I can keep a tally of users and total books they've read, just drop in here and say what you read and what you thought about it, should be a fun discussion I think. Oh, and I guess let me know how many systems you own or something. Maybe you'll win a prize! Probably not. Read books because it's the Chad thing to do on a website about trading videogames.
Finished up Bel Breaker by Chris Cardenas. really interesting story...set in the distant future where gravity has gone haywire and bodies of water float way up in the air. inevitably travel and things go through them, but so does war/fighting. very interesting but a TON of terms and stuff thrown at you that's really confusing at the start.
I finished Three Men in a Boat by Jerome K Jerome last week. Silly and charming. Pretty easy ready, though I'm not sure much of it is going to stay with me.
I started Filth by Irvine Welsh immediately afterward. Really enjoying the first chunk. I love the Trainspotting/Mark Renton series. Seems like I'm eventually going to have to get through everything by Irvine Welsh.
just finished up the first book in a new series: The Queen's Opal by Jacque Stevens. its the first of 5. basic fantasy setting with humans, elves, dwarves, and what not, but with an interesting take on magic. i like it so far, and it has great reviews so i'm excited for the rest.
Perdido Street Station by China Mievielle 4/5 This book was good and bad at the same time. I was gonna give it a 3/5 then the ending sorta pissed me off to a degree, but in a good way to bump it up. The spoiler will describe the whole book in a general overview.
The book starts with Yagharek coming to New Crobuzon City, he's a Garuda which is basically a bird person. He had his wings removed in what he describes as something he did, he "took someone's choice away" and his tribe ripped his wings off. He comes to the city to find a man, Isaac who he thinks can restore his ability to fly.
Isaac is a scientist of sorts, he's a human male. He has a girlfriend named Lin, who's a beetle person. Humanoid otherwise besides a Beetle head, she can understand people who talk but only communicates via Sign Language.
Yagharek hires Isaac to help him fly again. He refuses to be remade to fly again.
There are also Remade usually, but not always, humans who are caught up in the criminal justice system and then forced to undergo a capricious and cruel alteration at the hands of New Crobuzon's bio-thaumaturges.
In the punishment factories, the prisoners' bodies are horrifically altered, limbs and other body parts replaced with steam-powered machinery, heavy mechanical metal parts, or grafted together with human or animal components. Live foxes sewn into chests, torsos attached backwards to a horse, tentacles and pistons and caterpillar treads and eyes and lizard claws fitted wantonly wherever they will go; the sadism of Remaking knows no limits.
Frog people, etc flying bat people, and other sorts of multi-diverse species.
Slake-moths are the main plot point of sorts.
Slake moths are a species of large, predatory butterfly-like creatures. Slake moths are known to exist in several extra-dimensional planes simultaneously, making them especially difficult to kill. If you look at them directly, you are hypnotized by their wings and they put their large tongue down your mouth, suck out your soul and dreams and leave you basically a zombie. After this, they excrete a pheromone in the sky that gives people nightmare dreams, which then they seek out more prey to soul/dream suck.
Isaac accidentally gets one as a slug, feeds it, and makes one.
Isaac's girlfriend, Lin gets hired by a thug, Motley to make a sculpture of him for a large sum of money she can't refuse. Motley also owns 4 Slake-Moths who produce a very expensive drug called "dreamcrap".
Isaac's Moth escapes and frees the other 4 moths.
Because Isaac had a moth, Motley thinks he wants them to sell dreamcrap so he captures Lin and rips her wings off, sends it to her apartment as a threat to Isaac. Isaac at this point thinks she's dead.
The government is corrupt and useless, but they try to hire a multi-dimensional creature called a Weaver to kill the Slake-Moths.
All this time, Yagharek is helping Isaac with the moth problem, being useful, and helpful.
The only way to fight the moths is with helmets with mirrors fitted, so you can see the moth behind you and not be hypnotized. They only feed or can see sentient things that can dream.
Eventually, a Sentient robot shows up to help them, it's called The Council. It cannot dream or anything. It creates a plan to kill the moths.
