Books (General)

[long sorrel]

If you want a bit better stats you should mark when you start and when you finish

but otherwise you can just mark a book as read only and it'll register the day you finished

[junior dew]

Ahh yeah that makes sense! I honestly don’t see myself ever going to my laptop for my book tracking

[long sorrel]

It just happens to be where I'm at most of the day

[ivory cypress]

i'm at my desk so much of the day

[junior dew]

Oh dang just loaded up Storygraph on my browser for the first time. Why is current read vertically on the right side?

[ivory cypress]

i don't know how to answer that question

[junior dew]

I mean I also am, though I work from a different laptop. But I spend a ton of time on laptops

[long sorrel]

(the reading challenge thing won't appear if you haven't joined any)

[junior dew]

Hmm Margins looks like it may need to improve the UX for marking a book as finished

Takes 3 taps it seems

[long sorrel]

@lusty meteor I meant to ping reply but I auto remove it lol

[junior dew]

Would be nice if it took 1 tap to mark as finished

[long sorrel]

takes 1 on web for storygraph, 2 on app

Since the options on web appear on hover

[lusty meteor]

i dont mind pins so dw

[junior dew]

Storygraph on web looks like it takes 2

From home page

[long sorrel]

No, I mean I automatically remove it, I did want to lol

[junior dew]

Actually it’s 3?

[long sorrel]

OH I see, fair yeah

Nah, click on the book > hover > click

[long sorrel]

just hover the arrow

[junior dew]

Hmm, why have the mark as finished button under there then?

That seems redundant

[long sorrel]

I assume it's meant to be a faster way to mark it as finished

but it becomes pointless with the confirmation

lol

[junior dew]

Yeah lol

Strange

I do wish Margins just had an option on the home page with each book to mark it as finished. Would be nice, though it's not a dealbreaker

[long sorrel]

mhm, I'd not mind that

[junior dew]

Yeah I think on margins it’d make a lot of sense to add an additional button for marking a book as read or at least updating book status so you could either mark as read, paused, or DNF’d. There’s definitely easily space for another button.

[long sorrel]

yaeh

[junior dew]

I do hope they move the whole “Your story” section out of the initial main view

I like “currently reading” being the focal point/front and center. Perhaps the “story” aspect is there to have currently reading more central to the app view, but it does feel unnecessary to me to have, as I don’t care about profiles or following other people

[long sorrel]

The ideal app is the one that has modules and lets you choose the order of the modules

but that's so much more work haha

[junior dew]

Yeah for sure haha

Honestly I'm kinda excited about Margins so far. It seems like it may be fairly ideal for my use cases and preferences actually. Room for some improvements but I like a lot of what they're doing here

Especially being able to add the whole series to your TBR rather than the individual books. I LOVE that idea/feature admittedly

Just since it makes things easier a bit

[long sorrel]

Oh, I think that's a great option yeah

I specifically don't want to do that but having the option would be nifty

[tight kindle]

I only use StoryGraph on my phone lol
But I also don't use my laptop that often or have a dedicated computer setup

Also

[ivory cypress]

i also specifically only want to add books and not series but i see why someone would want that

[long sorrel]

Yeah, it keeps my tbr clean

I am reading like 20 series at once

I'd die if I added full series, also idk if I want to add the 3rd book without having read the second!

and then i'd need to go and remove it!

When i finish book 1 I go and add book 2 to the tbr

[ivory cypress]

yeah exactly, cause what if i'm not into it... then it's like dnfing multiple books instead of just one 😩

[tight kindle]

I'm in here to ask for book recommendations for @soft inlet because she's in a reading slump and has been having trouble finding books to read. My tastes differ a lot from hers so I figured I'd consult the hive mind.
I set her up with StoryGraph so she can track a TBR :P

She really likes all of Brandon but especially Mistborn and Skyward, fantasy stuff (WotM, Six of Crows, Rick Riordan, the Night Circus (but not TSS which is crazy given she's related to me)), sci-fi (Renegades and The Lunar Chronicles by Marissa Meyer, Project Hail Mary, The Martian), some murder mystery (Good Girl's Guide to Murder), and teen dystopian (Hunger Games, Divergent)
Generally low romance, low spice

[long sorrel]

@soft inlet
For magic and world setup: A Darker Shade of Magic
Obviously, Tainted Cup has magic, mystery, etc.
The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue is kinda dark but magical, I think it could hit a similar spot to Night Circus
Similar-ish to Brandon, The Dollmakers (but you'll know better if this would work, Atrus)
Any Kingfisher fairy tale retelling I think I'd recommend here. Nettle & Bone would be a good point to start to see if you like them, they all have romance more or less but it isn't the point of any of them I'd say, and I think the fairy-tale retellings have no spice, or it's fade to black.
For something a bit different than more traditional fantasy: A Master of Djinn
And for something "softer", The Goblin Emperor

I don't recall if A Master of Djinn has any smut scenes 🤔 i think not? But I don't remember

[tight kindle]

She loved The Dollmakers!

She might like ADSoM

I need to get back to it

[long sorrel]

Aha, so that one's a pointless recc

[tight kindle]

Well, gives you another data point

[long sorrel]

I'm kinda sad there aren't more stories in The Dead Djinn Universe

[tight kindle]

Tainted Cup might be a little dark
Might be worth a shot though. I know our local library has it (because I got them to buy it lmao)

[long sorrel]

Have you read it?

[tight kindle]

Yup! And ADoC

[long sorrel]

Ah gotcha, and what about it do you think is dark? 🤔

or like what type of dark?

[tight kindle]

Hm. Dark might not be the right word.

I'm trying to figure out how to describe it

[long sorrel]

mhm, I think Mistborn is darker for example

so I'm not sure what bar to use

[tight kindle]

I think it's the setting
...The more I think about it the more it feels like an irrational feeling. ||Something about the biopunk setting just makes it feel like somewhere I would absolutely not want to live.
...Maybe I hate the setting because I loathe biology
That might actually be the reason.||

[long sorrel]

Oh

This is that it's hitting you as mild body horror

[tight kindle]

YES

That's exactly it

[long sorrel]

Yeah that makes sense, and I personally love it, but if she doesn't want that kind of stuff then scrap Tainted Cup, the rest should be fine still

[long sorrel]

like this is like Tress basically

||where the spores are sort of body horror, since they can grow through your oriffices and such from the inside||

I think it has a similar vibe

though Sanderson write it more "cutesy"

which makes it feel less real?

[tight kindle]

Yeah exactly. It bothers me WAY less in Tress

It's the body horror mixed with the grittier setting that gets me

I still enjoy the story but it was a little more of a struggle to get through because of that

Which is why I don't feel the same way about it as a lot of you do. Like... I don't know that it's something I'd really recommend to people

[long sorrel]

I think it isn't strong enough that most people won't just see past it, but i guess we're both biased!

[ivory cypress]

maybe the person you're reccing to won't be hit as hard either

who knows!

[junior dew]

Ahh so it doesn't add all the books to the TBR. It adds the series as "Want to Read" specifically, so if you start a book and DNF it, you just remove the series from "Want to Read" rather than multiple books. But it seems like if you finish a book in a series and then you have the series in your Want to Read, then when you go to continue the series, it'll show the first book in the series is completed and which book is next up

I'll have to actually finish Licanius book 1 to confirm some stuff, and I need to mark some books read to see how they handle things like ratings. But I think they've landed on something that feels fairly elegant for the handling of series vs books in the TBR. And of course you don't have to add series, you can just add the books

[soft inlet]

Thanks for the reccs!

[junior dew]

I'd also highly recommend Children of Time for sci-fi if you haven't read it yet!

[tight kindle]

I think I hit halfway in Fateheart

[long sorrel]

the fic?

you're gonna have to tell me if you recc it or not once you're done

Im curious that someone wuld write something so long ngl

[tight kindle]

I'm really enjoying where the plot is going and am excited to see where it goes

[long sorrel]

I am fascinated and curious

[tight kindle]

Also, (TSS and Fateheart) ||The new Harbor is just... Perfect. The fic author somehow created a Harbor that I like almost as much as the canon one. And it's only an almost as much because there's not a lot of people or books there yet.||

[long sorrel]

Does the fic have the og characters?

||Maybe Kat?||

Does it have Dorian is my real Q

I always forget not-Vecna's name

[tight kindle]

Yup
||Zachary, Dorian, and Kat are the MCs with Zachary's mom being a supporting character and we have some new ones as well! Bernard, Leander, and... Uh... She's new I don't remember her name. An acolyte from the old Harbor that got trapped outside (her backstory is told in the same way as the Sweet Sorrows stories and it's really well done imo)
Lenore and Simon were there for the first bit because it started right where the first book left off but they haven't been around much since Z and Dorian arrived at the new Harbor.
Also the celestial hare makes a reappearance, which is cool because that was one of the more random bits in the original book.
Interestingly enough we haven't seen the Keeper, Mirabel, or Ryme yet and I'm curious if the author is going to reintroduce them eventually or not.||

[ripe tide]

I just finished the Rook and Rose trilogy and I absolutely loved it. I’m sooo excited for The Sea Beyond since the first book of that publishes this year.

[long sorrel]

so it's a direct "sequel"?

[long sorrel]

You're making me want to reread Starless Sea

and now I have the spanish in print

and I'm looking forward to see what they did with Morgenstern prose in the translation

because, crap, that can't be easy to translate

[long sorrel]

did i not show you?

[tight kindle]

Yup
And it has its own identity and doesn't feel like an addendum to the first one. It took a while to get going because the first section of the book was mostly occupied with ||getting back to and exploring the new Harbor. The plot is well underway now and it's really cool. Ties in members from the old, collapsed Collector's Club. And the fact that Zachary has Fate's heart inside him.||

[tight kindle]

That's a prettyyyyyyyyy cover

[tight kindle]

I like

[long sorrel]

lookd the same as the og I think

judging by my digital version

glad they kept all the details

[tight kindle]

That decoration next to the heading looks different

Nope never mind

It's the same

[long sorrel]

this?

[tight kindle]

Yeah

[long sorrel]

i think it's identical, at least to my epub

[tight kindle]

Yeah

[long sorrel]

yeah

[tight kindle]

I got it mixed up with ||the headings of the present plot chapters, which are different.||

[long sorrel]

aaah, yeah

I didn't wanna spam

"There are three paths, this is one of them" is such a sentence?

[tight kindle]

The biggest criticism I have so far is the [Fateheart] ||complete lack of Mirabel, The Keeper, and Ryme. It feels a little weird, especially because they're occasionally referenced. But nobody wonders where they are. Feels like a gap in the storytelling and I hope it gets resolved.||

[tight kindle]

It feels like it shouldn't work or like it should be a little awkward or something but it's really not at all

[tight kindle]

Referring to Zachary as not-Vecna is very funny and also quite accurate

[tight kindle]

Whoa
There's a site that converts Ao3 fics into EPUBs that I can download

And put on my Kindle

That's wild

[ivory cypress]

you can already download ao3 fics as epubs...

