>168238>>168237Red Comet OG anon here. I think it's probably likely it won't measure up either, but honestly, her whole life was so fucked, I kind of want something of hers to be published, just so her work can exist independently, out in the world. I mean, I'm hitting the moment she and Hughes start the affair, she is not my favorite person rn, but still.
Tbh, with every page I turn, I hate Ted Hughes more and more. I am so fucking tired of his 400 poems about virile stormy eagles that are metaphors for dicks that are metaphors for war that are metaphors for truth that are metaphors for how his wife is chaining him to mundanity by………aging? Expressing literally any interest in earning money? Being emotionally affected by the misogyny of 1950s society? She asked so little of him, kick-started his entire career, moved thousands of miles away from her family for him, never stopped singing his praises to literally everyone, never demanded he take a steady job, and bore him two children. But boo hoo, he feels vague ennui because, idk, he's turned 30, and he has to fuck other women to cope? All his never-ending odes to rugged masculinity, and he can't deal with the gentlest little ripples in his world. Meanwhile, Sylvia is cleaning his house, being cheated on, being hit, raising kids, living in rural isolation, dealing with mental illness, handling two careers, and cranking out a fucking masterpiece.
No. 169661
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I have been reading Sally Thorne's books lately trying to get into romance novels. I liked The Hating Game for the enemies to lovers, slow burn dynamic. Also glad the author doesn't write grotesque sex scenes. However, the MC is a bit of a cringy quirky type. I saw one goodreads review that said she was like Jess from New Girl which was pretty accurate. And many characters throughout the book obsessively point out the height difference between the MC and the guy (5'0 and 6'4) which was annoying.
No. 169698
File: 1636771458060.jpg (227.03 KB, 306x475, 34336519._SY475_.jpg)
Nonnies I'm cackling so hard. I got an automated recommendation on Goodreads for this book called The Fetishists, author name COOMER. The synopsis mentions "ponygirls.
No. 169899
>>166505just finished reading this. i thought it was pretty good.
all the japanese literature i’ve read has a slightly sterile vibe to it. not sure if it’s like that in the original japanese or if it’s just how it’s been translated
No. 169933
File: 1636915067685.jpg (127.14 KB, 750x750, Convenience W-1.JPG)
>>167548I saw this one at the book fair this week, now I'm salty I didn't pick it up because it was super cheap.
>>169919I just decided to start reading stuff by japanese authors after a long long time of not reading books and I read convenience store woman, while it completely makes sense plot wise, it's definitely written in a sterile deadpan way. Honestly I like it because it was easy to read but I wonder if it's in any way related to how Japanese translates into English.
No. 169937
File: 1636916035983.jpg (27.96 KB, 308x475, 22078596.jpg)
Reading picrel, about 25% through. It's fine… kind of slow-paced so far, and written in a way that feels kind of try-hard.
>>169899Honestly I find the "sterile" vibe very charming and unique. I love how a lot of Japanese literature feels so dreamy.
>>169733>>169740Let a girl dream!
No. 169947
>>169938I don't know but they irked me before I even opened the book.
>as intoxicating as a sake mojitog-get it haha it's a japanese book lol!
No. 169960
File: 1636922995540.jpg (77.97 KB, 424x630, 9781435158139_p0_v3_s1200x630.…)
>>169938>>169947i genuinely hate reviews on covers so much, they ruin everything and are often so off the mark. i wish they were just stickers put on those plastic foils that books often come in so they weren't printed on the cover. nothing more annoying than having a book you love in your shelf and then it says that stephen king liked it too - who even gives a fuck? i get that it's a marketing tactic but i just hate it so much. it's why i stopped buying physical books completely and only buy hardcover editions of books i already read and loved if they are really beautiful. idk what's the english term but in german it's called 'schmuckausgabe' and refers to books that have exceptionally pretty cover designs (see pic) and are meant to look great in shelves.
No. 170043
File: 1636992795068.jpg (108.51 KB, 799x1200, 61cssv3Xd-S.jpg)
Reading Stiff by Mary Roach - a nonfiction book about cadavers. "This is a book about notable achievements made while dead."
Only a few pages in, but reading a nonfiction book by a woman is refreshing. Mary Roach seems to specialize in weird/fascinating nonfiction.
No. 170140
File: 1637064824140.jpg (33.03 KB, 305x499, 51f22ybsJyL._SX303_BO1,204,203…)
Any anons into Japanese horror/mystery lit? What have you read?
Jusft finished picrel and it was amazing. I'm a big ero-guro fan and the tension this book made me feel was absolutely fantastic. I especially loved the references to 1920s Japan with its mix of western and eastern influences. I'm really looking forward to reading more Edogawa Ranpo but also would love to discover more of these kinds of books.
No. 170299
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>>170248i looked up his bio on goodreads and man i was not expecting this
No. 170331
File: 1637223359960.jpg (30.39 KB, 314x475, 36332136._SY475_.jpg)
The Mere Wife
A friend gave it to me for my birthday. Its supposedly a 21st century retelling of Beowolf with feminist themes and I finished reading it, I fucking threw it, I've never read a single book that has had this many Tropes I despise in one text
>unresearched depictions of military combat and the middle east
>Unrealistic Woke kids
>Infantilizing/patronizing depictions of minorities
>pointless and badly handled racial commentary which is a big part of the book btw
>unironic use of the word "Queer"
no offense to white women but this is the most "woke white woman" Novel I have ever read and also Beowulf is George Zimmerman in this novel
No. 170341
>>170299Oh god, you don't know shit yet. It wasn't normal ritualistic suicide, he tried to commit suicide after attempting to overthrow Japanese government. He made a speech that got drowned out by helicopters. Of course he went with seppuku and had to be finished by a partner in crime. I think he had a big problem cutting off Mishima's head.
If you are not aware yet, Mishima was a giant nationalist obsessed with samurais etc
No. 170343
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>>170341>With a prepared manifesto and a banner listing their demands, Mishima stepped out onto the balcony to address the soldiers gathered below. His speech was intended to inspire a coup d'état to restore the power of the emperor. He succeeded only in irritating the soldiers, and was heckled, with jeers and the noise of helicopters drowning out some parts of his speech. In his speech Mishima rebuked the JSDF for their passive acceptance of a constitution that "denies (their) own existence" and shouted to rouse them, "Where has the spirit of the samurai gone?"I recommend reading the entire Wikipedia note about this, shit is wild
No. 170414
>>170331"Beowulf is George Zimmerman in this novel"
I fucking died, lmaooo I can't but then I went and checked the authors wikipedia and you know she wrote that whole thing herself nvm the pic lemony snicket she ain't!
No. 170467
>>170414He's named Ben Woolf and the main character even name drops Treyvon Martin(I swear I'm not making this up) at the same time she references how tall her son is but white society will never accept him and view him as a monster cause he's "brown", It's the most ham-fisted racial commentary I've read
I'm sure you've already figured out what's gonna happen
No. 170762
>>170331Ugh, I hated this book too. And what really gets me is that I think it could have actually been great with a little tweaking. If she'd just fucking stuck to making the book about the moms, it could have been something really new, and complex, and I think WAY more in her wheelhouse. Like, all the race stuff really did feel so hugely condescending, you're completely right, though I do think there's….a version of what she tried to do there that works. But these perfect anti-racist woke boys falling in luv just stick out so weirdly and stupidly, compared to what were the only really interesting parts of the book, imho, which were about the moms. The Woolf mom, I've forgotten her name, seemed like she was really going to become something cool early on, and I expected it to end up being this story about these two weird, hostile, interesting women fighting this shit out. She's clearly so much more comfortable writing about women, and willing to take more interesting risks and just make them actual fucking characters. But that isn't what the book ends up being about. And "Beowulf, but retold in suburbia and it's about fucked-up moms" is just way more fucking intriguing than what it actually is.
No. 170810
>>170762I agree, I already had this Idea or retweeting some of the books concept
about a badass Veteran mom who lives in the woods and her strong but socially awkward son who refuse to leave their territory against a system that wants to take all what they have from them
No. 170867
File: 1637540635542.jpg (20.9 KB, 289x475, 78436.jpg)
Has anyone read the edible woman? This book was the beginning of my radfem era
No. 170892
>>170043I read this bc anons mentioned it. It was a fun enjoyable read.
>>170890Nta but I’ll note that down!
No. 171007
>>171002Ooo, that's a really interesting description. Alright, I'm pulling the
trigger on this one.
>>170989Shine on, you crazy diamond
No. 171040
File: 1637629878227.jpg (304.91 KB, 600x600, 1623409398118.jpg)
>>171014Seconding this rec request
No. 171098
>>171014the closest thing I have to recommend would be The Ritual by Adam Nevill
>4 friends on a hiking trip, one of them gets his leg injured. can't find their way out of the woods, they start finding creepy abandoned cabins and shit. they start getting in fights with each other and running out of food.the book gets really fucking weird in the second half though
No. 171139
File: 1637699122801.jpg (57.47 KB, 640x304, 4r7o83x10e181.jpg)
Any other Kojimafag gonna read The Creative Gene?
I will hug any anon that can explain to me why Japanese video game creators (well, maybe Japanese people in general) read like that when translated to English. I swear to God it's so specifically different from the way American or British people speak. At the same time, I probably couldn't tell Kojima from Itoi or Iwata (ok, this one is a guess since I haven't read his book yet - I'm pretty sure an interview with another Nintendo guy read the same).
No. 171144
File: 1637704759357.jpg (111.49 KB, 540x675, cat49.jpg)
>>171139I might read it if it's good because I'm also a kojimafag. If you ever read it, I would be really intrested on what you thought about it and if you recommend the book or not!
No. 171174
>>171139Is it so strange to realize people from different countries have different ways of speaking? There have even been studies that show speaking various languages not only changes how people express themselves but their views of certain situations and emotions. Language is highly influenced by the culture it's derived from, and on top of that sentence structure is completely different between English and Japanese. Yes, a lot of Japanese sounds stilted and weird when translated directly into English, just as English sounds stilted and weird when translated directly into Japanese. This is why localization teams are important, because they not only translate words but whole concepts between cultures. (So far as I know they are more common when translating video games and to some extent manga over books or casual interviews.) You'll get a lot of debate on whether translating as literally as possible is for the best because it preserves the original content of the writing or whether translating ideas is better because it gives people outside the culture a clearer idea of the overall "vibe" the person is communicating.
Japanese is also a very indirect and context-dependent language with it being assumed that the listener is intuiting details based on the overall context of the conversation, so sometimes it's hard to accurately translate something without taking the full conversation into account. As a very brief example if you asked a Japanese person if they were free to see a movie over the weekend, they might respond "Sore wa chotto…" which literally translates to "That's a little…" which makes absolutely no fucking sense in English. But as an intuitive listener you would understand that's the polite Japanese way of saying "Nah not interested" so you might simply translate it as, "No thanks, I've got other stuff going on/just want to laze around all day" which is how a blunt English speaker would approach it.
No. 171237
>>171174Thank you for taking your time to give me a quality reply!!!
>Is it so strange to realize people from different countries have different ways of speaking? There have even been studies that show speaking various languages not only changes how people express themselves but their views of certain situations and emotionI'm aware of the differences, many of my PHD classes were about language and the way it shapes reality while being shaped by it. Maybe I was unclear, but I absolutely did not mean it in a negative way, I find it very pleasant to read. I just cannot put my finger on what makes it feel so different, beyond Japanese people enjoying using metaphors and the royal you (based on the translations that I read, I'm aware it may be the indirectness that you mentioned). The same thing makes me wonder about Japanese song lyrics. They also read very different than English once and once more, I don't know what makes them feel so different — maybe except generous use of imagery, metaphors and allegories (as in jumping from one to another).
>As a very brief example if you asked a Japanese person if they were free to see a movie over the weekend, they might respond "Sore wa chotto…" which literally translates to "That's a little…" which makes absolutely no fucking sense in English. Ah, I immediately understood it as "That's a little too much", but it's true it doesn't really make sense. You gave me a reason to learn Japanese someday. The linguistic differences are actually interesting (though probably also frustrating), so it seems like it's worth spending time on it. My native language isn't weird enough to poorly translate to English, so I was kinda biased when it comes to learning new languages (what's the point if 99% of things is in English anyway?).
Your example reminded me of apparent diplomatic issues resulting from misunderstanding Japanese politeness (saying something that means no, but which sounds like agreement if you don't know about it).
No. 171280
>>171014 >We Have Always Lived in the Castle by Shirley Jackson Two sisters are mostly isolated with their sick uncle after a family accident makes them the target of fear and hatred by the villagers nearby. The sisters share an unhealthy, codependent relationship that is tested when their estranged cousin visits. You might like Jackson's stuff in general, a lot of her work deals with isolation, alienation, and unhealthy relationships, e.g. Haunting of Hill House.
>The Beguiled by Thomas CullinanAn injured Union soldier stumbles upon a Virginian school for young women at the height of the American Civil War. As they nurse him back to health, he tries to pit the women against each other via seduction and manipulation to prevent them from handing him over to the Confederate military after he's healed, but they're not as oblivious as he thinks.
No. 171385
File: 1637842462248.jpeg (46.28 KB, 450x681, 8E7569A7-F469-4949-B43C-90B4E3…)
currently reading the YA offering by genderqueer fujoshi author cs pacat. not quite sure what to think so far, it been so long since i’ve read YA fantasy
No. 171389
>>171385I don't know why but just by seeing this book's cover i
knew it was written by a fakeboi
No. 171563
>>164258I'm the same anon as
>>169651 and I've just finished the book. I think I really liked it
No. 171574
File: 1637953834517.jpg (14.9 KB, 600x431, 1630385136528.jpg)
TRA terminology makes so many books sound so unappealing… i see an interesting book and think i wanna read it and then the publisher put something like "creepy page-turner with a stunning queer love story!" on the back and it just makes me want to hurl and not read the book anymore. yes i'm gay, yes i'm homophobic, yes we exist.
No. 171578
File: 1637954997779.jpeg (75.36 KB, 548x743, 46CF2E95-182B-4B49-9731-390AA5…)
>>171574Yeah, I actually had to suppress a sight when I was with some friends and they started talking about ~kweer~ literature.
Please, just say it’s a story in a fantasy setting about two guys or two girls who are really into each other, or that it’s a story about some spicy heterosexual couple composed by a guy and a self-hating woman.
Hell, I would love to read a story about a self-hating woman who comes to terms with her identity or something like that. I don’t want to read about someone who then has to live as a “non-man” as if being a woman was that much of a curse.
I also despise how everything has to be so heavily dependent of genderbullshit. It’s a fucking magical world with magic and shit, but you want your characters to hate themselves because oh no, a guy wants to wear pink! The travesty! Or a girl wants to wear pants! Horrifying! You can literally erase all of that and focus on the important shit of the plot, biological realities and gender roles shouldn’t be such an important thing in a story that is about magic or robots.
No. 171585
>>171578>You can literally erase all of that and focus on the important shit of the plot, biological realities and gender roles shouldn’t be such an important thing in a story that is about magic or robots.this is exactly the thing. they never just come up with a world where everything is possible because then they might realize that, oh no, actually this world is boring as fuck because it's our world. you absolutely can wear pants as a woman or pink as a man (to use your examples kek) and no one will shoot you for it. they always focus on their transness and how stunning and brave they are for being trans and that's their only personality trait. it's never about coming up with something that actually frees them of real world constraints, it's only navel gazing about non issues because they have no actual issues to worry about.
and yeah, i also have friends that always try to peddle me kweer books because tehe, anon, you're gay, right? but i always just frown and say i'm not interested. i have a personality outside of my sexuality, which is probably shocking considering the state of the world right now.
No. 171586
File: 1637958230718.jpeg (64.26 KB, 299x450, 9780451450524.jpeg)
Can somebody explain why I can't find an ebook of this anywhere? I checked kindle, nook store and Google play. Something tells me it's not in the itunes store either. There also isn't an audiobook of it. I don't understand.
No. 171589
>>171586Here it is as an epub:
https://au1lib.org/book/4427101/4c0a81Do you mean that addition or something?
No. 171593
>>171589No. You literally can't buy an ebook of it on any of the main platforms that sell ebooks and there's no audiobook of it in existence (that I could find). The epub copy I can only read from my phone which I don't like doing (it hurts my eyes) and to send it to my Kindle I'd have to donate, and if I'm going to donate it would make more sense to just buy the book. Also my phone isn't even letting me open the link
>>171587 gave
No. 171681
>>171593>>171589You can just take the epub and convert it to .mobi with a converter like this:
https://convertio.co/epub-mobi/. I have a kindle and that's what I do. I'm not sure what you mean by sending but you can just connect your kindle with your laptop by a cable and drag the file from your downloads into the kindle files. (Or you can use calibre like another anon said but I find calibre difficult to use personally and just another app clogging up my laptop).
Never buying a Kindle again btw.
No. 171683
File: 1638024840849.jpg (178.04 KB, 1063x1045, 71BU_RhCcsL_add3d880-f6b2-447c…)
>>171617>i wish people would just be normal about being gayi'm
>>171574 and i completely agree with you. the way people treat being gay these days reminds me of the lol random zomg toast!!! era from when i was a teenager. i just want this shit to be over. i'm pleasantly surprised when there's a gay couple in a book (i read a crime fiction book a few months ago and it was for well adjusted adults so the fact that the female main character was married to a woman was not used to promote the book) but i don't absolutely have to read about gays like me. at this point, being a well-adjusted adult is quirkier than being a kweerio with 15 labels, 20 mental illnesses and 30 alters/fictionkins.
slightly related, are any of you into percy jackson? i've been thinking about re-reading the series and then catching up on the rest of the riordanverse, but i think i remember people talk about how ~inclusive~ the author is. anyone know how bad it is? is there gender nonsense in there?