They kill the small moth Isaac fed easily with the Council's help. They also kill the other 3 in a convoluted way of sorts.
When they get to the last moth, Lin is there still making the sculpture for Motley as he's obsessed with it being finished. She knows nothing about the moths. She has been tortured, abused, and who knows what else. Isaac tells her not to turn around to look at it, but she does. It sucks her in, but Yagharek manages to free her partway.
The last one dies to massive fire spray in the end.
Lin is still alive, but basically half alive. She still makes sign language but it's random and makes no sense.
Lin, Isaac and Yagharek escape but are wanted so have to hide.
When Yagharek is out one day, another Garuda approaches Isaac and tells him not to create the device to make him fly again. He doesn't want to, but then she tells him she's the one who he "took choice away from". She tells him that in Isaac's world, it is called "rape".
Isaac is conflicted as he promised Yagharek he'd do it, then he thinks about what happened to Lin and leaves a note saying he won't help anymore. If he helps him fly again, he feels like he would be forgiving of the rape.
Yagharek knows what he did was wrong, but still feels like Isaac should have kept his deal.
Yagharek at this point decides to continue living like a wingless garuda and no longer hiding.
So yeah.... The end feels like being slammed by a freight train. The reader sees Yagharek help out, be nice, and then, bam! We find out he raped someone. This book was written before the big Grim-dark boom but does feel grim-dark I suppose. The good guys don't really win, the government is crap and useless and we get slammed into liking this character, then find out he raped someone. The writer is very left-leaning, and the politics sorta show in this book. The ending kinda reminds me of how people were so upset over The Last of Us 2 for killing a character we like when in all reality he wasn't a great person. But in that world, no one is really purely "Good".
His prose is very interesting, people seem to call it "purple Prose". I did like it, but definitely couldn't read two of his books in a row as it seems like he writes next to a dictionary.
What If? 2 - Randall Munroe More of the same as the first book. These are perfect for quick fun reads though I wasn't nearly as engaged or entertained as the first book. Not sure if it's a shift from my side or if the "schtick" has run out. Many of the answers expectedly devolve into inane extreme calculations. The artwork and quick comics are still great though. I'll continue to read anything Randall Munroe puts out almost no matter what the subject matter. His creativity and clear joy in his work is hard to knock.
Filth - Irvine Welsh I've loved everything I've read from Irvine Welsh, most notably the entire Trainspotting/Mark Renton saga. Yet again I was drawn in and really enjoyed another trip through Edinburgh. Filth is seen through the eyes of a crooked cop who has tangential interactions with some of the same characters mentioned in Trainspotting. I don't think I've ever read a book where the main character is a bigger scumbag POS than the main character of Filth, yet despite that you are somehow rooting for him. There's something endearing about a narrator that is both fooling himself and fully aware of his own bullcrap. Either way, another good read. Really curious how they made a movie out of this. Definitely interested to check it out with James MacAvoy as the main role.
Good job. I feel bad, I'm actually considering picking up an old book I never finished and then picking up the book that came after it but since the author's a tool and is too busy arguing with idiots on Facebook and clapping himself on the back for writing Trouble with Tribbles decades after the fact the series will never be finished anyways so why bother I guess...
Dead Silence - this wasn't scary at all. Very predictable ending. It was pretty mid.
Werecage - Very amusing, short read. Here is the description :
Legend says that whoever is bitten by Nic Cage and lives becomes a Nic Cage themselves...
Stanley Miller got bit by Nic Cage in the park. Things got worse from there. If his roommate Cameron and Wilford Brimley are to be believed, the world is now on a fast track to the apocalypse. Unless Stanley can save it. When the moon rises, Stanley feels the change overcome him and Nicolas Cage takes over.
With the first Cage still out there, turning more and more people into raving, angry, Hollywood action stars, can Stanley use his tenuous grasp on his own sense of self to track the source of the infection and stop it once and for all? Or are we all destined to fall victim to the curse?
