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ResettePlayer

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Finally finished Nineteen Eighty-Four by George Orwell. From a literature standpoint, it isn't the greatest--but that's not the point. It makes sure to hammer the point into your face with every word on every page. And that's okay, because its point is an important one. Onto Brave New World by Aldous Huxley.

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Ooh, "1984".  That's a doozy.  Haven't read "Brave New World" yet, but it sounds like something I'd like from what I've heard.  I reccommended 1984 to my brother, and afterwards he said he liked it, but "Wait a minute--YOU reccommended this to me?!"  I'm kind of always asking him "It's not too dark, is it?" whenever he wants to show us a movie he likes or something, is why.  : P

I've also read "The Invisible Man", and one thing that _did_ surprise me about it was...well, again, how dark and serious it was!  I mean, up until then I'd only seen the idea as a GAG, and seen like, the silly parody movies of it. That the dude was actually a beeping VIOLENT CRIMINAL and that he tested out the invisibility potion on his CAT...poor kitty!  :(  nobody with the gag bandages around their face ever mentioned...

Right now I'm still slowly chewing my way through the big thick "Penny Dreadfuls" book.  Lemme tell ya, Mary Shelley definitely made the RIGHT decision in how she rewrote Frankenstein.  The original version was SO FREAKING DIFFERENT! and it's kinda offputting to see The Monster speaking eruditely like a normal person.  Like, he (eventually) gets exactly the same vocabulary level as Dr. Frankenstein himself.  And the part about how he DESERVED a mate so _make_ me one, now! kinda unpleasantly reminded me of the incel forums...

So, I've read several stories past that, and I think so far my fave was "Wake Not the Dead!" because it's got such a classic vampire in it.  Also because the horror that was happening in the village actually WAS the arsehole main character's fault--not just "Bad stuff happens because SCARY and shut up that's why", it had a reason.   I'll keep you guys posted as I go along Penny Dreadfulling if anyone cares.  : P

...Notorious

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1 hour ago, CaptainChaotica said:

Haven't read "Brave New World" yet, but it sounds like something I'd like from what I've heard

It is very similar to 1984 in the respect that it's all like "Is this the future you want? Is this what you want!? Huh!? Huh?! No?! Didn't think so!" But it takes a slightly different approach.

1 hour ago, CaptainChaotica said:

kinda unpleasantly reminded me of the incel forums...

y i k e s

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Huh.  I could've sworn I wrote a post here in which I talked about how Aldous Huxley was related to an actual astronomer named Huxley and how that was a kind of funny coincidence, how I might have been wrong about details of the normal release of "Frankenstein" because I haven't read it it in a long time...and last but not least, how I warned people AWAY from a certain subject, gave no actual details at all, and used no specifics or even euphemisms in my description.  Nothing objectionable at all was said, except perhaps to someone who IS one...?

But that post is gone now, so I guess I was mistaken.  There was never another post here, Friend Citizens.  And we have always been at war with Eurasia.

...Notorious

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Finished Brave New World yesterday. It does have a lot of similarities to Nineteen Eighty-Four, which is why they're compared all the time. I think I prefer BNW a little more, though. It has more similarities to today's society as well as revolving around a question I find a little more compelling.

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Just read Gideon Falls vol. 1 by Jeff Lemire. Big fan of his stuff. This particular series has a strong... folklorish vibe, I guess. Somewhat reminded me of reading Haunted Canada when I was a kid (loved those books so much). Many readers compare it to Twin Peaks. Mysterious murders, supernatural elements, creative panel usage. I'm likin' it so far.

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God, do I adore books... Even textbooks (unless they're on mathematics or other languages XD I've not the mental capacity, confidence or desire to tackle those... yet), encyclopedias and almanacs are fair game to me. :D 

Right now I can only wish for Brave New World, it's quite rare where I'm from :( I have yet to finish 1904, too.

I'm also trying to complete the Redwall series by Brian Jacques, and snag Watership Down, too, but sadly they're also rare where I'm from...

For now I've finished Metro 2033 by Glukhovsky and starting on Metro 2034, and I also wish for a copy of Roadside Picnic, which is completely absent where I'm from, however much I've looked :(. It's nice to see the source from which many other good works like the STALKER series (which I also yet have to complete) and Metro took inspiration from and flourished, too. 