No. 171697
File: 1638034486445.jpg (54.09 KB, 549x635, bc4227bf5a529ca38a44be169f416c…)
>>162362Just wanted to thank you anon, I started reading it because honestly I'm fucking tired of male fantasy books which is, well, most of the fantasy books out there and so far I'm loving it. I have all of these
>>162643 on my list, can't wait to finish TPOTOT so I can give them all a go
No. 171744
>>171680the essay is called loving outside simple lines by sonya bulos. i read it on tumblr here:
https://gatheringbones.tumblr.com/post/668333319875952640even though i’m a lesbian i just can’t relate to stuff like this
No. 171779
>>171385well i’m at the halfway point. author has indicated that several random male side characters are bisexual in relationships with men. main male character has flirted with women so far but i don’t think the author is going to give up the money to be made off a m/m series so easily. i’m predicting there’s going to be an enemies to lovers romance between MC and the main male antagonist whom the MC has referred to as being beautiful handsome etc.
main female character prefers wearing pants and her older brothers old clothes and mentions many times looking up to and admiring men. hoping this character stays a girl and a trans/gender fluid plotline isn’t shoehorned into a series set in the 1800s. the author is a genderspecial though so anything is possible.
book’s pace is slow and worldbuilding is clunky. i’ll finish the book but i could have sworn captive prince was better written than this . so far seems to be shaping up to be a basic chosen one narrative but i’m curious if she’s going to subvert this because right now it seems very paint by the numbers
No. 171802
>>171685>>171776thank you, i looked it up and i guess i'm only reading the core series and heroes of olympus now. maybe it's over the top but i just can't stand gender nonsense in books, especially if the nonsense is dedicated to an entire love interest.
>>171778yeah, it feels really shady and almost groomer-ish. he's gonna look back at this and be embarrassed, hopefully.
No. 172522
File: 1638527187651.jpg (Spoiler Image,1.42 MB, 1800x2700, 6fa61018_2048.jpg)
>>171385Just read this, not as good/mature as Captive Prince but I enjoyed it and I'm really looking forward to where the series goes from here. It was an easy read but I'd love it to get a bit deeper and darker considering where the plot goes. I'm also looking forward to it becoming popular so a tonne of fanfic gets written kek.
No. 172786
>>172681I've been thinking it over a bit and I think at least some of it had to be real
because at the graduation ceremony all of the bunnies are visibly injured and it seems like other people notice not just Samantha. Then Samantha kind of makes fun of them for it because it's a sore spot and even though they say it's a book arts accident it seems pretty obvious that they're embarrassed/annoyed and trying to hide something… but I really still can't explain what was up with the reveal that Jonah also wasn't real in the end.
No. 172810
File: 1638693004551.jpg (71.21 KB, 600x600, taste-makers-book.jpg)
This is a new book but I want to read it so bad!
No. 172926
File: 1638764255112.jpeg (43.06 KB, 447x686, 972AC34A-69B5-4CAB-81EA-32E4AF…)
just finished reading the remains of the day. i found it to be such a pleasant and refreshing book to read. it could have been boring but i found it so engaging because the narrative voice of the protagonist is so strong. you can see clearly how he struggles with social cues, how he doesn’t seem to fully realise his own feelings and his dedication to his job is depressing and funny at the same time. overall a little melancholy but not overly sad. i enjoyed it so much even more than never let me go
No. 173032
File: 1638851135815.png (544.38 KB, 639x706, imagen_2021-12-06_222527.png)
What is the book next to gone girl? I want/have most of these
No. 173033
File: 1638851226349.png (604.52 KB, 639x706, erououefhfe.png)
>>173032oh shit new bingo format just dropped
No. 173063
>>173052>i also hate japanese litme too, and that includes light novels. i just hate the infodumping they all do. could also be because translators only ever translate (and not localize) the language and keep the original "sound" of the language the same so everything sounds clunky and bad, like an ESL trying to write fanfic in english.
i think anyone reading YA literature above the age of 20 at most is immature and juvenile, just as their preferred literature. i also dislike goodreads and the people there who make reviewing books and getting stupidly heated about them their entire personality. in general people who make "i like to read" their only personality trait. i used to be friends with this girl who looked down on me for only reading on my ereader and not having any books (because a home without books is like a person without a soul or some bullshit) but in the end she always read the same YA romance bullshit so her bragging about reading one hundred books a year sounded more like "i read the same boring juvenile YA romance book one hundred times this year." at least she's happy, i guess. we're not friends anymore, but that's because of other reasons.
No. 173101
>>173075I agree with this anon
>>173083 that literature can be just for entertainment purposes without challenging your worldview or whatever. (She’s also right in that teen boys are hardly ever criticized for reading YA the same way that teen girls are.) I agree that teen girls and people in general should be encouraged to check out older literature and the classics and heavier stuff but honestly, if they really have no interest in that kind of thing, they shouldn’t waste all their time trying to read it and instead read something that they actually enjoy. I don’t think most people would enjoy reading Finnegans Wake, or Ulysses.
I’m neutral about audiobooks but I do think they take away from the experience.
No. 173116
>>173107Yeah, most entertainment literature is, but really only womens get criticised for it. Reminds me that 4chan /lit board pick and it's bottom of the barrel fantasy larping as deep being touted as great.
>>173075Some people just like reading for entertainment and get their lessons from real life. Life doesn't need to be about being challenged all the time.
No. 173128
File: 1638919342553.jpg (42.16 KB, 500x750, AtYourServiceM'Lady.jpg)
>>173123>>173125>It is easier to understand if you think of it in terms of music. Sometimes a man enjoys a symphony. Elsetimes he finds a jig more suited to his taste.>The same holds true for lovemaking. One type is suited to the deep cushions of a twilight forest glade. Another comes quite naturally tangled in the sheets of narrow beds upstairs in inns. Each woman is like an instrument, waiting to be learned, loved, and finely played, to have at last her own true music made.
>Some might take offense at this way of seeing things, not understanding how a trouper views his music. They might think I degrade women. They might consider me callous, or boorish, or crude.
>But those people do not understand love, or music, or me. No. 173130
File: 1638920162707.jpg (132.99 KB, 482x427, why.jpg)
>>173125>70 page long sex scenethis is what fantasy has become
No. 173134
>>173081I love Arthurian themed stuff, will definitely look into it. Been looking to scratch that itch forever so thanks for the rec.
>>173083>>173107It doesn’t have to be challenging, but come on, let’s have a little more faith in teen girls. Everybody undermines their intelligence, including the publishers and authors. There can be fun, entertaining books too that aren’t plain laughable. Modern male YA is the peak of kekdom, of course, but that doesn’t really cancel anything out.
>>173128Lower than Komeada-anon’s hornyposting. Absolutely diabolical. Imagining sharing a space with a book that contains those words. Makes me want to vomit all over my shelves, my pirated books, and the written word itself.
No. 173146
>>173075I completely agree with this take. I also believe that literature, as all art forms, should be studied and interacted with the same way we interact with other art. Of course it should challenge your worldview, or make you feel things. YA makes sure that their target audience (girls, who then become women) remain ignorant. Enjoying YA is good when you're a teenager or when you're an adult looking for some quick, easy fun, but just like any other quick and easy form of entertainment, it shouldn't be abused.
I believe anons who say YA is only criticized for being aimed at teenage girls are a bit silly as well, YA is mostly criticized by its ridiculous themes (and I've only seen scrotes on /lit/ criticize it, my literature teachers at high school made us read mediocre dystopian garbage and praised it highly, I think plenty of YA books are included in my country's recommended list to teach at schools). Its very good for young girls to read, but YA topics are aimed at teenagers. By encouraging women to continue reading literature aimed at teenagers, you make sure that women continue having a teenager mentality, which isn't good for women in general at all. Teenage girls are allowed to enjoy things, but they should be encouraged to interact with higher forms of literature that will allow them to grow as people. Most YA is mediocre, and it ensures that teenage girls stay ignorant.
No. 173170
>>173164Modern YA is garbage, and no one is telling teen girls to read Joyce. Even adults aren’t reading Joyce.
>children’s litYes because girls are being terrorized into reading Howl’s Moving Castle and Anne of Green Gables, not Esmeralda and the Bad Boy and Mr Werewolf and Me. You don’t have to defend worthless garbage to prove that you’re not a pseud.
No. 173171
File: 1638959136399.jpg (2.52 MB, 3792x2388, Pierre-Henri_de_Valenciennes_-…)
>>173146come on now let's not be pretentious. sometimes a pretty piece of artwork is just simply nice to look at. sometimes the only purpose of art is to make you feel nice. if everything would have a deeper, world-challenging meaning we would be exhausted all the damn time. sometimes i just want to read some shitty romance novel with a hot male love interest and that's all. although fanfics are a lot better at this
No. 173180
File: 1638966515934.jpg (28.02 KB, 312x475, 43884209.jpg)
This is one of those feel good romance books where you read for a good time but you end up depressed cause you know for a fact that no IRL would ever be as caring, as thoughtful, as loving and as great as the love interest in the book
I know there will never be guy like Red in the real world. a man who is understanding, loving and good looking and just wants what's best for me
No. 173201
>>173101>literature can be just for entertainment purposesFrom Merriam-Webster
>Literature: writings having excellence of form or expression and expressing ideas of permanent or universal interestSo no, what you're talking about is genre fiction. Literature by definition needs to do more than just entertain people.
>>173171You calling the other anon pretentious comes across 100x more pretentious than she ever did. It's okay to criticize things and want more from an art form. You're shushing her for expressing she wants more intelligent books aimed at young women in a thread aimed at discussion of books and not just asinine praise. Fugouttahere
No. 173219
As someone who works in a bookstore, I think a lot of anger at YA is misdirected. I don't think everyone who reads a ton of it would be gobbling down more intense lit if it didn't exist, I think they'd just not be reading. I also never really meet the only-reads-YA kidult people moan about – like, yes, I'm sure you could find me an example on Twitter, but I work in an SJW heavy area and I've still never noticed this as an irl trend. There are a ton of YA-heavy readers who also read other shit, and a lot of young girls who transition into more adult lit once they grow up. Some people just want popcorn, which is probably always going to be the case, but most of them don't even want it all the time. It's also a genre that's really female-dominated both in terms of writers and readership, and a lot of people just want to be able to let their guard down a little. There are more options in sci-fi and fantasy nowadays, but it's still slim pickings. If you pick up a new YA book, at worst it's going to be crappy, but you're not going to have to deal with Name of the Wind style bs.
Tbh, I think the best criticism that can be levied against the YA craze is that there's pressure on female writers to shape their work to it, even if they want to write adult lit. There's a weird mismatch in marketing sometimes, which can often lead to me having no idea where to shelve things.
No. 173235
>>172984I found some girl on reddit (yes, I know) who had a really interesting analysis on it.
Her theory was that Samantha had the ability to turn animals into people but wasn't aware of it. She made Ava out of a swan. It mentioned about how their hands wouldn't come out right or something like that, and it would frequently mention Ava wearing gloves. Then the bunnies realized Samanatha had that ability and that's why they invited her into their group. I think the ending is still pretty ambiguous though and I'm not sure if I agree with everything in that analysis but I still think it's really interesting. I also still can't decide if Jonah was real lol. I'm not gonna go through the effort of screenshotting this entire post because it's pretty long but here it is if you want to read it
https://www.reddit.com/r/books/comments/gxaxjw/bunny_by_mona_awad_is_misunderstood_by_many/Anyway, Bunny was one of my favorite books of the year and I'm glad I read it, it's so different from everything I've read.
No. 173249
File: 1639018026984.jpg (378.42 KB, 600x1200, tumblr_oefp8bhnnn1qlwxojo4_128…)
>>173246Aww, anon. I haven't read them, but a friend of mine loves Olivia Waite's books if you're interested in super classic-style romance novels. Sarah Waters' Fingersmith has rough bits for sure, but I also think it's overall a really fun, rollicking story with a really sweet ending romance. I've also heard fun things about Meryl Wilsner's Something to Talk About.
Don't know if you're into comics, but (most of) Melanie Gillman's 24 Hour Comics Day comics are all incredibly sweet (and very short) fairy/folk tales that center around romances between women. Her other stuff is frustrating (don't even bother with As The Crow Flies or Stage Dreams, they've got men with very important gender feelings in them), but the 24 hour ones are great, picrel. I think she's put all of them here:
https://melgillman.tumblr.com/tagged/24%20hour%20comic%20dayAlso, gigi d.g.'s Lady of the Shard! It's a webcomic, kind of a fairy tale of its own. A little bit wistful, but so sweet. Really cool art too.
No. 173325
File: 1639105609554.jpeg (19.91 KB, 249x400, 42638D2D-15B7-43C9-82E4-501FAD…)
currently reading this. main character kind of annoys me but i’ll have to see what the ending is like for my final thoughts
No. 173703
File: 1639423898785.jpg (9.88 KB, 160x203, Tumblr_l_1354800365886046__01.…)
Why is there so much memeing happening around this book. What is it's power? Is this Stacey lit?
No. 173706
>>173703I think it's just incredibly relatable. IDK if a book about a woman who would be an unhinged neet farmer can be called a Stacy literature though lol. In a way yes, but also no because it's not about a Stacy?
Anyway where can I see those memes. I've read the book last year and wasn't aware of this happening
No. 173709
File: 1639427042389.jpg (113.33 KB, 1242x782, Tumblr_l_1354800365886046.jpg)
>>173706memes like pic related and
>>>/ot/992983 , as well as
>>173032I just got the book myself and will start it soon
No. 173881
File: 1639525210483.jpeg (1.03 MB, 1170x1365, A80BAD4D-4D2C-4C02-8ADA-68C8A0…)
Anne Rice was a shit author. Pic related for anyone who never read Interview With the Vampire. I couldn’t force my way through that book even though I loved the movie.
No. 173887
File: 1639538520892.jpeg (7.38 KB, 230x219, images.jpeg)
>>173881I don't see what the problem is, besides the typo after "simply." Also this edition doesn't have indentations at new paragraphs, which is kind of odd.
I'm okay this writing style though…
No. 173891
>>173713I finished this today and I have to say it was not great. I was hyped because other people were praising it so highly, but it was written so pretentiously that I couldn't feel for a character that struggled with such deep issues because we don't know anything about her. We barely know anything about any of the side characters like Reva and the art guy either, and like you said, we are looking at this story from so far away it just doesn't pay off.
It bums me out because I was excited to get a female character that struggles in such a way, but of course she HAS to be fuckable and the most perfect person ever (while simultaneously being disgusting?). The whole art guy aspect is so glossed over but I don't want to spoil. The ending was predictable. I admire that we get a female character like this, but the writing needs improvement. 4/10 from me because of little characterization. I think the premise is strong but so many times I just couldn't keep reading the same shit over and over. I wanted to hate her character or feel something, but I just did not care enough to because all we can see is that she is skinny, blonde, depressed, hot, art guy is using her pain for art, etc. This is meant to convey that we live in a society, but it doesn't fulfill that role enough either. It just seems fanfic-like.
Sorry for sperging but I really wanted to like this and everyone else seems to love this book. Maybe it'll grow on me in time. I love when women can be insane in books, but it's boring.
No. 173997
File: 1639610345078.png (250.69 KB, 540x715, 1619379078366.png)
Anyone have any good recs with a bitter/hateful/depressed female protagonist? I've read most of the usual suspects in this thread (Animal/Rest and Relaxation/The New Me etc.), so if anyone knows anything in a similar style but lesser known I'd be grateful. Kind of addicted to this point of view lately.
No. 173998
>>173997Same, there was a really good post (I think in previous thread) where anon recommended books with similar vibes to Animal (one of them some incest diary). I need to check the post myself since it had solid recs.
Also Eileen in case you somehow haven't read it yet!
No. 174003
>>173677>Is it the interactive ability that you're looking for, like a big community, or logging and recommendations?Late reply, but both I guess. I would like to keep better track of the books I read, but talking about books with people and getting recommendations would be nice too.
I tried that app Likewise but it's basically just a ploy to get you to buy even more books off Amazon and the recommendations aren't specialized beyond the "people also searched for" feature on Google.
No. 174020
>>173703Its appeal and power is undeniably feminine. Say, the same appeal that a show like Girls or a Sofia Coppola film has. It's about retarded (and sometimes identity-obsessed) girls toiling around doing god-knows-what, wasting away, being solipsistic and self-diminishing in an undeniably feminine way. I'd say all the ladies who are memeing around this now would've been the same girls reading Prozac Nation in the nineties: another book about a pill-popping, depressed woman, with the same heavily aestheticized branding and media buzz around it. I'm not a Gen X fag but I'd bet all the cool and edgy girls were carrying it dramatically around and showing it off in public.
Plus, we're on the internet. Images are a Thing, women love them, and our minds engage in a continuous feedback loop with these images, forever updating as our viewing requires, copying and being copied, growing and improving upon an this amalgamation of Internet Aesthetics…and this particular kind of image lends itself to memes (think Dumb Bitch memes) more than others. Heavily drugged, self-loathing, skinny, beautiful, undeniably vain, narcissistic, lonely, bitter…it's just that pro-ana tumblr did it better. Whoever did the marketing on that book was successful, though, as evidenced by the conversation we're having.
Eileen has always seemed more interesting to me. And I'm not going to lie, but personally I dislike these kinds of books…or more accurately, the branding and images around them. Endlessly vain, chronically self-diminishing, and very much obsessed with its own retardation. Not only that, but it takes its retardation as identity, and markets it in memes that my poor, poor eyes have to come upon in the vast wildness of the internet.
