Books

i stumbled upon an offer of the kl noir series from malaysia > i remembered that it was brooklyn-based akashic books who had started the noir series

and it was also akashic who cooperated with peepal tree from uk > by now, their peekash collabo has already turned into a publisher of its own: https://www.peekashpress.com/

I've recently gotten into reading. I realised how much I love fiction, and a couple of tropes. So I'm here asking maybe some of you know any books that have them.

I love it when the story focuses more on world building rather than character. The theory crafting I can do in my head, or just before I sleep, is priceless.

Here I'll contradict myself by saying a character development related point, but the more important one. I'd like to read more works that show some mysterious big-bad first as a rivalry, later as a friend. They soften up with the MC and we they become friends or allies or whatever. We get to see a BBEG of sorts's friendly and weak side. I get that it's a bit childish, but I lost my mind of how cool of a character they made the first time I read it. Now, it was in a manga, so I'd love to read an example that made this best or first.

Thank you in advance, even if you just name some genres or authors.

Mods, please delete this if it's not allowed.

Hi everyone! I'm a very avid reader and would love to add more reading people to The StoryGraph. The more friends, the more books I may want to read I'll see!

Feel free to add me: https://app.thestorygraph.com/profile/amarnareads

Me, I’m currently on ”F” is for Fugitive by Sue Grafton, still from my local library.

So my main language is Greek and I read english and greek books. Depending on the book/author I may have 2-5 words per page that I may not understand (or at least I want to understand them better). Thus, many times after I finish a page, I use aard2 and either search the word in the english-to-english dictionary or (rarer) in the greek wiktionary for a translation. (For context, I'm reading ~mainly fantasy, sci-fi or dystopian books of the 20th and 21th century and currently I'm on "Croocked kingdom". I haven't dared to try reading a classic book in english.)

The issue is that this effectively slows me down by an extra ~50% time per page and I'm not even very sure that those words are remembered. I could simply keep reading without searching the words up and just use the context to get a vague sense of their meaning (or simply ignore them as they ~usually aren't necessary to the plot), but I think I'd miss on the whole experience by doing this and it doesn't address the underlying issue (being that I don't know english extremely well even if I have C2 and scored high on vocabulary), which will perpetuate the problem. I'd like to note that I have made searching words almost as efficient as it gets by using downloaded dictionaries, so I don't think I can reduce the time I spend looking up words by anything more, at least on paper books.

I'd like to ask anyone who searches up words like me:

Did you eventually reach a point where you learnt enough words this way, that it wasn't that much necessary to use dictionaries anymore? (I'd be kinda satisfied if I could reduce the frequnecy of unknown words to 1 per two pages or something.)

I've recently started a job driving a shuttle van across the city for the general public. I've got a wide amount of leeway, but the audiobooks I've been listening to have been... not hitting right. I started with "The Name of the Wind" which was extremely well reviewed. I liked it a lot for the most part, and for the most part so did my passengers, but at one point it started talking about how much the main character would like to see one of the young woman characters naked and would pay for that privilege. In the context of the story it sort-of made sense, but out of context it was completely gross and I was beyond embarrassed. The next day I tried "Consider Phlebas" (again well reviewed) which was a completely different thing, but almost immediately it started in with a vivid description the mc being drowned in sewage- It did not hit right, despite the interesting developments that I would ordinarily probably enjoy for just myself.

I'm looking for suggestions of completely SFW audiobooks I could listen to (through audible, alas) with random passengers of all walks of life coming and going without context. I cannot stress strongly enough that they should be quite literally safe for work. I don't mind skirting a bit of controversy or challenging preconceptions or introducing new or unusual perspectives (In fact I kind of relish the idea of being somewhat progressive and/or boundary-pushing, though I'd like to start small after these initial embarrassments), but it cant be crude, or sexual, or violent.

Thanks for your attention, please chime in with your suggestions.

Edit: Oh jeez wow this got more traction than I expected. I appreciate everyone's suggestions! I'll be trawling through them in the coming weeks and maybe even post my experience with some of them, "shuttle van reviews" or some such. Thanks!

Hello, I'm trying to find a book that I read a long time ago about a man who turned invisible because cosmic radiation hit his electric blanket while he was asleep. I've tried googling and chat GPT and neither of them turned up any results. Does this book sound familiar to anyone?

Hello everyone!

I'm looking for two book recommendations:

1. an "entry" book into SciFi. Something that is easy readable. I prefer sth. "positive" or utopian.
2. A similar book like "48 rules of power" but without the Machiavellian touch and the religious touch of "How to win Friends and Influence People". Maybe there is something more "universal" available on how to connect to people on a respectful level.