[long sorrel]

Uh oh

[ivory cypress]

that seems like maybe against the tos

[tight kindle]

oh weird

[tight kindle]

Wonder why the website exists then
It's got its own Discord server and everything
I think I randomly stumbled across it and figured if there was a website someone put together that it wasn't a built in function

[alpine drum]

Does it offer configuration features?

[tight kindle]

I don't think it has any formats that aren't on that download thing
Do other fanfic sites have the same download function? It wasn't just for Ao3

[tight kindle]

Fateheart ||OMG FATE AND TIME ARE COMING BACK||

[long sorrel]

Fine, I downloaded the damn thing 😩

[tight kindle]

Hah
Pumps fist

[old bone]

That's Hardc

Hardcover *

[wraith lynx]

Oh really 👀👀

[snow vessel]

I might take a short break from SOTF soon to read Odd Spirits

I think it's only about 140 pages...

[tight kindle]

Fateheart ||...I want my wedding to be like this.
Obviously I won't be married by Fate and Time themselves but honestly having the officiant go
"Rings to wear, a lifetime to bear, the unending circle, a promise you share,” is just an absolutely BANGER line. I'm going to steal that.||

[somber timber]

So I got a physical copies of books instead of digital for the first time in over a decade and it has not sunk in that turning the lights off when reading before bed doesn’t really work

[lucid isle]

I’ve recently bought paperbacks instead of digital recently and must say I’m really enjoying it again.

In fact, I like reading fantasy in paperback and sci-fi on my kindle.

[low hill]

Ahh, I have* the English versions of those covers. They make a nice pair.
-# *Obviously, because I have like three different copies of each...

[long sorrel]

I wish I had the pretty editions 😩

[snow vessel]

A store near me has a penguin(?) classics edition of the night circus

[low hill]

[The Starless Sea] Both my standard editions are like this:

[long sorrel]

Cute

[proper silo]

Peerless 114 ||oh gods, this got so dramatic and tragic all ofna sudden ||

[minor sleet]

I bet I know what part you just got to

Is there a nice illustration in this edition?

[proper silo]

Not... Yet? I'm not sure we're thinking of the same moment

114 ||Feng Xiao just got revealed(?) as Thirteen Floors member||

||Me when one of the two spies who have a rivalry with each other end up being genuine rivals and betraying each other: shocked_pikachu.jpg||

[minor sleet]

Not the moment I was thinking of but yes very big plot twist

[proper silo]

[minor sleet]

https://tenor.com/view/spy-spy-vs-spy-black-spy-white-spy-iggydr-gif-18988644

[proper silo]

Honestly after (Thousand Autumns) ||Yan Wushu betraying Shen Qiao to that Hehuan guy, I should've expected a similar twist here||

||This author does so love repetition||

[minor sleet]

I loved those spy v spy cartoons as a kid. Best part of mad tv

[proper silo]

I don't think I've ever seen them before 🤔

[wraith lynx]

I wasnt allowed to watch the show but spy vs spy was okay 😂

[proper silo]

Out of curiosity, is the moment you're thinking about already passed or yet to come?

Peerless 116 ||Oh, I love that Cui Buqu is not even really mad at Feng Xiao about it, just like, yep, that's the business we're in||

||Like obviously he's gonna be indignant later and Feng Xiao's gonna have to grovel, but... Yeah, they're in spy business, they're gonna do spy stuff||

Ooh, the cover for volume 4 is real pretty

[junior dew]

Shadow of What Was Lost is proving very interesting at this point. Enjoying it as a whole more than WoTM for sure

SoWWL 38 || With how good Davian is with the magic system and some of the specific things he can do, I wonder if this is setting stuff up for Davian from another point in time being the villain of the story. Perhaps Davian much later in time going back in time substantially ||

[ripe tide]

Literally crying as I walk through Santa María Del Mar, in large part because of the book by Ildefonso Falcones, but also because it just really connects with my own writing, at least in terms of what’s made me excited for coming here, what I’ve seen, the way that just seeing it has contributed to my research… I was literally able to get up close to one of the stained glass windows because of the balcony.

[wraith lynx]

Awww thats so precious!!

[proper silo]

Peerless 123 ||Awww, they finally kissed properly||

idk if this is the moment Codenames was talking about but if so, there is indeed an illustration

[mild lance]

Read The Olympian Affair on my plane ride!

Olympian Affair ||overall better than the first book imo. Found the plot more compelling especially with the greater series threat taking shape, and I think the climax was better, which was one of my complaints with Aeronaut’s Windlass||

||I’m a bit confused as to why the etherealists’ ability to see the future didn’t come up a single time this book||

||also wish that Gwen and Folly had POVs||

[proper silo]

Peerless 124 ||ah damn it, they're not actually seriously kissing||

||Feng Xiao stop messing around and actually confess, dammit||

[somber timber]

Yeah I got paperbacks and it was great for like just relaxing on the couch reading over the holidays!

[long sorrel]

I do have a bunch of paperbacks but I'm stuck on the one I'm currently reading

just like every other book I'm reading

[junior dew]

I got a book light the other day and I think I’m a lot more likely to read physical books more often as a result

Consistent lighting is a wonder

[minor sleet]

The clown show must go on

[versed agate]

||I completely forgot that was a thing||

[proper silo]

I swear, Erha really spoiled me with the way ||the love interests get together halfway through the story|| and now every book where the main couple ||doesn't become a couple until the last few chapters|| feels just a little disappointing...

[long sorrel]

I get the opposite

well, both

like ||middle point is good but too early I also don't like, but right at the end also not good||

[proper silo]

hm... I think I like when couples get together early on cause I've read so many stories of attraction and pre-relationship, but not that many when the couple is already in a relationship. But at the same time, the pre-relationship is fun. So midpoint works best for me

(I was gonna spoiler tag it but at this point what am I even spoiling )

[long sorrel]

I think there is a fun thing of a pre existing one that morphs

Vs going from where they just met

[proper silo]

yeah

[long sorrel]

ive read some fwb > romantic relationship that are pretty fun

[proven token]

Fun challenge: find three love songs about a healthy and stable relationship

[mild lance]

||So did Jim Butcher evidently||

[mellow meteor]

where will we be discussing Twelve Months?

[wet belfry]

Imma be honest I don't think Dresden Files is nearly popular enough around these parts to warrant discussion anywhere bespoke

[hollow hedge]

idk about that, you might be right? I'm definitely going to read it but like, even when I read Dresden books, I don't usually have a lot to say about them

[mellow meteor]

yeah, just checking

[unique turret]

I didn’t even know a new DF was coming out lol

I waited over a year to read the last two

[alpine drum]

if it seems like a thread is warranted it's trivial to set up

[brazen pilot]

Shadow Games 1 ||One-Eye and Goblin mentioned in the second sentence. This is gonna be a gooooooood book.||

[oblique zodiac]

hmmm

[brazen pilot]

Shadow Games 1

||The Company is dead in fact but not in name.||

||And we, O merciless gods, stand witness to the power of names.||

||Been ages since I read The White Rose and yet still this hits.||

[oblique zodiac]

hmmm

the only brandon sanderson novel in this library is the korean version of the final empire

[mellow meteor]

coming out in two weeks

[oblique zodiac]

Wow. I didn't know that there was a fully translated version of the Witcher

hmmm

found Ilias

[minor sleet]

I loved those books!!!

Didn’t realize they got translated into Korean

[junior dew]

TSOWWL 46 + Mistborn || Someone has to secretly have been replaced by an auger shapeshifter, but who? 🤔 Who’s the Kandra? ||

[oblique zodiac]

whats it about? 👀

ugh

[minor sleet]

The author invented childhood adventures for Merlin to have in Avalon

[oblique zodiac]

trying to decide between nonfiction or fiction

[minor sleet]

They’re very fun. Fiction and not fully based in Arthuriana but again, I really loved them. I read the books obsessively in 2008

I’m confident of the year because my dad was listening Bruce Springsteen’s new album Magic in the car on loop

[snow vessel]

-# both....

[oblique zodiac]

thanks I might give it a shot

[oblique zodiac]

hmm

I never really read 2 books at once before. I either obsess over one book or don’t read it at all.

[snow vessel]

Ahh, choosing which to read?

[oblique zodiac]

Yeah, I really want to improve my Korean by reading a lot of books this year

There's a list of book suggestions that the Seoul National University(best college here) announces, and I might choose from there

[brazen pilot]

Shadow Games 5
||Croaker: Man, it'd suck if any of the Taken weren't really dead. There's just no way to know.
Raven, meanwhile: AAAAAAAAAAAA CROAKER PLEASE COME BACK||

||NO CROAKER AND THE LADY CAN'T SEPARATE||

||I guess each one of us, at some time, finds one person with whom we are compelled toward absolute honesty, one person whose good opinion of us becomes a substitute for the broader opinion of the world. And that opinion becomes more important than all our sneaky, sleazy schemes of greed, lust, self-aggrandizement, whatever we are up to while lying the world into believing we are just plain nice folks. I was her truth object, and she was mine.||

glen could be a damn good romance writer if he wanted

[brazen pilot]

Shadow Games 9

||Croaker: Past the border, if you wanna travel with us you gotta follow the same rules as everyone else.
Lady: But I'm just a woman 🥺 I'm just a little girl||

This is so damn good

[snow vessel]

Storygraph question: is it possible to mark a book as one you read this year, but not have it count towards your x books reading challenge?

[ripe tide]

It was something that surprised me a lot about the series.

[snow vessel]

Ok I have another random question

A book I'm reading has "file under:" and then a list of terms on the back in small print

Does anyone know what that is?

I assumed it'd be some sort of genre/theme category but the things it lists don't feel like common themes to me

[low hill]

Yeah, it'll be that.

[snow vessel]

Is there like... a standard list? Or are these just the things the author came up with?

It has marriage & malevolence / teatime with a tulpa / broken reflections / at a crossroads

Those seem... so vague and also specific to be categories

[low hill]

Probably the author/publisher/marketing team, yeah. I doubt its standardised in that way, because bookshops will have access to the catalogue that uses the "normal" categories.

[merry galleon]

I’m feeling better after a couple of days of being sick, so dipping my toes back into reading.

[analog geode]

I always read when Im sick

[grim veldt]

I once re-read Nona the Ninth while sick
Legit gave me a headache.

[snow vessel]

Ok but is that because you read while sick or because you read locked tomb while sick xD

[low hill]

Embrace the power of AND...

[merry galleon]

My sick came with a headache (possible migraine) that hurt every time I blinked

So it was hard trying to concentrate on reading with my head thumping like a drum

[grim veldt]

That is entirely my point, it was because I read the Locked Tomb while sick

[snow vessel]

I think there's a solid 3-4/5ths of the ending of Nona that I did not fully understand

[minor sleet]

Did you get the part where cows have best friends and watch sunsets?

[lucid isle]

I've paused The King Beyond the Gate and started on Shadow of the Gods by John Gwynne instead.
It's started well!

[old bone]

Man I read Cow and got reminded of that Colleen Hoover book

[minor sleet]

There are cows in her books?

