Books

I'll be starting this book today. It's been a few months since I've read fiction.

It's originally in Japanese but translated to English by Albert Novick.

"Otohiko Kaga's Marshland is an epic novel on a Tolstoian scale, running from pre-World War II period to the turbulence of 1960s Japan."

It seem really interesting and I'm looking forward to it. I also really like the cover design.

#books

@read-and-be-merry List of Books to Read Before You Die

1. Any book you want
2. Don’t read books you don’t want to read
3. That's it
4. Congratulations you did it

@iammewhooaryou | really like this list. All my favorite books are on it.

@ read-and-be-merry Thanks | worked really hard on it

I'm currently making my way through The Third Reich Trilogy as an audiobook and it is hands down the best researched, most in-depth piece of history I've ever read / listened to.

Evans must have spent half his life in primary sources and uses that research to great effect. The book includes many diary and newspaper extracts from the time for example (including liberal use of Goebbels diary) and goes into detail in all sorts of areas that paint a very clear picture of everyday life in Germany at the time.

It's long (around 90 hours audio or over 2000 pages) but I have learned so much from it.

cross-posted from: https://feddit.uk/post/40687915

"Who's to know? [Technology firms] are spending trillions and trillions on AI and maybe it's going to produce the next War and Peace.

"And if people want to read that book, AI-generated or not, we will be selling it - as long as it doesn't pretend to [be] something that it isn't.

"We as booksellers would certainly naturally and instinctively disdain it," Daunt said.

Readers value a connection with the author "that does require a real person", he added. Any AI-generated book would always be clearly labelled as such.

I first came upon Richard Wright via The Warmth of Other Suns by Isabel Wilkerson (incredible book btw), the title of which actually comes from a poem in the original draft of Black Boy:

I was leaving the South
to fling myself into the unknown...
I was taking a part of the South
to transplant in alien soil,
to see if it could grow differently,
if it could drink of new and cool rains,
bend in strange winds,
respond to the warmth of other suns
and, perhaps, to bloom.

I first read Wright's novel Native Son, a story about a young black man (Bigger Thomas) born to Jim Crow Mississippi and living in Chicago's redlined Black Belt in the 1930s

The book was especially captivating to me through Wright's ability to express the chaotic, bewildered psychological turmoil in Bigger's mind throughout the book.

Reading Black Boy, Wright's autobiography, it is clear where this ability came from. As powerful as Native Son is, I found Black Boy to be even more so. The details of his life are harrowing. The abject poverty and hunger, the racial subjugation and humiliation, the suppression of his individuality and intellect by his own family and community. But again what made this book so captivating to me was clarity with which he could see and portray his own inner life and psychology through all of this. His prose is engrossing and poetic. I was absorbed in it from page one. I've never quite read anything else like it, and can't recommend it enough.

If anyone has read Black Boy or anything else by Wright (or Isabel Wilkerson as well for that matter; Caste and The Warmth of Other Suns are absolute favorites of mine), I'd love to hear your thoughts.

As I said a couple of weeks ago, we recently did a podcast episode about Heather Parry's excellent gothic horror Carrion Crow - she heard the episode and offered to come on the show to talk about the book which we of course were thrilled to accept - that episode is now live here or wherever you get podcasts.

Note: Our PeerTube instance is still struggling - a move is imminent but for now we're not adding new episodes to it.

Cosy up with a wild read this winter, as The Wildlife Trust's Meg Dobson guides you through some of our best loved titles from Bloomsbury Wildlife.

This winter, unwind and reconnect with the natural world – all from the comfort of your home. As frost glitters on every surface and the low winter sun casts shadows across the ground, it feels only fitting to reach for a good book. One that will deepen our understanding of the landscapes, species and stories that shape and inspire us.

Discover a wide selection of new and notable titles from Bloomsbury Books – works that illuminate the untamed, celebrate the overlooked and offer fresh perspectives on our relationship with nature. These books promise exploration from the comfort of your favourite reading spot, so get cosy and lose yourself in nature without leaving the glow of your Christmas tree.

I was listening to Too Many Tabs and Mrs P mentioned a website called storygraph.com as an alternative to Goodreads. I was wondering if anybody had heard about it or had an experience with it. Any pitfalls or skeletons in the closet?

Still reading Cold Days by Jim Butcher, the 14th book in Dresden Files series.

