Oof I'm late, but I just got through

2)

Alice's adventures in wonderland

By Lewis Carroll

I'm a big fan of the story and the many adaptations that have come since. I decided it was time to take a look at the source.

One thing that I found a bit odd is that this was meant to be a story to entertain a bunch of kids on a boat ride. Others are named, and insulted towards the beginning with alice wondering if she is now them. At the very end, her sister is mentioned but not named, and given focus on the closing paragraph. Even then, its her sister reflecting on alices dream , more or less.

Book I: Pretext and Genesis

I'll be counting these as one book. So the pretext starts out by introducing you to the book as an academic text. It walks you through what translation its going by, the historical context of academic biblical analysis, and the different names and orderings of all the books depending on faith, whether it be Jewish, Catholic, Protestant, etc.

The pretext also explains to you how the biblical and the academic perspective differ, such as how the biblical narrative is that the Old Testament was written by Moses, but the academic view came to find that the books are cut and paste jobs by several different authors over periods of time. Also, how the biblical perspective kind of demands that if there are inconsistencies or "plot holes" in the text, that this must somehow make sense, whereas the academic perspective tries to look through history, archaeology, and different contexts in order to try to come up with an understanding of what the text means, doesn't mean, and how it connects or does not connect.

You're also walked through the history of the ancient Israelite religion, how it has polytheistic roots, and how there were different gods such as El and Yahweh, a wife named Asherah, and other deities like "the sons of God" and Ba'al. You're also given the contexts of how ancient Greek and Roman religion and culture impacted the Bible.

On to Genesis, I'm not going to go super in depth about every story. I'll give you the gist, and some of the things that stuck out to me, because there are a lot of bits that just aren't as relevant to modern Christians, seemingly.

The world gets made, Adam and Eve gets made, she eat'a da apple, you know the drill. What stuck out to me is how God kind of implies that he's speaking to either other gods or angels, because he says that when they eat the apple they'll become "like us".

At one point, angels were fucking humans and creating angel/human hybrids until God told them to stop. One thing that I find weird about actually reading the Bible is how the actual text kind of contradicts the popular narrative that God is all knowing. Genesis at least makes it pretty obvious that God didn't know everything that was going to happen. They make it pretty obvious that he makes mistakes and has regrets. I don't see why this is a problem. It actually seems like more of a failure of the culture of Christianity rather than the Bible itself that they insist that God must be all knowing. He doesn't have to be and I'd actually be more inclined to believe the whole thing if they just admitted that God can be wrong, make mistakes, and be irrational, but anyways.

God floods the Earth, and Noah builds the boat, Abraham almost kills his son, and Isaac's descendants come to compose the twelve tribes of Israel. It doesn't get much more complicated than that.

Up next will be Exodus, presumably the story of Moses. Until next time.

2 - Sandra Newman - Julia

1984 but from Julia's perspective. It was interesting to build out the setting a little more and see how Winston Smith ended up with Julia, as well as what came after the Ministry of Love. Well written!

I know I said my goal was 10, but I might as well make it the amount of books I have in this Bible. Make it 83. Some of the books are like 10 pages but oh well.

7: The Isles of the Cutlass Sea by Torsten Weitze

Finished the next installment of the 13th Paladin. They're still looking for the other 12 Paladins but there's some good foreshadowing following a former enemy from the main character's home town.

7. Daisy Jones and The Six – A faux oral history depicting the rise and fall of a Fleetwood Mac-style rock band in the 1970s. The interviews almost seemed real at times, with band members giving slightly different accounts on certain events to make themselves look good. As usual with rock-n-roll stories, plenty of drug use and sleeping around are featured, both being major factors in the break-up. While the book seemed to make the interviewer’s identity as a major reveal, it was clear who it could be early in the book. It is surprising that the author actually wrote lyrics for the 10 songs mentioned in the book.

8. James – A POV retelling of the novel Huckleberry Finn, from the perspective of the runaway slave Jim. While the story loosely follows the events of the Mark Twain book, it goes from being an adventure for Huck and more about Jim trying to get back to his family, showing him to be more intelligent and articulate. The book deals with the absurd hypocrisy in racism, like when Jim had to wear blackface in an acting troupe to pass as a white man, and slaves having to speak less eloquently to please their white masters.

