What have you been reading? - Book Discussion Thread

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trulyalive

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@alphasquid: I can totally understand that reaction. I was talking about it to a friend of mine who is currently going through a pretty rough time and I realised that this book is totally not what he needs whilst he wraps his head around his life right now so suggested he not try it just yet.

Although I'll say the first two chapters are easily the most viscerally upsetting, the book kinda never really lets up. It tackles tragedy from a lot of different angles so it's never an easy read.

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druv

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I finished The Traitor Baru Cormorant which I liked a lot for being a more bureaucracy-focused fantasy book. Hyperinflation is fun!

However, at the end of it, I'm not very fond, mainly because it seems to accept the main conceit of the antagonists: that if you're clever and ruthless enough, the social world is as easy to control as the natural world. It buys into the idea that a secret cabal of the cleverest people can rule from the shadows and, basically, be right about everything. And that's not really my thing.

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alwaysbebombing

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I'm currently reading The OCD Workbook. I was recently diagnosed with pretty severe OCD and my psychiatrist recommended it to me. It's actually helping more than I thought it would.

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ImGrifter

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Mostly just comic books. Finished Tokyo Ghost last night, and now I'm catching up on Bloodshot and Batman.

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sparky_buzzsaw

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Finished up listening to Jonathan Maberry's Dragon Factory while on a Fallout 4 binge the last couple of days. I wish I liked his character Joe Ledger a bit more than I actually do. He's always come across as a bit humble-braggish, If you've read Lee Child's novels, you get the idea - a main character spouting seemingly self-effacing comments while then making that impossible trick shot or beating down a room full of bad guys who've suddenly forgotten how to use a gun. Usually his novels are couched somewhat in some interesting near-future techno-threats, but this one has aliens in the faintest sense. It does that modern sci-fi thing, like Saturn Run, of showing alien technology, but the aliens themselves are always conveniently off the page so as to not push the realm of believability too far. You're already writing about goddamn aliens - why not have fun with it?

In any case, I think it's likely to be my last Joe Ledger novel... until it isn't, and I get curious about what he's written next. Which is pretty much always the case with Maberry.

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deactivated-5e6e407163fd7

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radicalbradical

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I've decided to start reading A Darker Shade of Magic by V.E. Schwab. So far, I've been really enjoying it! It's a pretty traditional fantasy book, but the characters are interesting as they each have distinct and colorful personalities. Only about 4 chapters in.

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theacidskull

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I've been reading HP Lovecrafts road to madness, which is a collection of his short horror stories. What can I say? Bloodborne inspired me. I have to admit, while his writing doesn't scare me in the slightest (unsurprisingly, given how my generation is severely desensitized by video games and movies, or any visual aids for that matter) , the subtle undertone of lore and exploration is pretty great.

It's not hard to see why, during it's prime, HP's stories really imbedded themselves into your mind. It's not just mindless gore, spooky monsters or shock value; there's quite a lot of thought that went into each paragraph and/or tale. I've only read a couple so far, and the undertone of wonder is really refreshing.

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imchardo

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I'm new to the site and, reading and video games being my primary leisure time activities, I dropped in here first.

I haven't read through the entire thread, so I apologize if I'm repeating someone else's recommendation, but I enjoy Patrick O'Brian's Aubrey/Maturin novels enough to read them similarly to how they paint the Golden Gate Bridge - once I finish the 20 book series, I start over again on book 1. Just finishing my 3rd time through.

The novels are historical fiction, set in the early 1800's during the time of the Napoleonic Wars and follow the adventures of Jack Aubrey, a British Navy Post Captain (and later Admiral), and his good friend Stephen Maturin, a physician and intelligence agent.

The prose is wonderfully sophisticated, the character interactions insightful, the whole deeply affecting, sometimes tense, sometimes heartwarming, oftentimes laugh out loud funny.

My favorite books, while I read plenty else, I can't recommend them highly enough.

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Poliathan

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I've recently finished the modern-ish fantasy City of Stairs/Blades/Miracles trilogy by Robert Jackson Bennett and was pleasantly surprised. Each book has a different protagonist and the events of each are almost wholly detached from the previous entries. Great world-building, some interesting characters, and in my opinion spectacularly paced even if some of the plot points are telegraphed far in advance.

I also am re-reading Words of Radiance by Brandon Sanderson in preparation for his next entry Oathbringer in The Stormlight Archive this November... this series is just so gosh darn good.

