Books

I'm new to this and it seems interesting. I use https://bookwyrm.social/ to track my books. I'm unemployed right now and my priorities is to get a job, which means most books are related to that future job where I'm a billionaire. The best so far are:

• Head First Design Patterns : it's a good software development book, and most "Head First" books are nice to read, and won't give you headaches.
• Designing Your New Work Life : it's a bit different from the other motivational books I have read so far, and it gives you an alternate point of view of work and the workplace. This book is not preachy and shows interesting advice on how you can experience (or "reframe" as they say) your daily job.

I stopped reading the "Bullet Journal Method" because it was filled with useless motivational quotes, the kind you can read on Instagram, while giving absolutely no useful advice or method.

Finished Project Hail Mary a few days ago, wanted to get it read before watching the movie tonight. It was such a great read, Rocky was amaze! Started Player One by Douglas Coupland afterwards/now, as I wanted a genre change up, been quite a non-stop thrill when comparing to the length of Project Hail Mary.

On the nonfiction side, reading Metaphors We Live By (by Johnson & Lakoff) currently. Taking it slow as it gets me thinking about experiencing experience itself. Real meta stuff.

I wanted to read a classic that I've never read before. Frankenstein by Mary Shelley. I'm reading it on Libby. It's good so far. Different from what a lot of movie and TV adaptations have been.

I have finally just finished 1984 by George Orwell, and with that, my last bingo square as well. \o/ Overall, I liked it, but found it too drawn out; the book section at the 60% mark especially killed the pacing for me. The appendix about Newspeak at the end was fascinating, though.

The Count of Monte Cristo Alexandre Dumas

I'm almost done with For Whom the Bell Tolls by Ernest Hemingway. I've quite enjoyed reading it and was surprised by the complaints of some people online regarding Hemingway's writing style. The book indeed reads like it was literally translated from Spanish, but it was a creative choice given that the plot is set in the Spanish civil war. Hemingway navigated censorship of profanity in a humorous way by replacing slurs like "fuck" and "shit" with "muck," "obscenity" and "unprintable." Also, the protagonist's inner dialogues are insightful.

I just finished my second reread of Starship Troopers. I've read it in three very different parts of my life and every time I read it, I come away with something new.

I'm currently reading Salt: A World History and listening to The Final Empire.

Made the choice of trying out infinite jest, boy is it tough yet so interesting. Like the parts a lot with some incredible descriptions yet some words are just so incredibly niche I have to stop and look it up.

Just finished "How to Commit a Postcolonial Murder" and "Binti"

The former is very good lit fic. It does deal with some tough topics including rape and murder, but it's very good. Highly recommend.

Binti is very short, but well done. The book won a Hugo award.

Currently reading "Blindsight." It's also quite good, though I'm only through the first section.

I'm on an Ira Levin kick right now. I just finished The Stepford Wives, now I'm reading The Boys From Brazil with a work friend. It's really good.

I have two in progress.

• Bill Bryson's Mother Tongue: English and how it got that way. Some of it more dated than I expected (The opening page mentions a sign in Yugoslavia.) Some of it I already knew (or at least had already been told, even if I'd forgotten the details). But linguistical trivia can be interesting and informative, so it's worth the read.

• Louis Sachar's The Cardturner. This is a blatant propaganda novel. The author is a bridge player and hopes to popularize the game among younger audiences (perhaps inspired by the million weaboos who took up Go inspired by Hikaru no Go.) At least it's a nobler cause than some of the propaganda I've been exposed to. The old, rich, blind bridge expert hires a kid to escort him to tournaments, look at his cards, tell him his hand and play it as he directs. The previous kid fucked up and got fired for learning enough bridge to question his decisions, but this new cardturner knows nothing. The book is intended for YA audiences and has the usual scenes of teenagers acting like teenagers, often while their parents act like toddlers, neither of which appeal to me, but they can be skimmed to get back to bridge scenes more comprehensive than I'd expected.

The Cardturner would be a great fit for the 4E (Game, Gamble, Contest) bingo square. This would also break a beautiful symmetry on my card. Not counting the central square, all 12 of my my scoring lines have an odd number of books completed. (2 lines are 1/5 completed, 8 are 3/5, and 2 are 5/5.) I don't think that specifies a unique arrangement (even up to rotational and reflectional symmetry), but it was surprising.

I have been re-listening to the Battle Of Midway.

The story is the stuff of legends and the narrator is excellent.

I just finished 1Q84, Book 2 by Haruki Murakami over the weekend. I’m excited to finish, but I’ve decided I needed a bit of a break before getting into Book 3.

In the meantime I’ve started There Is No Antimemetics Division by qntm. Tonally very different, but the intro was so intriguing I had to learn more!

I have been slogging through The Tipping Point by Malcolm Gladwell and while it’s extremely interesting it is so dense. I am undecided between a Neal Stephenson or Philip K Dick or Kurt Vonnegut novel next ¯_(ツ)_/¯

A food store near me has a book shelf where anyone can leave books for others to freely take. I dropped a couple of books and picked up Sid Fleischman's Chancy and the Grand Rascal. It's a lighthearted kids' book, set in the post-civil war USA. It's not a long one, but I've enjoyed it so far. After this I'm probably reading a book written by the mom of someone I know about her parents and their lives during the Second World War. Should be interesting.

