http://4-ch.net/games/kareha.pl/1206548566/
This is a nice thread. Let's have a book edition.
I just read my first book by Haruki Murakami, "The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle". Murakami gets a lot of praise in these parts, and after reading this book, I can confirm that it isn't unfounded. The book to me felt a bit weaker towards the end, but I really liked hearing the stories of Nomonhan, Siberia, and such.
i am a heron. i ahev a long neck and i pick fish out of the water w/ my beak. if you dont repost this comment on 10 other pages i will fly into your kitchen tonight and make a mess of your pots and pans
Been reading the Redwall series, finished the first two books, about halfway through the third.
It's a pretty fun little series, but I remember catching a look at the wikipedia and seeing a mention of criticism of it being repetitious, and I have to agree with what I've read so far.
It's not a major deal breaker or anything but the riddles and exactly 2 named allies dying among other thins is annoyingly ever-present. The main protags are also all very similar but that's kind of the point so whatever. 3rd book is looking a little fresher at least so far.
Also I had the weirdest issue reading the first one in that it has some weird early installment thing where it's vaguely implied they live in a world with humans with human-sized carts and buildings and the like; it was really confusing to try and envision it in my head since other parts made it seem like things were the size of the animals. And Redwall itself is made much, much smaller in the 3rd book, so at least it's not an issue in the later entries.
>>1
I've read The white nights, by Fedor Dostoievski. A short book, However, a great book.
I listened to an English translation of "La Maldicion de la Cabeza Reducida" but forgot to make a file for the last chapter.
"Paperback, 72 pages
Published [2009-06-01] by TPRS Publishing, Incorporated"
Links:
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/12433349-la-maldicion-de-la-cabeza-reducida
https://www.teachersdiscovery.com/product/la-maldicion-de-la-cabeza-recudinda-level-2-intermediate-low-spanish-novel/spanish-clearance
https://www.abebooks.com/book-search/isbn/9781934958971/
https://m.directtextbook.com/isbn/9781934958971
https://fluencymatters.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/06/Spa-Maldicion-TG-Web.Spl_.pdf
https://fluencymatters.com/courses/la-maldicion-de-la-cabeza-reducida-e-course/
https://cinovels.fandom.com/wiki/La_maldición_de_la_cabeza_reducida
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comprehensible_Input
https://www.amazon.com/Maldicion-Reducida-Pinelands-Regional-Spanish/dp/1934958972
Just finished Watership Down.
A thoroughly captivating read from beginning to end, beyond what I expected even as I already had high expectations. I'm not altogether sure why, but reading about the little group of rabbits fighting against the odds to achieve a happy life through strength and smarts was very satisfying. I also liked the sort of culture the rabbit's were given, it was clever and worked well in the narrative.
I was actually a bit surprised to find the story to be as happy and sentimental as it was; I had heard it was quite the brutal tale, and, while there was blood and death to be sure, it wasn't nearly as grim as I was expecting. I imagine that must be more associated with the movie, considering its own reputation as not being a typical children's film and knowing that The Plague Dogs movie, based on another book by the same author, was actually made more dismal than the book, if I remember correctly.
Altogether, I enjoyed this book immensely. It's no wonder its considered such a classic.
Read Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH
Pretty standard fare I'd say, and, though the fact I was familiar with the movie adaptation probably gives me a bias to some extent, I feel the film was in fact a better piece of work, even considering the deus ex machina in the amulet. The novel was surprisingly rather bland and short, the main conflict just sort of came and went without much issue and even that much trouble for Mrs. Frisby aside from her capture; the movie did a lot to show a beautiful advanced world and definitely showed more of the protagonist's emotions and inner challenges. Actually having Jenner present as an antagonist helped the climax a great deal I believe as well, the scientists trying in vain to capture the rats was a lot weaker for an ending.
The story itself was fine at least, but I don't think it's very surprising the adaptation is much more famous.
Just finished reading Neuromancer. Been on my backlog for about ten years at this point, but so glad I finally got around to it. Some aspects are understandbly dated, but this serves only to contrast the amazing vision of “cyberspace” that existed in Gibson’s dreams, long before the advent of the internet. Brilliant stuff.
I read The Depths of Time by Roger MacBride Allen, borrowed from the Internet Archive’s digital library. It was pretty good, I might read the next book in the seties.
Read Raptor Red a little while ago
An alright book, starts off pretty weak but it picks up quickly for the most part. The weird combination of anthropomorphic thoughts/actions alongside these really out of place overly-specific technical descriptions almost killed it for me, though it lessens up as it goes on (or I just got used to it). Word choice was kind of odd throughout the story as well, like the use of "Darwinian" 4 times in the first chapter and the use of the word "shit" like 6 times on one page and then never again. Just obtuse language here and there like the whole sentence "Another vital bit of information was added to the hard disk of her mental computer."
That kind of thing makes it VERY obvious this novel was written by a paleontologist and not a professional writer, which in all fairness has a charm of its own.
Like I said, it does get interesting and becomes a fun read but something about took me out of it every few pages.
Finished The Hobbit. Reread it for the firs time in a long while. Might actually be better than I remembered, it's really charming and such a perfect distilled version of fantasy. Tolkien went a long way to make the story feel like it was actually being related to you in a really cozy way. And not being intimately tied into an overarching epic like LOTR is pretty nice too in that it's a short, pleasant read.
Finally finished Tolstoy's war and peace. it took me nearly 5 years but i'm finally done with it. a lot better than i thought it would be, i kept quitting and putting it off to read other stuff only to come back to it later. its actually pretty good once you get past the ancient writing style and just how slow and dry the start is. i wouldnt recommend it though. save yourself the time and read as summary online.
Just finished Political Theology by Carl Schmitt. It’s a short work, to the point, and can be finished in just two hours. Schmitt dives straight in with his famous definition of the sovereign as “he who decides on the state of exception.” From this he unfolds an infamous critique of liberal democracy manifest in the Weimar Republic. Schmitt argues that politics hinges on a distinction between friend and enemy, a fundamental distinction liberals try to deny or erase while in the process make things much worse. Whereas Schmitt advocates a pragmatic and realist engagement with the enemy, as someone who can be respected and traded with, liberals maniacal obsession with humanity leads to the dehumanization of the ‘other’ and this reduction of the enemy to less than human invites all kinds of brutal atrocities. Schmitt concludes that the ‘depoliticizing’ tendencies make liberal regimes unattractive and incapable. There is a lot of debate over Schmitt’s own politics and he’s relationship with Nazism, although a party member it’s debatable whether he was so out of genuine conviction or simply a pragmatic move to ensure his survival in Hitler’s Reich. Overall, I found Schmitt’s arguments to be thought provoking but not always entirely convincing, why exactly should we accept his claim that the political is founded on an antagonism? Nevertheless, his critique of liberalism helps us understand how that ideology has maintained a stranglehold over humanity despite the numerous atrocities it has inflicted on us.