I'm not sure how useful this'll be to people, but on the off-chance that like me, you like to track your pages read daily (into something like Storygraph or Goodreads) and you happen to have an ereader, I've created a spreadsheet that may be useful.

Essentially I found that tracking pages when you're reading a book on an ereader is a little tricky because the number of pages will differ depending on the size of your device and the font size. You can use percentage instead, but:

1. My Kobo seems to calculate percentage based on number of words rather than pages
2. Sometimes with really large books, you can read a ton of pages and the percentage won't have changed

So I created a spreadsheet that can work out the equivalent page count on Storygraph (although this can work for any book tracking site).

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1ehIw4dE_66yU0Km98i4fBtqMqWXvlN1zTSpLSgR4OCA/edit?usp=drivesdk

I think you should be able to save a copy of the spreadsheet from that link.

I've also added in padding. So for example if the actual text of the book starts on page 6, enter 6 in the padding start field. And then the final page number of the text in padding end. This prevents inflation of number of pages read at the start and end of your tracking (because of all the copywrite info, credits etc.)

Like I say, this probably would only be useful to a select few, but thought I'd share it just in case :)

cross-posted from: https://lazysoci.al/post/15660272

I would like to recommend a book. It's a short read, but food for thought.

I heard a lot of praise for Bulgakov's oeuvre in the past, so I decided to give it a go.

I have read Russian literature in the past by recommendation of family and friends who always showed much interest in it; be it Dostoevsky, Tolstoy, Chekhov or Pushkin.

But recently I noticed that knowledge of Russian literature virtually stops at the onset of the revolution. When it comes to the Soviet era, there is a sort of intentional silence regarding the literature of that time, at least in the West and its colonized peripheries. Anecdotally, I once had a conversation with my mother during which she claimed that the Soviet period was a dark time to be living in Russia. When I asked her what's the basis of her statement, she said this is based on the novels she read, citing Dostoevsky and Tolstoy. The awkward smile on her face after telling her that these authors died decades before the revolution was priceless; bless her heart, but I am digressing.

When a few exceptions of Soviet literature emerge out of the iron curtain, it turns out to be some anticommunist rambling, just like Bulgakov's Master and Margarita.

Considering the critical acclaim, it feels wrong to say that I found it to be average. Was I supposed to cheer for the devil and his retinue as they terrorize Moscow? Maybe it's my ideological orientation which prevents me from fully engaging with the novel, and I'm alright with that. Though I did enjoy the chapters narrating Pontius Pilate's encounter with Yeshua Ha-Nozri.

Anyhow, was Soviet literature ever popular? Did it die out after the collapse of the union? Or has it always been curtailed in the West?

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/17539998

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/17539905

@MaxBlumenthal

Government By Gunplay. A collection that never gets old.

I'm trying to read some more books (canon) set in the Metro universe. The books don't have to be written by Dmitry Glukhovsky, I'm just looking for some recommendations to expand my knowledge of the lore. Bonus points for chronological ordering! Ty

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/17146897

The Fisherman is a horror novel by John Langan that won the 2016 Bram Stoker Award for Best Novel. The story follows two widowers, Abe and Dan, who bond over their shared grief and a passion for fishing. When they hear rumors of a mysterious and cursed fishing spot called Dutchman's Creek, they decide to investigate, despite warnings from locals. Soon, the men find themselves drawn into a tale as deep and old as the Reservoir. It's a tale of dark pacts, of long-buried secrets, and of a mysterious figure known as Der Fisher: the Fisherman. It will bring Abe and Dan face to face with all that they have lost, and with the price they must pay to regain it.

Reviews

grimdarkmagazine.com | goodreads.com |

Lovecraft Done Right | The Fisherman by John Langan - Book Review (video)

author interviews

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/16892902

The best horror books of 2024 according to the Esquire (April 10)

• The House of Last Resort, by Christopher Golden
• This Wretched Valley, by Jenny Kiefer
• Among the Living, by Tim Lebbon
• In the Valley of the Headless Men, by L.P. Hernandez
• The Haunting of Velkwood, by Gwendolyn Kiste
• Mouth, by Joshua Hull
• King Nyx, by Kirsten Bakis
• The Angel of Indian Lake, by Stephen Graham Jones
• The Black Girl Survives in This One, edited by Desiree S. Evans and Saraciea J. Fennell
• Bless Your Heart, by Lindy Ryan
• This Skin Was Once Mine and Other Disturbances, by Eric LaRocca
• Diavola, by Jennifer Thorne
• The Underhistory, by Kaaron Warren
• Incidents Around the House, by Josh Malerman