 

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5 minutes ago, ResettePlayer said:

Oh no, that's unfortunate. Do you have a lot of second-hand sales in your country? Sometimes those can surprise you. If not, that's a bummer. Hopefully you can make do with what you can get. 

Indeed, there are plenty. Second-hand sale shops are where i get most of my books. Redwall books are the ones I know of that sporadically show up in said booksales, and so far none of the other books I've mentioned i want have never been seen there. Did manage to get a copy of All Quiet on the Western Front and King Solomon's Mines, all at bargain prices

Still, a lot of the Top Gear annuals and special books show up a lot, at nearly 1/6 their original prices, and I snag them every time i get the chance. Second-hand sales are awesome that way :D

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Started to read Origin of species by Charles Darwin a year ago. A really good book but have not finnished it. A few chapters left.

I would like to read Iliad and Odyssey at some point but that might take a a while.

 

I have read The Life and Times of Scrooge McDuck which is a really good book. If you like reading Donald Duck or Scrooge McDuck comics this is a must to read. It is a collection of stories of Scrooge Mcduck's life. It also explains(in the swedish version) why he is called Farbror Joakim instead of Morbror Joakim which I really like.

This is because Uncle(Father's brother, Mother's brother) = Farbror(Father's brother) and Morbror(Mother's brother). 

I would also like to get the other Don Rosa Stories.

 

 

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21 hours ago, MrKoopa said:

The Life and Times of Scrooge McDuck which is a really good book.

I wouldn't doubt it! I'll keep an eye out.

 

Finished Peter Pan (J. M. Barrie). Though I knew that older children's fiction tended to have more violence and bloodshed, I was not aware that Neverland is a land that knows only war. It wasn't gratuitous or anything, but everyone on that island is an evil, cold-blooded murderer. No wonder edgy interpretations are so common--I kind of want to do my own.

Also finished Figure Drawing: Design and Invention by Michael Hampton. I still have more drawings to do from it, and I do think it's helpful for overcoming some of my bad habits. It isn't a super detailed anatomy book, and it simplifies things a great deal--which makes it a good place to start levelling up your figure/character drawing. I borrowed a print version from my college's library, but you can find free PDFs of the full book online if you can't get a physical copy.

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Finished Prince Valiant and nowthere's two different books I'm reading, depending on which restroom I'm in. Second floor I'm reading Dinosaurs and Cadillacs(a 1980s comic about a post apocalyptic world where people and dinosaurs work together) and first floor I'm reading the first Wizard of Oz book.

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HOO boy, Minespatch.  Speaking of children's stories being more violent and dark than we think of them nowadays?  GET READY FOR A TRAIN RIDE.  I am not kidding.  Oz is _so_ much more than the one movie, it's _so_ much weirder, creepier, more colourful, fun, strangely progressive...(many of the most powerful/influential people in Oz are female, and there's a character who's technically trans*...)  There's a motherbeeping _steampunk ROBOT_!  Made out of copper with clockwork and rivets and everything!  There's that whole one where they go to the center of the....whatever planet Oz is on and run into one weird society after another, with my favourite part being the part about the princesses who each represent a different type of light.  (So...they're basically the modern-day fad thing of taking concepts and objects and making them into cute girls, without the anime part.)  Electricity-Chan is the baby sister, of course.  : P

There's "Those kids today and their darned loud music!" about ragtime, the Shaggy Man is basically a hippie from decades earlier, there's the Glass Cat, the Patchwork Girl who keeps rhyming all the time, the Gump, which is...yeah, the Gnome King, and the creepiest villianess ever (or up there, anyway) Princess Languidere.   Oh, and then there's the Death Desert!  Literally.  And I've only scratched the surface.  Put it this way:  When you read the actual books, you realise that Oz is WAY more than just a movie and is, in fact, a proper, developed, full fantasy world all of its own.  It may have less realistic rules than stuff like, say, Lord of the Rings, but it's definitely a full fantasy world.  I totally applaud your decision to do this and hope you keep going, because _more people need to know the actual books_!