They all seemed to be set in a city or generic American suburbs

[junior dew]

TSOWWL 48 || Talkamar is going to take Licanius to the wells. Wait so I know we’ve heard this before but I didn’t connect it before. Talkamar is Cadan, right?

I know Licanius is a word for fate and maybe an entity. Hmm ||

[long sorrel]

what is that even?

[junior dew]

The shadow of what was lost by James Islington

[old bone]

It ends with us

[junior dew]

Pretty sure I read that book in college. How the hell did I not even clock that. Listen I’m not one to kink shame, but…

[wraith lynx]

I think since im tracking my Manga on story graph (hehe im a Manga reader now 🥴) I think I want to double my book goal from 20 to 40? So it can be 20 op volumes and 20 actual books? 🤔

[old bone]

I think that's tooo much kinky for me

[old bone]

Please use Anilist for manga 😭

It's just better for tracking and finding new stuff

[wraith lynx]

Anilist?? Oh wait I've been told this, gotcha 😂

I'd rather have them separate anyway

[old bone]

Make one rn 🔫

[junior dew]

I think The Shadow of What Was Lost is demonstrating to me that James Islington does a good job with world building and crafting an interesting story (imo), but his weakness seems to consistently be character work.

And the fact that I’m even uttering that sentence feels like a sign that I have been growing as I’ve read more. If I had read this a few years ago I don’t think I would have noticed.

[old bone]

I think I would rather take that than a story with nothing as interesting as WoTM

[junior dew]

Honestly I’m enjoying this far more than WoTM as a whole

[old bone]

I liked Licanius more too

[wraith lynx]

I dont mean to break containment but (SoTF) ||It was kind of frustrating because the big draw was Vis meeting and interacting with the new worlds and not a SINGLE person is super interesting outside of caeror... makes the super cool worlds feel like set pieces at times :/||

[junior dew]

Interesting. I know my gf thought I’d enjoy Licanius because of its worldbuilding. When I was reading WoTM she kept asking if she could spoil Licanius for me so I said I’d read Licanius soon after. Now when I tell her about my Licanius theories, she doesn’t remember much

[junior dew]

SoTF || Tbh SoTF I enjoyed more than WoTM and didn’t notice the weaker character work as much because of how interesting I found the plot and worldbuilding + the jumping from world to world ||

I think I’m fortunate in that I still can be distracted from weaker character work if the plot and worldbuilding is interesting enough to keep the book compelling for me (SoTF).

I may notice weaker character work at times these days depending on how weak it is, but plot and worldbuilding can be interesting enough to outweigh it for me to the extent where it doesn’t detract too much from my enjoyment (TSoWWL).

But I also think stories do hit harder when the character work is excellent or when I finish a series and find myself genuinely wishing I had more time with the characters (RoTE, Cradle)

It’s always so special to come away from a series and think “wow, I’m sure going to miss these characters. I’d give anything to just spend more time with them and follow even more of their lives”.

And I say this as someone who was adamant for years I was solely a plot reader and didn’t care much for character work

[echo crater]

Hello there! I've a question and maybe you can assist me with the right choice.. i'm currently in a standstill with my reading, i've almost finished the cosmere (need to read the isles of emberdark but can't really start it, idk why but i don't feel like it at the time being) and thus i need some other book to read in the mean time. I've read WoT, Malazan, Rothfus, Lamora, Asimov, GRRM, Elric, R.A. Salvatore, First Law, Trilogy of the Wolf Empire (Swan), John Grynne first trilogy, The Demon cycle Brett and many other books i'm currently not remembering. TLDR i need something to dive into, a big world, better with magic and complex situation. I'm not afraid of big books but i need to find the will to read again, i need it! 😄 can someone assist me? 🥺 🥺

[echo crater]

i feel meloncholy everytime i end a series.. i've even cried when i finished the foundation cycle of asimov just to see that he wouldn't write more books :S

[low hill]

A Darker Shad e of Magic (Shades of Magic 1) by V.E. Schwab.
Foundryside (Founders 1) by Robert Jackson Bennett.
Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell by Susanna Clarke.

[echo crater]

Jonathan strange i've read it! Loved it, craving more of that series, so much untapped potential...

[analog geode]

Earthsea

[echo crater]

I will start with a Darker Shade of Magic, which i've came across several times and seems interesting! @analog geode i don't know why, but earthsea doesn't seems to pull my attention, it might be be, i should definetely give it a try, but i don't feel the urge to do so.. 🙁

Anyway, thank you very much for the tips! 🙂

[ripe tide]

The Rook and Rose trilogy (starting with The Mask of Mirrors) by M.A Carrick.

(And if you’re a live-blogging person then I can get an invite to their server, Marie loved my live-blogging of the series)

[junior dew]

Hmm not as much magic going on by I loved the Dandelion Dynasty series by Ken Liu. Loved the world, history, characters, and conflict

Broken Earth trilogy by N.K. Jemisin is always an easy recommendation because it’s top tier. Must read imo.

Robin Hobb’s Realm of the Elderlings series is another must read imo. Huge fantasy series. Some of my favorite characters of all time.

Children of Time series as well for sci-fi

[echo crater]

Sci-Fi is welcome as well, finished recently (like 3-4 months ago) the Expanse, so i'm a huge fan of it, just feeling the need for a bit of fireball here and there.

[long sorrel]

Okay, have you read the new book by the Expanse authors?

(y'all knew this was coming)

[echo crater]

not a blogger sorry! but i've heard of the trilogy, i'll add to my tbr! 😄

[long sorrel]

The Mercy of Gods

it's unrelated to the expanse and it's very good

[echo crater]

To be honest no, i prefer to read in my mother tongue, which is not english and read the book in english just as last resort if the translation team is too slow or they wont translate it! But i'll check it out! Also, would love to hear more about the expanse.. really missing Amos

[long sorrel]

Well Mercy of Gods has been translated to a couple other languages already, so might want to check if it's in yours if you're interested

[echo crater]

knowing the publisher in Italy, it wont be transalted for another 3 years if ever 🙁

[long sorrel]

Here it was released about 4 months after or so

[echo crater]

but i've just found out that i should real the sins of our fathers to properly end the Expanse series.. and that might be an oopsie from my side

[long sorrel]

You haven't!?

Yes you should do that!

[echo crater]

https://tenor.com/view/hello-gif-13062150862685254762

[analog geode]

Honor Harrington for sci-fi

Peak

Or the Vorkosigan Saga

[mossy gyro]

Kingdom of Copper 13 ||I suppose surviving a horrible metal blood poison is one way to mend a friendship. Nahri's overheard a lot of Qatani family drama though and also trusts Nesrin far less after discovering she'd lied about the extent of Ali's scars. Which is valid considering that woman knows a lottttttttttt more than she ever lets on||

[light drum]

I think maybe in your journal, thats how you can reread a book

[lucid isle]

How do we get other Book channels/threads/whatever added?

[long sorrel]

you mean added to your list or added to the server?

[lucid isle]

The sever, I see the Will/Strength of the Few there

Unless there are already more and my weak Discord skills haven't uncovered them

[long sorrel]

But I don't tihnk we need any more?

[somber timber]

They have to be

https://tenor.com/view/flaunting-my-hair-glinda-wicked-hair-shake-universal-pictures-gif-7546243940643062326

[lucid isle]

Would Dungeon Crawler Carl qualify as popular?

[long sorrel]

more like, they need to be overtaking the channel

[brazen pilot]

The mods make threads here for stuff that gets discussed so much that is fills #1404497733108236318

[long sorrel]

not popular

[brazen pilot]

If it isn't at that level you can just discuss here

[long sorrel]

Yeah it's about how something is talked about so much that it drowns everything else

[lucid isle]

Perfect, thanks/

[long sorrel]

so anything with no dedicated thread goes here, and it also helps discovry and such

[lucid isle]

I've never heard of Willverse

[somber timber]

It’s cradle

[lucid isle]

Or that

I'll do a Google.

[long sorrel]

well, now you have!

[lucid isle]

This is true

I'm learnding

[versed agate]

Cradle Series by Will Wight
there was a strong overlap in fandom back in the day, to the point they use the same custom software to track things the author says ("WoBs" become "WoWs")

[marble sinew]

Cradle is big here, but it's a finished series and most people that will read it have read it. That being said, we're always open to new recruits!

[alpine drum]

as other's have said we only make threads when it's clogging up the main channel but feel free to talk about DCC in this thread, I know there are quite a few readers of it here

[random dome]

Yep, if something doesn't have a dedicated thread, the appropriate place to talk about it is here! I've actually been making my way through the 3rd DCC audiobook lately myself

[lucid isle]

Big love

[low hill]

[All Souls all] @ripe tide Remind me, ||what are the demons thing? I had managed to completely delete them from my memory as well apparently... Are they the very smart ones?||

[ripe tide]

||Correct. They tend to prodigious creativity.||

[lucid isle]

I'm on book 4, so far 3 has been the weakest for me.

[ripe tide]

Where are you at?

[low hill]

[Black Bird Oracle all] ||Part 3 I think? The book is downstairs now, packed to go out in a bit. They're in Venice and they've just worked out their plan to infiltrate the tower with the memory bottles. The last chapter ended with them in a boat waiting for the night to arrive.||

[ripe tide]

Ahhhh ok. You’ve made quite some progress.

[low hill]

I vaguely assume I'll fiinish it today, yeah.

Just based on how far through my bookmark is. I haven't looked at the page count to see if that's true. :P

[ripe tide]

You’re close to the end for sure.

What have you thought?

[low hill]

I've been enjoying it, but given how much I've apparently forgotten in the probably 12 years since I read the original trilogy, I do wonder if I should have re-read it all...
[All Souls] ||And how much Matthew's possessiveness annoys me.||

[ripe tide]

Yeah I’m with you on that last statement.

[junior dew]

I mean, the channel has had at least 3 new readers and 2 re-reads just over the last few months

[marble sinew]

Yeah, but there are decent droughts between recruits

[junior dew]

Very fair!