Yet another busy week but things have started to settle down, got back to reading properly yesterday and have reached the point where we get some interesting reveals. Very excited about where it goes from here.

What about all of you? What have you been reading or listening to lately?

For details on the c/Books bingo challenge that just restarted for the year, you can checkout the initial Book Bingo, and its Recommendation Post. Links are also present in our community sidebar.

I’m currently reading “The Number of the Beast” by Robert Heinlein. Book is from the 1980s, and there’s a completely doubled up paragraph in the book! It spans two pages but the image shows enough I think.

I have seen many people these days addicted to Tiktok, youtube shorts, or Instagram reels. Myself included, I feel like not many people read books these days. I for one rarely read normal books, but I do read a lot of manga and webtoons. My question do you consider them as reading?

https://medium.com/@bailey.anna231/as-someone-whos-spent-the-last-eighteen-or-so-years-in-a-school-environment-and-is-lucky-enough-b92181deef84

I love bad books. Popular bad books. Non-fiction bad books. Any bad book is worth a read every once in a while.

Bad books aren’t objectively bad in my opinion just books that might not be for me or I even disagree with. The best bad books are the books that I want to enjoy because they’re popular or because the premise is fun. And what makes them bad is equally fluid and often just my own bias.

Why Bad Over Good?

Good books are good books. What is there to talk about? What do we even do in a Tolkein book club? Make sure everyone has read Lord of the Rings and the Hobbit. Then divide the room into people who preferred the Hobbit or thought LOTR was too long but still good. Then we share the same fun facts about the extended edition of the movies?

Boring. We get it. Essential reading for the book lover.

Now a shlocky Romantasy that very clearly ripped scene from other Young Adult novels and then put the “Fuck” word or act in there (with adults of course). Now we’re talking! How many different books do you recognize? Is this transformative? Are we out of original ideas? Does the sex add anything? Is she a good writer because I felt the intended emotion even if the scene is stupid? Can I do better than this? I should try!

A proper bad book where the flaws are glaring enough that I, a simpleton, can see them and talk about them is so much fun. There’s a discussion, there’s room for disagreement, there are no stakes! There may even be diamonds in the rough….

Finding Good ideas in Bad Books

It’s no secret that I love Slavoj Zizek and his writings, but not because they’re good.

Zizek is a load of fun to read because it really is a cacaphony of references and jokes interspersed with “And now to contradict myself!” that makes it feel profound. If I was smarter I think I’d call any Zizek book the philosophy equivalent of “Finnegans Wake”. The books are non-sense but there is a hidden idea that you, the reader, must decode. Maybe you disagree with the meaning, maybe you found a different meaning than what was intended, maybe the referenced book sounds interesting so you start reading Judith Butler instead (a good author).

Bad philosophy books are stimulating in that they triggered the part of your brain that wants to “philosophize” in that you want to express why you feel the way you feel. Be it the author made a good point in a bad way or maybe they made a bad point and you want to really think out a rebuttle they will never read.

Allowing a transgressive thought to make you reflect and expound upon is the correct way to use offensive content. There are obviously exceptions to this idea in that some people write books explicitly to be useless propaganda.

Bad Books verses Unreadable Books

I think the defining feature of a bad book is that it is genuine in it’s attempt to do whatever it is trying to do.

I love Rebecca Yarros “Fourth Wing” not because it’s good fantasy (or even exceptional porn) but because it feels like she’s trying to write an entertaining book. It feels like a genuine attempt at decent world building. It’s a flawed story and the world doesn’t make any sense when you think about it trying to be anything other than an explanation for why everyone is so horny.

Zizek is living far too modestly for someone who is simply a political grifter leveraging memes and podcast interviews to sell suplaments to a guilable audience. He’s even said he’d rather write the occastional Ambrocrombe and Fitch ad if it means he’s not married to a publisher or Patreon account. And that makes his work feel more genuine. I am convinced this is how he really feels and thinks.

Now, on the other end, I’ve read a lot of political writings from people I hard disagree with. I’ve read theological works from people who seemingly just like that they are a “published author”.

I used to worry that I was easily influenced and that I would just agree with or enjoy any book because I invested the eight-ish hours it takes to read one. Then I read a book I thought was interesting, and the point was one I agreed with, but it was so painfully obvious that this author had nothing new or interesting to add. It read as if they were a high schooler who had Chat GPT write a paper on something controversial, but it was pre-LLMs and I think ChatGPT would have been more interesting.