  And as you may have found out, even the FIRST book, the one that the happy bright Technicolour musical with the famous songs and characters is based off of...is _also_ way darker than you'd expect.  The part with the Tin Woodsman and the wolves.  Yikes.

You know what I would reccommend afterwards?  The Mary Poppins books.  Yes, plural.  Again, WAY darker, stranger...

Yeah, I've also read Peter Pan and kids' stories back then didn't kid around, man. Of course, I also had a big ol' collection of Grimm's Fairy Tales sitting around that I'd read before that, so I wasn't TOO shocked (and then there's Hans Christian Andersen, who could _seriously_ have used some therapy) but, yeah...

As for what I'VE read recently myself, that's another whole story...but I don't feel up to ranting right now.  Let's just say:  If you're reading the Harry Dresden Files and haven't gotten to the book "Changes" yet...you're NOT gonna like it.  For some reason it's most people's favourite and yes, it is a roller coaster, but _so are most of the others_!  It was just so freaking _dark_ and bleak and mean.  Harry DID things.  He did things that made me not freaking LIKE him anymore.  He crossed lines like a mofo.  ("And the worst thing is...I can live with it.  I _can_ live with it.")  I do _not_ like when previously likeable and trustworthy characters go dark.  It's the main thing that makes me drop series and get angry at writers.  Lookin' at you, reboot Battlestar Galactica and Heroes.

No, the type of "changes" they're talking about here are less _replacing_ an old thing with something new, and more BLOWING EVERYTHING INTO TINY LITTLE BITS AND THEN SETTING THE BITS ON FIRE AND BLOWING AWAY THE ASHES!  (So, basically, letting a griefer into your camp.  Including, yes, part of the destroying _did_ actually involve fire.)  A more accurate name for the book would be...Loss.  :(

...well I guess that WAS my review of it.  Never mind.  : P

...Notorious

*But yes, then there's also the Hottentots, I haven't forgotten them.  At the time, as a kid, I thought they WERE actually supposed to be a whole other species of person!  I mean, after all, Oz is legit full of those...

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22 hours ago, CaptainChaotica said:

the Harry Dresden Files

I've heard good and bad things about this series. Ultimately I decided not to bother with them (after all, there are so very many books to read, I can't expect to read every series that ever was), though I can't remember exactly why.

Finished Neil Gaiman's The Graveyard Book last night. I think the last book of his I read was American Gods, and it's interesting how his children's stuff is so different from his adult stuff, but undeniably written my the same person. Strong flavours of mythology, history, and literature, same writing style, and yet different enough to still be interesting.

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6 hours ago, ResettePlayer said:

it's interesting how his children's stuff is so different from his adult stuff, but undeniably written my the same person.

I highly recommend his Norse story on Odd. It's about a young boy who travels with the Norse gods trapped in animal forms who go on a epic quest to return their forms.

 

Halfway done with Wizard of Oz. Didn't expect the wizard to have so many forms in his disguise.

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The Dresden Files books are _normally_ pretty dang good, which is why I was pissed off at that one book--it got rid of a lot of beloved stuff from the series that had been well-built-up over the years.  Yes, I agree with the people saying that's what made it that much more effective, that you'd had time to get to know all this stuff before the big "changes" happened...but then I veer off and say that makes it more DEPRESSING, not awesome!

I think part of the thing is, the Dresden Files are now part of an _oversaturated_, become-generic, Urban Fantasy genre.  Like, I saw the Nostalgia Critic (whom I now no longer watch*) and Nash's review of the Sci-Fi Channel show version (which is REALLY messed up from the books, so don't take that as an indication of what you'll actually see in the pages) and the VERY SECOND Nash said the words "urban fantasy", Nostalgia Critic got up and tried to leave. 

BUTTT...when _I_ was introduced to the series, it was through a copy of the audiobook of the first one with James Marsters reading it, because the friend who reccommended it was a massive super dooper plus-ultra "Buffy" fan.  She went off into other stuff James Marsters read; _I_ went:  "Huh.  I'd like to see more of this actual story..." and just started reading it without knowing any of the outside trappings.  The whole genre that some people are now sick of, the fact that the books were already HUGELY popular and had a TV show and a comic book, and...all of that.