[minor sleet]

https://www.tumblr.com/minubell/785564862135910400/au-where-sauron-literally-pours-all-of-his-cruelty

[spring turtle]

Sin-Eater rings

Sounds fun

[brazen pilot]

Honestly at this point it's less that Glen could be and more that he is

[spring turtle]

Excise the bad parts, throw the thing away you put them in and pray no one finds it

[lusty meteor]

You say this like the first trilogy isnt a romance smh

[brazen pilot]

You need to catch up with me

The stuff we're getting is wild

[mossy gyro]

Kingdom of Copper 16 ||JAMSHID POISONED HIM???||

[brazen pilot]

there's something oddly refreshing about the way The Black Company talks about race

i feel like most fantasy books are afraid to talk about skin color in a way that feels real

they sort of shy away from it, and tend to try to build racial divides off of other traits – which isn't a bad thing, it's good to explore how things can be different

but i appreciate the frankness with which The Black Company is willing to just refer to people as black or white or brown, especially when it's not using it for any oppression metaphors but is just acknowledging that people do look different on the outside in ways, when you explore far around the world

[random dome]

I think this is safe for you but just in case: ||Jamshid living that be gay do crimes kind of life||

[white scroll]

Started Red Rising

Thought the first half of Book 1 was fairly uninspired dystopic scifi

I’m now half way through Morning Star and man

This series ROCKS

[unique turret]

I DNF’ed after the first couple chapters for the same reason

Maybe I’ll try it again

[white scroll]

Series really picks up in the second half of book 1 imo

I feel like the book doesn’t adequately work with its themes until then

[wraith lynx]

https://tenor.com/view/spongebob-cant-wait-impatient-anxious-eagerly-gif-16498763039499928961

It only goes up from here unironically

[white scroll]

Mustang and Darrow’s relationship is so good its pulling me through these books at light speed

[wraith lynx]

And youre just in time! Book 7 maybe comes out this year (insane copium)

[white scroll]

I keep reading just to get a lil taste of more Mustang and Darrow interactions

[wraith lynx]

You arent the only one (im married to darrow in my head) 🥴

[white scroll]

I legit read the entire second half of book 1 in a single day

This Pierce Brown guy knows how to write

[royal carbon]

Started Tailored Realities last night for some of reason

[mossy gyro]

Kingdom of Copper 16 ||so Nesrin sent the letter to the rebel Daeva and also recognized that the poison was something Monaiza (I don't remember what the corrected spelling was) made before her "death." Jamshid must have found her old notes, and also that means Nesrin lied to Nahri's face about having never seen this before. Meanwhile Dara confronted Kahve over Jamshid's loyalty, and having worked out that he'll side with Muntadir (who they're planning to kill), Dara decided to take the blame for it. However he's having second thoughts as he's realizing that this coup will likely perpetuate the cycle of violence among the Djinn tribes||

[brazen pilot]

Shadow Games 19 ||SHIFTER?????||

[brazen pilot]

@ripe tide Shadow Games general ||Was Roses above or below the sea? I can't remember and it's making it harder to contextualize where Willow is from. Dunno if it was in the empire or a jewel city.||

[ripe tide]

I honestly don’t remember at all

And Cook doesnt like maps

[brazen pilot]

Okay the book gave me enough context

Man

This book is so good

It'll be hard to overtake Shadows Linger for me but this could end up being my second favorite

There are so many subtle things about it that are just like

The most interesting way to explore what The Black Company is

While Shadows Linger is of course ||peak not as a Black Company book but as a book about Shed||

[ripe tide]

Yeah Shadow Games is incredible.

And some of the best are yet to come

They do get profoundly weird before though.

[brazen pilot]

Shadow Games 22 ||I love being back to small mercenary games. I love the yearning for history, visiting and forgotten places steeped in legacy. I love how legacy is the thing that's somehow making the Black Company bounce back despite being down to 7 at first. And the slow burn romance? Goddamn.||

||And just having the focus on the travels, the cultures they pass through, proves how good of a writer Glen is. We don't need huge battles or conflicts, although I'm sure they will come. Just seeing how the company handles the minor obstacles of travel is fascinating, especially under Croaker. I love how he is slowly becoming more of a leader.||

[ripe tide]

It’s so good

I can’t wait to see what you make of the rest of the series.

[brazen pilot]

||glittering stone mentioned...||

[mossy gyro]

I really gotta get the second book. First one was very good

[ripe tide]

I think my favorites go: Soldiers Live, Water Sleeps, Shadows Linger, She is the Darkness, Shadow Games.

I don’t remember my exact ranking of the other ones but Silver Spike is the lowest, followed by Black Company.

[potent linden]

S.T. Gibson being a woman should not surprise me but I wasn't expecting it

I think because when I first heard talk in here it was at the same time as RJB's books and they sounded vaguely similar at the time?

[long sorrel]

Hm, I had not mentally assigned any gender 🤔

[mossy gyro]

Kingdom of Copper 19 ||okay so I'd worked out that Jamshid is probably Manizheh's son but didn't think about the implications of that. Though whatever this seal on his abilities is, I'm assuming that's what's preventing Nahri from healing him. Presumably she'll discover it and destroy it, and then he'll also learn to heal people.
So anyway fantasy WMDs were not on my bingo card for this series||

[snow vessel]

Tangential but I've been reading Odd Spirits by her and I can't entirely put my finger on why but man Ive been clicking with these books so well in the last year

When I first read Evocation I didn't really have strong feelings either way

[wet belfry]

I do assume these days that two initials is probably a woman writer, it seems to be advice going around in publication circles for not attracting unwanted attention from chuds

[wide hearth]

When you resume reading a web serial, thinking you're near the end, and realise there's still about 1.3M words to go...

[low hill]

@ripe tide ||So, I think I was expecting that to be a standalone like book 4 was, but I'm happy things are carrying on.
There were some things which felt like she was undoing the plot of earlier books by having victories turn out to be incomplete or temporary, which I'm not sure I liked.
More magic lore was good, but the twisting, layed history of all three families is getting far too complicated to keep track of...
But I mostly enjoyed it.||

[brazen pilot]

Shadow Games 30 ||Croaker is military dictator. He also has to go perform surgery. This book is amazing.||

[random dome]

Me, thinking this book was gonna be a popcorny YA style paranormal romance, and then (Kingdom of Copper) ||whoops where'd all this "inescapable cycles of ethnoreligious violence and atrocity" come from??? oh hey there "biological warfare with clear genocidal intent," didn't expect you at this party||

it's peak

[brazen pilot]

Shadow Games 31 ||they're gonna use elephants 🐘||

[mossy gyro]

This series has been incredible so far

[merry galleon]

Oh dear. My headache came back with a vengeance. I’ll have to wait until the meds kicks in to able to read without my head ready to explode on me. I hope I’m over the bend with this cold.

[ivory cypress]

HELLO

official dnd cozy romance fantasy set in the feywild by an author i already like?????? yesssssssssssssssss

i have already preordered

[craggy cargo]

That's a really gorgeous cover.

[mellow meteor]

I have never read a book like this and that description makes me want to

[zinc flicker]

That looks amazing

[tired dragon]

Just finished reading Lost Souls Meet Under a Full Moon by Mizuki Tsujimura it was really good and there’s a sequel coming this year in March

[brazen pilot]

Shadow Games 39 ||Man, at this point the only ones I think are really dead are Soulcatcher and the Limper, and the Limper only because I've seen it twice.||

||It does make sense that a lot of them chose not to betray Lady so much as to leave and do their own thing.||

||One-Eye knows...||

||It's really fitting that Shifter is just hear for some old grudge, when iirc that was why he helped them against the Limper originally.||

Shadow Games 40 ||i feel like it's all been too easy and it's going to fall apart soon||

[brazen pilot]

Shadow Games 42 ||I could see Croaker dying here. That is troubling.||

...

@ripe tide

https://tenor.com/view/cat-screaming-for-hes-life-gif-22962749

[brazen pilot]

i cannot understate how excited i am for what dreams of steel will be as a book

[analog geode]

https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/555759059647856640/1458210826962993348/image.png?ex=695ed029&is=695d7ea9&hm=b0ed6d6bfab442f0bc7fbe0419e2bd87adaa551dbffd79989d65779f89b636a2&

[junior dew]

TSoWWL 52 || Those new tenants give a lot of leeway in “or to protect andara” ||

[snow vessel]

Finished Odd Spirits by ST Gibson

[ripe tide]

I am loving these

[ripe tide]

It’s a good one

[snow vessel]

Are any of you in book clubs?

If so, how've your experiences been?

[analog geode]

I am

It’s pretty fun

[snow vessel]

Do you ever have issues with clashing/differing tastes?

[analog geode]

Yeah

I read it anyways

Cant hurt

[light drum]

Its another Progfantasy book

[snow vessel]

@long sorrel (I hope the ping is ok?) did you ever read odd spirits? I know you read Ascension & Evocation but not sure about the book0

[proper silo]

Peerless 136 ||I love how this entire story arc is basically a game of Town of Salem, except instead of trying to figure out which player is the witch, it's which character is Feng Xiao||

||My bet is none of them and he's sitting this one out, laughing at everyone running around in the rain||

[long sorrel]

Nope! I did not

[snow vessel]

Ahh

It's fun!

Very short, fairly simple, but a good read especially having already got a connection to these characters from the other two books

It gets a lot of points from me for [Odd Spirits light/vague] ||David only being in one scene and literally only making things worse ||

||so funny to me that David was not a major character here, he showed up, caused problems, and left without fixing them||

Odd spirits/summoners circle gen ||I don't remember what it was specifically but Rhys continues to be surprisingly very relatable.||

[cloud socket]

Yeah, I co-host one that meets weekly at my friend's restaurant. We pick a theme and a book for a two month period though because people read quickly we've been doing two books (so I guess that shakes out to one a month). Our general rule of thumb is aiming for ~300 pages or less so it's not a slog to get through (we've made some exceptions in the past with mixed results). There's maybe a dozen regulars though we're pretty relaxed. Our opinionated German retiree likes books that generate good discussion, even if sometimes he raises his eyebrow at genre stuff. For Jan/Feb our current theme is mind-body connections, and we're starting with Siddhartha by Herman Hesse and then Altered Carbon.

I'm also trying to wrangle book club in one of my other servers, picking a book every other month because we're all moms of small children. My friends there prefer thrillers which isn't something I read often. Think we're doing a Colleen Hoover in February, trying to suggest some themes like memoir or nostalgia read for later in the year, and earmarking October for Pachinko because it's a little long and fall (for North Americans) seems like a good time to read something more thoughtful

I like book clubs for getting me out of my fantasy/sci-fi wheelhouse, though I also consider readalongs to be book clubs in a way so like, the Legends read in #1364954784737792102 has been pretty fun

[snow vessel]

Interesting!

[idle trellis]

You mean irl? not just online?

If so, I wish

None of my friends read

[snow vessel]

Either works

Irl is a bit more directly relevant to what I'm thinking about but online experiences can't hurt

[cloud socket]

German retiree likes to look at the author's background and the context which might've led them to write the book. It can be a little tricky since we don't enforce reading by specific dates so it can be asynchronous but the group is pretty good about avoiding major spoilers until everyone's done (or is ok with it for sake of discussion), like we also talk about how applicable it is to the theme.

We did "ritual" as our theme for Nov/Dec and the nonfiction book was very popsci, and we had a lot of chatter on if the author was too broad in his definition (habit vs ritual) or if he should've gone more in depth on examples in areas. The fiction pick was Record of a Spaceborn Few and I missed the last one because holidays but people seemed to enjoy it, talking about the framing with an alien anthropologist and comparing it to how we (general society)view the Other in our current real world

And if no one's read our book club pick I'll ask what else they're reading instead because I just wanna hang out and talk about books

[junior dew]

TSOWWL 54 || Interesting. Caden being 3k years old and intentionally removing his memory to get Licanius is interesting. Curious to see where exactly this is going to go ||

[junior dew]

TSoWWL Epilogue || That conversation Asha overheard was very uhh… revealing. The dialogue there between Tashyr and Lardon or whatever his name is felt a bit… unnatural for some reason. Like overhearing a conversation and learning information is a common thing but this one felt really… forced? Hmm.