No. 174022
>>173997>>173998That was my rec list! Ty nona, I'm glad you liked it. Seconding Eileen, though I haven't finished it yet.
Some additions: My Dark Vanessa – it's obvs mostly about the creepy relationship, but so much of the grown-up-Vanessa plotline is an intensely intimate portrait of being a fucked up woman who sends pictures of herself at 16 to her rapist teacher ex. Some really vivid invocations of creepy AIM use.
Anything by Joanna Russ, though tbh, I'm just getting into her and haven't read much yet. It's sci-fi (and some nonfiction), but it doesn't demand you be into the genre necessarily, and tbh, what I've read so far is way more about being an intensely angry bitch (honorific) who knows she's right than aliens.
Just finished My Heart is a Chainsaw, which was really fucking intense. Horror, and specifically slasher, and even more specifically, our protag is a teen girl horror nut. I don't think I've ever seen a slasher all the way through, but it didn't matter. Takes place in a mountain town with a creepy history, where Jade (protag) is miserable and angry and also dealing with a really shitty family situation. Just a really intense look at what it's like to feel (and be, tbh) enormously failed by the people around you as a young woman and to turn all that into seething anger.
No. 174049
>>173998>>174022I just realized that Gillian Flynn's books qualify, especially Dark Places. AFAIR the heroine is an orphan who survived a murder of her parents by her own brother when she was a little girl. She's whoring the fact out and deeply cynical about it. NEETs around thanks to people donating money to her. As the money stops flowing, she is approached by the true crime fandom spergs willing to pay her for cooperating on their investigation of her brother's supposed innocence.
The book is theoretically a thriller, but it mostly focuses on a fucked up family. I remember people whining about Libby (the protagonist) being whiny and pathetic. I feel that she would be appreciated much more if the book came out now.
The protagonist of Sharp Objects also is a depressed, drinking mess and the fact that she has to come back to her childhood town to write articles about murders of teenage girls and deal with her
toxic mother doesn't make things any better.
To an extent, Gone Girl fits too, but the heroine is motivated and powerful, so maybe it cancels out a bit. It's a stellar book, though and a very fun one at that.
No. 174058
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>>173957Nayrt but you get it. Dante is a massive incel with an extremely creepy crush on this married woman that he only ever talked to once to the point of turning her into a virginal saint to the level of the Holy Mother in his fanfiction, where he also enjoyed putting his political enemies in hell to be entombed in tombs of fire and drown in lakes of shit for all eternity. It's masturbation.
Divine comedy is an incredible classic and all but I hate the obsession with it when there are so many more interesting work of medieval Italian literature, like Orlando Furioso (picrel). I recommend this epic poem for those who are interested in this type of lit, it's absolutely hilarious and Ariosto would totally be a farmer. He opens the poem by an extremely passive aggressive dedication to his sponsor (as was the custom at the time) which seems like a beautiful tribute but is actually just one massive insult. It's great.
The translation of the title is basically Crazy Orlando, a famous fictional medieval knight in the french chivalric romance tradition going completely insane. I won't spoil if you haven't read it but it's so funny and the poetry is beautiful.
No. 174086
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I just finished reading The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo because of all the hype and it was so trash I couldn't believe it.
No. 174100
>>174086Seethe with me, nona. I fucking hate that ending twist, and that dumbass "here's your lesson on sexuality, courtesy of me being an enlightened bisexual and Celia being a meanie lesbian." I also read Daisy Jones, which tbh I enjoyed, but ALSO had an unnecessary and stupid ending twist. Maybe that's Reid's thing.
I think what pisses me off the most about Evelyn Hugo is that there are a lot of killer ideas in it – like, just the baseline "famously multiply-married star reveals the only one that mattered was her wife" premise is great. I love female characters like Evelyn, who become ruthlessly practical in response to an unfair world. But man, it does not come together.
No. 174111
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why don't penguin books include a disclaimer that the deckle edge (rough/uneven edges of a book for nostalgia reasons/vintage-y feel) is done on purpose? i hate scrolling through amazon reviews and seeing a bunch of people seethe about how horrible the book's quality is and that amazon/penguin has no quality control. otoh i also appreciate it because deckle edge makes turning the pages so fucking difficult and i sold all my penguin orange collection books because i couldn't stand fumbling with the pages every time i wanted to flip to the next page.
anyways, my reading challenge to myself for 2022 is to read more classics (at least 24, so two per month, which should be doable considering how much i read). do you guys engage in any reading challenges?
No. 174114
File: 1639690878984.jpg (36.28 KB, 565x368, 41daba1afeb2b339b4988cfda60645…)
>>174108I think you would like Mission of Gravity by Hal Clement. It's an adventure story on an alien planet, an alien local goes on the adventure and a human astronaut communicates with him remotely and guides him. I really loved it, it was fun and the planet they are on is very special so some very interesting things happen on the trip, which are not just "oh we ran out of gas in space what do we do" or "oh we are cornered by aliens what do we do
No. 174127
>>173998There's been a lot of good recs thrown around in these threads so far, many I've enjoyed! Always hungry for more, though. I have read Eileen and I enjoyed it a lot. Should probably check out Ottessa Moshfegh's other books as well since I obviously like her writing.
>>174022>>174049Thanks for your rec list! My Dark Vanessa is already a favorite of mine and I've read a few Gillian Flynn books (her short story The Grownup was also pretty interesting), I'll check out the other ones you've mentioned here. Sending love.
No. 174164
>>174129agreed! i never post but i really enjoy reading this thread and anons are usually helpful and articulate.
i always wondered if there's any other bookclub kind of community like that online, but i guess not?
i tried some book clubs on discord but i always end up hating people there. or the books they read are not books i want to read.
No. 174170
File: 1639740774237.jpeg (75.53 KB, 447x686, AC2AFB48-FB33-417F-856B-AEBF4E…)
just finished reading this. all i can say is that the first book did not need a sequel
No. 174176
>>174131I really like The Rise and Fall of Ancient Egypt by Toby Wilkinson. Really cool if you want to know more about archeology, society and trade and not just a long list of rulers and battles.
Carthage Must Be Destroted by Richard Miles is a book about Rome's greatest enemy, Carthage, a North African culture.
Babylon by Paul Kriwaczek is a short pop history but very lovely and atmospheric, I liked it.
The Horse, the Wheel, and Language is a tough book with lots of genetics, archeology and linguistics, but informative. The best book about Indo-European peoples. I guess it's not really European? Idk.
The Silk Road: A New History by Valerie Hansen is about different societies that lived along the Silk Road. Mostly archeology (again). Each chapter is about different culture.
Atlas of a Lost World: Travels in Ice Age America by whoever. Prehistory so not sure if it fits here.
Arabia and the Arabs: From the Bronze Age to the coming of Islam by Robert G. Hoyland. I listed this book just because people don't know much about pre-Islam history of Arabs and other peoples of ME.
The Fall of the Ottomans by Eugene Rogan. Modern history so idk if you would like it. The title is pretty self-explanatory: the book is about Turkey in first half of 20th century.
No. 174263
File: 1639784618286.jpg (97.53 KB, 898x449, 4880151ed025c6bc9044890c784a02…)
>>174258same. i like to alternate between heavier books and lighter books - not as in high culture and low culture, but after reading something very serious i often need something easily digestible to cleanse my palate. there are also some YA books i actually ended up liking. i'm not the target audience so i find a lot of YA cringy and embarrassing and absolutely uninteresting. but some YA is actually good. pic related, i really like the birthmarked trilogy and i only read it because i liked the title in my language (which translates to something like "the city of the missing children") but it was such a nice and refreshing read. in a climate full of "some men have vaginas, some women have dicks, some dads give birth to babies!" it's extremely nice to read a book that explicitly puts midwifery and childbirth and the female reproductive system and how it ONLY affects women at the center.
No. 174298
File: 1639816632649.jpg (606.99 KB, 1305x2133, the neverending story.jpg)
Only the first half of this book got adapted into a movie, which I knew going into it. I felt like I knew where the second half was going, and I was right, but it got surprisingly dark at some points like when Bastian tried to kill Atreyu. I also kind of felt like the childlike empress was lowkey evil? Giving Bastian Auryn. Like, you'd think she would know what was going to happen to him eventually, since it had happened to other humans before. I got genuinely confused at some points about certain things but I think that was the author's intention. I must say I enjoyed the first half much more and it felt more magical to me, I wasn't as much a fan of the second half but I think the ending was worth it, I actually cried. Yes I'm a baby.
Also somehow I didn't realize until halfway through that Atreyu had green skin even though it basically said it in the beginning.
No. 174301
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>>174297
This was my favorite book as a child! I get overly excited every time someone mentions it, because most people are only familiar with the film, which didn't really do the book justice (they did make a film losely based on part 2, although it was even worse than the first film). I hope more people will read this. Momo and Jim Button are also great children's books by Michael Ende, but The Neverending Story will always be my favorite. I think it's such a timeless story.
No. 174560
File: 1639943277588.jpeg (141.72 KB, 750x849, 796A0FBD-883B-48B4-B379-7D5DC8…)
This but with Morgaine of Avalon
No. 174565
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>>173997I know this is old but I just found this goodreads review that you might like
Also I can recommend Anna Kavan for some bleak and horrifying shit. Julia and the Bazooka knocked me out for like a week
No. 174724
>>174565The Piano Teacher is extremely unpleasant even knowing fully what you are getting into. I honestly cannot recommend it unless someone wants to feel repulsed and filthy or isn't emotionally affected by their literature. Only in that regard, it's like the Things Have Gotten Worse Since We Last Spoke novella, except it's actually good.
I feel like at least some of the books in the Goodreads review are very different than OP's examples, but I may be wrong. The list is still worth sharing, so thank you anon.
No. 174784
>>174737Interesting! To me, the recent self-hating women novels feel different than older ones.
Don't get me wrong, The Piano Teacher is a quality book. It's just that it's also vile thanks to Jelinek's skill at describing tissues with crusty cum, people copulating publicly among trash like animals, emotional incest and a sadomasochistic relationship that makes most BDSM look truly safe, sane and consensual.
All needs to be said is that Michael Haneke made an accurate adaptation and I'm sure he signed up in a heartbeat. Just think about it. I read the book 14 years after seeing the movie and thought it surely cannot be that bad. Words are less powerful than pictures, right? Well, I was completely wrong.
At least in the movie the scrote seems actually fascinated with the protagonist and not just looking to bone a milf No. 174785
>>174565AYRT, thank you! This is definitely of interest.
>>174724Thanks for the heads up in regards to The Piano Teacher. I will look into it a bit, but might skip it. I specifically avoided Things Have Gotten Worse because I can't handle extremely graphic gross stuff (plus the fact that it was written by a man just seemed off to me).
No. 174816
>>174784I really should watch the other Haneke movies I haven't seen yet, his works aren't perfect but they're always shocking and unique…
>>174813When I read something wrong in non fiction books I strike out the sentence and correct the author in the margin, don't be afraid to underline sentences and add your own comments if you plan to keep the book, it's your book
No. 174876
>>174855if Wikipedia is to be trusted,
the heroine becoming her adopted, underage son's pimp (though he starts prostituting himself "on his own" due to poverty) because she is too ugly to be a prostitute. Someone wants to fuck her in the end, but she rejects or somethingI'm seething since local translation is based on the English version of the book and not original, Japanese one. Trash
No. 174882
File: 1640091426485.jpg (564.47 KB, 1512x2455, 91cxU8FJDML.jpg)
has anyone read come closer by sara gran? it's very short (less than 200 pages) and details the possession of a young woman by a demon. i'm easily scared so some of the descriptions really unsettled me, which was obviously the point of a spooky novel. i keep thinking about some of the descriptions of how she realizes that many people around her are possessed by demons, even her doctors and a family friend and several coworkers/business partners. also the moment when the demon points out that she actually wanted to be possessed felt very movie-like to me. it's a fun and quick read, maybe some of you might enjoy it.
No. 175051
File: 1640152180722.png (1.15 MB, 800x963, speculative-evolution-fef962d2…)
does anyone have recommendations for narrative fiction that involves speculative biology? finished the factory by hiroko oyamada earlier this month and the section detailing how the animals in the factory have adapted to live in that specific environment was my favorite part. other books with this subject matter seem to mostly be written to imitate nonfiction, textbooks, etc., so i'd appreciate any story-focused works, especially if they're more on the surreal fiction side than typical sci-fi.
No. 175057
File: 1640153201888.jpeg (66.18 KB, 500x608, 8F4E774D-AF3E-4185-9DFA-937EAF…)
>>175051There’s been a speculative biology kick that happened thanks to All Tomorrow’s being popular again! If you’re looking for fiction thats written in a way thats meant to document “real creatures” then anything by Dougal Dixon. Also recommend All Yesterday’s if you’re interested in speculative paleontology.
No. 175059
File: 1640153744653.jpg (416.36 KB, 1024x1280, Tumblr_l_269089342161653.jpg)
I really want to buy these penguin classic sets.
No. 175099
File: 1640169548936.jpeg (50.5 KB, 300x455, 0300ACE1-3C30-47FA-B472-09D9CF…)
currently reading this. it’s about a bisexual person in the 90s who can shape shift from male to female at will. interesting premise, writing is a little insufferable in a typical ~queer~ way and the numerous sex scenes are very raw and dirty. it’s refreshing because there’s surprisingly no fucking around with gender identity bullshit. for example the mc changes into a female and dates a lesbian and it’s pretty much made point blank clear that she is not down to fuck the mc if his body is male. not sure what to make of it so far as it’s not the type of book i would ordinarily gravitate towards. it was a christmas gift from my brother who tries to buy me lgbt themed books because i’m a lesbian who likes to read lol.
No. 175109
File: 1640171972929.jpg (763.65 KB, 3866x2056, my-penguin-english-library-col…)
>>175059go for it! i wanted to buy the little black classics box set but ended up deciding against it because the majority of the books didn't interest me and i thought the format was too small for me. in the end i went through the entire english library collection (pic related) and bought a bunch of books that interest me. they look really pretty in the shelf.
No. 175151
File: 1640193997779.jpg (273.61 KB, 1691x2560, 294756655658.jpg)
Recently finished The Paper Wasp by Lauren Acampora. It is about Abby who in her late 20s still lives at home with her parents after dropping out of college. She's slightly unhinged and mostly lives inside her vivid dreams that she uses as inspiration for her artworks. Her only real tether to reality is her obsession with a childhood friend Elise who is now a Hollywood it-girl. When they reunite at a high school reunion Abby forces her way back into Elise's life.
This book really went to places I did not expect and I found it very interesting and also entertaining. Recommend it for anyone who likes reading about unhinged women and the complexities of female friendship.
>>174882I read this a few months ago and I loved it! Seconding your recommendation nonita.
No. 175197
File: 1640209267636.jpg (40.12 KB, 324x500, 3772757372.jpg)
>>175161Me too! You should check out Necessary People by Anna Pitoniak and Social Creature by Tara Isabella Burton if you haven't already. Especially Social Creature is so good, I still think about it all the time. It's about a young woman who worms her way into every aspect of the life of a woman she admires.
No. 175380
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>>172926I just finished Remains of the Day. Such a beautiful book. The ending made me really emotional, in a good way!
No. 175735
File: 1640506394423.jpg (565.32 KB, 1280x1280, tumblr_aaf0c7ee982f748103e0e63…)
Hi ladies, what are your favorite nonfiction books?
No. 175773
File: 1640530775270.jpg (188.28 KB, 1674x2560, 71db66ZoJdL.jpg)
>>175735picrel, but it might make you very angry.
No. 175784
File: 1640536995111.jpg (191.02 KB, 1400x2240, 71EJVoleXnL.jpg)
>>175735Extremely well-researched and compassionate toward everyone involved
No. 175804
File: 1640545100145.jpg (1.31 MB, 1519x2324, A173bUECROL.jpg)
i'm reading pic related right now and i keep thinking that all the women in it are farmers. every pov chapter sounds like a post in the vent thread or the mundane shit thread. i love it. i guess at heart, every woman is a farmer.
No. 175901
File: 1640608845269.jpg (65.09 KB, 640x553, 169a5870e0649e8dc5269c979fee44…)
>>175735Mentioned it elsewhere some time ago, but for those who are interested in Adam Lanza and the phenomenon of school shootings: Sheltered Storm by Matthew Nolan aka Reed Coleman is a must-read. If you have had any interest in the case, then you know the name. If not… well, it's enough to say that the author has been investigating the case for many years. His blog (
https://sandyhooklighthouse.wordpress.com/) has been a gripping read. It's worth noting that Nolan has managed to dig out Lanza's internet profiles, forum posts and PMs (AFAIR) when none were previously available. His sheer dedication to the topic was insane.
Sheltered Storm is a long read, I myself haven't finished it. It has almost 800 pages. It doesn't only cover the Lanza family and the Sandy Hook shooting, though. The author goes deep into USA's failed attempts at gun control, as well as past shootings. It's extremely worth noting that none of the shooters are never mentioned by name, which tells a lot about how the author feels about the topic. Another notable thing is that the Lanza chapters heavily focus on Nancy rather than her son. And not in a misogynistic way, in case you worry — she was the first
victim, after all.
I'm only 200 pages into the book, but what I've found incredible is how it recontextualizes Columbine. It's often treated as a unique tragedy that started a wave of school shootings in the USA. I will not debate the second part, but Nolan shows how it was really "greatest hits" of previous school shootings. Nothing Harris and Klebold did was original, everything has been done before (including the "iCoNiC" outfits). I think it's an important point, as it takes away a lot of the mystique of the crime. The chapters about the struggle for gun control also are illuminating, though also kinda boring to me (as an eurofag). I'm skimming them, but I'm glad that they have been included.
