Books you read

[Crazyroostereye]

I am personally not a Big reader. This I assume is because of a Read/Write Disability I have. Where I am a bit slow with reading and comprehension of the text.

But I recently started reading a book that caught my attention and really enjoyed reading. The Book I read was There Is No Antimemetics Division. It's a Book set in the SCP universe and talks about the Antimemetics Division of the Foundation.

Now you may ask, what is an antimeme? An antimeme is an idea with self-censoring properties, meaning you can't remember specific Parts or the entire thing once you stop observing it. A good example in the SCP wiki about such an item is SCP-055.

The Book itself talks about fighting a War against an Antimemetic creature and the Issues arising with an enemy you can't even remember you're at war with. It's written in a way where it is more disjointed between major Chapters. As we get to learn about our protagonists encounters of the enemy and promptly forgetting about it in the past after the first Climax of the Story. Basically we know what is going to happen, but we didn't realize what scope it actually had and what that meant and how long they actually were at war with it.

I am curious what interesting Books you have read recently and how they were?

[Felid131]

I'm a big Warriors fan and have been since I was little. The main series has gotten less interesting to read, it's just a carrier for the main plot and gets a lot of things going on at once spread over 6 books per arc. The really enjoyable stuff is in the super editions, novellas, and some of the graphic novels. I'm missing some of the books since I borrowed the first ones when I was little and lost one of them when I was older.

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[Stefen_Maxwell]

I'm a big Warriors fan and have been since I was little. The main series has gotten less interesting to read, it's just a carrier for the main plot and gets a lot of things going on at once spread over 6 books per arc. The really enjoyable stuff is in the super editions, novellas, and some of the graphic novels. I'm missing some of the books since I borrowed the first ones when I was little and lost one of them when I was older.
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OMG, I read so many of those books. I eventually gave up reading them in the story arc when Firepaw moves the tribe to a new location. The first arc was so good from what I can remember from my childhood.

[December_W_Wolf]

I know the topic of the original post is "books you read recently" and I could talk about Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness since I have indeed been reading that one recently, but I haven't finished it yet so I can't really give a proper judgement of it. So far it's quite interesting, and yet very depressing in nature - it's a guy telling the story of when he went to explore the Amazon river, back when they were still figuring things out in South America.

But the one book I always love to go back to is Watership Down. I first read it when I was maybe 10, I read it maybe 5 times after that, I went back to read it last year. There's a lot of scuffles and rabbits and long-distance treks and death and brotherhood and friendship and schemes, it's brilliant.

If you want the TL;DR, here's how I explained it in the subreddit r/ExplainABookPlotBadly over a year ago: "Men spend half the book moving house, spend the other half stealing women"

[seasnails]

I was just starting into a book on Norse mythology by Neil Gaiman, but then all the allegations against him came out and that felt kind of gross, so it's back to poking through collections of short Western/frontier stories by Louis L'amour and William Johnstone that I picked up on a whim a while back in a used books store. Nothing particularly deep or moving, just nice simple stories to wind down with at the end of the day.

(Warning: Grouchy rant about the Belgariad books below. Feel free to skip.)

Actually, on the subject! I recently tried to re-read the Belgariad books that I loved so much when I was younger. As a series they were firmly in my top five favorite reading material. But man ... it was such an awful experience this time. I couldn't get past the second book, I think it was? Shortly after Ce'Nedra was introduced I just gave up, knowing it was only going to get worse.

So much of the main cast are always going on about how much smarter and cleverer and right-er than everyone else they are, and how stupid and idiotic anyone is that thinks differently than they do. They're constantly talking down to Garion (the main protagonist) and treating him like a fool or a naive youth despite having *deliberately raised him that way and intentionally keeping information from him*. Polgara is constantly being insufferably smug and self-assured about how amazing and always-right she is, and many other characters support her in that and fawn over her and tell her how amazing and always-right she is. Ce'Nedra is just ... Ce'Nedra ... and it's like they rip into Garion constantly for acting foolish or being wrong about something when honestly he's just acting like a youth who hasn't been able to experience the world yet (OH AND DID I MENTION THEY DELIBERATELY KEEP IMPORTANT INFORMATION AND DETAILS FROM HIM), and yet when he treats Ce'Nedra as a spoiled little brat, and she *actually is* immensely spoiled and bratty, they tear Garion apart for it ... arrrrrgghh how did I love these books so much? It feels like a field guide on how to gaslight and mentally abuse a kid or something!

Has anyone else had a similar experience with these? The only characters I could stand (besides Garion, who I felt bad for the entire time) were Durnik, Barak, and Mandorallen. The first two because they seemed to actually have some sliver of humility and weren't always acting right all the time while putting everyone else down for being idiots. I was disappointed every time they fawned over Polgara because of course Polgara is perfect in every way and is never wrong and every other character must constantly remind the reader of this fact. And Mandorallen, while incredibly self-assured, somehow managed to pull it off with a sense of innocence about it, so it was amusing to read rather than insufferable.

Anyway. Apologies for the rant. It was nice to finally get that out of my system.

Edit: Did a little internet searching to see if anyone else felt the same way, and it turns out the husband and wife co-authors were jailed at one point for child abuse. So that's a depressing explanation for it.

[Speb]

I havent been a massive reader until recently, only ever read some of the A Song of Ice and Fire books and both the Vermis books. Recently finished Ghost in the Wires and it was a very fun read hearing about Kevins life on the run, regardless of your own opinions on Mitnick, he had lead an interesting life. After that I finished 1984, amazing, but wow did I get depressed, its such a tragic story.

Now I', just waiting on Little Brother by Cory Doctorow to be delivered so I can get started on that, as well as ASOIAF Storm of swords part 2, because I bought A feast for crows not realising i skipped over a book. I was never a massive reader but lately I sit down for hours while my girlfriend is watching TV and just read, it has really grown on me.

[Ellie_Taglietelle]

After that I finished 1984, amazing, but wow did I get depressed, its such a tragic story.

I really recommend Homage to Catalonia! It gives a ton of background to the formation of 1984 as a work and it's also super fascinating in it's own right, it's the true story of Orwell's experience in the Spanish Civil War as a volunteer

I'm a big Sally Rooney fan which has lead me to recently read Coco Mellors' first book Cleopatra and Frankenstein, it's certainly in the vein of Rooney. It gets a lot of flak for being pretentious but I think that's the expectation going in or at least it was for me, I enjoy books about people's conflicting lives with little to no central plot, just raw emotion so Cleo and Frankenstein was perfect for me. (Intermezzo is a genuine modern classic btw)