Also Caden getting his memories back of the time right before he lost them. Just mentioned Tanbar’s finger being taken. Surprising to discover that may have been Cadan. Wish I knew which chapter that was because now I’m curious to recall all the details surrounding that scene. I didn’t make as strong a note of the person (seemingly Cadan) that appeared in that scene. But I remember talk of a master and all that. Hmm. I do also wonder if maybe Cadan is said “master” and he orchestrated the finger removal? Can’t remember the exact name of the master that was mentioned. ||

[minor sleet]

https://www.tumblr.com/arithmonym/773069137367941120/i-saw-this-sign-in-a-bookstore-and-it-made-me

[junior dew]

So… Shadow of What Was Lost.

Story was quite interesting. Worldbuilding is cool and plot is compelling. Character work is pretty weak.

For some reason though I struggle with names far more in this book than I do with most books and series. I know the main characters and some side characters well, but so many names for other significant characters and places all kinda jumble together because of how similar they sound.

May look at a map before book 2 if there is one lol

Thinking I may try to slide in a listen of This Is How You Lose The Time War tonight(possibly going into tomorrow) before Licanius book 2 though, since it’s only about 2 hours

[mossy gyro]

Kingdom of Copper 22 ||my gosh is Ali oblivious to these girls crushing on him||

[long sorrel]

fixed that for you

[random dome]

You're. Not wrong.

[long sorrel]

now that I got The Adventures of Amina Al-Sirafi in print I'm very looking forward to it 😩 but I'm not about to start an 11th book

[mossy gyro]

Daevabad general ||I love Ali but man is he a doofus||

[long sorrel]

||I don't love any of them tbh, except Nahru the rest need some form of violence enacted upon them so they stop being [insert appropriate insult depending on the character]||

[minor sleet]

https://tenor.com/view/doja-cat-star-wars-gif-25078126

[long sorrel]

No no no, let me at least get my "currently reading" down to 7 or 8

[tight kindle]

I'm taking a bit of a break from Fateheart at the moment because I don't have the mental space to appreciate it properly, so I think I'm going to go back to creeping my way through Paladin's Grace

[long sorrel]

Paladin's Grace is a very light read, though the worldbuilding is

And then if you continue you will eventually be rewarded with gay

[random dome]

Ok but your honor I love him

[tight kindle]

Exactly!

I'm reading for the worldbuilding and the eventual gay

[long sorrel]

The characters also get interesting

Paladin's Grace has the weakest character work imo

of all of that series

[tight kindle]

Which is good because I already like the characters a lot

-# books, men, coffee

[long sorrel]

I don't dislike them

but Stephen and Grace are kinda bland

[lusty meteor]

I was pretty disappointed in PG tbh

PG all ||if i read gingerbread one more time i was going to commit violence||

[long sorrel]

did you read the second one?

I am in agreement here, idk what came over her but ||it was a tad repetitive and besides the wrold building the characters weren't very fleshed out||

I read the ones in the same world that she wrote before this and they were better so idk what happened for that specific book

[ivory cypress]

I never had a problem with Paladin's Grace and liked it well enough. I didn't find any of those issues intolerable or even notice them tbh

pleased that the series did get better and better though

[lusty meteor]

No, i should give it a shot tho

[long sorrel]

I didn't find them intolerable but they did stand out to me quite a lot

[long sorrel]

the series does get better and better and so does the overarching plot and damn when are we getting the next book 😩

Kingfisher here releases 4 books per year and none are this

okay, my "currently reading" have gone from 10 to 9 😌
I can do this

[lusty meteor]

So. Cradle amight?

[analog geode]

https://tenor.com/view/wrong-mistake-no-way-false-404error-gif-26596374

[lusty meteor]

What

[long sorrel]

now i need to choose from my remaining 9 books which to finish next

[lusty meteor]

What is the list?

[long sorrel]

The Raven Scholar, Red Rising (no, I'm not going to go through this one atm), Long Live Evil, Innombrable (this is a spanish book), Wolf of Withervale, Deadhouse Gates, Fifth Season, Children of Time, Trollslayer

very tempted to choose based on which I could finish faster ngl

[analog geode]

I vote for Trollslayer

[wraith lynx]

Raven scholar!! I plan to start it soon too!

[echo crater]

i would say Deadhouse gates, but if you go for the serie you should finisht it, so leave it as last one and then tuckle the whole malazan one after the other! 🫡

[long sorrel]

I'm not going to read Malazan consecutively no matter when

that's just not how I read

[echo crater]

read malazan, before malazan read you!

[long sorrel]

lol

[lusty meteor]

You can def take breaks with malazan

With the exception of the last two books

[long sorrel]

am also hoping for slightly more consistency than with GotM as based on y'all comments on it

[echo crater]

i wish i had your approach to reading.. i litteraly can't stop untill i've read everything of a single serie..

[long sorrel]

isn't that fine too?

I don't think one or another way is better or worse

[lusty meteor]

There are people who like gotm more. I think on average dhg is rated higher

[long sorrel]

bah, I'll decide when I get to it

[echo crater]

what do you mean by consistency? I love the serie, i remember less of the single book, more about the "single character" or idk, the "single narrative arc".

Ye, but when i've read malazan for the first time i've read the whole serie in like 2 months. Almost like i was an addict, i wish to have more controll on my reading habit.

[long sorrel]

When I started reading Deadhouse Gates it took me a lot of effort to connect some stuff to GotM

or understanding if I had read a character prior or not, besides the time space between books, some of the gotm stuff was just there and then it was a bit different in DHG (like that one guy I had entirely forgotten existed)

for the record I usually have a pretty good memory so this isn't very common for me

[small bloom]

Only read Raven Scholar and Fifth Season out of these, very different but both peak

[echo crater]

its kinda the style they use. but i feel you ❤️

[long sorrel]

I've started all of those books already so I got the vibe down

[white scroll]

2/3 through Morning Star and man

This series is good

[random dome]

This is also a lot of why I dropped Malazan after like two and a half books. I found it hard to follow, difficult to care about the characters, and a bit frustrating to figure out what was going on or why it mattered

I was told it's kind of an intentional style for things in the worldbuilding to be mentioned but not explained, kind of an organic discovery of how things work over multiple books, but it wasn't a style that worked for me as a reader

[long sorrel]

I was able to follow thrpugh the individual book (and what i read of the second) just fine

But not link back some stuff

Like, I can follow the books in isolation?

[ivory cypress]

I'll say I do enjoy Malazan, so far, (two books in, dithered with the start of the third), but it isn't written in such a way that it'll ever be my favourite. it's not close enough to the characters and they'll never hit blorbo or whatever we say now

[random dome]

Malazan also really suffered from the friend who recommended it to me trying to sell me on a certain character being my type and that didn't really work

[long sorrel]

Oh, yeah that kinda sucks unless you're like super certain

[random dome]

I've kind of had this happen a few times where people will try to get me to like a thing by finding me a character they want me to latch onto and making that their pitch and... it usually doesn't work

[alpine drum]

ok but have you heard of this character in book 5...

[random dome]

I might try an episode or a book or something to give it a chance, but I find I usually bounce off because looking for a single character I've been told about in advance is not a great way to get into a story as a whole

[brazen pilot]

i think the way malazan writes its characters is deeply fascinating to engage with, and i enjoyed a lot of how it would challenge narrative conventions with how it structured arc, but for the most part it wasn't the kind of series that makes me blorbo a character

then i hit book 6 and certain things just exploded in my brain

both because of how good book 6 is and because of how the series just compounds upon itself and makes you think back on past characters and events in new ways

[alpine drum]

it's fun to mentally rotate them in my mind

[lusty meteor]

the way malazan does characters is really unique. they do def benefit from erikson's ability to stack things ontop of each other in a way i have never really seen anywhere else

[random dome]

Malazan GotM ||Also it did not help that my introduction to my supposedly Assigned Blorbo™ in GotM was like. He's just the coolest dude, very mysterious, so cool, very extremely cool. Wow, such vibes, very aura. For one single scene and then he's gone again.||

[lusty meteor]

i think that character is pretty overrated tbh

wouldnt be in my top 25 malazan characters

[brazen pilot]

Which one

[zinc flicker]

And Malazan is such a… it’s so widespread? So like individual characters aren’t getting as much time in the story. So even if you really like a character, they’ll be in one scene a book.

[lusty meteor]

gotm ||anomander rake i assume||

[brazen pilot]

I feel like the character I'd expect to be Feather core is a fantastic character but also one who only gets focus late enough in the series that I wouldn't recommend reading it for him, when two books are more than enough to decide it's not your thing

[random dome]

GotM ||Not sure I actually developed an opinion that that character was interesting other than noticing he was placed underneath a neon narrative sign that says COOL, MYSTERIOUS GUY!!! VERY COOL!!!! that flashed really bright for a few seconds||

[lusty meteor]

i think erikson also doesnt present characters in a snappy immediete way. they dont have quick elevator pitches like a kaladin or rand or jude or whatever. you just have to see how they play out

like fiddler is one of the best characters of all time and there is no way i can justify this statement to someoen who hasnt read every books

[zinc flicker]

I’d say it’s more focused on the plot and the characters enter and exit as players than on the individual arc of the character

From what I’ve read ofc

[lusty meteor]

whereas "magical spearman surgeon depressed guy" is a pretty gripping sell

i do think it delves depper into character later

[brazen pilot]

Malazan book 6 ||Cotillion as of Bonehunters just starts hitting like crazy and even I can recognize he's not just fascinating but also hot as hell, but I'm not gonna recommend anybody get into Malazan just for him when this happens halfway through the series||

[alpine drum]

insert pie chart of the number of words per POV character in the main Malazan series

Character #1 has 4% of the word count

[long sorrel]

for me the issue is that while I do love character work I am unlikely to read something solely for the characters and i'm 100% not reading something for one character even if I were to latch onto them

[lusty meteor]

the best way i can describe it is this. most stories give you some set of characters to follow and root for, and you see everything through their eyes. Way of Kings is big and sprawling, but if you know about shallan dalinar and kaladin then everything makes sense. (stormlight ran into trouble with this in later book imo where things got too tied to the main cast)

[ivory cypress]

I'm not really feeling drawn back to Malazan at all, the events of the books are in my brain as "hmm. neat." but nothing more than that, and I think I can chalk that up to not feeling really any attachment at all to the people in this story

[lusty meteor]

but malazan is far more decentralized. and so each pov you are in is not supposed to be a character you root for, but one you study and follow. this style does lock in around the end of book 2 imo, but malazan expects you to be far more suspicious of its characters compared to Hero Fantasy which descibes a large % of fantasy

[ivory cypress]

they don't really make me feel any emotions, or space in my brain when I'm not reading

[brazen pilot]

Malazan definitely doesn't write characters with a close perspective, but I think something it's lowkey really good at is where it does suddenly dig directly into a character, in a way that changes everything you felt about them. It's not like, specific reveals or twists, so much as just a way of thinking about them that you suddenly get. And it knows exactly where and how to use these so the effect is greater than if you were just getting that stuff all along.

