Staying at home is the norm... What are you reading?

Hawki

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Read some stuff:

Doctor Who: The Legends of Ashildr (4/5)

Star Wars: Boba Fett – Man with a Mission (2/5)

Halo: Blood Line (4/5)

Halo: Escalation – The Next 72 Hours (2/5)

Halo: Escalation – Exposure (3/5)

Halo: Escalation – The Janus Key (3/5)

Halo: Escalation – The Glass Horizon (3/5)
 

Johnny Novgorod

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Finished After Dark by Murakami.
This is my third novel by the author and I think I'm picking on a trend here: these are all just strangers spontaneously having candid conversations, right? With a vague sense of danger hanging around in the back? Moody atmosphere with a jazzy soundtrack literally timestamped into the pages of the book? And a smattering of magical realism at a crucial point of the plot? I think that covers all of them.
 

Hawki

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Read some stuff:

Halo: Renegades (3/5)

Sonic the Hedgehog Annual 2020 (3/5)

Sonic the Hedgehog: Volume 8 – Out of the Blue (4/5)

Aliens: Rescue (3/5)
 

Bob_McMillan

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Kinda sad that Boku no Hero seems to be speeding towards a finale. I think so much more could have been done with the concept and the characters, but the author just kept wasting time with pointless fluff arcs. I guess the manga and anime world will just have to keep searching for Naruto and Bleach's replacements.
 

Johnny Novgorod

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Kinda sad that Boku no Hero seems to be speeding towards a finale. I think so much more could have been done with the concept and the characters, but the author just kept wasting time with pointless fluff arcs.
I just know this as the crap my girlfriend ships on AO3. Apparently half the fandom is people writing smut about different characters taking it up the ass. Says she anyway.
 

Bob_McMillan

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I just know this as the crap my girlfriend ships on AO3. Apparently half the fandom is people writing smut about different characters taking it up the ass. Says she anyway.
No, she's right. My girlfriend is the same, she started reading it way before me but dropped out after maybe a year. But of course she still read steamy fanfics about her favorite ships.
 

Sora383

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My reading list is kinda mixed (not counting textbooks)

I am currently working through a 75 hour audiobook collection of Sherlock Holmes, currently the sign of four part of that collection.

Along with that I’m also re reading the Lincoln Lawyer series written by Michael Connelly

For my manga I’m reading:
All the weekly Shonen jump chapters (today they axed on I was enjoying which ticked me off)
The last chapter of attack on Titan (when ever it gets released)
Cardcaptors clear card arc
Ron Kamonohashi: Deranged Detective
Blue exorcist
seraph of the end
Twin stars exorcists.

Honestly the list for manga goes on, I think I got about 30ish on the go right now haha.
 

Thaluikhain

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Just read Tarzan the Untamed, and lots of racism and sexism in this one. Also, OtT evil Germans which ended the series' popularity in Germany, though he was a writer in the US writing in 1919, not surprising he wasn't fond of Germans. And the "twist" at the end you should have seen coming from the beginning.

Starting Tarzan the Terrible, and it's starting off with him meeting some strange non-human person, learning the language and being told about a dodgy king, a princess, conflict and...yeah, back to the classic ERB here.
 

Drathnoxis

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My reading list is kinda mixed (not counting textbooks)

I am currently working through a 75 hour audiobook collection of Sherlock Holmes, currently the sign of four part of that collection.
Sherlock Holmes is good, but he's a little annoyingly perfect. There are only two kinds of mistakes Sherlock Holmes ever makes; the first is when he makes a mistake (breaks something, stumbles, etc.) and later it's revealed that it actually was not a mistake at all and it was instrumental to catching the culprit. The second is when he makes some trifling error in his impossible deductions that no normal person could follow let alone call an error and that doesn't actually prevent him from catching the culprit.
 