9. What Moves The Dead – A retelling of the Edgar Allen Poe story “The Fall of The House of Usher”. It follows a soldier going to a decrepit manor to see a sick friend. I never read the Poe story, or seen the Netflix series, but this is a creepy novella. Scary imagery involving fungus, mushrooms and some weird walking rabbits. This is also the first time I encountered a non-binary protagonist, which is cool to see.

I finished book 7 in the Wheel of Time, A Crown of Swords.

Like book six, Lord of Chaos, this one had a lot going on throughout that made it hard to follow sometimes. With some villains assuming identities and other getting revived and put into new bodies, figuring out who is doing what becomes difficult at times, although Jordan leaves enough clues to dialog to refresh your memory.

This one had another great line "That man is Padan Fain, he sent trollocs to my home because it is my home, he hunted my friends because they are my friends. He is a dark friend, and a dead man."

Currently I'm reading When Money Dies, going over Weimar Germany, then book 8 of the Wheel of Time

8: Elder Race by Adrian Tchaikovsky

Humanity had sent out colony ships and then kinda forgot about them. Eventually Earth sent anthropologists to study how they were getting along and well, forgot about those guys too. The anthropologist found a world that was back in the middle ages and believed he was some powerful wizard and want him to stop a demon that's plaguing their countryside. I enjoyed it!

How is it the double posts don't show until after the fact? Any way, I was doing some searches for books on writing to help with this little block I'm going thru and was getting everything except for what I was looking.

Dishonorable Mentions:

The Creative Blogger: Write What You Want by Joshua King and Sit, Write, Share by Kathryn Britton

I read the overview and snippets before checking them out and hot darn were they off. The Creative Blogger was a hodgepodge of randomness that felt like an advertisement for something unknown. Sit, Write, Share was a collection of mini stories meant to encourage writers to get writing; at least that's what I think it was about.

Couldn't thru either of these books as the first few pages of each failed to keep me interested in reading more. What's kind of sad about these books is that I obtained more useful info from the following.

2) Writing a Blog by Cecilia Minden

The fact that a book geared toward young readers (book is from the Juvenile section of digital library) provided more useful information than two books geared toward adults is interesting.

Still browsing books on the topic to see if anything comes up that actually fits the search topic. After this I'm going back to leisure reading.

4 - The Characters (by Theophrastus) and Plays & Fragments (by Menander) [This is one book]

The Characters is a set of 30 descriptions of comedy archetypes. Each character gets their personality briefly defined then they're thrust into what reads like a montage of skits. The archetypes are all timeless, and the writing is pretty damn funny.  

As for Menander's plays: 

The Arbitration and The Unkindest Cut were the ones I found the most entertaining, they're also complete enough that the translator could conjecture the missing scenes. 

He has some good lines, in all his plays and in the fragments -not just funny ones but philosophical too- but the characters and plots are just stock and forgettable. 

The Arbitration is the only play in here that had a well delivered reveal with some buildup in my opinion.

3 - Karen Robards - The Girl from Guernica

Following a young woman and her family as they are caught in the attack on Guernica in the Spanish Civil War, through their life in Germany as WW2 builds. A war spy novel with a little more romance than I usually look for in books, but I enjoyed the story and how the author worked the plot into real life events.

omg this is the thread i been lookin for, i been reading like a mf

2025 i wanna finish 24 books! About 2 per month!

I think im on pace, I think im on my 5th book right now?

Current Progress

1. The Book of Ichigo Ichie - Hector Garcia
2. Look Back - Tatsuki Fujimoto (super short but imma count it yoink)
3. SONY - John Nathans
4. Uncanny: The Origins of Fear - Junji Ito

Currently I'm reading "To Pixar and Beyond" by Lawrence Levy! It's about the early days of Pixar, riiiight before Toy Story came out. It's about the BUSINESS side of what Pixar was going through at the time, how they weren't making any money, how they wanted to renegotiate their contract with disney but had no leverage, taking the company public in an IPO and all of that. Very fun book!

wait manga counts? if yes then I'm reading a ton of books, Other than that the only book I finished this year is Animal Farm by Orwell...