[zinc flicker]

I think… when I was reading Malazan I would thing “wow this is really interesting for x character, I wanna know what they are thinking and see the internal struggle” but that just. Never. Happened. Everything was externalized.

[long sorrel]

I am completely fine with that, personally

Though I have read one series that also had everything externalized and it was awful but I think that was just the writing

[brazen pilot]

But it's definitely something it starts to pull out more later in the series, and the places it does use it in the early books don't hit as hard because there's not as much content built up yet for it to do that recontextualization to

[ivory cypress]

I'm fine with it. it doesn't attract any affection or attachment in me, though.

I kind of just find I don't care

[random dome]

I do feel like it maybe would have helped to be warned that there's a two-or-so-book A Realm Reborn period for this series if I was going to stick it out

[long sorrel]

I think the thing that threw me off of DHG was ||that one character that i wasn't sure I had seen before and I went search him up on gotm and he appears like 200 times and I was like then I was told he basically has no personality in gotm, but this really made following thins supposedly known-but unknown to me- character really confusing||

[random dome]

(not that I'm ever planning to go back, even if it does get better later. I've forgotten so much I'd have to start over and the idea of reading GotM and DHG twice is gonna be a hard no from me)

[long sorrel]

I still remembre what I read of DHG thankfully

so I don't even have to restart the book

[random dome]

It was at least a decade ago for me

[zinc flicker]

I do plan on getting back to Malazan, but DHG definitely was feeling like a slog

And I didn’t care about the characters, like Grey said

[long sorrel]

yeah yeah, it was only half a year for me

[long sorrel]

I do care! ||just not you, Ganoes||, Malazan suffered the same as every other book I tried to read in the last few months that required half a brain cell 😭

[zinc flicker]

It’s funny you say that because that characters is the one I did care about

[long sorrel]

I know!

we've talked about this

you and i really have a very very small overlap of preferences in characters

[wet belfry]

I bought the whole series digitally for one of my earlier deployments (six or seven years ago now!) and couldn't make it halfway through the first one before I aggressively DNF'd it

[vital ibex]

DHG was a deeply emotional book for me

[lusty meteor]

DHG hit me most with one character’s storyline and the ending. I think it is around the 8th most emotional for me.

[junior dew]

This is How You Lose The Time War 4 || “Haha blueser, your mission objective’s in another castle” ||

This really is impeccably written

[wide hearth]

DNFing GotM makes sense. I feel weirdly emotional at the idea of someone DNFing MoI. But there's so much to read, you do you.

I will say I think one would enjoy MoI even without remembering much of what happens in the first two. If it's going to be enjoyable to you at all, I mean.

[royal carbon]

Man, Blood Rites really has that earlier Dresden Files... characterization

[long sorrel]

lowly?

[low hill]

Will of the Many for book 2 I think.

[snow vessel]

I know I'm about 3 hours late to the malazan discussion but I do agree with a lot of what was said, especially re: the characters. Personally I do have a bunch of malazan characters I'm interested in, but it is in a bit of a different way to with a lot of other media. I think for me a lot of my enjoyment and hype with malazan comes from sort of... seeing how everything's fitting together and evolving and changing? Even if I'm not as personally attached to some of the cast, seeing them go through these big sweeping things still often hits to some extent to me. And then I think a lot of the rest of my hype does kind of come from the way the world is presented - I like getting new pieces each book to fit together and being able to try and figure it all out as I read

I would say there are a bunch of malazan characters I care about, it's just in a slightly less... personally intense way maybe? There's a bunch who I know I like and like to read, but not necessarily in the whole blorbo way

[minor sleet]

Guys I’m thinking about this translation of Gilgamesh again

[tight kindle]

Found a random romance to listen to while I shovel snow tonight

Dragons 😌

And gay

[zinc chasm]

DCC I forget what chapter but I think somewhere in the 1st 100 pages ||If he had cigarettes in his pocket, how did he get the Empy Pockets achievement?||

[somber timber]

Hmmmmm when I shoveled a few weeks ago I was listening to “battle cry of freedom” and the chapter about the fugitive slave act

[tight kindle]

This book is extremely overdramatic

[sharp steeple]

Just finally finished Exordia, only took me like two months.

That was...interesting.

Exordia ||The first third was honestly rather boring to me, the militaryism stuff just didnt' draw me in a tall. But once I pushed through that it was quite good. I did suspect that Earth was going to loose in the end, Seth loves his downer endings.||

[minor sleet]

The first third used to be a novella

You should look the original source of the concept for Anna up

[sharp steeple]

What do you mean?

[minor sleet]

Spoilers + language https://thenerddaily.com/seth-dickinson-exordia-author-interview/

[snow vessel]

I'm not sure what I want to read now.

Specifically, I've got a stack of books I want to read and a few I'm in the middle of, but I'm not sure which I want to give my time to as my next book

[sharp steeple]

Exordia ||This [explicative] is Bionicle fan-fiction???????????????||

[minor sleet]

Loosely, yes

[tight kindle]

I like it though

Popcorn book

Fun worldbuilding

A Curse of Scales and Flame

[oblique zodiac]

hmm

I was planning to read books suggested to college students(there's a popular list online), but I'm thinking about reading from the bottom up, starting from grade school level which isn't anything to ignore. I found a blog post that suggest about 100 books on average for each grade school, middle school, and high school level, and it really seems enticing

I'll share them as I read if it's written by a foreign author and well known

I once read for 14 hours in one sitting when I was reading Stormlight, which is pretty impressive(I think?), and I wonder if I would have the same amount of passion towards these books

But I highly doubt that

Stormlight was something else

[snow vessel]

I could never xD

[oblique zodiac]

The first book on this list is Tree Girl by Ben Mikaelsen

[ivory cypress]

okay turns out the key to reading again was... rereading

[potent linden]

rereading does go zoom

[tight kindle]

I love to balance my reading and rereading because I have soooo many books I love returning to

I could be making my way through the TBR much faster if I just read new stuff

But I like rereading

[potent linden]

I want to reread Fire...

[tight kindle]

?

[oblique zodiac]

Tree Girl ||How ignorant of me to have never heard of Guatemala||

[potent linden]

in the Graceling series by Kristin Cashore!

[proper silo]

Peerless 146 ||Oh gods, three Feng Xiaos Cui Buqu would get a aneurysm if he sas this||

[oblique zodiac]

Tree Girl ||Sometimes reading about these things really makes me realize how much I really have in my life||

[junior dew]

This is how you lose the time war 13 - I know I’ve mentioned already that this is impeccably written, but I feel the need to emphasize the point. This is so well done, damn.

[lucid isle]

Just finshed DCC book 4, The Gate of the Feral Gods. Damn that was good! ||and the epilogue changes everything!||

[white scroll]

Just finished Morning Star

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA

[lucid isle]

I stalled on Golden Son but I'd like to have another go this year

[proper silo]

Peerless 150 ||Finally, we discovered the one thing Zhuoyue and Jiejian agents can agree on: being absolutely horrified by their bosses' shameless PDA||

[white scroll]

Golden Son was imo the best of the original trilogy

RR’s best attribute is 100% it’s pacing to me, made each book incredibly difficult to put down (minus the first half of book 1)

And Golden Son was imo the best paced of the three that I have read

[minor sleet]

Who in fantasy ancient China is payed enough to watch their boss behave like that

[proper silo]

Who in whenever is paid enough for that?

[minor sleet]

Exactly

Especially because Feng Xiao keeps docking his staff’s pay

[proper silo]

alright, done with volume 4; really funny that one book (or rather, half a book, given the rest is probably extras) from the end, ||only Fei Xiao has realized and internalized that he's in love with Cui Buqu and that Cui Buqu is in love with him, whereas Cui Buqu seems absolutely determined the sail the entirety of the Nile||

||also, I wonder if there's any family relation between Cui Buqu and Cui Youwang, given the Cui clan is supposed to be this massive historically-important family, yet no-one's ever mentioned Cui Youwang as a famous relation||

[long sorrel]

is this a 5 vol thing?

[untold leaf]

I just finished "I Don't Want To Kill You" and I think I can say I am Not Okay™

IDWTKY all ||I must say, Dan Wells does a fantastic job making these character feel like three-dimensional people, because I got so invested in them. I actually swore out loud when Marci died because I was so shocked and upset. And the ending almost made me cry, what with, you know, John's mom dying in order to kill Nobody, and then his late confession of love to Marci. Ugh, why does this book have to be so heartbreaking. I want to read the next few books, but I think I need a break from this series for a while.||

[knotty dirge]

Such a good series

[proper silo]

Yeah, the book is 5 volumes

[long sorrel]

at some point I started Guardian 2

because I've realized I'm midway through

[proper silo]

I see

[long sorrel]

like, weeks ago

maybe I read 1.5 books at once

I was curious about something specifc

I think that must have been it

[proper silo]

well, color me curious 🤔

[long sorrel]

mhm, there was something I needed to know about uh, stuff!

[proper silo]

👍

I'm torn between what my next book after Peerless will be, Guardian or Remnant of Filth

On one hand, I have Remnant of Filth like, in my house right now, on the other hand, Guardian is shorter...

[long sorrel]

I'm curious for you to read Guardian

[proper silo]

Contemporary setting might be a bit of a good break, given Peerless is like the fourth ancient fantasy china book I've read in a row 🤔

[long sorrel]

there's some foreshadowing I somehow got right from the beginning and then some that I caught right before it got confirmed

And then stuff that i didn't see coming

[low hill]

Out of interest, has anyone who's read the Hierarchy series also read the Runelords series by David Farland?

[long sorrel]

Oh, @low hill I read Widdershins which is supernatural gay fantasy set in, idk old times, I think it might be your thing.

[low hill]

Author?

[long sorrel]

It was entertaining enough, has a few smut scenes (detailed) and the supernatural stuff was fun, though I did find the series is long

[long sorrel]

Jordan L. Hawk

I am not sure I'm in for ... checks notes 11 books

depends if there's an overarching plot or something?

Book 1 felt very episodical

[low hill]

"A Whyborne & Griffin novel"?

[long sorrel]

yep

[low hill]

There is zero info about it on Waterstones. :P
-# Unless I buy books based on page count, weight, or physical dimensions.

[long sorrel]

well, I suppose you can use amazon, shivers, for just checking the info

[low hill]

I found the author's website, thankfully.

[long sorrel]

Much better 😌

Widdershins general ||I think there's a possibility that the MC (the nerdy scholar), ends up delving quite into occultism himself as part of a more overarching plot||

[low hill]

idk old times
The website confirms that this is Victorian era America, btw. :P

[long sorrel]

Yes it felt victorian-ish

but I never know because some people just do some sort of approximation and don't particularly commit to a time frame

[low hill]

The 10th anniversary hardcovers look nice.

[long sorrel]

👀

[tight kindle]

idk old times absolutely sent me Usha

[long sorrel]

the og covers look ass

[low hill]

Yes.

