I love books recommended on here but unless I specify you mfs will recommend theory. You all read anything captivating without overt political themes?

  • Moonworm [any]@hexbear.net
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    1 year ago

    Slowly chipping away at Brothers Karamazov. Despite all his wordiness and digressions, it contains some of the craziest drama unfolding within the space of hours I’ve ever read. Reality TV doesn’t hold a candle to these passionate, often drunk, Russians. And of course a drip feed of theological dialogues plus extensive detailing of contemporary Russian culture rounds it out.

    The man does really have a way woth identifying all the little ways that people behave and navigate an interaction, putting on faces, jockeying for position, getting right up to the threshold of something before their pride stops them.

    Sometimes it feels a little slow, but then something just fucking gobsmacking will happen and you’ll put up with a little more talking about an ancillary monk’s ascetic practice so you can find out what cruel trick Grushenka will do next.

      • Tomorrow_Farewell [any, they/them]@hexbear.net
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        1 year ago

        Oh, no, I hate number theory. I hate numbers. My hatred for numbers is why I study math - I want to start studying it for a living and get as far from working with numbers as I can.

        I was thinking of something like Ore Ø.'s book on graph theory, or Jech’s book on set theory, etc.

  • JoeByeThen [he/him, they/them]@hexbear.net
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    1 year ago

    This week I’m working through China Meiville’s Bas Lag trilogy. Just started the Third Book. First time reading him, I’m in love.

    I recently read Manhunt by Gretchen Felker-Martin, which was really good.

    Oh, also read Octavia Butler’s Kindred. Awesome stuff.

  • chickentendrils [any, comrade/them]@hexbear.netBanned
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    1 year ago

    Read The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho recently. I don’t read a ton of fiction, I don’t have visual imagination (unless I do DMT or a lot of dabs) so over the top visual descriptions don’t do anything for me.

    Oh and Hiroyuki Nishigaki’s “How to Good-bye Depression: If You Constrict Anus 100 Times Everyday. Malarkey? or Effective Way?” which is pretty funny.

  • Beetle_O_Rourke@hexbear.net
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    1 year ago

    Excession by Iain M. Banks

    very gay story about what would have been an iraq war allegory had it been released a decade later.

    • FishLake
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      1 year ago

      Love that book. I really enjoyed the concept of the Shatterlings too. Reynolds is just great in general.

  • Sulvor [he/him, undecided]@hexbear.netBanned
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    1 year ago

    Working my way through The Wheel of Time series by Robert Jordan right now. Pretty standard high fantasy, Tolkien inspired.

    If you’re looking for something more light-hearted, maybe some Discworld?

    I read the Three Body series last year, very engrossing hard sci-fi imo.

    • Coca_Cola_but_Commie [he/him]@hexbear.net
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      1 year ago

      WoT is funny for me because if you look at who I am (demographically speaking), at the age I am, and at the sorts of books I enjoy I should love them. But I read them at exactly the wrong time in my life and hated them, and now I feel like it’s pointless to revisit them, that that first experience with them will forever taint my opinion of what I suspect are, at the very least, perfectly serviceable fantasy fare, certainly nothing worthy of hatred.

      I happened to visit a used bookstore, while on vacation in a different State to the one I live in, and there was a box with copies of all the books that had been released up to that point (I think this was right before the first Sanderson book came out). Of the 12 books, 7 were hardcover and in very good condition, though the 5 paperbacks were a little beat up. Got the whole set for, IIRC, $38. Bought the Sanderson ones too, even though I never did get around to reading them, just for completion’s sake.

  • Muad'DibberA
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    1 year ago

    A confederacy of dunces. Outside of catch-22, it’s maybe the best satire book ever written. Highly recommend the barrett whitener audiobook.

  • PM_ME_YOUR_FOUCAULTS [he/him, they/them]@hexbear.netBanned
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    1 year ago

    Let’s see

    The Buccaneers by Edith Wharton - Very good, Edith Wharton is the GOAT, but unfinished at the time of her death. The edition that I had was finished (badly) by some hack in the 90’s, so watch out for that

    Education of a Felon by Eddie Bunker - A fascinating memoir by a career criminal turned novelist. Well worth it for a look at the seedy underbelly of midcentury LA and prison culture. Danny Trejo, William Randolph Hearst, and George Jackson are minor characters

    Blood and Guts in High School by Cathy Acker - I don’t even know what to say about this one. Visceral, weird and raw. Highly recommend

    Some Desperate Glory by Edwin Campion Vaughan - Posthumously published memoir of an English officer during WWI. Great if you’re at all interested in this period of history

    The Rifles by William T. Vollmann - If you’re not already Vollmannpilled you need to be. This one mingles the history of the doomed Franklin expedition with the systematic destruction of the indigenous arctic peoples through the present day (well of the 90’s when he wrote it)

    Cuckoo by Gretchen Felker Martin - I really liked Manhunt last year and this one is also great. Queer horror in a wilderness conversion therapy camp. I actually saw her on her tour for this one’s release

    • Wertheimer [any]@hexbear.net
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      1 year ago

      What’s your favorite Vollmann to start with? I couldn’t get into You Bright and Risen Angels and am suspicious of Europe Central but I’ve been meaning to try something from the Seven Dreams series.

      • PM_ME_YOUR_FOUCAULTS [he/him, they/them]@hexbear.netBanned
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        1 year ago

        Okay of the ones I’ve read

        I remember really liking removed for Gloria

        The Rifles is great and is Volume 6 of the Seven Dreams Series

        I just started Imperial, which has been sitting on my shelf for years. It’s good so far, but is a MASSIVE tome

        I’ve been wanting to snag a copy of You Bright and Risen Angels

  • FishLake
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    1 year ago

    I recently read Dark Matter by Blake Crouch. If you’re looking for something you can shut your brain off with It’s a pretty good page turner.

    • Wertheimer [any]@hexbear.net
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      1 year ago

      “You can win a girl with a poem, but you can’t keep a girl with a poem. Not even a poetry movement.”

      Even your small town library ought to have Baudelaire, which counts as getting started on 2666 since one of his lines (idiosyncratically translated?) is the epigraph for that one. “An oasis of horror in a desert of boredom.” From The Voyage.