My local library fuckin blows and has next to no selection, been itching to find more books to read tho

sorry henry if manga is all you read it doesnt count (i make the rules since you replied to me !)

4 - George Orwell - 1984

I read this years ago in school but its a much different experience after reading "Julia", as the newer book filled in a lot of world building and set up everything up to Winston Smith meeting Julia. There were some minor differences in "Julia" which didn't mesh with the original text but I'd put that to either creative license or the perception of the respective lead characters.

I would definitely recommend reading "Julia" and "1984" as a pair in that order if it's been a while

1. Wise Blood by Flannery O'Connor

This year has been a lot of poetry reading for myself, so not a lot of finishing of books happening, but happy to report I've knocked out a classic to start my year. It was a pretty easy read and is shockingly more of its time than I expected. Definitely see why it's preached as a classic, even if some sections are a bit more dated than others.

I forgot, another book I just finished reading a few weeks ago is The Tao Of Wu by RZA

Very damn good, surprisingly spiritual book. Lotta good nuggets of wisdom in there. Few years back I read book by JayZ and I'd say I much prefer this RZA book!!!

9: The Valkyrie Stratagem by Glynn Stewart

Newest novel by Stewart. As always I get the ARC from his patreon and for once I have finished before the release (Thursday). Its really good. There was a twist I did not see coming at all even though there were hints in the last couple of books. Highly recommend this series.

A couple days late to an update - finished No. 6 #4 on the 23rd.

It's finally time to break into the correctional facility. Not without a plan, of course. The majority of this book involves executing the first stage of the plan that Nezumi had drawn up - gathering information from a top-ranking official who sneaks into West Block every now and then, getting the updated map of the correctional facility and deciding how to break in. We also get to see more of what has happened inside the secret facilities in No. 6 - including the scheme hatched by the scientists there involving the parasitic insects. The book ends with Nezumi and Shion getting inside the correctional facility - but whether it'll go how they want it to is as yet unknown...

There's a couple interesting points here. For those who know the end of the series, there's an ominous bit of foreshadowing in the middle of the book, and for those who watched the anime, you'll find that there's quite a few big differences between the anime and the novels - the main one being that Nezumi and Shion confront the correctional facility head-on in an event that (I believe) doesn't occur in the anime, whereas the anime has them consulting a group of people outside West Block. I'm not fully clear on the details since it's been years since I watched the show; I'll have to rewatch and find out.

Overall, a 7/10. I'm interested to find out how things proceed from here, and really although I have an inkling of what's coming up eventually, I'd like to know how that happens and what happens as a consequence.

I have been consistently forgetting to throw my name in, and officially join.

I'll shoot for 20 books this year

So far I've read the following six (6) books:

Speculative Los Angeles - Anthology

Big miss for me, there were maybe three decent stories in this collection of Sci-Fi stories set in Los Angeles. The short story format can be tricky in a lot of ways, but I think I was spoiled by the Harlan Ellison collection I read at the end of last year. There's a lot that can be done with the culture, climate, politics, etc of Los Angeles and the surrounding area, and none of these stories seemed to be super capable of saying anything memorable or too engaging with that. One of the standout awful ones was written in the second person -- just awful.

The Cabinet - Un-Su Kim Translated by Sean Lin Halbert.

I enjoyed this one a lot. I think it could be a little meandering and fatalistic, but there was enough intrigue and that type of ennui that appeals to me. I think people who want more closure might hate this one, but I vibed with it. Also I really like the cover.

The Salt Grows Heavy - Cassandra Khaw

I think the best thing going for this one is that it was brief; I think it clocked in at like 100 pages or so. This isn't a backhanded compliment to say it's bad. It's a compelling enough read, the subject matter is extremely macabre and gothy one of the main characters is a plague doctor. I will say the way the world of this book works is a bit at odds with it's horror asperations. It wears the gory aesthetics of horror, but lacks a deeper true horror. I think this would make a great comic, animation, or Del Toro film. It is a solid sort of dark fairy tale though, and worth a read as inspiration for some dark art.

The last three are from the Patternist Novels by Octavia E Butler I have one more left in the series. I am reading according to the reading guide since they were published out of Butler's suggested reading order.