[tight kindle]

I'm like giggling on the couch in an empty room

[low hill]

https://jordanlhawk.com/en-gb/collections/whyborne-griffin-hardcovers

[long sorrel]

You're too easy, are you feasting on my words now? 🤨

[long sorrel]

oooh, fancy

luckily I don't care a lot about my digital covers

Oh, she has more series, huh

[tight kindle]

Slight sleep deprivation probably

[long sorrel]

if that didn't send you then yes

You should not mess with sawblades in the middle of the night, really

these covers are all so ass

[tight kindle]

Well time to go read Paladin's Grace and giggle at the barely funny passages

[low hill]

He.

[long sorrel]

Oh I had googled that and came up with she, my bad.

[low hill]

Well, according to his website anyway...

[long sorrel]

this website is very complete

also can buy the epubs directly from here 👀

[tight kindle]

...I should finish A Curse of Scaled and Flame first

[long sorrel]

Best-selling series: Whyborne & Griffin EBOOKS, A gay Victorian wizard fights Lovecraftian monsters and finds true love.

This does describe it pretty well

[tight kindle]

Y'know what
That sounds great

looks up description
Mhm

[long sorrel]

The only reason I didn't ping you too is that it is set in a time when being gay is illegal and I've seen you mention it bothers you some times.

Some of his series are too "paranormal" which I think I don't cre for

the supernatural stuff seems good, maybe i'll check some others

[tight kindle]

tilts hand side to side
Bother isn't quite the right word.
It just makes it hit harder emotionally so I have to moderate how many of them I read

[long sorrel]

mhm, yes "bother" doesn't usually quite cover in any way these type of feelings

[low hill]

You shouldn't read my books then, as apparently that the only time period I can successfully write...

[long sorrel]

Makes sense

given your... gestures wisdom

[low hill]

chuckles

[tight kindle]

I do tend to enjoy those and have read plenty. I just can't read multiple in a row

I do want to read your books at some point Vecna. My sister speaks very highly of your writing

[low hill]

Who is your sister? I don't keep track...

[tight kindle]

Ralio

[junior dew]

This is How You Lose The Time War 21 || Double bluff, betrayal? I’m a bit confused at this point and not understanding Blue here. Miscommunication?

For a second I thought maybe Blue took the poison as a whole “rather be dead than without you” sort of angle, but it seems not?

Blue thinks she was played. The hell? But she’s thanking Red? Am I dumb? Because I’m not understanding what the hell just happened?

I don’t understand Blue ignoring the letter saying not to read the next letter.

Like I get Blue took the poison because she felt cornered, but why read the letter in the first place after being explicitly told not to? ||

If someone has read This is How You Lose the Time War, please let me know what I’m not getting here. Relistening to the last 2 chapters now in the meantime

[wraith lynx]

Goated title omg

[velvet umbra]

I don't remember it well enough to explain it but I do remember enough to say you're not dumb for being confused lol

[junior dew]

Lol alright I appreciate it. Maybe I’ll just read through to the end and see if things explain themselves

[velvet umbra]

it did make sense eventually but it's not immediately self-explanatory and I remember having a similar reaction

[junior dew]

Awesome love to hear it

[junior dew]

Yeah current confusion aside book is very good and very short

TIHYLTTW 20 || Immune to my ruses. Huh? ||

[wraith lynx]

God that acronyms 🤣

[junior dew]

Yeahhhhhhhh

But also typing the name each time is also…

Welp

[wraith lynx]

Price to pay for a sick title

[junior dew]

True

[junior dew]

TIHYLTTW 23 || Why am I getting this weird suspicion that Red is also Blue. She’s going through time taking in pieces of Blue and it sounds like she’s going to go to the Garden at some point, maybe to be remade into Blue?

If that’s where this is going, that’s WILD and super cool. Time to find out ||

[junior dew]

This is How You Lose the Time War All || Dayum. That was definitely better than where I thought it may be going.

That was hella good. Really well done ||

So This is How You Lose the Time War lives up to the hype

[rugged tartan]

I'm really sad I had to donate my copy to the library to make space when I moved, but at least its in a library now so other people will read it

[tight kindle]

Paladin's Grace 12 ||Them both thinking that the other undoubtedly finds them ugly is very funny.||

||Also relatable. But funny.||

[junior dew]

May slide in another shorter novel/novella before Licanius 2. Perhaps Elder Race by Tchaikovsky 🤔 We’ll see

[royal carbon]

Finished 3 books the last two days. No more library loans so time to work on the other backlog.

[tight kindle]

I'm trying to decide which books to take back with me to college and it's a struggle

I'm taking Fifth Season, my His Dark Materials omnibus, and I'm heavily debating taking my nice copies of Yumi and Tress because I want to loan them to a friend

[snow vessel]

What's the day that tor does their announcements?

I think I heard Monday but I'm not confident

[low hill]

Ah, that makes sense now.

[long sorrel]

If you've space for everything?

[oblique zodiac]

Continuing Tree Girl! Has anyone read it?

How many hours do you guys read a day? Is there a set time?

I am trying to read at least one hour a day, more only if I want to

[long sorrel]

Depends on the day but maybe 3h average

[low hill]

About 1.5 hours usually.

[long sorrel]

Sometimes its more sometimes less,I do read every day

Like even if I'm really tired ill read a page before going to sleep, but I don't have any set time

I could do with reading less so there's no point on setting minimums for me

[low hill]

Heh.

[lucid isle]

I just read as much as I have time for

I started and almost finished All Systems Red (Murderbot Diaries) yesterday after waiting 2 months for my library reservation to come in

[long sorrel]

If the book is <200p I'll generally read it in one sitting I guess, idk it varies a lot

[lucid isle]

I really wish I could read more but I only have time in the evening and they send me to sleep

[wide hearth]

I'm exactly the same

I blame having kids

Although probably all those all-nighters as a student didn't help

[oblique zodiac]

Tree Girl ||This books is really.. really.. dark. I don't even know if I can write about this here..||

[oblique zodiac]

I keep saying this, but I really do wonder how differently I would read scenes like this after I actually experience true loss.

||The MC just came back home to find her whole family massacred.||

[snow vessel]

Maybe one on an average day 😭

Probably more like 30-45 min

I usually read for a short period in the morning and evening - about 15m in the evening, not sure about morning but not long. On my better reading days, probably 1-2 hours? Those are usually days where I'll read a bit in the morning and then sit down for an hour or so around midday

[old bone]

On my best day (holidays, train/flight), 12-15 hours

On my worst days, not at all 😭

[light drum]

HIS DARK MATERIAL!!!!!!!

Do it

Its so good

[low hill]

I should try and remember to read the sequel trilogy this year, now I have them all.

[light drum]

Its a significant downgrade in quantity

[small bloom]

Oh right I still haven’t acquired The Rose Field

Read the other two so I’ll finish it but yeah they weren’t as good as the original trilogy

[oblique zodiac]

Tree Girl ||WTF did I just read? How can they be so cruel? Is there no hope for men?||

[junior dew]

For me it really depends on the day. It’s kind of a matter of what I’m reading, what other hobbies are calling to me, how much other hobbies are calling to me, etc. Am I driving anywhere that day?

Probably at least an hour most days though?

No set time for me really. I’ll often listen in the morning before work while eating breakfast though. Always listening while driving. Frequently will do some listening in the evening, particularly if a book has really grabbed me.

[oblique zodiac]

||It makes me wonder, is it worth dying than to be a part of something atrocious? I find this to be more true as I keep reading.||

[long sorrel]

I was going home and suddenly I'm in a bookstore

It wasnt even in the way

[low hill]

They do sneak up and ambush you.

[long sorrel]

Yeah

I left with no new books and a few titles to check online on my free time

[proper silo]

A successful escape 😌

Peerless 163 ||I was not expecting kung fu rage zombies? 😕 This story has taken a turn for the horror||

[oblique zodiac]

Omg the craziest thing just happened

You see, I have the song called "Alicia" from E33 on my Spotify

and there is a girl named Alicia in this book, Tree Girl, which I didn't notice until now because it was in Korean

[merry galleon]

This cold is kicking my butt, and it’s preventing me from reading and finishing Titan’s Nest.

[oblique zodiac]

I play songs that align with specific moods in the book, and you see, I thought Alicia was the perfect song for this one moment, and BAM

Tree Girl 13 ||Alicia, who was thought dead, appeared again||

[merry galleon]

At least I have three days before this thing that has been plaguing me goes away, it’s day seven now.

[long sorrel]

I am pretty sure this should be spoiled?

[junior dew]

Yeah was about to say the same

[merry galleon]

And I’m waiting for Ryan Cahill to release information about his book tour

[minor sleet]

https://tenor.com/view/anakin-skywalker-palpatine-is-it-possible-learn-this-power-gif-17185041

[long sorrel]

yeah, reading mostly digital

[oblique zodiac]

I find it fascinating how Korean has three distinct words for self-respect while in English they often get lumped together as if they mean the same thing.

자부심 = pride in what you have or have done (achievements, background)
자긍심 = pride in who you are (dignity, worth, identity)

I think.. I didn't have the second one during my years of highschool. I remember always looking down and feeling ashamed because of my grades. There was this one day when I just.. stopped caring about everything and focused really focused on respecting myself and not caring what others think, and even though it didn't last long, I think that was what made others like me more.

Tree Girl 14 ||“If children aren’t taught pride and self-respect, they’ll end up believing they’re nothing.”||

[long sorrel]

It is nearly impossible to translate these kind of things, they need to be lumped and then understood by context

[alpine drum]

well as those translations indicate english has more words for self-respect like ego, pride, dignity, etc

[versed agate]

OTOH, Ego and Pride both can come with a derogatory slant

[low hill]

Ego almost always does.

[long sorrel]

those also exist in korean afaik, this is something a bit more nuanced I believe?

[oblique zodiac]

Finished Tree Girl! Wonderful book. I haven't read a book that isn't fantasy for some time now, but I finally understand why people read these things. I was crying at the end.

It made me want to consider charity for the first time in my life. I don't know if this is a spoiler, but there was a moment when the MC wished for things like toilets, refrigerators, and cars—things I already have—and it made me realize and reflect how much I really have.

[oblique zodiac]

There's a book called "The Giver" on this list that y'all should know about

I wonder if it counts as "already read" if I read it in english in highschool?

Lol, I remember breezing through the book so fast compared to my other Korean friends in English class. It was always that way, though it was the opposite during Korean class which I was always behind

[hollow hedge]

I remember really enjoying that one in middle school

[long sorrel]

read is read imo, unless you didn't understand most of it or something, you could reread if you feel like it

[oblique zodiac]

I was thinking along the lines of: The point of reading is to improve my Korean, so it doesn't count because I read it english

[tight kindle]

I'll make space

[ripe tide]

I actually only ever read Messenger and Gathering Blue, not The Giver. Tjode are technically 3 and 2 respectively in the series.

[long sorrel]

Oh right but since you have a list and there are other books out there unless you want to reread it, won't it be less intersting to reread?

This depends entirely on you ofc, I'd not want to reread something only for the language

[oblique zodiac]

Lol! I found my essay paper that I wrote in 11th grade on the Giver. It was an essay tournament, and I won first place in it. Spoilers for the Giver.