The book has been removed from the website some time ago (it's supposed to come back — my unconfirmed suspicion is that the author wants to update it in the light of new information available), but you can find copies floating around the internet no problem.
picrel for attention, as I cannot find the ebook's cover on the net>>175804Glad you like it! I have recommended it a few times here so it makes me happy I wasn't wrong about other nonas enjoying it. Makes me want to re-read, but I don't have the time
No. 175995
>>175901maybe i found it through your rec then! i stumbled over it on my e-reader because i had downloaded it a while ago so i just started reading it. i really enjoyed it.
>>175988me too! i could really relate to millie since we're almost the same age and that feeling of "never being able to follow through" hit me deep. also the fact that she has a college degree and couldn't find a proper job.
it really depressed me when she had that ticket selling job because it reminded me so much of one of my shitty jobs. my boss yelled at me and my only coworker was no help at all and treated me like i was stupid, so i quit after three days - i also just walked out and handed in my notice. a while later i had another office job but i felt the same horrible feeling that i had at my previous job because i had no coworker to help me at all. all i did was answer phone calls and read emails, maybe clean up some stuff - just like millie. i was SO happy when she had a proper job that she seemed to like at the end. i hope i can get there too since i'm applying for jobs rn. No. 176231
>>174176>>174178Very late and ntayrt, but thanks, I'll check these out. I read history books a lot, and it can be hard to find ones that aren't extremely dense and dry. A recent book like this I enjoyed reading is called "The Time Traveler's Guide to Medieval England" by Ian Mortimer, I found it easy to read and interesting because it talked about lots of little stuff, like how people breaking the law were found. I really like reading ancient history most, though.
I'm currently reading The Death of Roger Ackroyd right now since I also love mystery novels, and someone got me Gideon the Ninth for the holidays, so I'll read that next.
No. 176233
File: 1640805338516.jpg (108.41 KB, 1000x1608, 9781783786688.jpg)
Finished reading pic rel, so here are my brainlet opinions on it.I initially thought that Natsuki was being a bit retarded because I doubted that it would've been THAT hard to be childfree, and but after their intrusive families started interrogating them I understood what they meant. I think it's more of a story directed to a conformist Japanese audience tbh. I liked the portrayal of dissociation and writing style, the idea that, through sexual abuse and societal pressure, your body no longer becomes truly yours and how predators are often excused in society. It seems like the message was 'it's okay to not follow societal norms, but societal norms shouldn't be wholly abandoned because they provide moral stability.' I find it a little weird how Natsuki is okay with her husband committing incest, even though the reason why incest is bad is because of the inherent power dynamic between the people involved, especially since Japanese society seems more hierarchical (though may have been intentional, as abuse of power seems to be a theme in this book. Though that would make it seem like Murata is saying that her husband is potentially as bad as the teacher, with Natsuki even stating that if her husband were to rape his comatose grandfather, he'd be a monster too, like the teacher, so idk). Thank you for reading my ramblings
No. 176247
File: 1640809349682.jpeg (186.51 KB, 880x1360, 4EE8FBE1-E672-40BA-91A2-221F9A…)
>>176188Have you read The Twisted Ones by T. Kingfisher, anon? It’s pretty good and sounds like it’s fits exactly what you’re looking for
No. 176271
File: 1640820104397.jpg (522.31 KB, 1600x2409, 91hB0fy5ZfL.jpg)
i finished picrel a few days ago. it was… hm. on the one hand i really enjoyed it and i loved the setting, but i thought it was going to be creepier. at times it also felt incredibly slow and like a drag. i also kept going back to the map to locate where the main character was but the map sometimes didn't match the descriptions. i wish they had added markers to indicate where she is in which chapter. the protagonists are two very complicated women with an equally complicated relationship to each other. the romance between them is pretty interesting because of that.
No. 176286
>>176254I was more upset about
Lin's death. Like damn, she went through so much and still didn't get a happy ending. I'd grown to like Yagharek so the reveal was definitely a gut punch, which I know was the point. I think it was disappointing to me in terms of wishing I could still love the character, but personally I thought it was a good reflection of how even the "best" people can be hiding horrible truths and refuse to own up to the consequences they deserve. It did feel a bit out of the blue but that's life as they say. I was glad Isaac did not forgive him for his actions/keeping that secret. Initially was worried he would side with him after all they'd been through but it was refreshing that he took it as the betrayal it was, especially coming from Miéville as a male author.
No. 176328
File: 1640856229442.jpg (48.48 KB, 500x500, home before dark.jpg)
so the plot of this book is that a family (a mom, a dad and a daughter) moves into an amityville horror type house. they buy it for cheap, a bunch of shit goes down in the 3 weeks they live there and then leave. the dad decides to write a tell all book of what happened - according to him it's a ghost story - and makes a fortune. the daughter hates it because it made her feel alienated growing up because she was always singled out because of the book her dad wrote. she doesn't remember what actually happened when they lived there so she goes back as an adult to try and find out the truth.
I just finished it, and I don't know how to feel tbh. I didn't care about it for the first half of the book, then got really into it about halfway through wanting to know what really happened. even though this book objectively was pretty well done as far as thrillers go (I've read some terrible ones) the plot twists were good (not too predictable, not too ridiculous, at least in my opinion) the ending was pretty sad and I feel really unsatisfied for some reason, even though it essentially wrapped everything up. there is one minor plot hole that annoyed me about it though. or maybe it's not a plot hole and I'm missing something, Idk. if the parents didn't want her to find out the truth about what really happened, or what they thought happened, why did the dad leave her the house in his will? if he was going to leave it to her why did he pretend he sold it?
No. 176358
>>176328Slightly related, but I can't stand Riley Sager. All his books are the same and he really needs to stop writing female characters because he isn't very good at it.
I thought Home Before Dark was one of his better ones, but once you read a couple of his books the formula becomes so obvious. An interesting premise ripped from horror movies, then a game of how many twists he can cram into the last fifteen pages. I've given up on his books.
No. 176405
>>175151i'm
>>175161 and i finished this last night! the narrator was so crazy and full of shit, i loved it, kek. it was just kinda slow at times. spoilers:
i can't believe she seriously stole the baby AND got away with it AND went to live with the filmmaker dude. wtf. i didn't see that coming at all. unhinged queen. No. 176417
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>>176257It’s about a lady that goes to clean out her hoarder of a grandmother’s house and ends up finding a book with weird writing in it. Somewhat spooky things happen
and she ends up going through a portal in the woods to a world with weird magical beings. There’s a cute dog (who doesn’t die) and plenty of humor throughout.
The summary chosen for it + being marketed as horror does it no favors as far as people’s expectations. I’m sure there are plenty of people (myself included originally) disappointed that they didn’t get the backwoods folk horror they were sold. I did enjoy it though. It just wasn’t exactly what I was looking to read at the time.
Also
>>176188 while I think The Twisted Ones fits more of what you’re looking for you may want to check out The Hike by Drew Magery too. A guy goes on a hike and ends up in a bizarre world and is trying to get back home to his family. There’s a talking crab, a sexy giantess, sentient dust clouds- all sorts of strange things.
I don’t even know how to describe it besides absurd yet touching. It kind of reminded me of a cross between Alice in Wonderland and an Adventure Time episode (but in book form with more mature themes such as family, growing older while living an unfulfilling life, etc.) I think it’s one of those books someone would either love or hate no in between. I personally loved it.
Please post your thoughts if you ever decide to read either of these!
No. 176436
>>176405ayrt, i'm glad you liked it! the ending took me by surprise as well
i definitely didn't see her getting away with everything like that, and i definitely didn't think she was gonna steal a fucking baby. i was kinda happy for her though? i found the whole vivid dream thing very interesting and in a way relatable. i tend to also live in my dreams too much, in a less unhinged way.
>>176403thanks for the laugh anon, she really did.
No. 176460
File: 1640914241288.jpg (1.24 MB, 1838x2850, 41716929.jpg)
>>176436yeah, the whole time i thought 'this woman is way too confident, she's gonna get a reality check and HARD' and then it didn't even happen, she just did the thing and got away with it. amazing.reading pic related now, i already laughed at the part with the parents asking for the employment letter because that's such a rich people thing.
No. 176701
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Gonna dump my thoughts here since I don't have a goodreads account lol but I just really wanna talk about this book.
Not gonna lie, the main reason I picked up this book is because of the title. I really wanted to know what it was about, and thought the plot might actually have something to do with physics (spoiler; it didn't). The basic premise is that at the highschool our main character goes to there's a mysterious film studies teacher named Hannah who dies (that's not a spoiler, it happens very early on) and our main character is trying to solve her death. The plot might kind of sound like The Secret History (it is sometimes pitched that way) but I can assure you other than the basic premise they have nothing in common. I also read somewhere this book has an unreliable narrator, and I must not understand what that means because it didn't feel that way to me.
I really hated the weird narration style that the author chose, especially in the first half of the book. Basically she is just constantly making references to things. I don't have the book anymore so I can't give any actual examples but it would be something like "and then my classmate sat down next to me, his eyes were green; you know, that shade of green used in a portrait of a duchess in 1793 for her dress. The painter was in love with her, you see proceeds to spend 3 pages telling this stupid anecdote about these historical figures that has fuck all to do with the main plot" then return to the plot, rinse and repeat. It made SO MANY references to literature/art/history etc and sometimes just straight up felt like the author was trying to flex her knowledge. I didn't like it, in fact it made it hard to follow the plot imo. In the latter half of the book it did this less, it'd still make a lot of references to things but spend less time on them. I think the main goal of this was to be funny, some places I've even seen this book categorized as humor. But then later in the book it gets more serious, then at the end of the book it kind of feels more lighthearted again. Idk what this book was trying to be. A thriller? I wouldn't call it that. It is also a slow moving book. There was a stupid thing about her dad buying her an antique desk, it spent way too much time on this. And for what reason I still don't know.
Oh yeah, her dad. Blue (yes, the MC's name is Blue) is being raised by a single dad, the book mentions her dad like every other paragraph. It is straight up annoying, hell even the other characters in the book get tired of her talking about her dad. Her dad is like in his 40's or 50's and it was always saying how super attractive he was and how every woman who meets him falls in love with him immediately and gets obsessed with him. It says the unique thing about Hannah is that she didn't seem interested in him at all. Her dad did end up being a pretty major plot point later on but I really think it could have spent less time on him. Another thing is that the characters were highschool students yet seemed older to me, I didn't even realize until like 1/3 of the way through it was a highschool, I thought it was university. But maybe that's because I was abnormally immature as a teen.
My main gripe though is that there was a plot twist that was very out of left field. Although some things happened that later you go "ah, so that's why that happened" it didn't drop any real hints as to what was actually going on. I could have never predicted it. Maybe that's because I'm just dumb but I don't think so. Idk if it's just my preference, but I don't like it when books do that.
All in all though? I really enjoyed this book, in the latter half at least. I don't know why either because there were so many things that annoyed me about it. I even almost gave up on it around the halfway point, but kept going because I wanted to know more about Hannah. But I found myself really caring about Blue and empathizing with her, which is rare for me, since I hardly ever give a fuck about characters. I'm glad I read it though. I don't even know how to feel about this book.
No. 176724
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do any of you have favorite books that are weirdly out of character for them? for me it's anything lucinda riley. i don't read any dreamy and romantic women's literature usually but i just love lucinda riley for some reason. i tried other books that follow the same format of a love story set in the present and a love story set in the past in the same book, but i just can't warm up to them.
No. 176729
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Do you guys know any good or funny booktube channels?
No. 176741
>>176729Idk about funny but these are the ones I watch the most
Merphy Napier- used to have the most similar taste to me, but most of her content is about One Piece now which I don't care about, also she just adopted a second kid so she is uploading a lot less
Books with Brittany- probably has the most well rounded taste of all the booktubers I watch
Emmie- is a classical literature major, reads a lot of classics, sometimes seems pretentious but I really like her channel
Alexandra Roselyn- reads a lot of YA and middle grade, which I don't read, but she is adorable
Chandler Ainsley- reads mostly romance which I don't read either, but I find her really entertaining
Elliot Brooks- reads mostly fantasy, is a huge Witcher fan, is annoyingly woke but I still enjoy her content
No. 176768
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It's a bit like a middle class Wuthering Heights where Heathcliff just fucking murders Edgar at the start of the book, and no character is noble or clever, just selfish and petty
Writers really started to no longer self-censor themselves about what was -proper- to depict in their books around the 1870s it seems
No. 176788
>>176769You can still read the ebook, it's just inconvenient at times. Why not pirate the ebook and see if you like it enough to buy the physical copy?
I read it a long time ago so I'm pretty fuzzy on the details, but I remember being pretty fascinated with it at the time. I couldn't get enough of that academic, essay style depiction of horror but I definitely could've done without a lot of the Johnny sections. They were a bit scrotey, the rest isn't though so I don't think moids liking it really matters.
No. 176807
>>176797The johnny truant parts got bearable when I started picturing them as vastly exaggerated inventions by the kind of lowlife who'd lie about his sexual encounters, which meant that he'd definitely lie about some other details of the story.
>>176789I'm used to gorier/Stephen King stories so I didn't find it the ~scariest~ but from what I recall the scary parts are about the anguish of exploring something apparently completely unknown, but with a sense of inhuman logic behind, a bit like seeing a gigantic shape moving in the night. It's also a book that tries to not be just horror, which means that a lot of readers who never read horror because they deem it an inferior genre actually read house of leaves, and called it then the scariest book they've ever read because of a lack of proper horror corpus to compare it to.
No. 177006
>>176460update, i finished it last night and i really enjoyed it. it's very similar to the paper wasp
>>175151 but i think i enjoyed reading necessary people more because the characters felt livelier. everyone in paper wasp was pretty one dimensional/flat. i also liked how morally gray every character was. spoiler:
in the beginning i was like 'oh no, poor violet' because of how the bradleys treated her - that one part where she cooked dinner and had to serve everyone?? - and then came the moment when i realized she's shady as hell. No. 177067
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>>177006I'm the anon who originally posted about The Paper Wasp. Necessary People was one of the most fun books I read last year! Check out Social Creature for something similar if you haven't already, I found both books to be wildly entertaining. I'd love recs for something similar.
No. 177115
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>>177067social creature is next on my list! i'm reading
such small hands by andrés barba right now since it's very short (60 pages according to my e-reader) the vibe is very creepy in some parts.
No. 177143
>>177115NTA
I've read Such Small Hands, the book kinda reminds me of Rule of Rose. As mentioned earlier
>>154128, I'm suspicious of a man writing a story about elementary school girls getting obsessed about and 'consuming' another, all in a way suggesting an unrecognized erotic obsession. The book was okay. I felt like either I didn't get it or it was largely overrated
No. 177358
>>176286I liked that too, we could even see him trying to rationalize it and distance himself from the act but in the end if he realized if he stuck with yag, he'd be condoning his actions. And omg yes, lin went through so much her ending felt the worse. Out of all bas lag protagonists I feel like her destiny was the most tragic honestly. Others were traumatized for life but at least they had a shot at starting over. Being
lobotomized by slake moths seems worse than death.
>>177143I played Rule of Rose a few times, but I never saw it from this perspective. Feel a bit gross now to be honest, I enjoyed most of the story.
No. 177492
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>>177452>And these are the same retards who want more sex and dark themes in the YA genre. I don't mind dark themes but for the level they seem to seek, they are better off looking at adult books in the genre. Same for the sex. Why do you want teens to fuck all the time? Why do you want YA to keep pushing the envelope to the point that it may as well be adult writing? Grow the fuck up and look at adult books with that content: they exist, trust me. Quit trying to make YA grow up with you. The other anon is right, YA is very ill defined (probably on purpose to appeal to a wider demographic) and is mostly just a marketing ploy. When YA became popular they tried to re-market older fantasy books as being YA. That being said, I don't think books with graphic sex in them are generally considered YA, (though I'm pretty sure there are a few exceptions like Twilight). That's why they made a new genre, "New Adult", and yes it's as dumb as it sounds, I think it means people who are "newly adults" as opposed to "young adults" (although one could argue those are the same thing). It is literally YA with the wish fulfillment generic protagonist type plots but with steamy sex scenes and/or graphic violence/drugs other things you wouldn't see in most YA. An example of this is From Blood And Ash. I started listening to that book once because everyone was talking about it, I couldn't stand it because it was so fucking generic it was just annoying, but it already started talking about sex in like the first couple chapters. I think Ninth House is also NA, although a little bit less generic.
No. 177549
>>177415sadly, the closest I can reccomend is
>>175784 for the 'obsessed with each other girls caught in a fantasy' factor, plus a Peter Jackson movie based on the case. I will research if there are any novels with similar mood. I miss RoR
>>177452Agree with you completely.
>One other issue with YA is the name itself. "Young adult." What is a "young adult?"And then you have (had?) New Adult, which is supposed to be YA but more mature and maybe for slighlty older 'young adults'
>>177492kek you beat me to it
No. 177570
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anyone read picrel? i picked it up some months ago because it was 50% off and i remember it being discussed on a literature talk show, read the first like two chapters on the beach this summer then forgot about it until now. i'm gonna pick it up again before i start school again this month i think.
No. 177597
>>177493They also have a lot of "sexy buzzwords."