Sora383

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Sherlock Holmes is good, but he's a little annoyingly perfect. There are only two kinds of mistakes Sherlock Holmes ever makes; the first is when he makes a mistake (breaks something, stumbles, etc.) and later it's revealed that it actually was not a mistake at all and it was instrumental to catching the culprit. The second is when he makes some trifling error in his impossible deductions that no normal person could follow let alone call an error and that doesn't actually prevent him from catching the culprit.
You hit it perfectly on the nose, he is a bit to perfect but honestly that’s one of the reason I had this urge to read his stuff again, with all the randomness going on lately in the world it’s been nice to dive into his perfect (and let’s be honest more then a little cocky) world.

Also there have been a couple of manga’s that have been drawing influence from the Sherlock Holmes mythos that I have been reading lately, so it’s been rather interesting to see what the manga authors/artists interpretation has been compared to Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.
 

Trunkage

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I heard this one was a sidetrack... and it is. But, then I don't think you've understood was Erikson does.

Its interesting though. The politics between each group was fascinating and well fleshed out. Could not care about the Snake at all. I started skimming because it was going nowhere.

I actually finished month ago but couldn't write anything. The last bit with Tool was so dumb. It doesn't fit the character. Also he forgave Toc and saw the manipulation but still did what he did? For a person who does motivating so well, Erikson failed here

Onto the final chapter of this series...
 

Drathnoxis

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Finished.
Wish actual novels would get a little more love. It's always comics and teen sagas around these parts.
Is it? I read a lot of novels, but I guess I just haven't been making posts in the thread recently about them. I just kind of got tired of making long write ups that don't get any responses.

Here's everything I've read since my last post

Animal Farm
Gulliver's Travels
Hornblower and the Atropos
Hornblower in the West Indies
Artemis Fowl: (Ok, it's a teen saga :P)
-Artemis Fowl
-The Arctic Incident
-The Eternity Code
-The Opal Deception
-The Lost Colony
-The Time Paradox
Exit the Milkman (dropped it after the first 80 pages)

And right now I'm reading The Hobbit and Treasure Island
 

Hawki

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Is it? I read a lot of novels, but I guess I just haven't been making posts in the thread recently about them. I just kind of got tired of making long write ups that don't get any responses.
Join the club. :(

Actually, to be fair, it makes sense. There's a hell of a lot of novels in the world, so the chances of us being able to read and comment on the same thing are much lower when compared to other forms of media.
 

Hawki

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Star Wars: Spark of the Resistance (2/5)

This book is bad. Like, really bad. It's marked as YF, though should really be JF by the standards of its writing. But even then, it's still bad - the argument "it's for kids" (even if it was intended for kids, which is iffy) doesn't stop it from being bad.

I've got a theory that Justina Ireland struggled to write this. The way the sentences and dialogue is structured, it comes off as someone who's trying to write for a younger audience, but is struggling to do so. And I actually sympathize with that - being someone who writes a lot, even if it's only on hobby level, it's very difficult in my experience to actually write for a younger audience, because you have to fight your own instincts and desires. However, again, that doesn't excuse the novel's lack of quality. I know (or assume) that Ireland can write YF/AF fiction, if only for the existence of the Dread Nation duology and the praise it got, but if I'm right, then she was really poor suited for this.

Whatever. The book takes place between Last Jedi and Rise of Skywalker, detailing a mission of Rey, Rose, Poe, and BB-8 to some planet that's under attack by the First Order, as they seek out a mcGuffin. That by itself isn't a problem, but how the book is written is. Often, it relies on telling rather than showing - we're "told" about how Rey regards Rose as a close friend or somesuch, but little of it comes through. But that aside, the title is "Spark of the Resistance," and the novel repeatedly makes reference to the "spark of hope" or "fire of hope" or some other variant that's repeated throughout the work, be it through narrative or dialogue, and it gets very old, very quickly. Congratulations, you reference the title, which references Poe's lines in Last Jedi, have a cookie.

Oh, and the First Order characters are two-dimensional - evil people who do evil things, who the author constantly reminds you are evil. Again, I don't need to be TOLD the First Order is evil, I know it. It's only a few steps short of the Jedi Apprentice series where Moff Hissa literally said "dark tidings" to an assembled crowd. Rule of writing, "bad guys don't see themselves as bad guys," and while you can break this rule and still have fun, the rule is there for a reason.