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Goboard

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I never liked reading books, but since I started an audible subscription two years ago I've listened to quite a few. Recently I've been listening to Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors and The Dragons of Eden by Carl Sagan and Ann Druyan. I also just started listening to The Demon-Haunted World by Sagan and Druyan as well. Ann and her son Nick Sagan have been putting together re-releases and recordings of several of her and Carl's books over the last year and it couldn't be more topical for the current state of the world. They also did a re-release and recording of Pale Blue Dot which retains the portion that Carl recorded. It has a few areas where the quality dips due to the age of the source recording they pulled it from, but it's as evocative as ever to listen to even after several decades since it was first released.

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hermes

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Finished Danse Macabre, by Stephen King, by recommendation of Scoops himself, Mr Patrick Klepek.

It is an interesting read. Unlike most works by the author, this is more like a thesis on the history of horror novels, movies and other media. The guy knows his horror, I will give him that, although when he start talking about other people's work his personality starts to drip into his "analysis" and he gets rather pedantic.

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chaulk

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Maybe someone here can help me. I'm trying to find the author that Vinny recommended to Abby on a recent Beastcast. I'm looking for some books to read and wanted to look at this author but just can't remember the name or find the episode that this was discussed. Thanks!

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billmcneal

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#264  Edited By billmcneal

Well, it's not a book but I read an article in Wired about a man who is claiming he can make rum taste older with his machine, using light.

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mozzle

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@poliathan: I read City of Stairs, but I still need to read the other two. Looking forward to the second one. My wife says it's the best.

I am currently reading the Mistborn sequel trilogy. Will then move on to Words of Radiance, so that, like you, I'll be ready for Oathbringer.

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NTM

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No books, unless you can call a comic book, a book. If so, then I'm reading Judge Dredd and it's awesome. I may start The Darkness after.

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deactivated-5e6e407163fd7

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@chaulk: Might have been on Blue Bombin from a few weeks back. They had a pretty long media discussion on it.

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ImGrifter

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Just finished Bloodshot Reborn. Amazing book and Valiant Comics definitely deserves to be up there with Marvel and DC cause they are consistently putting out amazing books.

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KevinWalsh

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@imgrifter: Do you read any Image stuff? So many good books: Southern Bastards, Deadly Class, East of West, Manifest Destiny, Birthright, The Beauty, Black Magick.

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ImGrifter

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#270  Edited By ImGrifter

@kevinwalsh: Yes! Right now I'm reading Black Science, Saga, Low, Seven to Eternity and Descender. Been meaning to check out Deadly Class and East of West.

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Danny9

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#271  Edited By Danny9

@bojackhorseman: hehe, so true! What was the most impressive in his stories?

I liked a short story White elephants. The Old man and the sea is also the greatest one.

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bazookaPC

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#272  Edited By bazookaPC

I was really into Sarah J. Maas's Throne of Glass series until Empire of Storms' "beach scene" that completely destroyed my eyes and any last scrap of innocence I possessed. Now I enjoy Sarah Raughley's Effigy series, starting with "Fate of Flames". Anything by Jim Butcher or Cinda Williams Chima is also good to me. Terry Blackstock's "Casey Cox" series, about a girl who runs from corrupt cops for a crime she didn't commit is also excellent and has kept me on the edge of my proverbial seat (since I typically read laying on the floor).

Off-topic: anyone else think the floor is more comfortable than most seating? I used to love seats as a kid and teenager, but now as an adult, it's like "Ehh screw it, the floor and a nice sturdy wall is all I need for back support and reading". :/

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LostOddity

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Nothing left to lose: John Cleaver series.

I've really liked the other 5 books but this one swings way wide of the mark for me. Really convenient/rushed plot and the ending feels like something from a different series entirely.

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pyromagnestir

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#274  Edited By pyromagnestir

Alright, I got time for another update I suppose.

For non fiction I finished John Quincy Adams. The book was an interesting look at a guy who probably isn't one of the better known historical political figures of the US but I ended up liking him quite a bit.

He seems to have been a talented ambassador, then as a senator he was a sort of lone wolf who stuck to his own principles rather than fall in with any party lines, but that same tendency to not fall in with a party is one reason he was completely ineffectual as president, another reason being he was accused of making a corrupt bargain with Henry Clay to steal an election that otherwise probably would have gone to Andrew Jackson and this accusation doomed JQA's presidency before it even started. But after he was inevitably voted out of the presidency he was elected to the House of Representatives and oh boy did he then really seem to hit his stride.

