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I'm an idiot and posted in the wrong place. Here is a copypasta of what I wrote in FCJ. Thanks /u/tanglisha
I'm finishing up Man's Search for Meaning by Viktor Frankl before I start Meditations by Marcus Aurelius. I'm on a psychology/stoicism kick and it's been the shit. All this nonfiction is a nice change of pace from my usual reading. If you have recommendations that fall into cool psychology based nonfiction books, I'd love to hear them.
Thanks for the recommendations for new books /u/Homoerotica
I finished Way of Kings, and then started (and finished) Words of Radiance. I really liked these, though it took me quite some time to get really into the first one. I'm now working on The Water Knife and Thinking, Fast and Slow. I'm liking The Water Knife so far, though Paolo Bacigalupi seems to have a very distinct style of story telling.
/u/catsaddlez got me a Kindle Voyage, and it is pretty sweet. The higher resolution lets me use a smaller font, and I like the vibrate-y pager turny buttons.
i'll play.
slowly working my way through new canon star wars books cause im a dork and dont care what people think. finished "dark disciple" a few months ago, and just finished "a new dawn". I enjoyed both books - Vos, Ventress, and Kanaan are all interesting characters. Now on to "battlefront: twilight company", and hopefully the 2nd aftermath book and the book for Episode VI before Rogue One comes out.
Also trying to power through "Getting to Yes" and "The Challenger Sale" but my mind just cant handle that type of business thinking right now so I'm only about 1/8 through both of them. Im completely sold on both concepts at a high level though. I definitely recommend both for anyone in a sales or an otherwise customer-facing role.
The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up by Marie Kondo
I have no idea why I read this book, but it's actually pretty cool. It's about exactly what the title says - how to tidy up your house full of shit. There's a lot of anecdotes and it's a bit masturbatory about how good she is at tidying up, so it's a short read if you skip the filler.
The Goblin Emperor by Sarah Monette
Sucked. Boring. The writing is dry, characters are only mildly interesting, the plot has no real conflicts. One of these things I could deal with, but all of them made me give up after like 200 pages.
The Butcher of Anderson Station by James SA Corey
Short novella from The Expanse series, about Fred Johnson. Really good but too damn short.
The Emperor's Blades by Brian Staveley
The Providence of Fire by Brian Staveley
These books are really good. Standard-ish plot of fantasy war of succession (kind of), but it tends to turn some of the tropes on their ears. The pacing and plot are tight and overall it's pretty well written. I'm excited to read the 3rd book (not out yet).
Autumn Republic by Brian McClellan
Fuckin' awesome conclusion to the trilogy. Flintlock magic, big battles, good pacing, nice plotting.
Bad Science by Ben Goldacre
Still reading this one, would highly recommend if you have any interest in science at all.
I mostly read a bunch of related documents to this course on ancient Greek civilization. 2500 year old translated writing is SOOOOO DRYYYYYY.
I would like to pose a question though. Fantasy/sci-fi series greater than 3 books, with a good ending; do they exist? Racking my brain, I'm having trouble thinking of one. Someone was talking about how excited they were for the next ASOIAF book, and it hit me that I'm not. Haven't even read Dance with Dragons yet, and don't really intend to. I don't see any kind of satisfying conclusion being pulled out of it. I kind of have an idea that the world-building in fantasy/sci-fi dwarfs/blunts such things, but it may just be that the world-building is easier, so you find it more than good endings.
Finally finished Kafka on the Shore. It was OK. The only other Murakami I've read was Norweign Wood, which now helps me understand why his novels have been somewhat divisive. Kafka is the norm, Wood is the departure.
I'm a third of the way through Road to Perdition. Which makes me want to read Lone Wolf and Cub in the future.
I'll also start Marie Kondo's The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up soon enough. I'm going to throw out everything I own and live in the woods, building a DIY gym and eat wildlife for protein.
I read Waking Up by Sam Harris and Food of the Gods by Terence McKenna. I also read volumes 1,2, and I'm working on 4 of Neil Gaiman's Sandman series (3 is missing here).
Waking Up is really really good and I would highly recommend it.
I'm working on Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics. Or at least I was. Upside to physical labor is that I'm too wiped at the end of the night to do much damage to myself. Downside is too sleepy to read good.
- Percy Jackson & The Lightning Theif
- Michael Chrichton - Sphere
- Life of Pi
- James Patterson - Toys
- Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance
- Your Cat is Plotting to Kill you
- Laravel: Code Happy
- The Elegant Universe
- A Game of Thrones
- 11/22/63 by Stephen King
- Snow Crash
The Fall of Reach was my shit back in the day. If you like space battles, Execution Hour and Shadowpoint were pretty good. But as a disclaimer, I really liked them back when I read Reach, which was 13 years ago.
I basically read this book page to page, so yes, Lovecraft gives me a nerd boner.
Unfortunately I don't think Zazubrin's book has been translated to english, google shows it mentioned in all kinds of books on stalinism under different names ("The Chip", "Sliver", etc. ) and there' s 1992 movie adaptation "Chekist" which I didn't see and can't recommend, especially since most of russian cinema of about 1988-1995 is terrible.
Edit: it might be available in paper form
The Sense of Style by Steven Pinker. Motherfucking nonfiction. It's pretty boring, but it's one of the few style/writing books I've read that doesn't make me want to shoot myself in the face. The basic problem with English-y books is that they're written by either teachers with a good eye for writing but no idea what the fuck they're talking about (e.g., the horrible "Strunk & White") or by linguists who would argue that assigning value to one style of writing over another is utterly insane, which claim is absurd on its face, as one can easily discern from this sentence.
Pinker kinda splits the difference. If I were teaching college, I'd make them read this.
I've got bookmarks in:
- Shadow and Claw, by Gene Wolfe
- Thinking, Fast and Slow, by Daniel Kahneman
and several short story collections:
- Rashomon and 17 other stories by Akutagawa Ryunosuke
- The Cyberiad by Stanislaw Lem
- Accelerando by Charles Stross
I've been reading The Hate U Give for my office's book club. I felt like I was a pretty woke person going in but reading this book has definitely helped me develop a level of empathy that I didn't know I didn't have. I'm not sure if it's a classic like John Green says, but if you're interested in expanding your mind and you're not already a black person in America I would definitely recommend that you read it.
I have been reading Good to Great. It's a really interesting book about what common traits companies have that made the leap from being historically good, to some of the best businesses in the US. I really like this book because unlike Malcolm Gladwell books, it seems to be much less sensationalist and doesn't seem to be trying to prove a point. It just takes in all the facts and talks about them.