This was the first time I found a Liberal leaning grifter since I did find their podcast and heavily pushed merch store. It was embarrassing to see.

I’ve since given a lot of people I would disagree with a chance. I read Charlie Kirk’s ghost written slog feast, Ben Shapiro’s argument-less book on “Bullies”, and a book by Glenn Beck? I guess he was a Proto-Stephen Crowder.

“Authors” like that really helped me solidify the difference in my mind between “Transgressive” and “insubstantial but I’m triggered.” They’re so hard to talk about because there is very little to pull from. I was hoping to find a real argument to look into. I was giving them a fair shot and not just be angry monologues and accusatory language without any reflection.

Every arguments seems to have been “The Libs accuse us of being classist, homophobic, racist, sexists who use slurs and dedicate all our time to making life worse for minorities, poor people, and the Libs. But by calling US fascists, they show that they are the REAL FASCISTS!” And then just a bunch of examples of times someone got punched for saying a slur in public and crying “See, free speech haters!”

I don’t want to hang on this too long. It’s just the most egregious example of “Unreadable books”.

Books are Easy to Make

Yes I know it’s not that easy, especially if you want a good publisher, but book writing is so accessible these days that anyone can be a published author in hours with an Amazon Kindle account and a ChatGPT subscription. Maybe not a Good author or even a defendable Bad Author. You’d be an awful author but an author in the technical sense.

However, it is this accessibility of writing that I think allows for a diverse range of written works to exist. We no longer have the traditional filters that ensure only good or readable books are available. And I worry that the awful authors have soured the world of reading.

It is so easy to say any book that even begins to offend is trash and should be abandoned as a “Did Not Finish”. And with authors like the ones mentioned and the AI slop farms poisoning our book supply, I can’t really blame someone for not wasting their precious time on this earth with a Bad Book.

Yet, even with my bad experiences, I love the things I’ve learned about myself and the world at large because of bad books. I will continue committing way too much time to authors who probably don’t deserve the fame or my money.

Read the sequel too. They're just good fun, well written and not heavy reading

With the release of the Netflix series adapting Bardugo's Grishaverse (side note, I kinda hate "verse" terms) to the screen, I had been reading a lot of praise for the world and the written series, in particular the Six of Crows duology. Sure enough, popular review sites seem to back that hype up. It is very well reviewed.

After trudging my way through the Shadow & Bone trilogy, I thought I would finally get to the payoff: Six of Crows, pretty much universally praised fantasy heist book with a great cast of characters. What's not to love?

Well... A lot, I found out. I acknowledge that I'm probably just not the right audience for this, I guess. I know it's targeted at YA, but the praise is so universal, even my like-aged fantasy reading nerd friends recommended it. But it fell so short of expectations for me.

Now, I didn't hate it. I've read worse. And there's definitely things I liked about the book, and Bardugo's world. But not nearly enough to like as much as everyone else seems to.

I constantly found it very difficult to believe, even in a world of fantastical magic, that a group of 15 to 18 year olds had the breadth and depth of skills and knowledge the main cast do. And found myself constantly asking in the second half of the book how this palace could possibly be described as impregnable as it had been when the crew seemed to pretty much have the run of the place.

The timings of the flashbacks were jarring to me, the romances were shallow and unbelievable, and for probably half of the chapters I asked myself, "did we really need to change character POVs for this?"

I ultimately landed on a 2.75/5 - still above average, but a far cry from the consensus. Ultimately I was disappointed that this was a teen drama with a flimsy heist backdrop rather than a heist with background romance.

So I'm really into noir, and I would really love to have a discussion about it. Specifically, I don't mean detective stories. I prefer stuff that is told from the perspective of the criminal. Bad people getting worse, essentially. Authors that come to mind are Jim Thompson, James M. Cain, Jake Hinkson, Will Christopher Baer, Craig Clevenger and Patricia Highsmith. If you are at all into this stuff, let me know. Let's chat.

Reading Cold Days by Jim Butcher, the 14th book in Dresden Files series.

Another super busy week, so pretty much still at the same place as last week.

What about all of you? What have you been reading or listening to lately?

For details on the c/Books bingo challenge that just restarted for the year, you can checkout the initial Book Bingo, and its Recommendation Post. Links are also present in our community sidebar.