He became an extremely outspoken abolitionist at a time where it seems most politicians would preferred to carry on pretending slavery wasn't an issue. He was so vocal the other members of the house slapped a gag rule on the topic. He then railed against that gag rule as a violation of free speech, and continued to find every excuse to still bring up the evils of slavery. He seems to have gained a national popularity that he completely lacked while president.

I have now started Unfamiliar Fishes by Sarah Vowell, it's about Hawaii, particularly the American influence in Hawaii leading up to the eventual annexation. I decided to read it after having gone on a family trip to Oahu for this past new years. I'm not very far into it yet.

It does not seem to be considered the author's best book but it's the first work I've read by her. She's got a bit of a scattershot approach to writing where she'll mix the history with personal anecdotes and deviate every so often to inform you of a fact she finds interesting or quirky, and she does all this haphazardly without warning and when it works it's fun but at other times I just sorta find it to be easy to zone out and lose the thread of things so when I snap back I wonder what the hell she is talking about.

As for fiction.

I finished Three Body Problem. I dug it. The setting and the context of that setting, plus some clever sci fi touches, made it seem like an interesting approach to a familiar trope.

Then I finished a book called She of the Mountains by Vivek Shraya. It was pretty cool.

The author is a trans woman (though the book appears to have been released before she revealed this as the about the author stuff in the version I read still uses male pronouns) and that's relevant as half of it is story about a character coming to terms with their sexuality and their body. But there's also another half that's based on Hindu mythology. It shifts back and forth between the two stories and both are quite interesting. It also had some nifty art mixed in (note: I actually thought it was going to be more along the lines of a graphic novel when I decided to check it out but was wrong about that it was a story with some art every so often to add to the tone and theme). I really enjoyed it and thoroughly recommend it.

Now I'm gonna start Battle Royale. All the talk about it with the Battlegrounds stuff has had me itching to start it for a while.

I also started Return of the King and intend to slowly read through that.

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BoboBones

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I decided to check out Brandon Sanderson's The Way of Kings. Really enjoying it a lot so far. Not many thoughts yet, other then it being vivid and easy to picture without feeling too bogged down.

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jimothyjim

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I read the first Jurassic Park book, actually pretty good. Somehow I forgot dinosaurs were awesome. I need to watch the film again to see how much those differ, it's been a while.

I've also started book 4 of the Seven Suns Saga. I've only read the "here's what's happened so far" chapter, man does this series have a lot of goings on. I think it was being brief too, I'm pretty sure there's a bunch of other things I've forgotten about that weren't covered.

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deactivated-5b031d0e868a5

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@jimothyjim: I've been meaning to get around to the Jurassic Park book for some time.

I've actually just finished The Man In The High Castle which was alright but I think I prefer the Amazon series

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sparky_buzzsaw

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Finished up A Head Full of Ghosts sometime this week. Pretty neat take on the "possessed teenager" subgenre of suspense/horror, and Tremblay is a colorful, fast-paced writer. I could've read a whole book just based around the interactions between the narrator and her sister as teenagers. It's pretty smart stuff.

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littlelyca

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I am trying to finish Anne Rice's Vampire Chronicles series because I heard that there will be a TV adaptation of this book. So far so good. What irritates me sometimes is the overdone theatrics. Sometimes I wished that the book was written by Stephen King instead but I guess it's part of Anne Rice's style of writing.

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Cramsy

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Reading Catch 22. I feel like I'm on all the drugs. Only about 150 pages left

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euantor

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Just finished reading Ghost Flight by Bear Grylls as a holiday book. It was surprisingly good and had me wanting more so I've just picked up Burning Angels too.

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tragichipster

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I just finished the first Foundation book. It's a classic sci-fi book and a rather easy read.

Book on Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Foundation-Isaac-Asimov/dp/0553293354

I have a bad habit of buying books and only reading half of it, so this year I've been really trying to finish them. Thankfully I did finish this one. Now I'm re-reading House of Leaves since Halloween is next month. If you like creepy and weird you'll like this one. It's not 'scary,' at least not to me.

Book on Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/House-Leaves-Mark-Z-Danielewski/dp/0375703764/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1505959884&sr=1-1&keywords=house+of+leaves+by+mark+z.+danielewski

The book its self is almost like a piece of art. It can get really confusing, because of how it treats type, but that's kind of the point.

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csl316

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Blood, Sweat, and Pixels by a Kotaku guy is fantastic. About the making of 10 different video games, with some surprisingly varied stories.