Wild Seed

So far my favorite of the series. It begins around the 1400's and ends in the 1800's and is about two immortal beings entwined through history as they leave their homes in Africa and live in the new world and shape the development of society while breeding superhuman individuals through trial and error.

This series is on the further end of magic and fantasy of what I'd be interested in, but it is tied more heavily to biology, and Octavia Butler is a very compelling author to read so it was easy to get into decently.

Mind of My Mind

This is the most direct sequel to Wild Seed and features the two main characters from Wild Seed, however it was written and published before; which leads to some unfortunate lack of development for the two characters we spent the first book growing with. There are also a few other jagged edges on fitting these two books together but overall solid read, interesting build up of concepts and characters. The superpowered progeny of the two immortals of Wild Seed have spread throughout the US, they are connected still, but they are unstable and many are telepathic, or have telepathic elements of their powers. Basically they cannot be around each other and are potentially dangerous to the surrounding human population. The book follows the unification, struggles and growth of these super powered individuals.

Clay's Ark

This one felt entirely removed from the Patternist series, and does not feature any of the types of superpeople we've been following. It's the post-apocalypse rich and poor have massive disparities, the roads are dangerous, marauders regularly rob, murder and ransom travelers. On top of all of this there is an alien virus that has infected a compound in the mountains and has made a bunch of animalistic/primal people who are selfquarantining. There are parallels in how the process of how the virus works and of how the super people earlier in the series get their powers like an extreme puberty that might kill them. But that's the only tenuous through-line though. Anyway, a man and his two daughters get caught up with the infected primal people.

Overall solid, but a bit of whiplash since the 'patternists' are not featured in this at all. But solid pulp novel vibes with Butler's elevated writing ability.

I have started the fourth book and will say it does tie the animal people into the patternist world better, but takes place thousands of years in the future.

Excited to see what everyone gets into reading this year!

I just finished reading this "Gazette from Saltillo" that my grandparent gifted to me.

20 pages. Non fiction.

In this issue talks mostly about the old trades that were practiced in Saltillo (Coahuila, México), and I liked it a lot because it has anecdotes about people from the old days of the city that the writers searched in the municipal archives. It's like reading old gossip :v

Here are two of this types of anecdotes/letters that I would like to share ;v

"Saltillo, January 17, 1724. As is known, the blacksmith Bernardino de la Cerda has already been captured and imprisoned for having lived in concubinage, twice, with a married woman. Leave him alone. Sincerely, The Council."

"Saltillo, January 12, 1742. I have sued the shoemaker Apollo for the wounds he inflicted on me with a knife, all because I did not allow him to continue robbing some children who were playing pike with him. Sincerely, Pedro González."

Then I discovered I can download the other issues in PDF format for free, so maybe I'll read some more.

10: The Battle for Hjalgar by Torsten Weitze

This book went into some dark places. Had some pretty heavy moments and nasty twists towards the end but a pretty good ending. Onto the next book in the series

I just realized that I didn't upload the image of the gazette. Here is a photo.

Update! Finished two books:

The Heart of Understanding by Thich Nhat Hanh

A short but sweet book analyzing the Heart Sutra, one of the most famous and important sutras in Buddhism. This sutra teaches nonduality, the emptiness that tis present all phenomena, and much more. Thich Nhat Hanh interprets this sutra in such a way that makes it not only easy to understand, but also very engaging. I highly recommend it if you are a practicing Buddhist like me or are interested in learning about Buddhism.

Terrible Old Games You’ve Probably Never Heard Of by Dr. Stuart Ashen*

Dr. Stuart Ashen (or ashens on Youtube) is a Youtuber I’ve been watching for years now. He wrote a couple books about terrible games from old British computers and beyond, and this is the first one. Very amusing and full of games that, true to the name, I haven’t even heard of. Great for anyone who likes or liked old British computer games.

*yes, he’s a doctor of Psychology, but as far as I know, he doesn’t work as a psychologist or is licensed as one

Book #2 Done. EverQuest by Matthew S. Smith. I do not play MMOs, but I am very interested in learning the history of some of the older ones, and this was the perfect opportunity to do so. Matt did a good job covering the history, aftermath, and EverQuest's place in MMO history. Recommended

5 - Gravity's Rainbow by Thomas Pynchon 

American lieutenant Tyrone Slothrop wanders post WW2 Europe trying to uncover the mystery of why his erections were predicting the sites of German V-2 missile landings. Weaving in and out of other characters' own conspiracies. Features a fair few scenes that wouldn't be out of place in (some sort of post-modern) Looney Tunes.

