What are you reading right now?

[ROXYROLLAH]

BlueJay.

[Guybrush]

I'm re-reading Pratchett's Pyramids:



I've read the whole series at least a couple of times, but my favourite books I kept returning to and have read many times.

Pyramids is not one of those. It's about prince Pteppic who travels to Ankh-Morpork to train as an assassin in the assassin's guild, but then has to go back to the stagnant kingdom Djelibeiybi to become king when his father dies.

Last time I read this might have been 2007 or thereabouts. One of the things that makes it less fun is it's a one-off, so protagonist Pteppic only appears in this book.

It's entertaining, but anyone new to Discworld should start elsewhere.

[Guybrush]

Manly P. Hall. Peehole? That's the funniest author's name I've read all day.

Is it good?

[Skittler]

I'm on a Junji Ito manga kick lately. Currently reading Remina. Love his horror art style.

[Guybrush]

I'm on a Junji Ito manga kick lately. Currently reading Remina. Love his horror art style.

He does seem to have an interesting imagination.

I tried watching the Netflix show based on his stories, but it wasn't quite for me. I'm sure the mangas are better.

[Lisnaholic]

A friend recommended Lovecraft's Call of Cthulhu. I have his complete bibliography yet unread so I gave it a read tonight. I really enjoyed it! I love how his writing is so archaic as if it was from the eighteenth-century Gothic period, (if I have that right?)

It surprises me that HP Lovecraft is better known, better respected, today than he was back in the 1960s. That's when I read his stories, although I only ever found one classmate who shared my enthusiasm.

Today, my reading choices are resolutely non-fantasy, and here is the latest example:-



In some ways, his writing style could be said to be the opposite of HP Lovecraft: instead of drumming up drama with all of Lovecraft's OTT horrified prose, Rory Stewart so downplays what he did that sometimes I had to re-read sentences, then realise: "wait a minute! that was something incredible!" Anyone with a little patience and a desire to discover how the world is full of people and places of irl wonder would enjoy this book I think.

[DJChameleon]

Fights by John Christian Gill.

Interesting graphic novel. Will return to this post to give review once finished.

[innerspaceboy]

I spent the last two days retaking many of the Enneagram tests I'd documented results from back in 2018 and compiling analytical data on my results.

This afternoon I popped into a Friends of the Library Book Sale and scored this Enneagram book for a dollar.

Hoping it sheds some much-needed light on my varying results.

[Guybrush]

Will be starting this soon:



I think it's a horror novel about boys in an orphanage or something? We'll see 🙂

[Hope]

I'm still trying to read Game of Thrones. It's so close between the books and the show , at least in the first book, that I'm absolutely bored reading it and basically want to die.

[tristan_geoff]

just finished this, the book is from 1972 and has a note in the front that said it was gifted in 1980.  I bought it for 50 cents at a local used book place, and I found it more humorous in it's tone than I learned anything from it.  Of course, there's some really mind blowing facts thrown in there, but there's a lot of quick jokes and analogies that I suspect I will hear a lot more of in the agriculture field.

The most interesting aspect is that the book focuses very little on plants, only near the end and not for half as long as the insect chapters.  With each new piece of the garden introduced and explained, the book goes into extensive detail about what you can do to make these things decorations in your home lmao.  The weirdest part was when the narrator is saying "insects probably wouldn't mind if you made decorations out of them" but in doing that implied in some way that they needed to be killed or otherwise dead already in order to do this lol, it tickled me more than anything bc ofc I see the worth in keeping (at least already dead) insects framed in your house.

There was also other dated material inside, such as this part explaining how to make an ant farm directly encouraged the reader to burn holes into plastic sandwich containers 

It has some really cool drawings and side knowledge, but is otherwise sort of a relic.

Definitely worth the 50 cents!

[Lisnaholic]

^ 100% applaud your choice of getting some old second-hand book real cheap, tristan - that's how I've been selecting my books for most of my life. I'm glad you enjoyed the dual pleasures of absorbing the original and comparing it to how we think about things today. The other thing I love about this approach to reading is the way you can find yourself in some obscure random corner in the vast world of knowledge.

Spoiler for two biographies I totally enjoyed even though they are about people that the world has forgotten:-

Spoiler

Life of a painter born in 1894: biography written in 1974:

About an African American woman born in 1920 and her strange contribution to science: 

[close]

[Lisnaholic]

I'm still trying to read Game of Thrones. It's so close between the books and the show , at least in the first book, that I'm absolutely bored reading it and basically want to die.

^ Good luck in your endeavour, Hope !

My son loved the Game of Thrones books so much that I read them too, for the sake of some father/son bonding.
"I'm absolutely bored reading it and basically want to die." I also experienced this, though the feeling didn't really settle in for good until vols 3, 4 and 5 ! By then the short-comings of G Martin as a writer really start to stand out - which is his own fault imo. I remember a time when authors were less ambitious: a book was a stand-alone book, but might occasionally run to a trilogy. G Martin indulges his inventiveness over too many volumes and it starts to wear thin.

[Guybrush]

Game of Thrones is a TV show, guys.. It's called A Song of Ice and Fire. Don't make me get all nerdy on you.

I enjoyed them and have been waiting for the supposed conclusion, The Winds of Winter. Martin seems to have some sort of hickup. I'm guessing outing all his secrets and spoiling his upcoming book in the TV show may have something to do with it - and perhaps people hating the end of GoT.

He could rewrite the ending and maybe that's what's taking him so long? He seems more interested in world building than anything and so I assume if he makes changes to the planned ending of this series, there's a lot of world building he's done that suddenly becomes invalid or needs to be changed.

About his writing style, he's no Tolkien. There's little poetry to his prose, but I like the world he creates and the stories within it.. and how you can't always predict what's going to happen, at least as long as the TV show didn't spoil it for you.

[Lisnaholic]

Game of Thrones is a TV show, guys.. It's called A Song of Ice and Fire. Don't make me get all nerdy on you.

oops! Sorry about that !

To his credit, G Martin wrote a set a books that kept my son enthralled through five volumes, so he's clearly doing something right.
_____________________________

Currently reading This Sporting Life, a novel written in 1960 which created quite a lot of interest when it first came out. TBH its appeal is mainly to people who want to revisit the nuances of local life in an industrial town of that era - so, I'm guessing, nobody on SCD. Well, the question is "What are you reading?" and that's my answer; it's not a recommendation as such, though I'm enjoying the book myself:-