Literature Thread

Knight

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What do you guys read?

I've personally finished Neuromancer recently and loved it.
capa_neuromancer_aleph_jsan_gonzalez.jpg



I've been thinking of picking up a military sci-fi novel, either Halo Contact Harvest or maybe something from the Galaxy's Edge series, though I don't know anything about Galaxy's Edge and was wondering if it was any good?
 
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MaXenzie

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i want to read every 40k book

dont have any tho lmao
 

ButtonLip

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What do you guys read?

I've personally finished Neuromancer recently and loved it.
capa_neuromancer_aleph_jsan_gonzalez.jpg



I've been thinking of picking up a military sci-fi novel, either Halo Contact Harvest or maybe something from the Galaxy's Edge series, though I don't know anything about Galaxy's Edge and was wondering if it was any good?

I like Neuromancer, even though it's a little tropey at times. I read the sequel, Count Zero, and started the one after that which I can't remember the name of, but got distracted. Sprawl Trilogy as a whole is pretty cool, I'm a sucker for sci fi

I'm about half-way through a book called the Poppy War, which is cool in concept but a bit too rushed. I guess I feel that way because it has a lot of parallels to the Kingkiller chronicles, which are fucking fantastic and take their time developing stuff, which the Poppy War doesn't do so much. I also started reading a compilation of Lovecraft stories (I bought it as a birthday gift for my sister, but she isn't really reading it). I'd never actually dug deep with Lovecraft, but I'm liking it so far.
 
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tera

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I used to read a lot of series like The Maze Runner, The Hunger Games, Star Craft, Star Wars, etc. I still do have an interest for the Sci Fi genre and am always on a lookout for such books.

Now recently however, I've been more interested in reading books with historical genres, particularly set in the 20th century regarding military/wars, whether fictional or based on an biography.

IMO, the one of the best books I've read was War Trash by Ha Jin, depicting a fictional biography of an educated Chinese citizen being pressed into serving the People's Volunteer Army during the Korean War and his life during the short course of war before being captured by US and Korean Forces. The book then details about his life in the American POW camps and prisons, his interactions with his fellow Chinese volunteers, Koreans, Americans, etc and the things they would do to stay alive, to get back to the mainland or to escape, etc. Only for them to realize that they are truly war trash, forgotten and thrown aside. You could imagine from his POV, that this really could have been experienced by an average soldier during the Korean War.
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@Mesa @GenericPlayer @char and to anyone else who enjoys reading about 20th century military, you guys ought to read this if you have the chance, seriously amazing book, great historical references with a strong authentic tone.


The most recent book I've bought was Pandemic: The Extinction Files. I've only went through the beginning, I was reading it to enhance my learning of epidemiology (cuz med school help) and so far it has quite an interesting beginning and used real life medical aspects to enhance the plot as well as secret government shit.
51arHB45BLL.jpg

Yeeeahhh, that's just about the significant ones I can think of now.
 
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ButtonLip

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Just remembered to recommend the book I've been recommending for a while. This is from the cover of the best book I read last year, The Windup Girl:

bangkok-windup.jpg

Peak oil energy crisis plus climate change plus irresponsible scientific endeavors leads to widespread societal collapse. Things are relatively stable in largely isolated Thailand, but foreign corporatocracies are looking for ways in. I only have one qualm about recommending this one to anybody, and it's that there are one or two (brief) sexually graphic scenes.
 
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mårten

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i'm reading FUTU.RE by Dmitrij Gluchovskij (the guy who wrote the Metro series)
it's pretty cool, it's set like 200-300 years into the future in a utopian-like world where everyone is immortal
the protagonist is a dude who's part of a special government force whose job is to punish those who break the law of *you're not allowed to have kids because the world is overpopulated as fuck*
 

Tzula

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i want to read every 40k book

dont have any tho lmao
Some of them are good, some of them are bad.
Pandorax is a great concept with Dark Angels and Gray Knights but then it brings in
Some twisted vessel of slaanesh that was a gray knight master or something
 

Essence

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When I started reading, a hobby that I enjoy immensely, it was mainly fictitious young adult novels with stories that kept my mind busy. Stuff like The Maze Runner, The Ranger's Apprentice, and The Wheel of Time series ranging to even the convoluted nonsense of Dune [Still, its one of my favourite science-fiction novels to this date]. I also read a lot of classics from the small collection my grandfather had when I was either bored or no other book seemed to interest me - books like Oliver Twist, Tale of Two Cities [An amazing story], Pride and Prejudice [It's ok, I suppose], Wuthering Heights [Another amazing story], and a bunch of plays from Shakespeare like King Lear and Othello.

Nowadays, I absolutely love-love-LOVE satirical novels of both fiction and nonfiction. I just recently finished a dystopic novel that was published in 1932 that satires the rise of technology, its abuses, and how that would damper human society and interactions as they saw it in that time. Of course, I am referring to Aldous Huxley's Brave New World


brave-new-world-banner.jpg

I've been thinking about picking up Vonnegut's The Sirens of Titan for a while now and explore the themes that it attempts to portray about free will and the existential nature of humanity. I also love other historical accounts and novels relating to non-fiction, as I loved works like Candide and The Guns of August, which makes me also want to pick up Tuchman's piece on the crisis' of the late middle ages titled A Distant Mirror: The Calamitous 14th Century and her conceit on death and violence between the 14th century and the 20th century.