Roses, crystal, glass, thorns, throne, spell, curse, blood, darkness, shadow, ash, fire, sword, wings, enchantment, maiden, trap, savior, warrior
These sort of Hot Topic goth flavored words are all over the covers
No. 177626
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>>177609>reminds me of back when twilight was the shit and every vampire book had a black cover with a red accent to mimic the original twilight covers.They still do that, pic related
>it's always stuff like "a (noun) of (noun) and (noun)" or just "a (noun) of (noun)" or just a single adjective like "babmboozled" or "nippletwisted"Lmao true and I'm still laughing at nippletwisted
No. 177650
>>177626That book is garbage it completely ripped of twilight but failed … twilight was a better love story in this case kek
>>177638Thankyou so much kind stranger I really appreciate it so much !!!,!!!!
No. 177659
>>177651I don't remember that scene but is it when the characters
get turned into animals? Didn't seem too odd since they were still technically humans. The stuff surrounding Reynard the Fox is very disturbing but op did ask for dark, she can decide if she wants to avoid books with sexual components for herself. As I said, Lee gets into some pretty weird sexual shit too.
>Gaiman is scrote shitWhy do you say that? I've read the majority of his work and while I wouldn't consider it perfect (little is) I didn't find it particularly offensive either.
No. 177666
>>177659Nta- I've never read anything by Neil Gaiman because something about him always rubbed me the wrong way, then he came out against JKR which made me like him even less but people are always singing his praises as a writer.
Idk about his other books but I heard a summary of Stardust recently and it sounded really scrote-y.
No. 177700
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Okay, I know a lot of anons here are against blatantly fanfiction-y books, but I just started this and dammit, it's giving me so much serotonin. And yes I'm aware it's based on star wars shipping. Never seen star wars but nerdy sciencey men DO SOMETHING to me.
No. 177706
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With the launch of the Metaverse & talk of Amazon reviving company towns in the US, Neal Stephenson's Snow Crash feels more apt than ever.
It's set in a dystopian near-future that's meant to be a bit Mad Max, but in more of a capitalist hellscape kind of way. Certain states are owned by the mafia, some by the government still, some by companies, some are just lawless. There's overarching themes of VR tech & programming combined with ancient civ & linguistics.
In the book, a virus goes around the Metaverse that scrambles people's brains irl by using some kinda Sumerian code word.
No. 177743
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the plot of this book is basically that this family rents an arbnb from a rich couple. after the family gets to the house, the couple leaves, then comes back in a few hours saying that there was a huge blackout in the city and they need to stay at the house too. the house is remote and the cell service is bad so no one can check to see what's really happening. apparently it gets dark and there's gore in it at one point.
Idk if I'll read it because from what I've heard the book is really tense. I've heard it's good though. I just hate books that are super tense and give me anxiety.
No. 177793
>>177734>There are 1:1 analogues for Star Wars characters in that book (notably Rey, Kylo, Rose, Finn, Poe, Hux, and Snoke). Is Smoke a pedo guru/trainer, or at least a stalker rapist in a position of power?
Cause its the only realistic on this character that makes sense to me. Or "Adam's"
abusive ex.
>What's even worse is that the love interest's name is literally Adam.Barf. They aren't even trying. The only good thing I can say is that it's not as abysmal as Sariah Wilson's officially published real people fanfiction about Adam Driver (also a New York bestseller), because at least it's about bootleg versions of fictional characters. The author in that one literally gives AD advice on how to run his charity(through a NLOG self-insert), and that's probably not even the most egregious piece of the plot.
No. 177843
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>>177743I read this in the past year and it left so little of an impression I can’t remember any details at all. I just remember feeling super bored by it and slogging my way through then being very disappointed by the ending and wishing I hadn’t wasted my time. Also the writing was really goofy and gave me the impression that the author was trying way too hard.
Picture related. YMMV though maybe it’s just me that found it ridiculous.
No. 177895
>>177793Kind of?
Snoke was Adam's abusive academic advisor that would try to pit him against other students>The author in that one literally gives AD advice on how to run his charity(through a NLOG self-insert)That sounds pretty hilarious. Do these authors not feel any sense of shame when publishing their obvious self insert romances?
>>177843Reading this made me feel like I was having a stroke
No. 177916
>>177680lol
nonny, this is very sweet and totally not odd – I love learning about nun history for this same reason. not a book, but you should totally watch call the midwife – british show about anglican nurse nuns and secular nurse midwives who live together in the 50s/60s and care for the people of east london. amazing and huge range of female characters.
No. 177950
>>177006I just finished necessary people thanks to your rec and really enjoyed it, if you're willing, will you elaborate on why that moment (in your spoiler) was the thing that tipped you off to
Violet being shady? I'd like to hear your thoughts because I didn't get the same impression, just that
it was sad but somewhat understandable that she was willing to stoop to that level to appease the Bradley's. No. 178258
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Have you guys read the vows and honour saga?
The active descriptions and the ending were a bit lacking, but I feel it would be easily cinematographily adapted
No. 178350
File: 1641750969246.jpg (77.4 KB, 1200x675, meta.jpg)
Anybody have an epub/pdf copy of "My Body" by Em Rata?
No. 178380
File: 1641758401336.jpg (257.64 KB, 1684x2560, 7357586.jpg)
The Photographer by Mary Dixie Carter. Read this over the holidays and thought I'd at it to the unhinged women pile we've got going here. It's about a woman that becomes obsessed with a family after photographing an event for them. She attempts to insert herself into their lives. Nothing too special, but pretty entertaining thriller for anyone looking for a fun read. The main character was so creepy, I loved reading about the crazy shit she did.
No. 178445
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Been reading this. Really fun so far. TV show of it also possibly coming sometime in the future.
It's about a bored suburban housewife completely neglected and unappreciated by her dumb husband and her whatever children. She's in a true crime book club with some other ladies in her until now quiet neighborhood. And they all use it as an escape and place to vent. One night she's attacked by her elderly neighbor lady who suddenly seems completely bloodthirsty and unhinged. When the neighbor dies, her dashing nephew comes down to settle her affairs. Dude is clearly a vampire, shenanigans ensue.
Also really like the exploration of relationships between women and the commentary on how much women do for their families and how unappreciated they are.
Really liked the author's note, if you don't mind. Here's a part of it.
>When I was a kid I didn’t take my mom seriously. She was a housewife who was in a book club, and she and her friends were always running errands, and driving car pool, and forcing us to follow rules that didn’t make sense. They just seemed like a bunch of lightweights. Today I realize how many things they were dealing with that I was totally unaware of. They took the hits so we could skate by obliviously, because that’s the deal: as a parent, you endure pain so your children don’t have to.
>This is also a book about vampires. They’re that iconic American archetype of the rambling man, wearing denim, wandering from town to town with no past and no ties. Think Jack Kerouac, think Shane, think Woody Guthrie. Think Ted Bundy.
>Because vampires are the original serial killers, stripped of everything that makes us human—they have no friends, no family, no roots, no children. All they have is hunger. They eat and eat but they’re never full. With this book, I wanted to pit a man freed from all responsibilities but his appetites against women whose lives are shaped by their endless responsibilities. I wanted to pit Dracula against my mom.
As you’ll see, it’s not a fair fight.
No. 178491
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i just found this book about a haunted ikea, idk how it is yet but i love the idea of it.
No. 178504
>>178350Maybe I'm too late, but… Here you go. Always consult this site for all your book needs. It's constantly updated, unlike libgen
https://book4you.org/book/18077577/e59fe9In thanks for me dropping the link, please share your thoughts and choice quotes from this disaster! It's so narcissistic holy crap. Also vapid as hell. You have a head too, Emily. How about writing about it?
No. 178506
>>178491You might like this
https://scp-wiki.wikidot.com/scp-3008 if you don't know it yet!
The concept is great, I wonder if he book executes it well
No. 178524
>>178506this is super cool! i never got into scp, but i really liked that one. it felt very videogame-like to me, with the staff turning violent at night. are there more like these? like putting a horror twist on something very mundane?
>>178518i have all of these downloaded, but i have yet to read them. do you know My Heart is a Chainsaw? it's basically a teenage girl realizing that she lives in a slasher movie scenario.
No. 178528
>>178524Never heard of My Heart Is A Chainsaw. Thank you!
I feel like Bentley Little has a lot of that horror in the mundane thing. The Store is about a giant superstore coming into a small desert town in Arizona. Seemingly normal but of course it's not.
His book The Policy centers a man who is unemployed, starting a new life, finally finds an insurance company that will take him. But it offers strange benefits and asks for a little too much.
No. 178544
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Read this to fill the hole Soren left when she went to the great dead baby rape warehouse in the sky allegedly. What a ride.
It's a 'true story' that was a big part of the satanic panic. When you read it it's so easy to see what was really going on. The therapist is such a horrifying creep, despite Michelle going on and on about how wonderful and sexy he was. He'd get her to lay her head on his shoulder during their sessions, he was seeing her every day for 6+ hours, whenever she expressed doubts that her 'recovered' memories were real or asked to stop he'd argue with her until she relented. He was a devout Catholic (despite cheating on his wife with Michelle, his patient) and obsessed with rumours about west African satanic cults he'd heard in his time living there.
In real life, her mother had been neglectful and her father absent, she was orphaned as a child and the grandparents who adopted her also both died a few years later. She'd just had a miscarriage and she sought out treatment for depression. It was clear she desperately wanted a family and hadn't resolved her feelings about her mother, who'd been the closest thing she ever had to a stable family figure but also struggled to cope with raising her. But nope, her conflicted feelings about her mother had to have come from the fact that she had repressed memories of her mother giving her away to a satanic cult.
That all sounds bleak, but most of the novel is dedicated to her absolutely incredible Soren-tier 'trauma narrative'. I completely lost my shit when the Satanists surgically grafted horns and a devil tail onto her body.
I can only assume the book's impact came from the fact that not many people actually bothered to read it, because it ends with, I'm not kidding, a 50 page long anime battle between Jesus, Mary, the archangel Michael and Satan. Satan shoots fire out his hands.
No. 178576
>>178524>like putting a horror twist on something very mundane?Check out 112, 153, 342, 2030, 1733, 270, 332, 2316(read on pc for best experience),087, 2718, 413, 871, 2950, 643, 201, 2852. Most of these have tales or experiments attached to them, I tried to rec things in the style of the Ikea one. But series 1 has a lot of short skips about every day items with weird/paranormal/dangerous properties, it's worth checking out. Personally I love those the most, like the toaster that you can only talk about in 1st person.
No. 178826
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I'm reading this book rn, I think it was mentioned a few times in this thread. It makes me so angry - not because it's a bad book, but because I'm so mad to see what women are experiencing in the world. A good, but upsetting, read.
No. 179119
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just finished the first part of hanya yanagihara's newest novel, cackling at the fact she managed to make critics fall over themselves to call her poorly disguised fujo fiction 'the great american novel' for the second time in a row
No. 179124
>>179119is it as bad as the previous one?
that was such trash, i don't get how that misery porn somehow got so much praise
No. 179136
>>179124its very silly so far, not good but not unreadable
tbf i found a little life funny in how over the top 'ao3 angst tag' it was too so you might not enjoy to paradise either
No. 179145
>>179136>>179137i couldn't take 'a little life' seriously precisely bevcause it reminded me of a whump fic.
i bet yanagihara started off on ff.net writing fics where dracco malfoy gets abused and cuts himself set to linkinpark
>>179138looks like she's found her niche. she's probably gonva be another hack author that writes the same book over and over yet gets praised for it
No. 179146
>>179137For some reason, literary critics have been in a phase for a number of years of hyping up random misery porn novels by new up-and-coming writers as the most mind blowing and brave literature ever (especially if that young writer is part of a racial minority group*).
Recently a friend of mine got memed into reading Queenie because of the reviews it got, and according to her the whole novel is just a revolving door of cartoonishly
abusive boyfriends.
*racebait-chans DNI
No. 179191
>>179146nta but you're not imagining it. There's been a huge push for some years now to publish stuff from minorities (not just racial). It's why people like N.K. Jemisin have won the Hugo several years in a row. Not that her books are bad at all, I just think her contenders were better kek.
It can be a lot easier to get your book published if you are also some flavor of minority on top of it, regardless of what genre the book is or its quality. It's why there was drama about Tamsyn Muir pretending to be a lesbian to get her book published and pushed.
No. 179200
>>179138I didn't know that her other books also included scenes of child sexual abuse. What a weird thing to insistently put in your work. Correct me if I'm wrong, but judging from some of the more critical reviews of A Little Life, she doesn't seem to have anything interesting to say about CSA. She just seems interested in the shock value of it, or using it as another means of making her characters suffer.
One quote from an 'A Little Life' interview of hers that I found especially strange: “What I hope IS apparent on the page is how much I enjoyed creating them [the characters], how well I knew them, and how much I enjoyed spending time with them – all of them.”
I might be reading this wrong, but it seems kinda fucked to say you had a great time creating a character
with the exclusive goal of torturing him over the course of several decades in the worst ways imaginable only to have him ultimately off himself. She seems like an odd person. I wonder if people would be more critical of her work if she were a straight/white scrote.
>>179196Imagine trying to defend something that stupid… I hope her lesbian larp blows up in her face. Sick of people who encourage men to think lesbians are somehow available to them in any romantic or sexual capacity.
No. 179205
File: 1642110660248.png (62.34 KB, 530x349, moirail.png)
>>179196She describes him as her 'moirail' which is one of those Homestuck relationship terms (before she got her big break writing lesbian fiction she wrote Homestuck rape fanfiction).
No. 179273
File: 1642147916330.jpg (17.41 KB, 267x400, 1775164.jpg)
i had it sitting on my shelf and decided to check it out
No. 179336
File: 1642181811590.jpg (196.53 KB, 736x920, 60d4fd8d2d9bfccdf1d0215c46d6aa…)
which classic novels do you love and which do you dislike, anons? i'm currently making my way through jane austen's emma. i read jane austen for an english class in university 3 years ago and it was so tiring to read that i always just gave up halfway through. i like emma as a character, but i find austen's writing style so exhausting. i feel like her writing style mirrors how stifling society was for women at the time. it doesn't help that i'm ESL, i guess. i want to like her and i think she's cool and interesting as an author, but if i never had to read any jane austen again, i wouldn't mind.
No. 179352
>>179248Same. I actually wasn't a fan of her writing style, but I finished them because I wanted to see what the hype was about. They were just okay. Sometimes I really felt like the author was telling me stuff she'd had personal experience with, which made me kind of uncomfortable and made it feel fanfic-y at times.
>>179336Bleak House, Vanity Fair, Nectar in a Sieve are some of my favorites. Anything by Jules Verne is a snoozefest to me.
No. 179377
>>179336Are you looking for books originally in English? Love the Brontës, Oscar Wilde, Thomas Malory, Robert Louis Stevenson, Alexandre Dumas, Joseph Conrad, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Herman Melville, Octavia Butler, Margaret Atwood, Mary Shelley.
Otherwise if you don't mind translations: 100 Years of Solitude, Don Quixote, The Odyssey, Musashi, anything from Nabokov/Silvina Ocampo/Hermann Hesse
No. 179479
File: 1642259721994.jpg (686.16 KB, 1684x2560, 50623864.jpg)
>>179407I read this at the end of last year and I found it, ironically, pretty forgettable. You'd think that 300 years of history offers lots of interesting content, but it's barely touched upon. I also found the male protagonist (I forgot his name) lame and it was a struggle to get through his chapters. I also got so tired of the constant reminders about Addie's freckles, kek. Like, I get it. It wasn't relevant to the story in any way, but it kept getting brought up every other page.
I agree with your sentiment about a book probably hitting harder when you don't read as much. I read 50+ books every year, something has to be really good to stand out. I thought Vicious by the same author was much better.
No. 179545
>>179336My favorite books are considered classics (Emma, Wuthering Heights, Les misérables, Little women).
I don't think I've read any classics that I dislike, not because I'm pretentious and I think classics are inherently good, but because I'm very careful with the stuff that I choose to read to make sure I don't accidentally end up wasting my time with a book that has nothing to offer me.
Animal Farm and 1984 were lame as fuck though. I loved 1984 when I first read it, when I was 14, but I knew I wouldn't feel the same way if I read it now.
No. 179836
File: 1642445015161.jpg (494.87 KB, 740x909, 1642.jpg)
I'm 3 hours into reading the Bell Jar, and I've been really enjoying it, particularly in regards to how it talks about women and I relate to the aimlessness of the MC. idk why so many people (mainly men) call the MC unlikeable, even calling it 'a red flag' if a woman enjoys it. I'm not even particularly mentally unhealthy (though I don't think Esther has expressed any warning signs of being depressed yet in the book), I'm just aimless, and relate to the MC in that sense
No. 179874
>>179863I read Monte Cristo and watched Gankutsuou (anime adaptation where he is a space vampire) just after, it was a real treat. My reading advice for first half of the 19th century french books is to never try to convert the sums of money you'll read about as they can be given in many daunting currencies (francs, livres, louis, deniers, écus! unlike second half of the 19th century french literature like Au bonheur des dames where it's mostly just francs), and to always try to understand the political context of the book, as most are written around a particular event of possibly the most complex century in french politics' history (Dumas explains fairly well what les Cent Jours are in Monte Cristo though)
If you liked the complex social drama of Au Bonheur des Dames I can recommend La Cousine Bette by Balzac, it's about a femcel who decides to completely ruin the life of her successful cousin she's jealous of, it is -much- shorter than Monte Cristo
No. 179875
>>179874Thanks for the recommendation. I don't think not knowing the historical context of classic novels will be a problem because I've studied books this way in high school and I think I remember enough from my history classes too. I saw some episodes of Gankutsuou on TV long ago but not in the right order because it was on TV so I'm not sure I can say I liked it or not. I liked how it looked.