We said we'd post the stats from last year's bingo, so here's the breakdown!

Submissions are included in the stats as they were reported. In other words, while we do verify that works exist (as a side effect of compiling reading stats), we don't check if they "count".

What got completed?

Cards

• 6 cards submitted (1 card per person) Not bad for a niche first-time event on the fediverse!
• 2 challenge modes completed (review mode, by 2 people)

Bingo Lines

• 31 bingo lines completed
  • 2 cards with 12 bingos done ("blackout"/all squares)
  • 1 with 3 bingos
  • 1 with 2 bingos
  • 2 with 1 bingo
• most popular bingo (on 66.7% of cards): row 1

Squares

• 96 squares completed
  • most completed squares (on 83.3% of cards): 1A (Older Than You Are), 1C (What’s Yours Is Mine), 1D (Family Drama), 3A (Eazy, Breazy, Read-zie), 3C (One Less), 4A (Now a Major Motion Picture), 4C (Award Winner)
  • least completed squares (on 33.3% of cards): 4B (It’s About Time), 5B (It's a Holiday)
  • least favorite square, according to survey: 2B (Plays with Words)
• 41 hard mode squares (42.71% of completed squares)
  • most completed hard modes (on 66.7% of cards): 3B (Stranger in a Strange Land), 3C (One Less)
  • hard modes nobody did: 1E (It Takes Two, three authors), 3A (Eazy, Breazy, Read-zie, read on vacation), 4B (It’s About Time, backward in time), 5D (Minority Author, ethnic minority and LGBTQIA+)
  • squares submitted only in hard mode: 3B (Stranger in a Strange Land), 3E (LGBTQIA+ Lead), 5B (It's a Holiday)
• 2 substituted squares (2.1% of completed squares)
  • 33.3% of cards included a substitution
  • substitutions made: 1B > She Blinded Me with Science, 5A > A Change in Perspective

What did people read?

Types of Works

• 93 unique works read
  • 68 fiction novels (73.1% of unique works)
  • 14 fiction novellas (15.1%)
  • 3 fiction or nonfiction short stories or short story collections (3.2%)
  • 3 fiction or nonfiction comics, graphic novels, or manga (3.2%)
  • 3 verse works (epic poems, novels in verse, or dramatic verse) (3.2%)
  • 2 nonfiction biographies or memoirs (2.2%)

Publication Years

• before 1900: 3 (3.2% of unique works)
• 1900–1909: 2 (2.2%)
• 1910–1919: 0
• 1920–1929: 4 (4.3%)
• 1930–1939: 0
• 1940–1949: 0
• 1950–1959: 5 (5.4%)
• 1960–1969: 5 (5.4%)
• 1970–1979: 3 (3.2%)
• 1980–1989: 2 (2.2%)
• 1990–1999: 4 (4.3%)
• 2000–2009: 5 (5.4%)
• 2010–2019: 30 (32.3%)
• 2020–2024: 30 (32.3%)

Notable Content Tags

Works may be in multiple categories/subcategories. A space detective thriller would be counted once for each of the following tags: space, scifi, fantastical, mystery/detective, thriller, and suspenseful.

• fantastical: 62 (66.7% of unique works)
  • scifi: 22 (23.7%)
    • space: 8 (8.6%)
  • supernatural: 11 (11.8%) Surprisingly, not all supernatural titles were also horror.
  • dystopian: 6 (6.5%)
  • epic fantasy: 5 (5.4%)
  • magical realism: 4 (4.3%)
• suspenseful: 45 (48.4%)
  • mystery/detective: 20 (21.5%)
  • horror/gothic: 18 (19.4%)
  • thriller: 16 (17.2%)
• historical: 21 (22.6%)
• romantic: 16 (17.2%) Includes a significant romantic element; does not need to be in a romance genre.
• literary/contemporary: 16 (17.2%)
• YA/middle grade: 8 (8.6%)
• nonfiction: 4 (4.3%)

Most Read Titles (2 each)

• The Butcher of the Forest by Premee Mohamed
• Relic by Douglas Preston & Lincoln Child
• The Scarlet Pimpernel by Baroness Emmuska Orczy

Most Read Authors (2 each)

• Ray Bradbury
• Becky Chambers
• Mareike Fallwickl
• Nnedi Okorafor
• J.R.R. Tolkien