Finished reading "Unlikely Friendships", I really enjoyed this and I'm on to the sequel title featuring dogs. The book is about unusual inter-species friendships. I love animals, and they even had the story about the lioness and the baby gazelle (spoiler, she doesn't eat it) that I remember seeing on some Nat Geo show over 10 years ago (probably Big Cat Diary).
Heat 2 - This takes place before and after the movie Heat, and is absolutely a worthy follow up. Heat is probably my favorite movie of all time and I was kind of hesitant to give this a try since it was released some 27 years after the movie. Seemed like it this could be a money grab riding the coattails of the movie. Nope, this story is awesome. This is co-authored by Michael Mann and Meg Gardiner. I listened to the audio book which is a bit of a challenge at the start because the narrator has a voice similar to lego batman or and action movie trailer guy. There are times in the audio book when the narrator really sounds like the ones are being directed by Vincent Hanna/Al Pacino himself.
Finished Pachinko and loved every second of it. I have been putting off watching the show until finishing the book. Now I'm excited to see the series as I am a huge fan of Lee Min-ho (lead actor) and this sort of storytelling.
I'm almost done with Outlander book 9 and am trying to decide my next reads/listens. Will start something today for sure.
Finished Outlander Book 9 Go tell the Bees that I'm Gone. The title doesn't make much sense to me because I imagined someone would die, or be leaving, but they literally just told gossip to the bees. Anyway 1000 pages of a lot of nothing but being 9 books into a series it had to be dealt with.
I started Daughter of the Moon Goddess the other day and can hardly put it down. I'm going to zip through it and the sequel probably quickly.
Ashes of the Sun by Django Wexler - This is basically a Star Wars-esque book. It was really good, got through it in a week and started the next one already.
just finished up the last book in the series that my wife and i listen to while driving: Fate's Ransom by Jeff Wheeler. funny thing is we just realized that this was actually a prequel series to another 6 book series...so at least we didn't have to think long on what to start afterwards lol
Finished Daughter of the Moon Goddess today and onto the second book as it's a duology. Absolutely loving the writing style and characters. (this was book 6 for me for the year, btw)
Someone was just telling me all about a book they're almost done: The Last Watch, by Stephen King.
This book sounds fairly scary/thriller like. From what I heard about the story, the main character sounds pretty messed up, the things he's doing.
he's using something like mind control, via some sort of video game console, in order to persuade people to do bad things and/or kill themselves. Something like that. Messed up stuff.
I finished Requiem for a Dream by Hubert Selby Jr. Brutal glimpse into the life of a few addicts. I saw the movie back in high school with some friends and it definitely stuck with me. If you have any familiarity with the movie you know what you are in for. Glad I finally read the book though I wouldn't casually recommend it to most poeple. Will likely move on to something lighter as a palette cleanser for my next book.
"Can you read a book for every system you own in 2023????"
Okay, I admit it. I don't think I can 😅
There just doesn't seem to be enough time in the day to do everything I want to do. I don't read that often, mainly on weekends, so it can take months to finish even just 1 book.
If only there was a way to add more hours to the day (without sleeping less). Maybe I'll get ahold of a time turner from the Harry Potter series. Yeah yeah, I know. Magic isn't real... Just kidding. I know it is. But time turners are really difficult to find.
I'm with ya brother. Though I'm gonna read at least one anyways. Technically I only own a Switch now, so that should be easy. Should be. But the book I picked was Horus Rising. :O
>> I finished Two Towers. On to Return of the King now!
> I'd plus this twice if I could. Lord of the Rings series. That's a classic. Nice.
>
> I enjoyed the movies, and do want to read the books, but I primarily read on the
> weekends and have other books in middle of. Maybe some day.
>
> How was book 1 and 2?
This is my first time reading the books. I've been wanting to for a while since I love the movies. The first book was really good, but the second is much better IMO. The first book just had too many sections where Tolkien spends 10 pages describing them hiking from point A to point B, with nothing eventful really happening.
After I finished reading the first book, we watched the movie (extended, of course) with the kids because they hadn't seen it yet. Now that I've finished the second book we're going to watch the second movie this coming weekend since we have no plans (isn't that the best?)