>it's about a femcel who decides to completely ruin the life of her successful cousin she's jealous of, it is -much- shorter than Monte CristoThe way you described it kind of reminded me of Madame Bovary, I've only watched the kind of shitty movie at school way back and everyone cheered when the delulu protagonist died like an idiot. I really need to read this one because the story was kind of funny.
No. 180089
File: 1642579881544.jpg (8.23 KB, 514x355, 411l5usiFHL._AC_SY355_.jpg)
>>180068nonnita, i can fix you. or at least try and give some pointers how i fixed my brain. i was an avid reader as a kid (up to liiike age 14/15?) and then i almost completely stopped reading because i could barely make it through books, barely absorbed any information, and constantly got distracted by my own thoughts.
-if you're esl: read in your native language, it's easier for you and you build up more stamina that way. yes, i know, "muh english original" - it doesn't matter, you can re-read the thing in the original language later, but just for your enjoyment: read shit in your own language. i think i read like 50 books in my own language before i started reading in english again. mind that i'm fluent in english and i talk english the majority of the time because of my work. i still had trouble enjoying english texts despite blending in with native speakers. i think it was because i was always in "learning mode" and i thought i had to absorb nice sentences, words and expressions and use them myself one day.
-get off the social media, SPECIFICALLY tiktok/youtube shorts. stop training yourself like pavlov's dog to some short serotonin burst. it's seriously bad for you.
-maybe time yourself. tell yourself to read for 10 minutes, then put the book away. take a break for five minutes, think about what you just read, listen to yourself. have you enjoyed reading in the past 10 minutes? do you want to continue for another 10 minutes? then pick up your book for another 10 minutes. do this until you are tired of the book for the day. repeat the next day.
-also consider
>>180069 - you might have adhd.
just like any habit, reading can be trained. i read every day now, for at least 3 hours, and i go through 15 books a month sometimes. vary with genres and plots! don't just read the same YA stuff, romance stories or crime fiction plots over and over again. alternate long books with short ones. variety is the spice of life!
No. 180091
>>179200She wrote A Little Life (about a boy who was severely sexually abused and grew up to be a lawyer)
The People in the Trees (quite a good storyline if you look up the synopsis. But again, rife with the sexual abuse of young boys exclusively. Even has tribal ritualistic rape of young teenage boys)
No. 180113
>>180102i use this website to impose limits on myself:
https://freedom.to/downloadsif you have a problem with oversharing every single thing that happens to you on social media, i suggest starting a diary to get your thoughts out of your head! and maybe you can get your news somewhere else? oldschool newspapers or actually going on a newspaper's website are good alternatives to twitter.
No. 180130
>>180113I don’t share anything, actually. I have one of those zero follower locked accounts that I use as a way to mark interesting articles, news, links, thoughts, writings, and learning resources. I find most of the stuff I’m interested in from like-minded accounts on there, plus it helps with self-learning/finding out about events/life hacks/finance/money management. Even small things like cool local places to check out. It’s a substitute for a network that I don’t have irl; I don’t have friends who share my interests. I don’t have Instagram (never did! So I never got hooked on it), and I don’t find TikTok that fun. Facebook I’m actually trying to use more because of how I can find out about local events/local places; again, I don’t have a non-virtual way of accessing certain info. For example I was trying to find a place to learn the cello, and all the known places didn’t click (weird instructors). So I made a Facebook account, stalked a harpist, clicked on a profile of a friend, then clicked on a profile on a friend of a friend who happens to be a well-known guitarist, and I find out he has a really cool place where you can learn the cello with a known local musician. Why do I have to actively stalk someone’s profile to find a nice place to learn music? I don’t know. When the internet threw away our analog lives and become the centrepiece we laid the traditional knowledge-accessing ways to rest, and now there are a lot of people who have never known then or forgotten them.
I will check the website, though. Thanks.
>>180128I tried that. I go cold turkey, and when I get back, I find myself worse. Even when I deactivate my account, I still check my favourite accounts for interesting articles or posts to read. I remember before I got a phone at 16/17 it wasn’t this bad. I had a computer and I spent most of my time online, but I wrote or read for hours. Now I can read—I actually read a 800 page book recently—but I have to actively put effort into it. I wish I could do other stuff, though.
Also, my question is: let’s say all of us go cold turkey for a month. What do we do in that time? The internet has stretched into its own growth at this point and for a lot of us it’s hard to tell where we begin and where it ends. Reading, maybe. Writing. Playing the cello. Hobbies. Learning the stuff that I’ve been saying I’ll learn for years. But pulling back my attention span into its digitally untarnished fecund form is going to need, well, a shitton of pulling and stretching.
No. 180167
>>180130if I have my phone in the morning the day is lost. If it’s really bad, you can turn off your phone and put it high up in a closet, especially at night before bed so that you would have to get up and walk far to get it. You might want to keep it away all day for a while until you adjust.
Like anon said, cleaning happens because it’s what people default to when they don’t know what to do. After that, you might feel really good and ready to tackle hobby projects. If you don’t have any ideas or it feels overwhelming, try starting a journal to keep track of tasks and what to do next, and plan new things to try if you don’t have any physical hobbies
No. 180169
>>180089I'm esl, that's why I moved from adult books to reading children's. When I first went back into reading I tried books that granted were too hard for my level (shadow of the torturer, lathe of heaven, the dispossessed, three musketeers), so I went back into reading in my language but I had the same problem. I never finished narnia for example, and took me weeks to finish the hobbit, I was very tired by the end of it. Also dropped the colour of magic, the left hand of darkness, the dispossessed (yes, again.) and little women. These were all translated in my language.
I'm not on tiktok and only watch a few channels on youtube about videogames and music learning, these are longer than 10 minutes. I don't like super short videos, though I can hardly watch something longer than 30 minutes in one go either.
I read on my phone and use it to write too. My internet connection is not stable, so sometimes I can't even access lc. I'm not active on social media. I only use twitter to insult my president and the ministry of education. Been a while since I send them something. Twitter blocked my account twice so I gave it a rest.
And yeah, I don't read YA because I only like YA, it's simply because they tend to be easier to read. YA does get old after some time.
I went back into reading in english because I started writing to practice after my computer broke down and I had this huge free time which I used to devote to videogames. I had fun writing but reading my stories.. it shows I'm new to it and I wanted to get better. I also hoped reading would help me organizing my thoughts and better plan my stories/make better characters.
I wish I could say I was an avid reader as a kid but I simply wasn't. I would avoid books if I could because they were hard or boring. I was the dumb, lazy kid, most I read were comics.
I guess I never considered adhd because it's mostly a rich boy thing in my country.
Anyway, thanks everyone for the help. I really appreciate it.
No. 180223
File: 1642628848812.jpg (41.5 KB, 720x466, 272098263_4732260930228289_895…)
This reminds me of how some anons earlier in the thread were complaining about dumb reviews on the covers of books. I also hate when there's advertisements for the movie version of the book. Can I just have a pretty, minimalist cover with the title and some artwork?
No. 180273
File: 1642646992777.jpeg (25.36 KB, 554x554, CEA86395-3FBD-441E-926F-8C01E0…)
read this. it had an interesting premise and it started off good but it kind of dipped towards the end and the ending was frustrating. i knew there was going to be some twist but i wasn’t expecting it to be this annoying because it kind of rendered the rest of the book pointless.
also it kind of annoyed me that the protagonist made so many ~biting social observations that you could tell was just the author inserting her own run of the mill twitter opinions into the book. it was like she was afraid to make the main character too unhinged or unlikeable so monologues that probably were intended to be patrick bateman-esque were just milk toast derisive remarks about how rich white women think they’re oppressed but they’re not and other things about the evils of capitalism. especially ironic because apparently the author was born into rich and well connected family.
also i fucking hate reading about the lifestyles of the rich and famous even if it’s through the lens of criticising such lifestyles. it’s like, we fucking get it. they’re rich. now let’s move on with the story.
overall a 3.5/5
No. 180275
File: 1642652004579.jpg (89.86 KB, 505x768, 10363382.jpg)
Read pic rel, quite enjoyed it. It was definitely a page turner, in fact I read it in a single day, the pov switching after every chapter kinda sucked me in. The plot overall was good as well, it had mystery, it had satisfying romance, I will be honest I was kinda disappointed with the surrealistic twist near the end, I think I would have preferred a more realistic solution to the problem than sleepwalking breast milk consuming illuminati. Think might check out his other books, at this point I don't remember how I stumbled upon this as its a bit of an old release but it had been on my to-read list 5ever.
No. 180288
File: 1642663119729.jpg (96.09 KB, 1000x1000, 7b683a03125e70562ee014e1df5418…)
>>165434Thanks for the last rec, I've been reading through Joseph Campell's Mask of Gods as of late and was wondering if any women scholars had taken a crack at his stuff. I haven't read his Hero's Journey but I think I'd prefer another expert's perspective before I get into his other stuff.
No. 180289
File: 1642663228890.png (44.66 KB, 549x1133, booklist share.png)
Waiting for these books to get in and I'll be set for a few months.
No. 180293
>>180289I think I remember one of your posts on /ot/ from a long time ago lol
Anyway I'm jelly, I want to move out soon so I can have room for more books
No. 180323
>>180068Here are some tips that worked for me:
- only read one book at a time by medium. I've got one physical book I'm reading, one on my phone (for when you have to wait somewhere), one on my computer (to read when work is boring). I've got about 20 other books on my bookshelf I still have to read, I'm not touching any until I'm done with the one I have. Allowing yourself to start another book before you're done reading one is the surest way to never finish the first book, and the more unfinished books you have the less willing to read you become
- when you decide it's time to read, try to give yourself a goal. When I'm in a reading mood I decide I'm going for 10 pages minimum, and even if I go daydreaming or start browsing the internet I still have to come back and finish those 10 pages, even if it takes me an hour to do so (I often end up reading more). Imo this forces progression more than timing yourself
- identify the boring parts that make you drop a book and just skip them. Sometimes writers really want you to picture how the beautiful cliff or woods they have in mind look like and spend several paragraphs describing them, just skim through it until you get to something interesting (books are the worst media for that kind of narration). Same thing if the writing style starts to become deliberately obtuse (lol McCarthy)
- two focusing tips I found is to hydrate yourself regularly and to place your bookmark just under the sentence you're reading, hiding the text beneath. You subconsciously read whatever's written after what you're looking at, so hiding it prevents your concentration from wandering off. It sounds like some goofy reading-with-your-finger technique but it more than doubled my reading speed
No. 180363
>>180288How are the Joesph Campbell books? I've been waiting for the weekend to start the Golden Bough by James Frazer, a book on mythology. I found about it after fishing for some small detail regarding the Fischer King myth - I don't know what, but something about had caught my interest, and I was convinced if I learnt more about it I would unlock this new knowledge. And ever since I've been looking for similar books and the Campbell ones seem good.
>>180289Holy, that's an exciting list. Do give us updates on Spiritual Taxonomies. I'll be reading something about Greece, too,
nonny. Also: where do you get your reading list? I hate Goodreads with a passion, shitty website with shitty design, but I suppose it'd be good to find interesting books. Recently I just look for whatever I'm interested in, latch onto that thread, and pull it all the way from my brain into libgen.
No. 180500
>>180478i know people who just can't transition to ebooks, which is
valid, i just dislike it when they look down on people for mainly reading ebooks. imo there's nothing inherently ~ magical ~ about a physical book (unless there's something special about the print itself or something). i totally get that the feeling of turning a page and being able to visibly see your progress through the book is appealing though.
personally i grew up with physical books and would lug home piles of up to 20 books from the local library. then i fried my attention span for a good ten years and now i'm back to reading mainly ebooks and sometimes physical books. i get immersed in both though and spend way too much time reading at night kek.
No. 180501
File: 1642745969215.jpg (103.65 KB, 455x599, the librarian.jpg)
Whoops.
>>180331meant for
>>180293>>180363These particular books were decided by what the bookseller had, in this case Hamilton Books. They're pretty good, but their selection is smaller than something like say Thriftbooks. But you can get some insane deals there. Tons of books there are ten or fifteen bucks but are thirty or forty books on other sites. I scoured endlessly through their catalogue before deciding on those books. My major complaint is that they have nearly no Spanish/bilingual books. I suggest checking them out next time you're book shopping. You might just see a deal. Sadly one of the books that I wanted, The Book of Holy Medicines, was backordered this time.
>>180478Over the years, I have read a lot of books online, but I always prefer to read physically. I grew up reading a lot of my mom's college books and someday when I have children, they will be able to read my private collection, too.
No. 180506
>>180289Reminds me fondly of college. Are any of these for class or are they just for fun?
>>180363Anon, you should read Mircea Eliade. If you're interested in the Golden Bough and Joseph Campbell, you'd love it.
No. 180566
File: 1642788534744.jpg (36.53 KB, 334x540, 16112610._SY540_.jpg)
>>175051I know I'm super late, but you might like Letters from a Lost Uncle. It's styled as an expedition log by a man exploring a fantastical version of Antarctica looking for a white lion.
No. 180606
>>180576the seven pillars of wisdom by t. e. lawrence
wasted by marya hornbacher
the charioteer by mary renault
funeral rites by jean genet
also you might be the target audience for hanya yanagiharas a little life but i cant recommend it because i didnt like it personally
No. 180678
>>180363I like his writing style, for me personally, he has a way of making what he's talking about seem engaging, mystical even. It's not nearly as dry as many others, although it can be sometimes depending on the topic at hand. He's definitely, is one of the leading voices in meta-mythology. If you don't wanna jump right into a 4-volume series, I'd suggest reading his essay work. Flight of the Wild Gander is where I started.
>>180506Mircea Eliade is good too, I haven't gotten into much but I'd to read more. I also like Woman Who Run with the Wolves by Clarissa Pinkola Estes. She's a Jungian psychoanalyst and I personally enjoy reading her stuff a lot too.
No. 180879
>>180659The characters are presented as selfish, brutal and mostly ruled by their passions (with a hint of miscegenation), which was very original (very important point to become a literature classic) for a book published in 1847, especially one written by a woman. Pride and Prejudice (1813) or Jane Eyre (1847) for instance had both much more respectable characters. Wuthering Heights set an example for how tragic and passionate love stories could be written, and although it may not be very impressive now it was rather shocking in a century where even writing the word "penis" in a novel was unthinkable. Literature classics aren't the best books ever written, they're mostly milestones
Plus it had numerous TV/theatre adaptations…
No. 180940
File: 1642898031011.jpg (154.87 KB, 650x457, d9527-30-bd0247e21f9b15d185a4-…)
I like the series Murderbot Diaries. It's about a robot who gains sentience, so it becomes socially awkward. It's a sci-fi series written by a woman, yay!
(This is just the Japanese edition of the book. I thought it looked cute.)
No. 180993
File: 1642914868581.jpg (24.24 KB, 322x500, 41N0vGqf gL.jpg)
>>180809I am only 1 chapter into picrel, but I like it so far. It seems focused on telling real-life stories/history, without being too preachy.
No. 181003
>>180809I hate men but I just didn't get into the SCUM manifesto, it felt just cringy and pointless
the dumbass who failed to shoot a man who was right in front of her multiple times is just I don't know just seems kinda dumb
It comes across as a bullied nerd's journal(just replaces men overall with the Jocks) talking about what their gonna get revenge and men will pay or whatever, when we all know that men will just end any potential violent revolution with a single backhand and it will be over
No. 181048
File: 1642936979204.jpg (194.76 KB, 1024x1024, penguin-pile.jpg)
>>179352>>179377>>179429>>179545>>179687thank you for all your replies, anons! here's what classics i read since the beginning of the year:
my cousin rachel - loved this one, will probably re-read it one day.
emma - snooze fest. i like emma as a character but i dislike the writing style a lot.
the island of dr moreau - interesting, strangely enjoyable.
passing - enjoyable read, very insightful re: culture of the time regarding black people.
the time machine - again, strangely enjoyable and interesting, but less so than the island of dr moreau.
the thirty-nine steps - hilarious and fast-paced.
the great gatsby - this one was a re-read, it's still one of my faves. i love how unhinged and ridiculous gatsby is. my country isn't english speaking so it's not part of the curriculum to read this book, but i always wonder why so many americans hate this book.
the invisible man - i think this one is my fave hg wells book. i just love how he talks about the struggles of the invisible man and portrays his invisibility very realistically (how his food is visible in his stomach or how difficult it is to be naked in the cold in order to be invisible)
the great god pan - i loved the first story (the great god pan) but the other ones (the red hand, the white people, novel of the white powder) were boring as hell and absolutely paled in comparison to the great god pan.
the war of the worlds - i know this is said to be his most influential novel but i found this one to be the most boring of the four hg wells novels i read. it's just very dry and stale. i can see how he influenced future works though; the whole time i imagined the tripods to look and act like the guardians in botw.
i didn't bother with northanger abbey because jane austen. i also dropped the garden party (the short story collection) by katherine mansfield because her writing style is just too mundane and every day life-y. i can see how just one of her stories can be productive/interesting for an english class, but reading the same every day trifles over and over again is just too mind numbingly boring for me.
i'll take a break from classics now kek.
No. 181059
File: 1642941087756.jpg (35.7 KB, 540x304, original[1].jpg)
>>181048Did you just read 10 books in 20 days
No. 181069
File: 1642942788721.jpeg (26.05 KB, 300x458, 46D2C74D-8EFB-46F2-B878-E96E2B…)
recently started reading the tenant of wildfell hall by anne brontë. already i am in love with the writing and i find it surprisingly warm and modern and easy to read. i’m not sure if i’ve just matured a bit and developed my reading skills but i’m really enjoying reading this in a way that i didn’t enjoy reading wuthering heights (read last year) or jane eyre (read in high school 7 years ago). excited to see how the story unfolds and to read more of anne’s early feminist musings.
i find it quite interesting that this was originally published under a male name. i don’t know what it is but so far the protagonist (who is a man) has a lot of “man written by a woman” energy sorry to sound like a dumb zoomer
No. 181070
>>181059yeah, i spend a lot of time reading. usually 3-5 hours every night.