So, no. There's absolutely nothing to reccommend for this book. Not for adults, not for children, and for Star Wars fans, nothing in this book has any bearing on, well, anything. Least as far as I can tell. I've previously sung the praises of some EU works that have delved into the First Order and its associated time period, but this sure as hell isn't one of them.

Avoid like bantha poodoo.
 

Kae

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Is this
Join the club. :(

Actually, to be fair, it makes sense. There's a hell of a lot of novels in the world, so the chances of us being able to read and comment on the same thing are much lower when compared to other forms of media.
Well what could be done to fix that, if you really want to be discussing the books you read is to start a book club of sorts and agree to read the same books and discuss them.

TBH I haven't been posting in this thread because I've been reading political theory more than anything else and I seriously doubt anyone here wants to hear about "How Pacifism helps the State" and shit like that.
 

Hawki

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Well what could be done to fix that, if you really want to be discussing the books you read is to start a book club of sorts and agree to read the same books and discuss them.
I can list plenty of reasons why that isn't going to happen, but suffice to say...well, it isn't going to happen.

TBH I haven't been posting in this thread because I've been reading political theory more than anything else and I seriously doubt anyone here wants to hear about "How Pacifism helps the State" and shit like that.
People, including myself, have posted thoughts on non-fiction work here, so that wouldn't be out of place.
 

Hawki

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Alien 3: The Unproduced Screenplay (3/5)

This is a comic adaptation of William Gibson's Alien 3, veering off in a completely different direction from the Lynch version. And...I can't say I liked it.

Disclaimer: I like Alien 3 (or at least the Assembly Cut), and I think it's a criminally underrated film. However, even if I didn't, even if it was so bad that Gibson's version (or at least this comic adaptation) was better, that doesn't make the comic good. Because while it introduces some interesting ideas, it meanders in terms of plot. There's no real 'drive' to the sequence of events. Stuff happens, then happens, then happens, then OMG shit's hit the fan. Contrast that with what Alien and Aliens provide, with a steady buildup to said shit hitting said fan. Furthermore, the character choices here are...well, weird. Ripley is sidelined throughout the entire piece, remaining in stasis, before being jetissoned off Anchorpoint. It's a bizzare choice of story, and I don't know why it was made. You could ask "well what about Hicks and Newt, how Alien 3 killed them off?" First, I'd respond by pointing out that their deaths hold thematic weight, and second, it's still more definitive than keeping those characters in stasis throughout the entire piece.

On the subject of characters, there's kind of a shift to making Hicks the core protagonist, or at least as close to one as there could be. But that aside, what the comic arguably does add is worldbuilding, namely the introduction of the Union of Progressive Peoples (UPP) and putting them in a cold war with the "corporatist" Earth (or something - the term "United Americas" is never used). Basically, it's a case of transplanting the Cold War of the 20th century (which was still going on by this point) into the late 22nd. It raises an interesting question, as to where the Alien series would have gone from here if this was the version of Alien 3 that we got. I've commented before that the Alien series has been crippled by a haphazard approach to worldbuilding and a lack of imagination - it's why the Colonial Marines are so ubiqutous for instance, even to the point where it doesn't make sense.

There's also another thing of note, and that's the comic's take on the xenomorphs. As if predicting Alien: Resurrection, the comic's take sort of incorporates elements from 'The Thing,' which researchers get infected by xenomorph DNA, and turn into alien/human hybrids (which also look a bit like the T-800, what with their red glowing eyes). I can't say this is a "bad" take, but I'm not fond of it - it's less "Alien" and more a generic "monsters in space" story. Again, in an alternate universe where this was the Alien 3 we got, we could have seen the franchise shift to incorporate this idea more wildly, but on the other, Alien 3 did solidify the notion that the xenomorph takes on traits of its host, so pick your mutation I guess.

Overall, the comic is an interesting "what if?" but I don't think it's good, nor is it better than Lynch's version. I'm happy for ideas from this to be taken (and Fireteam is doing so), but for every good idea this version of Alien 3 has, it's crippled by a bad idea and/or bad execution.