Ugh, makes me cringe, but I see why it shocked my korean teachers at the time

[oblique zodiac]

Good point.

[tight kindle]

Paladin's Grace 17 ||He is so horny for her boobs, good god. It's a feeling I've never experienced so I'm just sitting here slightly bemused.||

[mossy gyro]

Kingdom of Copper through 26 ||Kavve came back right when Nahri was presenting her case to the Daeva priests. Also Ali and Zaineb were there instead of Muntadir because he's an asshole and got drunk instead. Kavve got really mad about this and probably intentionally set up a murder of a Daeva man near the Shafit work camp. Otherwise its a very convenient accident for him. A Daeva mob then attacked the camp and wrecked it, but Nahri and Ali barely managed to convince the king to let them continue building, but the argument was so heated that both have been effectively confined to their quarters. And the Queen was banished back to the Ayanle homeland. Fricking bastard. Anyway things are still progressing mostly okay but Ali is hearing rumors of a potential attack which is either the rebel one or an unrelated Shafit mob. The king is of course not doing much about this, and instead told Ali that he's being actually banished back to the desert for real this time after the festival. Nesrin is continuing to be very cryptic about how everything is gonna be muccccccch better for Nahri in a little bit, don't worry. I'm half certain at this point that Muntadir is trying to cause some kind of royal schism, but since his beliefs are closer to their father's he's still in favor other than what he's done to Nahri. And just as the festival is beginning, a bunch of water decorations in the palace exploded and Kavve was very happy about this. Must be the Marid since he knows of the plot. Also Darra learned that the Daeva were punished because they fought with the Marid over human worshippers, but the Marid got punished too just in a more subtle way. Probably explains why they've been so absent for millennia||

[mossy gyro]

Kingdom of Copper through 26 ||right so I just remembered that the former Tanzim member who spoke to Ali talked about what happened at the hospital. It was already clear that the Nahid were doing unethical experiments there, but the specific thing of making their Gazeri soldiers accidentally poison their own Shafit family and friends is disgusting. It was what specifically kicked off the rebellion that overthrew the Nahid, and why the entire hospital and everyone in it were the first things the Qatani forces destroyed and then left to rot. No wonder Ali just doesn't want to talk about that. Anyway though things are about to get very exciting 🍿 ||

[proper silo]

Peerless 169 ||"I had to repay you with something even more precious. I thought it over carefully: Why, the most precious thing in the world is myself. Since it’s impossible for you to see me whenever you like, now you can look at my portrait to console yourself."||
||Oh how I wish I had Feng Xiao's self-confidence||

[tight kindle]

Paladin's Grace 22 ||Grace is just like me fr fr
I also want a man who is a human wall in front of me.||

||Ngl she's really giving||

||Right now||

Just like me fr fr

[proper silo]

Peerless 171 ||OH NO Why did it suddenly turn into a horror story again???||

[analog geode]

I’ve started using StoryGraph; is there a way to tell it to average a books page length over the days spent reading it? I don’t like tracking page progress, but it leaves me with these weird dips on the days I don’t mark a book as finished

[long sorrel]

Nope

[analog geode]

Damn

[tight kindle]

Yeah. That'd be another nice feature

I'm trying to track book progress so I see how much I read each day right now

I'm hoping it'll help me get through Lightbringer when I start it

[lucid isle]

Shadow of the Gods is excellent

[finite sonnet]

Anyone have any good fantasy recs that are like sandersons but are more realistic and possible a bit on the dark side of fantasy? I loved The Poppy war if anyone is looking for a rec that fits that.

[analog geode]

Like Sanderson in what ways?

[finite sonnet]

Magic systems mostly.

[analog geode]

Hmm

Have you read Bartimaeus?

[finite sonnet]

He is good at magic systems and story but I feel he doesn't do well with lgbt topics and racism Stormlight||i.e in stormlight the parshendi an ungendered group is homophobic but the alethi(heavily genderd) aren't homophobic. ||

Bartimaeus, I can't say I have

[potent linden]

I'll recommend Babel, by the same author who did The Poppy War, it's set on Earth but it's still got a great magic system

[analog geode]

I’d recommend Katabasis too

[potent linden]

The Night Ends With Fire had some similar vibes to The Poppy War for me in magic and tone - it's a Mulan retelling with elemental powers through making deals with gods

oh, Six of Crows

[brazen pilot]

I'd recommend The Fifth Season

[junior dew]

It’s not exactly hard magic like Sanderson but I’m still going to throw Realm of the Elderlings out there as well because I can’t help myself

But yeah listen to frog pizza. Fifth Season is a must read

[oblique zodiac]

nice I didnt know you could change it to month

[finite sonnet]

Six of Crows I have heard of this somewhere

I've watched shadow and bone, tried to read it but the show was near identical to the series so after a couple pages I realized there was no point. Still good though.

[snow vessel]

SoC is fun!

[finite sonnet]

Current list then
Rest of cosmere(reread)(may do some of these inbetween them)
The fitfth season(seems to be the biggest rec)
Babel(that author was amazing I need more by her.)
Bartimaeus
Sixth of crows
The night ends with Fire
Katabasis
Realm of the Elderlings.

(Mostly did that to copy and paste it to see later)

Ty all so much

[potent linden]

Hope you enjoy!

[untold leaf]

My current reading list:

The Strength of the Few (current)
Splinter of the Mind's Eye
The Wingfeather Saga (1-4)
The Complete Novels of Sherlock Holmes (4)
The Iliad
The Odyssey
John Wayne Cleaver (4-6)
Crooked Kingdom
A Night of Blacker Darkness
Castle in the Air

And who knows what will be added after that

[snow vessel]

Oh how was the third John Cleaver book?

I've not read that one yet

[untold leaf]

Emotionally devastating

In all the narratively brilliant, but still heartbreaking ways

Very good book, but left me feeling Not Okay™

[snow vessel]

Ooh exciting

[untold leaf]

Yesss

Read it and weep 😈

[tight kindle]

scrolls down 100+ book reading list
🫠

[snow vessel]

I think my current reading list (like, for the next few weeks) is:

• sotf (current)
• notes from underground (current)
• paradise lost (current)
• bunny
• dracula

[finite sonnet]

I will be coming back here for more lol

[old bone]

notes from underground and paradise lost at the same time

damn

[snow vessel]

That was... kind of an accident tbh

I meant to finish NFU in December but I've been super slow with it

And paradise lost I'm doing for a year-long readalong

[old bone]

It's a book that makes you think

so I can see

I am rereading Beyond Good and Evil and I read a couple of page at a time

current reading list is:

• Garden of the Moon. Phone read
• Beyond Good and Evil: Kindle read
• The Lost World by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle: Audiobook
• Return of the thin man: Physical book

[snow vessel]

That one's by Nietzsche right?

[old bone]

Yes

I think Nietzsche is best when he's just going after everyone else and their philosophies then his own actual stuff

He picks them apart very well.

[vital ibex]

I cannot read books on my phone for the life of me

[old bone]

and then just ends at "oh no you can believe it. I don't have any answers for the nitpicking I did"

[old bone]

I grew up reading Harry Potter in Adobe Reader

in a desktop pc

so Phone is such an improvement

[snow vessel]

I'm hoping to give his stuff a read sometime in the near(er) future, but I'm only now even starting to touch philosophy books

[old bone]

have you read any Camus?

[snow vessel]

Nope, not yet

My total experience with them right now is like... putting them on my tbr

[old bone]

The Stranger is a very short yet very powerful read

you can read it like in a couple of hours and it will make such a difference

[snow vessel]

Maybe ill give it a read in the near future, then

[junior dew]

Big mood. 90 items in my TBR currently. 57 books and 33 series. And I haven’t even pulled everything over from my old tracking apps either 🫠

Quick dash through seems to show about 15 of the series are trilogies

[snow vessel]

notes from underground part 2 early ||oh my god this is so much easier to read||

[junior dew]

I just saw a book on Amazon called Heretical Fishing, and I’m ngl that is a title that makes me curious

[long sorrel]

A book about the literal richest man on Earth who gets blatantly isekai'd into a world where he can act even more special and superior than ever

[proper silo]

Peerless 185 ||Cui Buqu has to be literally on death's door to realize he might actually maybe kind of possibly have some sort of feelings of Feng Xiao ||

[minor sleet]

He is here

[proper silo]

Peerless 187 ||The way things are going now, I expect the first extra chapter to start with "and then everyone took a nap for a week" because good heavens, they're all getting absolutely wrecked here ||

oh gods, we're doing the thing where there's multiple epilogues again

Peerless epilogue 2 ||Okay, it wasn't taking a nap for a week, but he did sleep for three days, so almost ||

[minor sleet]

The author loves that

[proper silo]

yep

Peerless epilogue 3 ||Oh finally they acknowledged it. Kind of. I hope.||

||This relationship is going to remain an absolute clownshow, and their subordinates are gonna suffer from having front row seats to it all ||

[minor sleet]

The spy v spy nonsense never stops

https://tenor.com/view/spy-vs-spy-mad-magazine-madtv-mad-gif-7185277127412487561

[proper silo]

epilogue 4 ||"Yet over ten years later, Cui Buqu would discover that Feng Xiao had stored the hated wig in a box." I'd like to believe this means that the two of them will eventually move in together, but knowing them, Cui Buqu is probably gonna break into Feng Xiao's house for some reason||

[minor sleet]

Both maybe

[proper silo]

maybe

aaand that's the book

[minor sleet]

How’d you like the crossover extra?

[proper silo]

I don't think the crossover extra was included in the version I read? 🤔 There was one extra but it didn't feature a crossover

[minor sleet]

Huh

I read an online translation that had it

https://www.reddit.com/r/Thousand_Autumns/s/9pM4a0Oaun you can get to it here

[proper silo]

Thanks

Anyway, as for the book itself - really fun, took a bit to get into it, but once it was going, excellent. Also, an overall massive improvement over Thousand Autumns in pretty much every field - prose, plot, side characters... I was laughing before at how this spy novel is more of a crime series, but the focus of each story arc on a murder/conspiracy mystery really worked in terms of keeping the plot going. And all plots were resolved and all antagonists defeated without anyone being offscreened like what happened in Thousand Autumns. So like, props to the author for self-improvement.

She still loves repetition a bit too much, though And I'm pretty sure several plot points were retreads of Thousand Autumns, although written better.

I think I'm gonna read Guardian next, I do think I need a breather from historical-ish fantasy 🤔 Thoguh, there is also another book that just came out a few days ago, I might check that one out

...as soon as i remember the title, cause all I remember right now is the cover art

[long sorrel]

Read Guardian!

I'm curious to see you react!

And the way book 1 ends I think it's fine to continue or go back to something else

[proper silo]

🫡

[junior dew]

Wait, is that the fishing book?

[long sorrel]

Yep

[proper silo]

okay i found the book i've been thinking about (the one i remembered the cover of but not the title), and now I know why i didn't remember the title

https://sevenseasentertainment.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/10/after_disabled_god_DN1_coverFRONT.jpg

Because it's very dumb

[charred swallow]

Wild premise

[proper silo]

It gets better