My interest dropped (by varying degrees) whenever the scene changed to one without Slothrop*, and the book takes 300 pages to get going, so I can't really say I loved it holistically. 

*Eh sorta, I started liking Roger Mexico towards the end there. 

Done reading these books:

23. Das tiefschwarze Herz (The Ink Black Heart), Robert Galbraith, 1360 pages

24. Tokyo Zangyo, Michael Pronko, 340 pages

25. Frau Komachi empfiehlt ein Buch, Michiko Aoyama, 288 pages

26. Federkleid, Banana Yosimoto, 160 pages

27. Abschied von Hermine, Jasmin Schreiber, 288 pages

28. Eden.exe, Alice Delwin, 365 pages

29. Nur für dein Leben (I Will Find You), Harlan Coben, 432 pages

The Ink Black Heart:

6th book of the Cormoran Strike series. Edie Ledwell, co-author of the populare online series "The Ink Black Heart" is getting harrassed online by an unknown person going by the name of "Anomie". As the agency is busy, they turn her down, recommending another agency - but Edie Ledwell ends up getting killed in a graveyard.

From there, Cormoran is hired to find the true identity of Anomie - an undertaking that turns out very difficult and the murders don't stop either.

Book was okay but is mostly pretty uneventful outside of a few scenes. Weakest book of the series so far.

Tokyo Zangyo:

A top manager of a company ends up dead - falling from the rooftop of a building, the same building, the same spot, where one year ago an employee who committed suicide due to work pressure.

The company is interested in closing the case quickly but Hiroshi wants to get to the bottom of the clearly connected events.

Good book. Centering a book around japanese work culture/ethic is a great concept and done well.

Frau Komachi empfiehlt ein Buch:

5 short stories - all having one thing in common - a person is unhappy with their current life and through various circumstances ends up looking up books in the library where Miss Komachi works, recommending them books for their interests but also one additional book to lead them to a new path/hobby etc.

Good book, narrowingly avoids overstaying its welcome, as the core story plays out in a similiar fashion five times.

Federkleid:

Hotaru went through a rough ending of an eight year relationship and is returning to her home village to recover. Here, her paths cross with a man she feels like she saw before but doesn't know where.

Good book.

Abschied von Hermine:

The authors hamster, Hermine, recently died. She had hamsters die before but this time her grief was higher than expected, so she decided to look internally why that's the case.

The result is this book, detailing what happens to our bodies and cells when we die, how our mind goes through different phases of grief and how we can unintentionally try to surpress that process to how death is seen in different cultures/religions.

Great book. Having pet rats, I go through grief due to them dying on the regular and found this book helpful. Also manages to have great humour, making even the very scientific sections an enjoyable read.

Eden.exe:

Hired thief Sia lives in a Cyperpunk future. One day, she gets a mission to steal a mysterious USB stick - unknown to her, the stick holds the key to shut down all kinds of electronics and even the whole cyber structure that the city Neo-Orbis is running on. Clearly, there are powers that want to get the USB stick so Sia has to run - while also making her mind up what she wants the future of Neo-Orbis to look like.

Pretty good book.

I Will Find You:

David is in jail since four years - as he allegedly killed his three year old son one night. For all his tenure he has refused visits - he believes to be not guilty of the crime but also feels regret over not being able to save his son from whoever the reals murderer is.

When his first visitor in five years, his sister-in-law, shows him a photo, his entire world flips. The photo shows a group of people in an amusement park, and in the background - a 8-year old boy, looking just like a four years older version of his beloved, dead son, Matthew.

David has to find out if his son still lives - and for that, he needs to break out of prison.

Good action driven book.

Just got back from the AWP conference in Los Angeles. Managed to finish two books while out there.

2. I Hate It Here, Please Vote for Me: Essays on Rural Political Decay by Matthew Ferrence

3. Places We Left Behind: a memoir-in-miniature by Jennifer Lang

Time rages on. If anyone else has updates for March get 'em out.

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