>>181069this is on my list as well!
No. 181083
File: 1642947573768.jpg (191.85 KB, 967x643, ruhnama.jpg)
>>180506No, just for my own edification. I try to be eclectic to learn new things and be exposed to strange concepts. I am right now reading pic related and it's strange.
No. 181254
>>181070That's cool you read all that, your English must be really good! Finding titles that were popular in their day but not as known now are fun reads. I don't have it in me to read classics so quickly, usually it takes me longer to digest them and I have to spread them out over a longer period (but if it starts getting good in the second half I pick up the pace). What are you going to read now? Contemporary literature? Personally I try to alternate fiction with nonfiction so I don't get burnt out.
>i love how unhinged and ridiculous gatsby is. my country isn't english speaking so it's not part of the curriculum to read this book, but i always wonder why so many americans hate this book.Different books click with different people and many probably found it annoying as teens. Can't really relate and unless you pay attention won't find it funny. Being forced to analyze and write essays about symbolism in school can really kill an interest in reading.
No. 181317
File: 1643015413165.png (190.21 KB, 516x446, PDviiNL.png)
>>181102The 2d dog diagram in A Brief History of Time
No. 181341
>>181254i'm going to read some contemporary literature, since i'm super interested in the books by grady hendrix some anons mentioned upthread! i also have a few more self help books to read, about digital minimalism and more mindful spending habits.
>Being forced to analyze and write essays about symbolism in school can really kill an interest in reading.oooh, yeah, i get that. i always hated doing that with poems because i always prefer to "feel" poems instead of analyzing them and sitting in high school or university and ripping poems apart to analyze every single line always killed any joy i had for the poem in question.
No. 181365
File: 1643033300368.jpg (928.66 KB, 1650x2550, 53180064.jpg)
i'm only 2 chapters into "a certain hunger" but i think you nonnitas who like unhinged women literature would love it. the book is framed to be the memoir of a 50-something woman who was a popular food critic but now she's an imprisoned serial killer because she murdered and ate her past lovers. here's some killer quotes, mostly from chapter 2:
"It's such an intimate thing, to witness another's death. Orgasms are a dime a dozen. Any old human woman can see a man orgasm. We so rarely get to see them die; it has been my greatest gift and my most divine privilege."
"Indeed, I am the Bronze Copper of psychopaths, a big, beautiful auburn butterfly that flaps her darkling wings as she eats. I am rare, and sequestered in this endlessly gray penal institution, I am endangered."
"As a woman psychopath, the white tiger of human psychological deviance, I am a wonder, and I relish in your awe."
"We women have an emotional wiliness that shellacs us in a glossy patina of caring. We have been raised to take interest in promoting the healthy interior lives of other humans; preparation, I suppose, for taking on the emotional labor of moterhood–or marriage; either way, really. Few women come into maturity unscathed by the suffocating pink dress of girlhood, and even psychopaths are touched by the long, frilly arm of feminine expectations. It's not that women psychopaths don't exist; it's that we fake it better than men."
"Feminism comes to all things, it seems, but it comes to recognizing homicidal rage the slowest."
and my absolute favorite:
"You who call women the fairer sex, you may repress and deny all you want, but some of us were born with a howling void where our souls should sway."
at first i was taken aback because she seemed so unlikable and full of herself, but as the first chapter progressed (and throughout the 2nd chapter) i really started to like her. she's a psychopath and she loves it and i love her for that.
No. 181423
File: 1643050235999.jpg (245.53 KB, 1127x1201, 1504298813425.jpg)
>>181365ngl sound pretentious asf, not really even unhinged rather something you'd find on some teenage girl's tumblr girl
and the fact this is only from 2 chapters, Its just kinda cringe
No. 181425
File: 1643051117016.gif (732.4 KB, 300x168, tumblr_pds6s5S1Cx1two5gm_400.g…)
>>181365the premise and prose sound nice to me, so I will give it a download
>>181423maybe the second and third quote sounds like "tumblr prose" but the rest passable.
No. 181447
>>181423Kek have you ever read letters written by serial killers? Many of them absolutely have god complexes and go way overboard with the purple prose. Her writing sounds like it could be legit to me. This was a poem by the BTK killer Dennis Rader to an almost
victim:
Oh, Anna Why Didn't You Appear
T' was perfect plan of deviant pleasure so bold on that Spring nite
My inner felling hot with propension of the new awakening season
Warn, wet with inner fear and rapture, my pleasure of entanglement, like new vines at night
Oh, Anna, Why Didn't You Appear
Drop of fear fresh Spring rain would roll down from your nakedness to scent to lofty fever that burns within,
In that small world of longing, fear, rapture, and desparation,the game we play, fall on devil ears
Fantasy spring forth, mounts, to storm fury, then winter clam at the end.
Oh, Anna Why Didn't You Appear
Alone, now in another time span I lay with sweet enrapture garments across most private thought
Bed of Spring moist grass, clean before the sun, enslaved with control, warm wind scenting the air, sun light sparkle tears in eyes so deep and clear.
Alone again I trod in pass memory of mirrors, and ponder why for number eight was not.
Oh, Anna Why Didn't You Appear
No. 181464
File: 1643071364010.jpg (65.08 KB, 600x800, golden statue.jpg)
>>181094>>181102The book is varied. Some of it is history, some of it is parables, some of it is autobiography, some of it is poetry, some of it religious, and the Turkmenistan Constitution and succession treaty from the USSR are just lazily copy and pasted in there. The book is randomly slapped together, but it's hard to tell how sucky it really is because this English translation is the laziest thing I have ever seen. Words are transliterated differently for no reason, same names have random numbers in them, there have been sections that were repeated or misplaced in an obvious printing error, etc. Add onto that and Turkmenbasy talks at great length about Turkmen folk heroes and traditions without explanation because this is a book for Turkmen and they know who these people are, but since the rest of the world doesn't care about Turkmen or Turkmenistan, good luck trying to find anything out about them.
I know that Turkmenistan has a terrible international reputation, although I don't know exactly what kind of atrocities are done there, but honestly the spiritual feeling of the book is good. A megalomaniac dictator wrote this and forced everyone to read it and memorize it, that's true, but the contents of the book are generally quite sweet. Turkmenbasy clearly states that he's writing this book as a moral start for their new nation, and as a continuation of 5,000 years of proud Turkmen history. But despite that, he doesn't say that Turkmen are better than anyone else, just that they are also great. He repeatedly stresses being against war and welcoming strangers. You can really see the effect that being a poor orphan in a desolate Soviet shithole had on him from a young age.
Once I finish the book, I'm going to seriously look into why Turkmenistan is ranked among the worst countries in the world for human rights. But right now, I want to be lulled in and I want to believe Turkmenbasy's raw compassion and love for Allah, the Truth.
No. 181480
>>181447Is is explained how she kills the male
victims, does she poison them(which is realsistic) or is it pure dumb fantasy where she some how overpowers men and kills them but "aesthetically
No. 181495
File: 1643087799508.gif (2.56 MB, 322x178, 1643020911635.gif)
>>181365looked up some more quotes online, came across this one
>"Over trays of Bonnie Bell Lipsmackers and mountains of cooling fries, I learned that being female is as prefab, thoughtless, soulless and abjectly capitalist as a Big Mac. It's not important that it's real. It's only important that it's tasty."This sounds so bad
No. 181521
>>181493It's very common even in literature classics, the oldest protagonist I can think of being Jean Valjean (64 years old at the end of Les Misérables).
The main reason is that writers usually create protagonists who look like them or have similar lives, not out of sheer narcissism but because it's rather difficult to imagine the inner thoughts of someone who's in a different social class, who's much older than you or has a different job. You can even guess the writer's jobs and life by reading about his characters (Stan Lee for instance actually used to deliver not pizzas, but sandwiches)
Writers being usually young, as it's a career you don't wait to be old to start, the protagonists are then themselves usually young, simply because they have to be the character the writer knows the most about, and the writers just don't know or care about how an older person think. You get some exceptions when a writer was successful at a younger age and keeps writing books until he gets older himself (Victor Hugo was 60 when he was done with Les Misérables, which explains the much older than usual protagonist)
There are also, at least partly, marketing reasons behind this, as younger, inexperienced readers may not want to read stories about "old people" (40+ years old), or read about things that they'd much prefer to exclusively involve characters their age, like sex scenes
No. 181540
>>181525Does the text make that obvious though, it doesn't seem like American Psycho where the "joke" of Patrick's vapid narcissism and materialism due to his own insecurities is very easily untestable
its like a less well written version of American Psycho
No. 181544
>>181365>>181423>>181495>>181525i read that book and it's fun. what you have to remember is that this book is supposed to be her autobiography and she explains early on that she changes her behavior in order to get the most attention. i think she even consults the dsm in the prison library and looks up symptoms of other mental illnesses to keep the psychology phd students who want to analyze her interested. she directly addresses the reader of the 'biography' and makes fun of them for probably being bored because of her lengthy descriptions because they would rather read about something else. you're not supposed to take everything she says at face value because the waffling she does is to keep up this picture of the sophisticated gourmet black widow serial killer. she's an unreliable narrator and you are supposed to roll her eyes at her over the top descriptions and her constant mentions of the men she supposedly fucked. this quote
>>181495 sounds dumb when taken out of context, but when you read it in the context of the book, as in embedded in the text, it makes sense, insofar that our narrator is a psychopath and loves it and wants the attention she gets for being a female psychopath so she says the craziest things to keep people interested.
>>181480she kills them by poisoning them and/or making sure that they are unable to move. almost every time she murders someone, she complains that she doesn't have the physical strength required to wrangle the dead bodies around, so she has to get crafty. not a serial killer obviously but i found the portrayals quite realistic what with how difficult it was for her to achieve her goals by being a woman. she also mentions that she's 6'' and she still has difficulties carrying out her plans.
it's not a masterpiece, but the narrator definitely is a fun head to be in.
No. 181545
File: 1643115438002.jpeg (31.68 KB, 318x434, 07A1908F-1AB2-4629-A2C3-6B3D2E…)
just read picrel because it’s gotten a lot of hype and i wanted to know if any anons here read poetry? i’m kind of new to reading poetry and kind of just read what gets hyped up on tumblr but i have no idea how to read poetry effectively. even though it’s in english it feels like a second language and i just feel confused and frustrated . does anyone have any poetry recommendations or tips on how to read and analyze it? i feel so dumb right now
No. 181552
>>181543It was called Me You Madness, the main actress of the movie was also the director, writer and producer of the film
>>181365>>181544To the anon who recommend a certain hunger would say there any similarities to Me You Madness
No. 181554
File: 1643118457205.jpg (27.48 KB, 580x261, 239599810.jpg)
>>181545Poetry is clearly the most cryptic literary genre there is, as it's designed more to elicit emotions than describe a narrative. Sometimes the words don't even mean anything and are chosen just for how they sound, which is why it's often advised to read poems out loud (poems being long associated with songs). Sometimes they are chosen to evoke something personal to the poet, which means you have to read it over several times and infer why a particular word was picked over another, or even to read about the poet's life.
Contemporary poetry is much harder to "get" than older poetry, since at some point poets realized that a poem doesn't need to be that understandable to create emotions (
https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Lustra/In_a_Station_of_the_Metro for instance, about 50 years earlier than meaningless song lyrics)
which is why you'll find anything written before the 20th century much less frustrating to read. Not that everything written today is trash, just that it takes some getting used to, and is mostly written for other poets.
You can give Plath's Ariel a try, she at least attempts to be readable, plus any selection of the following if you want to get a better sense of how good poems are supposed to be written :
http://momobookblog.blogspot.com/2017/02/bbc-nations-favourite-poems.html No. 181559
>>181493A recent pleasantly surprising read for me was surrealist artist Leonora Carrington's "the Hearing Trumpet", which is from the perspective of an elderly woman(best to go in blind for full effect, imo, just keeping in mind who the writer is).
Margaret Atwood's "the Blind Assassin" has been a challenge for me to stay focused on, I'm only like 1/5th through, but it is basically a memoir from an old woman that jumps around to different times in her life. This reminded me I need to buckle down and finish it.
I know you don't necessarily mean a 90 year old protag but I happened to think of these two books immediately.
No. 181584
>>181554NTA but thanks for the links, anon
>>181493>>181559Death in her hands has an elderly female protagonist too (she's 70 or 80)
No. 181631
File: 1643149787379.jpg (32.74 KB, 316x475, 55249861._SY475_.jpg)
Anons who download and read tbooks on their computer/phone/e-reader, which sites do you use? I'm familiar with libgen, zlibrary and freebookspot but I just can't find the book I'm looking for anywhere! It's unavailable from my local or any surrounding libraries too. It's The Savage Instinct by M.M. DeLuca (aka Marjorie DeLuca). I would buy it but it's I'm a poorfag trying to save £££. are there any other sites for ebooks or even just psds I'm missing?
No. 181695
>>181638Thanks for the suggestions. I didn't know archive.org could be used for books. I don't see anywhere on Amazon to buy the book as an ebook, only paperback. On the US amazon site they advertise it as being available for Kindle though. I'm in the UK but I do have a US amazon account too so I'll look into it.
Failing that, I think I might see if my library takes requests, there might be a way for them to source it from outside my county hopefully. Thanks again!
No. 181697
File: 1643186484402.png (272.03 KB, 700x467, 1876.png)
the relationships in wuthering heights are confusing.
No. 181701
File: 1643190357418.jpeg (340.51 KB, 828x647, 3E34E91B-D980-44B5-860F-2F1EA2…)
nothing about this is encouraging
No. 181702
File: 1643191084876.jpg (712.9 KB, 2717x3425, bloomsbury group relationships…)
>>181697that's nothing compared to IRL bloomsbury group
bunch of fucking degenerates
No. 181714
>>181703Forgot to mention that I have checked on mIRC for anon (although on 1 channel out of 2 that are used, #bookz on Undernet - maybe the other one has it) and the book wasn't there. That's why I suggested returning it to Amazon. But I agree that IRC is great for getting books if they aren't on the usual sources. Though archive.org is the best when it comes to print-only books, which is worth keeping in mind.
>>181695Fuck it sucks, can't you buy on the US Amazon? I did it a few times. Polish Amazon is my native one, but I was able to buy ebooks on the USA one. Give it a shot! I think your account works on every Amazon iteration. You need to login on the USA one, though.
No. 181728
File: 1643204580427.png (196.79 KB, 1370x309, 5555.png)
any recommendations for a books with worlds similar to what's described picrel
not exactly as stated in the post but one's where men serve as the worker/warrior class(basically any and all physical labor jobs) and women are the intelligentsia and leaders of society
I feel like most fictional matriarchal societies are always rather lazy and never make a sense, 90% of the time it seems like its just our gender dynamics reversed but men are still visibly bigger and likely stronger then women
No. 181734
>>181731I'm on book 13 of WoT and I personally wouldn't describe it this way. It is a matriarchy, but women don't outnumber men. The polygamy with the main character is because it turns out Rand is
part Aiel, and polygamy is something practiced in Aiel culture. Also because WoT is basically a ripoff of Dune in many ways, and although I haven't read Dune, I've heard it borrows heavily from Islamic culture. Rand isn't "the exception" either, and the author kinda failed at writing a polygamous relationship because 99% of the time he's with one of the women.. or maybe that's a more accurate portrayal lol. But all of the other main couples in those books are monogamous, thankfully.
I don't think WoT is usually shilled as a feminist series either. The Gender Wars is one of the biggest complaints people have about it, how the women are always complaining about the men and vise versa. The author def had some issues with women.
No. 181744
>>181738I've heard about the book but I have no intention to ever read it, It could possibly be the greatest peace of fiction in the world and I still wouldn't read it
I was abused as a kid and I cannot support a fucking child abuser
No. 181754
File: 1643216442774.png (262.2 KB, 619x434, KFspjjZ[1].png)
>>181697To say nothing of the sudden bouts of yorkshire english
No. 181755
>>181702oh wow. i never heard of that term before
despite being an english major, but then again we also barely read any classics so i shouldn't be surprised but they would make an interesting tv show cast, i think.
>>181754i hate it so much. i'm not a native speaker so i always sit there and read those sentences super slowly and mutter them under my breath to understand half of what he's saying. i had the same issue when reading the secret garden, kek.
No. 181766
File: 1643221957778.jpg (9.49 KB, 465x108, gay af.jpg)
Because of a certain video game that shall not be named because of spoilers I suddenly want to reread Sherlock Holmes stories just to see how gay Holmes and Watson are for each other, but in English this time. I forgot most of the mysteries because last time I read everything I was in high school, that was like over ten years ago I think.
No. 181784
File: 1643228586197.png (98.04 KB, 298x403, andy long choo.png)
>>181701I bet she wrote a ton of fanfic and uses old fandom phrases like 'whumph'
No. 181805
I will probably post this in stupid questions too, but i figured this is a good place to start.
I have access to DeepL for this month. Do you know of any good books in your language that haven't been translated to English (and never will be)? If you know of any Japanese shit, that would be neat too. I'm open to different topics, but atm I'm primarly interested in true crime, the female experience with trauma/mental illness/pedophiles, dolls and pugs.