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BladeOfCreation

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I've been listening to a full cast production of Dune, I have less than 5 hours left and should finish it sometime tomorrow. Frank Herbert's most well-known work always--and rightfully--gets praise for how it tackles topics like religion, prophecy, prescience, politics, sex, ecology, and history. But what I've never heard anyone say is how good the writing itself is. Frank Herbert had a mastery of words that was truly beautiful.

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jaqen_hghar

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Currently reading "The secret history of Twin Peaks", which is crazy and pretty cool. Looking forward to "The Final Dossier", and I really need to rewatch the new season after that one I think.

And I am listening to "The year of the flood". Which I am so far liking more than "Oryx and Crake", not sure why. Really funny that they have recorded the hymns and songs throughout the book.

@bladeofcreation: Been buying the Penguin Galaxy editions of sci-fi classics recently, so far read "Neuromancer" and "The Left hand of Darkness". The next one on my list is "Dune"! Really looking forward to finally reading that one.

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DEmz

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Narnia

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rh51

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I've been reading the Dark Tower series by Stephen King. I'm about halfway through the third book "The Waste Lands" and I'm absolutely loving it. I've read a couple other of King's books and I just really enjoy his writing style. If anyone has been interested in the series but has never read it, I highly recommend diving in!

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indieslaw

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Just finished "IT", audiobook, great reader. Now I'm free and clear to see the movie. Starting in on the HRC "What Happened" for funsies, and Jason Schreier's Blood mucus and splines or whatever, inbetween podcast episodes. Big plans to hit Infinite Jest, with a PDF of the footnotes, before the year is out. My friend is obsessed with it, and I've promised that I'd read it before my death. And, well, things as they are in the world, I've started on my bucket list.

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monkeyking1969

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I just got into "Marcus Didius Falco" mysteries series by Lindsey Davis. I love mystery stories set in the Roman era or in Feudal Japan. I finished "The Silver Pigs:" last week and just started "Shadows in Bronze." I like the characters, the mysteries, and the writing; so I am very happy for a series that has another dozen books to enjoy.

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thomasnash

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#291  Edited By thomasnash

@monkeyking1969: Ah I really enjoyed those books as a younger. Only got 5 or so in before I started reading other stuff but always wonder if I should go back to them. My mum and sisters still read them religiously!

I've been reading the new John le Carré, A legacy of Spies. It's his first book foe about 20 years dealing with the cold war.

I'm pretty ambivalent about it so far though. He seems to have completely dispensed with the "thrilling" aspect of spy thrillers. Where I am now the plot has become completely bogged down in Peter Guillam reading reports about details that are intended to connect loose ends from The Spy Who Came in From the Cold to his Karla trilogy, but doing so slightly stretches credibility, and none of it feels urgent in any way. The cold war stuff seems to be focused on all his worst impulses, and a lot of his modern stuff just feels like...well, like an old man wrote it. Modern characters just don't feel at all modern. Where he is filling in gaps, it feels needless in the same way Prometheus does.

Unlike a lot of people, I like le Carré's post cold war stuff, and don't mind his occasional preachiness. The Constant Gardener, for example, more than justifies a bit of haranguing because it feels like a good, perceptive presentation of a real issue, wrapped around a good thriller. This book so far has just been moribund. It's really very disappointing.

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fenster

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I just finished the Shades of Magic trilogy by V.E. Schwab. As far as YA fantasy goes, it was very enjoyable. My main gripe was that the second book doesn't really have much of an ending, just a setup for the third book, and the third book drags a bit for the first half or so. But otherwise, well written, interesting characters, fun dialogue, all that.

I've just now started the Fifth Season, which I've heard very good things about. I'm only ~15% of the way through but very intrigued by it so far. The author does an excellent job of peeling the onion of the world back layer by layer through context, not through exposition. It's very well done.

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BladeOfCreation

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I just finished listening to First They Killed My Father by Luang Ung. It's an absolutely heartbreaking account of what it was like for a young girl to live in Cambodia under the Khmer Rouge. The author was five years old when the Khmer Rouge took over the country, and she talks about having to constantly move to different villages and, eventually, different camps. She describes living with constant, agonizing hunger as the regime cuts food rations, raises them months later, and cuts them again in an endless cycle. Both her and her younger sister (three years old at the time of the takeover) are severely malnourished. One day, two soldiers come and ask her father for "help" with something. They never see him again. This was before the regime started simply abducting and murdering people. This was when they still played at being the protectors of the people. At one point, she is at a girls' camp where she receives training on becoming a child soldier. On one occasion, she is almost raped but manages to get away. Eventually, the regime is overthrown and she reunites with some surviving family and finds her was to Vietnam, Thailand, and, finally, America.