Nemesis Games, although probably will finish tonight or tomorrow.

And then listening to Towers of Midnight.

I like series, because there's always another book! Until there's not, and then panic.

Reading The Shadow of the Gods by John Gwynne. Its OK so far, about half way through. Don't really like how the story jumps between characters as much.

I'm now reading Murder on the Orient Express by Agatha Christie. I was in the mood for something lighter and I had never read it. No murder yet, no idea how the story will unfold. It breathes that old atmosphere of a classic detective, which is really nice.

Sadomasochism and the BDSM Community in the United States by Stephen K. Stein.

Kind of in a reading slump/ not active reading because of new work.

I was busy with The Revenge of Odessa and its quite interesting. Also was reading from time to time Chainsaw Man Volume 13 (I’m still sad what the author did to one of my most favorite characters…).

Was also busy with a more educative book but either MacOS or IOS decided to screw me over and deleted it from Apple Books app (by itself…). So all my notes on the PDF file is gone as well. So quit reading it and don’t think I’ll ever get back to it.

Forgot to mention, also reading a.. ahem Doujinshi which to my surprise is more wholesome than I thought lol.

• The Works of Vermin, by Hiron Ennes—just starting, but so far it’s reminiscent of Perdido Street Station.

• On the Origin of the Human Mind, by Andrey Vyshedskiy—interested in how he relates his work on prefrontal synthesis to cognitive evolution.

• Spring Summer, Asteroid, Bird by Henry Lien—compares eastern and western narrative traditions, but so far seems to take a rather superficial approach to both.

The friend of the family by dean koontz. A really slow start but halfway in and i am hooked!

Exhalation stories - Ted Chiang. I'm into short stories while I physically and mentally prepare for Captive War #2.

Anyways, the first story about a gateway that can take you forward/back 20 years, but you can't change anything. Going forward merely tells you where you'll end up, going backwards merely increases your understanding of how you got where you are. Great story, fully locked in, the rest haven't caught my imagination quite like the first though.

I just finished a manga called "Gyo: The Death Stench Creeps" by Junji Ito. The art was fantastic.

A time to kill, john grisham.

Good read but wow, the deep south is insane.

I'm rereading the Slovene translation of Vonnegut's Player Piano (since that's the English version isn't available in my local library).

As I just visited a Volkswagen factory (high school trip), I could compare the real factory situation in the book and in reality. It's shockingly similar and we already are almost in the same situation.

Blue Moon in the Jack Reacher series. They're indulgent, half James bond, half Sherlock Holmes. I used to feel embarrassed reading fiction as an adult, but now I'm like hey, a book a week (or sometimes a day) of something pleasurable is way better than a book every six months of something taxing. I've got a toddler and I'm pregnant and I'm so glad to have this series so I never have to think about what my next read is. I'm on like book 20/30 though, so a little worried for when it ends.

It's been so much fun to follow reacher through the technical advances of the 90s and early 2000s! Cameras everywhere, cell phones, internet, debit cards all changing his way of life book to book, really neat.

Suggestions welcome for an equally easy/engaging long series after this!

Finally getting into Velocity Weapon by Megan O’Keefe I bought the book a few years ago because I thought the cover looked really cool. I decided to finally read it after picking up the 3rd book last week.

I’m a dummy for not reading it sooner, I’m about 40% through and really loving it.

Razor Girl by Carl Hiaasen. It is a good drive to/from work audio book, I don't have to pay too much attention to it.

I have been working a ton lately so I am still reading Shadows Upon Time the last book in the sun eater series.

Maybe I can finish it soon. I really would like to get back to the Dungeon Crawler Carl series.

Dune5

Finished "a death in Cornwall" by Daniel Silva, and now a little over half way through "an inside job", the next and latest book in this series. While I think the previous was a decent enough book, it left me with the feeling that the author was tip-toeing around the whole Israel situation where the series was heavily Israel centered in the earlier books (and deliberately pointing at a different country in the process). The not adressing of the current state of affairs in Israel goes on in the latest book unfortunately. Also, the plot twists are too predictable,

ive been reading a collection of locked room mysteries called miraculous mysteries: locked room mysteries and impossible crimes. i recently finished after the people lights have gone off by stephen graham jones and realized short stories fit more into the pace of life for me at the moment, and murder mysteries get me in just the right way. plus i dont have to agonize over my guess for quite as long

Finishing up “Fast Forward” by Robert Sawyer. It’s not very good. Lots of filler. One of the main characters finds out her young child has died and she just continues to mutter about like nothing has happened. One of the villains gives a long rambling speech about his motivations before shooting someone, like he’s a Bond villain. No one does this in real life.

I hear the TV show based on the book’s premise is much better. One of those rare instances where the tv show or movie is better than the book.