I've already ran the below books through machine translation:
>Wij Zijn Maar Wij Zijn Niet Geschift (We Are But We Are Not Psycho) by Tim Krabbé (this one is also available here https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1qodnWdaoixICFP4Vh-zAv1DUMOx3hpY3, IDK if the translation is better than my DeepL file - also looks machine translated)>Innocence by Eva IonescoPlanning to translate
>Loi Error 404 by Plaaastic (a new ebook source, possibly? https://www.dtv-ebook.com/loi-error-404-plaaastic_6047.html)Obviously nothing that is overly poetic since even DeepL will not be able to deal with it.
No. 181889
File: 1643271682655.png (23.05 KB, 1145x246, fanfic.png)
Sad to hear that the author who wrote the short story for Brokeback Mountain was plagued by gay erotic fanfics by misogynistic faggots.
No. 181890
File: 1643272053160.jpg (1.83 MB, 3024x1136, 20190823_173326.jpg)
>>181882Hard agree. She's no different than George RR Martin inserting his incest fetish into the entirety of Game of Thrones (and his big black nipples fetish). Some people enjoy voyeuristic psychological torture porn of fictional males and personally I think that's based.
No. 181906
File: 1643278508318.jpg (9.77 KB, 333x301, e6b.jpg)
>>181894did you not read the picrel? the issue is that people SEND her their works and expect praise for '''fixing''' her story. i bet she doesn't give a fuck about some brokeback mountain fanfic posted on ao3.
No. 181915
2/3 done with to paradise, its getting extremely boring. outside of the pandemic angle and like 80% of characters being (boring) gay men it has nothing going for it. its also not anywhere close to as miserable and voyeuristic as a little life was so far, i think people will forget this one existed soon like they did with the people in the trees
>>181826agree with this
>>181889obviously messed up but i find it fascinating that its men who write the brokeback mountain fanfic shes being plagued with, actual gay men are a tiny minority within the scene. scrotes…
No. 181960
File: 1643304260707.jpg (30.75 KB, 640x466, C6iW1b0V4AArTQf.jpg)
>>181697update, i'm almost done with volume 1 of wuthering heights and it's hilarious. like, depressing, but so hilarious at some points. cathy is such a bpdchan. that absolute power move when her soon-to-be in-laws called her to their house to nurse her back to health and she transmitted her disease to them and they both died. and then she comes back to wuthering heights being a bigger bitch than before. what a queen.
picrel is heathcliff and cathy when cathy first comes back and exclaims that heathcliff is dirty and heathcliff throws a fit and claims that he likes being dirty.
No. 181969
File: 1643308759343.png (325.83 KB, 990x448, JjZ4UA7.png)
>>181960I mainly read Wuthering Heights to understand the Hark a vagrant comics about it
No. 182299
File: 1643477794545.jpg (467.7 KB, 1684x2560, 266526756.jpg)
Has anyone else read All the Ugly and Wonderful Things by Bryn Greenwood? In short it's about a relationship between a child and a grown man. Iirc they get together when she is 13 and he's in his mid 20s, but he's sort of a parental figure to her from a young age. I thought it was really disgusting and it felt like the author genuinely portrayed it as some sort of beautiful love story. Would love to hear other anons thoughts on this one.
>>182192Completely agree. I have zero interests in her books, but I can't bring myself to feel angry over the way she frames her male characters. Good for her, tbh.
No. 182362
>>182299I have not read it, but ew, ew, ew. I am shocked the author is female. The author claims her dad was a drug dealer, it makes me sad and disgusted to think the book might be rooted in reality.
I looked it up on Goodreads, someone called it out for being pedophilia, and someone else replied, "Hit a nerve, much? Abuse comes in many forms… and love and salvation can be found in unlikely places. Not everything is black and white." wtf man.
Also my high school English teacher (female) rated it 4 stars lmao…
No. 182415
File: 1643530642385.jpg (119.41 KB, 1028x643, turkmenistan flag.jpg)
>>181094>>181102I finished Ruhnama the other day and figured I might as well give my two cents on it.
It's divided into 5 sections and only 1 and 5 are worth a damn. They generally contain the most emotional, spiritual, and most eclectic contents of the work. The middle three books are largely plagiarized history books of Turkmen history that is incomprehensible because the English translation is at times nearly unreadable it is so inconsistent and full of transcription errors. But books 1 and 5 contain the most emotional aspects of Turkmenbasy and you can even kind of convince yourself to drink the kool-aid a little bit and ignore the despotic state of Turkmenistan when he's talking about his great love for his people, the importance of family and love in a society, and all that jazz.
Book 5 is especially interesting because it is generally more organized than the preceding books which are really randomly slapped together as he thought of things to say. It has a deliberate division of ideas on united themes, starting with family in general and then especially the father, then the mother, then children, etc. A lot of what he said was really beautiful and sometimes strange, but he is coming from a patriarchal Muslim country, so that's no surprise. Even so, I think the section on mothers was substantially more personal to him than the section on fathers because he lost his mother when he was about 8 whereas he lost his father earlier. So, he really knew his mother and felt the loss more profoundly than his father, who he never really knew. He basically boils the role of father into respect and protection, whereas the role of mother is about love and compassion.
It's telling when the section on fathers is titled "A FATHER HAS THE RIGHTS OF ALLAH" and the section on mothers is called "NONE WOULD CARE AS MUCH AS MY MOTHER WOULD."
In 2002, in a fit of megalomania, he legally changed the name of all months and days of the week. Of course the first month is named after him. But interestingly he named April after his mother and one of the days of the week translates as "Mother Day." His father did not get a corresponding a month nor is there a corresponding "Father Day" in the week. Also, I didn't know this until I started writing this post, but he tried to replace the Turkmen word for "bread" with his mother's name!
I know he was a despotic tyrant, but it's hard to ignore the poor little orphan inside of him. I do truly believe him when he writes that he would give up everything in life to see his parents again.
No. 182416
File: 1643531909112.jpg (2.28 MB, 2453x2918, Gurbansoltan Eje with son.jpg)
>>182415Adding onto that, there are a few passages that I want to share.
From the section on fathers:
The child has different thoughts of his father at different ages:
5 years old: "My father knows everything."
10 years old: "My father knows quite a lot."
15 years old: "I know as much as my father."
20 years old: "To tell the truth, my father does not know anything."
30 years old: "Nevertheless, my father knows something."
40 years old: "It would be fine if I consulted my father."
50 years old: "My father knows everything."
60 years old: "If only my father were alive and I could consult him about this and that. I should have appreciated him properly when he was alive."
Later in the section of fathers:
"But Allah deprived me of maternal affection and paternal patronage. Therefore I knew the value of parents even before I had children. I felt lacking and low in myself compared to my friends when their fathers expressed affection to them. I used to feel bad, in a way inferior, when their fathers would smile at them."
Later in the section of fathers:
"I sometimes feel that I am not myself, and I am my father instead. It is as if I touch through his hands and not mine. It is as is I move forward on his feet and not mine. It is as if I speak through his tongue and not mine. This sounds strange and interesting at first sight. It is indeed not the kind of feeling that you could talk about to someone unless you had felt it. At those times, I feel that my father's movements, characteristics and behaviors are reviving in me. I understand that my father is reviving in me."
I think that because he is a man, he can conceptualize the father he never had through himself both as a man in general and as a "father" to his country. But since he's not a woman, he cannot do the same thing to cope with the loss of his mother, who he personally knew. He cannot experience the same level of unconditional love to himself as a mother can because it is natural for one to love oneself.
From the section on mothers:
"If one's father passes away, then one is in need of material things. If one's mother passes away, then one suffers from lack of love."
And:
"A child is part of his father's body, but he is part of his mother's heart."
And:
"Fatherless, I am orphan; motherless, I am captive…….. Fate decreed two pains for me. I was both an orphan and a captive. This double suffering is recognized only by those who have faced it. I can say that the severest pain is the need for maternal love. The pain felt by the heart is sharper than bodily suffering. Bodily pain abates, but the pain felt by the heart goes on, bleeds all the time and remains with one, as long as one's heart remains beating."
I could go on, but I think that's enough Ruhnama sperging. By the way, pic related is a statute he made of his mother and himself, holding a copy of Ruhnama. All that being said, I wouldn't recommend it to anyone because like I said, it's mostly crap from a crazy man.
No. 182426
File: 1643540784515.jpg (830.39 KB, 1500x3688, 1270061661552[1].jpg)
>>182423I personally try to focus on classics so I just save about a dozen recommendation lists like this one then read first the books that come back the most, then eventually (won't happen lol) all of them
https://4chanlit.fandom.com/wiki/Recommended_Reading/subIf I one day were done with all of these I guess I'd read whatever got the biggest literary prizes this year, expand into other genres I'm less familiar with or start learning the ten or so great lit languages to re-read the classics I had to read in a translated version
No. 182435
>>182423Especially for non-fiction, it's easy to use a book that you just read to pick other books through followings its bibliography. Much of a book's bibliography will be about the same topic which might not appeal to you, but a lot of times the bibliography will contain tangentially related topics that just so happened to be of use to that book about a different topic.
And whenever you're in doubt, you can always read more books by the same author. Or read books that inspired that author, if you know them.
No. 182439
File: 1643550400271.jpg (126.55 KB, 423x643, the snouters.jpg)
>>171624My favorite and most valued individual book is my dad's old copy of The Snouters. But my favorite book in general is impossible to say.
No. 182567
>>182427>>182423I've read many books recommended through this thread and most of them were great! This has become one of my favorite threads, love you nonitas.
As for finding books to read, I like to just browse the library or the bookstore for ideas. My library's homepage usually has a bunch of recommendations, old and new, might be worth checking out. I check out articles on Goodreads about new books coming out, I keep up with what my friends are reading. Sometimes I browse the recs on my Kindle. Really just always keeping my eyes open for new books.
No. 182908
>>182637Mmk, here are some random recs of stuff I've enjoyed recently. I really love Amy Tan's stuff, which is mostly about Chinese or Chinese-American women – I'm not either (or even Asian), she just tells great stories about women's lives. Can be kind of brutal sometimes, but not horrific. Joy Luck Club is a classic for a reason, mostly about mothers and daughters. I like Valley of Amazement too.
Emma Donoghue is definitely most famous for Room now, but her historical fiction is great. The Wonder is really interesting – about an English nurse in the 1800s who's sent to investigate a little Irish girl who is apparently living without needing to eat. Some romance with a guy, but it's very minor. If you're open to more romance-centric stuff without dudes, The Pull of the Stars is a great, super intense story told over the course of a couple of days of the 1918 flu epidemic.
I read God Spare the Girls by Kelsey McKinney recently and liked it. It's about two daughters of a megachurch pastor who learn their dad has had an affair. One is preparing for her own marriage, and both are struggling to figure out what they even believe in anymore. Really interesting look at that whole world.
If you're at all interested in Greek myths, there're a lot of retold classics happening right now. Madeleine Miller's Circe is the biggest, but also the most dude-centric. Natalie Haynes' A Thousand Ships retells the whole Trojan War from the point of view of women, while Pat Barker's The Silence of the Girls does the Iliad.
The Echo Wife by Sarah Gailey is sci-fi, and definitely affected by the protagonist's ex-husband but also definitely not a romance. Basically, protag finds out her husband cloned her, but edited her personality. Not horror, but dark.
Elizabeth Gilbert's The Signature of All Things is a huge, sweeping historical life story about a really great, really weird (complimentary!) woman of the 1800s, who becomes a scientist of moss. There is romance, but it's a minority of the book and it doesn't turn out like you might expect. I love City of Girls by her too, but there's more focus on men there.
No. 183565
File: 1643820941292.jpeg (2.19 MB, 1668x2049, E4C251A0-457C-410E-86E6-C0D0CB…)
This is just a thought i had when i looked at this goodreads newsletter
Aren’t all these covers super ugly…?
No. 184170
File: 1643960291004.jpeg (1.59 MB, 3464x3464, A012E61F-BFD4-4350-96D6-E37DB7…)
The used book store I frequent has a “bag of books” sale twice a month. $8 for as many books as you can fit into one of those plastic grocery bags. It was there that I found Pillars of the Earth by Ken Follet. I put it into my bag, recalling that I’d seen a lot of hype for it years ago. I sat down to read it today and promptly threw it in the trash bin about 80-ish pages in. Goodreads review related; I’ve never agreed so much.
No. 184191
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>>183565the current trend in book covers seems to be either that overloaded YA style or corporate art.
i kinda miss back when everyone in germany copied the style of the german twilight covers so you'd always see these female bodies/faces with texture overlays. they still had more soul than every cover i see in booktok YA recommendations.
No. 185006
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can anyone rec me a book that's either centered around horses or just involve a lot of horses, but is NOT YA and is actually of good quality? basically none of the famous ones, the horse whisperer, black beauty etc. it doesn't have to be "a horse book" it just has to have horses being somewhat important to the plot. any genre goes. i'm begging.
No. 185033
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I'm currently reading Yukio Mishima's Sea of Fertility tetralogy. I finished Spring Snow and I'm about halfway through Runaway Horses right now. I'm enjoying it so far! It's been a long time since I've read fiction. I stopped reading fiction after college and nothing really appealed to me so I've just been reading a lot of nonfiction, and I feel like now I'm struggling as I readjust to reading wordy descriptions of shit.
I'm excited to finish the tetralogy and read Confessions of a Mask. It was an assigned reading in college but I never did any of my readings but now I'm kicking myself for not. I'm surprised a book about homosexuality was so popular and pushed Mishima into the spotlight. I think Mishima himself is a pretty interesting character. I didn't even realize Sea of Fertility was by him, I saw it mentioned on an article reviewing Evangelion so I decided to randomly pick it up. Most of what I remember about Mishima was his botched beheading kek.
I used to read Murakami, but I've now accepted that his books are really lackluster (to me, at least). I only enjoyed Underground, which was nonfiction anyway, and Kafka on the Shore because of the back and forth perspectives between chapters. Norwegian Wood is okay. I didn't finish Wind up Bird Chronicle, wasn't interested in A Wild Sheep Chase that was also another assigned reading, and I got around a hundred pages into 1Q89 but it never really captivated me. I kind of don't get why Murakami is popular now that I think about it. I only started reading him because as a young weeb I didn't know of any non-manga Japanese authors and he was everywhere.
No. 185056
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>>185033You should try Thirst for Love as well, especially if you like fiction about unhinged women. The passage describing the protagonist's husband's death from typhoid is the most striking thing I've ever read.
No. 185210
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>>185033The Sea of Fertility series reignited my love of literature after it languished for nearly two years after graduating college. Eventually I got to the point where I decided I would read X chapters a day and record them on a calendar to commit myself. I chose those books because I bought them years before and still hadn't read them. I was very moved. I had only read "Patriotism" by Mishima at that time - actually, I still haven't read any more Mishima since then! My tastes are generally older, considerably older. But they're on my to do list!
I hope you enjoy them and they rekindle a love of fiction in you,
nonny! I'd love to hear your impressions after each book, especially. I remember writing my mom letters about the books as I finished them and talking about how I was getting back into reading because of them. It was a very personal time. They're not my favorite books - or anywhere near - but they'll always have a special place in my heart.
No. 185212
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Currently reading picrel, it's really good! I've always liked body horror, but never read a lot as I prefer to read about women but body horror written by men about women is usually gross. Whereas this has great prose, women at the centre of every short story, and is genuinely eerie and atmospheric.
No. 185282
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No. 185325
>>185218Is this a list of Cyberpunk books?
The Neuromancer trilogy / Burning Chrome are pretty much a necessity to read if you're into the genre.
Islands in the Net is a bit of a subversion where it's following someone who is on the corporations side.
When Gravity Fails has a neat middle eastern setting, but the last book is unfinished.
Snow Crash is a bit of a satire.
Do Androids Dream is actually very different from the Blade Runner movie.
Altered Carbon was sort of interesting but way too much sex for me, and the Netflix show changes up a bunch of plotpoints.
Software books are sort of goofy like some really weird ideas.
Hardwired is pretty generic, but not bad.
Some here that I haven't read yet. Where'd you get it from?
No. 185356
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i wish there were more blogs that post full summaries of books. sometimes i wanna know the twist of a novel but the novel/genre itself isn't my type or the writing/characters are bad or boring. it's especially annoying with like crime fiction or these "spoohooky things are a-happening to a female protagonist!" stories - the premise draws me in, but i actually don't enjoy reading these types of books, but i'm still curious, grrr.
No. 185381
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>>185006These but they are a little childish (except for the last one)
No. 185857
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i know this book has been talked about a lot on these threads, but i finally got around to reading earthlings. i really liked it, but it also disturbed me greatly (which i guess is the point). not sure if like it as much as convenience store woman tho. love murata's writing style though, there's something so visceral about how she writes about alienation and exclusion from mainstream norms
No. 185912
>>185864give me recs
nonny. I haven't read much older stuff (mostly after 2000s), I love plots with good enemies to lovers relationships and bickering.
No. 186000
>>185912You will very much enjoy Sweet Savage Love then. It is a classic and was a bit popular in the 70s. Crazy shit and my absolute favorite bodice ripper.
>>185885>Sweet Savage Love>The Silver Devil>This Other Eden>Lady Vixen>The Flesh and the Devil>Savage Surrender>While Passion Sleeps>Bound by the Heart (kek I like pirate shit)>Wicked Loving LiesThese are all of my favs. I recommend checking them out on Goodreads to see what interests you the most. There's also tons of bodice ripper book lists over on Goodreads where ladies compiled some different books in their shelves.
No. 186203
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what the fuck is the appeal of the cruel prince books
No. 186366
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Just started picrel. I'm only 20 pages in, and the writing style seems a little chaotic/confusing to me. But I'll keep going, because it's cool to read horror by an Asian woman. It's really short (~100 pages) and I like the cover, too.