Besides it might be one of those cases of the thing that seems really generic now seems that way BECAUSE it was _first_ and everyone copied it.  Or, the most famous/successful early one.  Like, _man_, Lord of the Rings is such TYPICAL high fantasy, isn't it?  Geez!  There have, of course, been urban/modern fantasy things before the Dresden Files, but I think that might be the first series that _really_ got the public's attention with said genre.  (My personal favourite is an old TV movie I saw a long time ago, called "Cast a Deadly Spell", which is a film-noir detective story in a world where (almost) everyone uses magic...in the 1940s.  In...San Francisco, I think?  It's just as atmospheric as it sounds.)

If none of what I just said is the reason you never picked up the Dresden Files books, then nevermind.  : P  But in general, they're pretty good.  The universe is built up gradually and deeply over time, and the main character is the flawed, human type where he gets beat up and _does_ admit to feeling pain, etc. (A LOT.  A LOT a lot.  By the end of pretty much every book I'm like "HOW ARE YOU STILL STANDING?!")  Also snark and pop culture references.  So....well if you have some spare time, try taking the first book out from the _library_ to see what you think, 'cos then it won't cost you any money.  :)

...Notorious

*See #ChangetheChannel and that's a whole OTHER story of bitterness I'm not getting into right now...

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21 minutes ago, CaptainChaotica said:

If none of what I just said is the reason you never picked up the Dresden Files books, then nevermind.

I'm pretty sure the issue I heard of was more along the lines of "depiction of women/minorities" and "long series" that turned me off. Long series are great when you like them, but if not, they become nothing but a slog. Like, I don't feel a keen desire to force myself through half a dozen books because it "gets good later", according to some readers. I also don't really intend on reading Wheel of Time because I don't know if the payoff would be worth the time invested.

I should keep an open mind, but series such as those are low on my priorities list.

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In my case, I've been reading them only occasionally, stretched out between other books, so it doesn't...feel like a slog?  I didn't actually set out to do that on purpose; it just kinda keeps turning out that way.  : P

As for depiction of women...hhmmmmm....well, I can't say it's perfect, but we meet the awesome little package of badass that is Sgt. Karin Murphy in the very first book, and she's a very major character throughout.  Molly is unfortunately sexualised a bit too much, especially after she becomes a young adult and before CENSORED BY THE COUNCIL OF NONSPOILERISTAN, even while the _character_ Harry doesn't think of her that way (because he knew her when she was a little kid).  And then when Charity Carpenter DOES SOMETHING SPOILERY, the very-Christian housewife with a bunch of kids suddenly becomes a GOD.  DAMNED.  VALKYRIE.  (Complete with being tall and having blonde hair, both of which were established much earlier.  Well, and then there's the ACTUAL Valkyrie we run into later...)  And I can legit see this in her character from how she was established before.

Most of the females in the story run from ordinary background people to Do Not Mess With in a mundane way to HOLY BEEP STAY THE BEEP AWAY OMG RUN.  Although that category also contains males and...undetermineds.  Basically don't mess with much of anything in the Dresden Files universe unless you know what you're doing.  And even then, probably not. 

So..bang up to date modern version of PC (that's politically correct, not player character or personal computer--since this IS a gaming forum, both of those others _could_ apply.  : P) with non-binary and trans people being represented and such?  No, not really, at least in the books I've read so far.  But _problematic_ depictions of women?  Not...really...  Like, not perfect, but not _oldschool_ problematic either.

I guess YMMV on this, really.  Not that I'm trying to get you to read the books RIGHT NOW, or anything, just...saying that they're not dismiss, forget about forever and throw-away level either.  (shrug)

...Notorious

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OH! A book thread! In that case, I better threadcomance and post.

I'm currently reading the Silmarillion by J.R.R Tolkien to finish my middle-earth marathon, and have 80 pages left. It's very boring, but also a masterpiece in some sick way that makes you want to keep reading (there's your summary, you don't have to read it now, your welcome). 

I'm also in the process of reading Sherlock Holmes, which I don't think I have to say anything about.

I placed a reserve on Devilman about 9 days ago, but I have a feeling that, seeing as the max lending time is 2 weeks and I checked if it was there about a week before I placed my reserve while I was out of town, it might've grown legs and found freedom from the current holder. I'll update this if it ever comes.

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