What are you reading at the moment?

[weirdboy]

I thought The Left Hand of Darkness did have others.

Yes, the set is called the Hainish Cycle.

They are not directly connected stories but they take place in the same universe, and share some references and whatnot.

[weirdboy]

Also I agree that the womanizing prose is really stupid, but about 90% of that book is them walking around this huge spaceship. So if you can get past the crud at the start you will be fine.

[Armoreska]

im reading Ursula LeGuin (Dispossessed) and looks like someone's been talking about it just earlier.

i also shortlisted a bunch of anarchist/socialist/postgender/transhumanist scifi and even got the texts for most of them. along with the shorts this should last me the lifetime

[prodigalgodson]

Finished Oakley Hall's Warlock, one of the small handful of best books I've read.

About a third of the way into Portrait of an Artist as a Young Man now, and I totally get the hype.

[burneyfan]

Finished Oakley Hall's Warlock, one of the small handful of best books I've read.

I read Warlock a few years ago and loved it. It's one of a trilogy, though I don't think the novels are connected, except perhaps thematically. I have the second novel, The Bad Lands, sitting on my shelf, waiting to be read. (The third novel is Apaches.) For other great western reads in a similar vein, I recommend:

The Land Breakers by John Ehle
Butcher's Crossing by John Edward Williams
Anything set in the west by Cormac McCarthy (Blood Meridian's my favorite so far, but they're all great)
Whiskey When We're Dry by John Larison (one of my favorites from the past 1-2 years)

Just my unsolicited follow-up recommendations.

[prodigalgodson]

Finished Oakley Hall's Warlock, one of the small handful of best books I've read.

I read Warlock a few years ago and loved it. It's one of a trilogy, though I don't think the novels are connected, except perhaps thematically. I have the second novel, The Bad Lands, sitting on my shelf, waiting to be read. (The third novel is Apaches.) For other great western reads in a similar vein, I recommend:

The Land Breakers by John Ehle
Butcher's Crossing by John Edward Williams
Anything set in the west by Cormac McCarthy (Blood Meridian's my favorite so far, but they're all great)
Whiskey When We're Dry by John Larison (one of my favorites from the past 1-2 years)

Just my unsolicited follow-up recommendations.

Ayy thank you for the recs! I was hoping to read more from Hall, so I'll definitely have to seek out the rest of the trilogy.

Love Butcher's Crossing (as well as Stoner and Augustus, the latter of which is top 10 material for me), and Blood Meridian was my favorite book back in college (I think I'd give Suttree the edge from McCarthy now), but I haven't read the Border Trilogy, and neither the Ehle nor Narison titles ring a bell, so I greatly appreciate the pointers. I love Western fiction, but it's tough to find it really done well, so I'm thrilled to have more to look forward to.

[mightysparks]

Started reading House of Leaves last month and finally finished it last night. Didn't really like it that much tbh and I don't understand why it's so consistently listed as one of the 'scariest' books. It's incredibly dense and dry and boring. It's not scary, although there are a couple of scenes that are sort of creepy/cool. But they probably total 5 sentences in the whole book. The format is interesting and the effort the author put into it is insane, but it's just not enjoyable.

[Pretentious Hipster]

Click to see the thread. Thought this might be of interest to many of you readers here

[prodigalgodson]

I wish they assigned Moby Dick in K-12. I do have to agree on The Scarlet Letter though, that cornball shit did not age well. Then again I only finished a fraction of it, heh heh.

There are a lot, like The Great Gatsby, that might be great books but devoid of context and as assigned reading lose whatever glow they might have. The only assigned books from K-12 I was really feeling were To Kill a Mockingbird (me and everyone else and their grandma), Crime and Punishment, and The Plague. I still think it's pretty cool that our high school assigned Camus.

[weirdboy]

I personally really liked Moby Dick, except for that chapter that was just a long list of whale names and specifications.

[Pretentious Hipster]

My English teacher decided to do his favourite books instead of the classics. He's someone who thinks that Gran Turino is one of the greatest films ever made.

We had to read The Stone Angel. He said we have no taste in books if we didn't enjoy that one. Turns out it's complete garbage anyways. The type of plot where someone old becomes "woke" after smoking weed.

[mightysparks]

Last year I made a list of 10 classics and 10 'sci-fi etc books I'm actually interested in' to read, but I didn't finish either of them. I'm hoping to actually hit my reading goal this year and finish off the lists. I've been going back and forth between them and I've been finding this quite enjoyable. My lists are currently looking like:

• The Great Gatsby
• The Catcher in the Rye
• Hamlet
• Picture of Dorian Gray
• A Tale of Two Cities
• Invisible Man
• Moby Dick
• The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
• Great Expectations
• One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest

• The Left Hand of Darkness
• Berserk (vol 1-4)
• Rendezvous With Rama
• Mistborn, The Final Empire
• Never Let Me Go
• Assassin's Apprentice
• Consider Phlebas
• The Mote in God's Eye
• The Illustrated Man
• House of Leaves

... yes I still haven't read Cuckoo's Nest. I bought it and started reading it when I was about 15 but a water bottle leaked in my bag and ruined the book so that put me off lol

I'm currently reading Picture of Dorian Gray. Not sure what I'm choosing next. I intend for Moby Dick to be my long read of the year, so I'll probably try and do that within the next month before I go back to uni.

[sebby]

I would say Cuckoo's nest is very hard not to like, but then again i would have said the same about house of leaves.

i've recently finished Convenience Store Woman and it's probably better than anything i read in 2020 or 2019.