IMO, the one of the best books I've read was War Trash by Ha Jin, depicting a fictional biography of an educated Chinese citizen being pressed into serving the People's Volunteer Army during the Korean War and his life during the short course of war before being captured by US and Korean Forces. The book then details about his life in the American POW camps and prisons, his interactions with his fellow Chinese volunteers, Koreans, Americans, etc and the things they would do to stay alive, to get back to the mainland or to escape, etc. Only for them to realize that they are truly war trash, forgotten and thrown aside.

Ooooh! That sounds really interesting! I might have to pick that up. Since you seem to like War Novels, I can certainly recommend you Tim O'Brien's The Things They Carried - which is essentially a collection of short stories and fictional semi-autobiographies of a platoon of American infantry soldiers before, during, and after the Vietnam war and the moral / psychological derangements that plague them. You should certainly pick it up if you haven't already, its a very decent read!
 
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jamEs

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I'm a sucker for Russian classics

Finished The Brothers Karamazov and Crime & Punishment by Dostoevsky recently, reading The Mother by Maxim Gorky right now and planning on reading Bulgakov's The Master and Margarita soon
 
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tera

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When I started reading, a hobby that I enjoy immensely, it was mainly fictitious young adult novels with stories that kept my mind busy. Stuff like The Maze Runner, The Ranger's Apprentice, and The Wheel of Time series ranging to even the convoluted nonsense of Dune [Still, its one of my favourite science-fiction novels to this date]. I also read a lot of classics from the small collection my grandfather had when I was either bored or no other book seemed to interest me - books like Oliver Twist, Tale of Two Cities [An amazing story], Pride and Prejudice [It's ok, I suppose], Wuthering Heights [Another amazing story], and a bunch of plays from Shakespeare like King Lear and Othello.

Nowadays, I absolutely love-love-LOVE satirical novels of both fiction and nonfiction. I just recently finished a dystopic novel that was published in 1932 that satires the rise of technology, its abuses, and how that would damper human society and interactions as they saw it in that time. Of course, I am referring to Aldous Huxley's Brave New World


brave-new-world-banner.jpg

I've been thinking about picking up Vonnegut's The Sirens of Titan for a while now and explore the themes that it attempts to portray about free will and the existential nature of humanity. I also love other historical accounts and novels relating to non-fiction, as I loved works like Candide and The Guns of August, which makes me also want to pick up Tuchman's piece on the crisis' of the late middle ages titled A Distant Mirror: The Calamitous 14th Century and her conceit on death and violence between the 14th century and the 20th century.



Ooooh! That sounds really interesting! I might have to pick that up. Since you seem to like War Novels, I can certainly recommend you Tim O'Brien's The Things They Carried - which is essentially a collection of short stories and fictional semi-autobiographies of a platoon of American infantry soldiers before, during, and after the Vietnam war and the moral / psychological derangements that plague them. You should certainly pick it up if you haven't already, its a very decent read!
I'll definitely keep a big look-out for that. I need more war novels to buy for the holidays.
 
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If you want to bigdick on someone about what books you read, look at David Peace's Occupied City.

It is madness. Peace apparently prescribes to the "12 book limit", a self imposed limit of writing only 12 books in your lifetime, to make each count. You can see it in Occupied City, as it's about 6 different books mashed in to one.
 
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Goatson

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The Ranger's Apprentice
ngl flanagan’s books are still some of my favourites til this day

Anyways recently been reading the Metro series but it feels like everyone on planet earth has so no point talking about that

Also loving Lars Wilderäng’s books after recently finishing Stjärnklart, a wonderful Swedish apocalyptic story about the world going to shit after all electronic technology in the entire world mysteriously stops working. Really good since it genuinely feels very reality-grounded and shows perspectives of loads of different people, from an average student, to a SpecOp soldier in Afghanistan, to a member of Parliament, to a businessman and on it goes.

Wish it was translated to English because there is no doubt in my mind that a lot of people here would really enjoy it too
 
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ButtonLip

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Anyways recently been reading the Metro series but it feels like everyone on planet earth has so no point talking about that

If you like Metro, you might like the Silo series by Hugh Howey, they've got a similar concept.

Also, when people eventually start itching for fantasy once Thrones (or ASoIaF, if you'd rather) is done, Kingkiller Chronicles are solid. Really well written, though the plot can be a little slow sometimes, and the main character experiences brief intervals of Mary Sue.

There are two full-length books out in it so far (and these fuckers are seriously full, full length), starting with The Name of the Wind. There's also a small novella out there in the same universe.

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Deleted member 3713

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I have to say by far my favorite books were The Road by McCarthy and some poems by the Blind Philospher Al Mareri , I really enjoy Arabic literature.
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mårten

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Anyways recently been reading the Metro series but it feels like everyone on planet earth has so no point talking about that
it's okay i will talk about it :))


I remember a book series called The Strain which was pretty cool. Co-written by Guillermo Del Toro and some other dude.
 

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Recently finished the book Never Let Me Go, it was a good read. Reminded me a lot of the Unwind series. Other books I finished that I thoroughly enjoyed are: Steelheart, Midshipman's Hope, The Kite Runner, and Starship Troopers Stranger in a Strange Land. There are other books I've read for high-school that I'm sure most people already know about or have read it themselves.
 
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Knight

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Been reading Thrawn and it's genuinely one of the few books that has me this interested in it. Great military science fiction.