I'd heard of the Khmer Rouge, of course, but this is the first time I've ever actually heard a first hand account of what they were like. This is an incredible accounting of one child's life under one of the 20th century's most vicious regimes. I recommend it. It's a story worth hearing.

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RonGalaxy

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#294  Edited By RonGalaxy

I'm not much of a reader, buy I've been chewing through the Witcher books recently. They can be hit or miss, but are overall pretty enjoyable. They're helping to fill in the gaps of the game series, which I plan on replaying after I finish the books. The short story collections are the best of what I've read so far and are easily recommendable.

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sparky_buzzsaw

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Less than a few weeks until we get a new David Wong novel. Yessss.

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pyromagnestir

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I wasn't as consistent during September with the whole book reading/audiobook listening thing as I have been most of the year, but I have finally managed to finish Battle Royale and it's a good book! Now I want to watch the movie again to see how close it follows the book. I remember the movie being more of a "watch a bunch of teenagers kill each other in gruesome ways" sort of thing while the book was, I dunno, less of that. I guess in part because the book had the time to develop a bunch of the characters and the anti fascist message before and/or during the parts where the junior high students gruesomely murdered each other.

And I finished Unfamiliar Fishes some time ago. It was certainly interesting (and also kind of depressing) to learn how Hawaii became U.S. territory. It starts off with somewhat well intentioned, though of course racist, efforts to help the natives by giving them educations and spreading Christianity, but also involves a somewhat accidental genocide of the natives (due mostly to disease brought by the Europeans who came to the island) combined with intentionally fucking them over through legal and economic systems and ultimately leading to a coup of the Hawaiian monarchy that was so controversial that it wasn't voted on in congress because it probably would have failed so instead was pushed through by something along the lines of an executive order.

I then finished a book called A Thousand Miles to Freedom. It was the true story of how a North Korean woman, young girl really during the events that took place, and her mom and sister ended up fleeing North Korea during a famine in the mid/late 90s. They are homeless for a while, get into China, get caught and sent back to North Korea, escape again to China, are smuggled to Mongolia before finally being sent to South Korea.

And I also just finished They Poured Fire on us From the Sky. Another true story, this time the story of 3 boys from a family in southern Sudan who had to flee during a civil war, when the northern government cracked down on the rural farming tribes of the south. They spend years running or living as refugees, get split apart from each other and the rest of the family many times for various reasons, and eventually ended up in the U.S.

So now that I have written this out I notice this is really not exactly a lot of super uplifting stuff. But it was very good and interesting.

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BladeOfCreation

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I'm currently listening to Snow Crash. It's not long, but the combination of the narrator and a whole lot of unfamiliar/made-up words means I have to pay a little more active attention to the book when I'm listening to it.

The world it depicts is strange, a sort of libertarian idea of innumerable small, independent neighborhoods that contract out security and law enforcement to private, for-profit corporations. Also the Italian Mob apparently runs the entire pizza-making and delivery industry in California.

Interestingly, the book straight up calls out a huge portion of Silicon Valley tech culture as being intensely sexist. The book was published in 1992, so this comes across as downright progressive. I just got through a part that details how a cable television magnate slowly but surely bought up various TV networks and linked them, eventually linking TV, phone, and internet access under a single monolithic corporation that a significant portion of the world's information travels through. It's chillingly prophetic in that regard.

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Spoonman671

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Reading 1984 for the first time. Holy crap, is that still relevant in modern times!

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sparky_buzzsaw

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What the Hell Did I Just Read? by David Wong is pretty fantastic so far. Just a few chapters in, but it's as funny as John Dies at the End and This Book is Full of Spiders. I need to sit down and make a point to read the rest of it because I nabbed Tad Williams's new Osten Ard novel and I'm really looking forward to that too.

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Superharman

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Paul Auster's 4 3 2 1 was excellent, I was initially concerned I'd be overwhelmed by the sheer length and structure of it but it reads very well.

Deciding to go a little bit lighter on and given I am doing a rewatch of the James Bond films, I decided to pick up where I left off with the Bond novels reading From Russia With Love, Dr No and getting close to the end of Goldfinger. All have been enjoyable despite the issues of racism and sexism that always make me cringe. I'll give Flemming a rest after Goldfinger but it has bit me with the spy bug so I'll be giving Le Carre a read after this.