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Which Book Are You Currently Reading?

VikzeLink

The Destructive One
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I'm re-reading my favorite series again, The Kingkiller Chronicles by Patrick Rothfuss. It's the best books ever. But that third book is taking forever for him to finish, but I'll wait patiently, it's just so good!
 

Dizzi

magical internet cat....
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I'm re-reading my favorite series again, The Kingkiller Chronicles by Patrick Rothfuss. It's the best books ever. But that third book is taking forever for him to finish, but I'll wait patiently, it's just so good!
Im like this with Nightworld by Lj Smith...
 

Mamono101

生きることは痛みを知ること。
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Just finished reading Openly Straight and its companion novel Honestly Ben by Bill Konigsberg. They were both really fun and easy reads only taking a few sittings each.

Openly Straight follows Rafe and how his desire to not be labelled as the “gay kid” leads to him not being out at his new school which complicates things when he falls in love.

Honestly Ben picks up where Openly Straight finishes only Rafe is no longer the narrator. That honour goes to Ben, who insists that despite all evidence to the contrary, he’s neither gay nor bi. However, things get complicated when Hannah comes into his life and his perspective of himself and the entire core of who he is at his foundation begins to shift.

Overall, Honestly Ben is my favourite of the two, though without that first novel I’m not sure I would have enjoyed it as much. It also didn’t tie everything up into a neat little bow and left the future of the character in an interesting position, which I’m hoping will be explored in another novel.
 

Cfrock

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:keese: Dracula by Bram Stoker :keese:
Read this for the second time. One thing I like about older books is that the language is archaic enough that you really have to stay focused, but because you're paying closer attention you take in so much more detail. Maybe that's just me and I'm just an idiot. The point is, there's a richness to the book that transcends its relatively dry delivery.

It's kind of remarkable how little Dracula himself is actually in the book. It centres so much more on the hunt and fight against him, but that helps give Dracula a sense of threat and power. He's almost entirely absent during his preying on poor Lucy, but it makes him all the scarier that we only see the result of his actions rather than the event.

I love the whole theme of the 'old world' vs the 'new'. The 19th century was a time of incredible scientific advancement, but that modern knowledge of the world is almost useless against the supernatural threat of the vampire. It takes understanding of ancient traditions and beliefs to effectively combat and eventually slay the vampire, things many of the heroes are slow to adopt. Even Dracula himself spends the book experimenting and learning his own powers and limitations. Knowledge is a weapon, for good and for ill, and we shouldn't blind ourselves with the belief that we can rationalise everything.

Sometimes the old ways are best.

Kaczynski/Tong 2020
 

Cfrock

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Lethal White by Robert 'JK, It's Really J.K.' Galbraith
The forth in her Strike detective series. It's been a while since I read the last one so I'd forgotten some of the details, but I enjoyed this as much as the others. Nothing spectacuar — it certainly isn't ahem "unputdownable" as the Sunday Times apparently said — but it's good.

It does irk me that Rowling throws uncommon words into her prose at seemingly random times. It happens frequently enough to be a trait of her writing, but infrequently enough to feel like she's trying to appear more sophisticated than she is. It's jarring when it happens, and as tme goes by I do find it harder to separate my dislike of the woman from my general enjoyment of her work.
 

Cfrock

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:keese: Carmilla by Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu :keese:
This is my second time reading this. Another seminal vampire novel, but this one came out a quater of a century before Dracula. And it deals with something far more terrifying than an immortal blood-sucking fiend.

LeSbIaNs oOoOoOoOoOoOo :eek:

Carmilla isn't only a vampire, she's a lesbain, too. Well, not explicitly. Carmilla is the kind of vampire that becomes fixated on things with an obsessive passion. It just so happens that the only thing she seems to fixate on are attractive young women who she showers with affection and kisses and declarations of love, not to mention promises that they shall be together forever in death. Yikes. She also visits them at night and drinks blood from their breast, biting not the neck but an inch or two lower. The book isn't smutty after all, gosh.

It's these overt affections that frighten Carmilla's poor victim, Laura, as much as the dark spectre that feeds on her at night. It's never quite clear if Laura's apprehension is due to the homoerotic affection itself or some underlying off-ness about the beautiful Carmilla. Regardless, Laura is consistently freaked out when Carmilla is snuggling up to her and peppering her with kisses.

It creates an interesting impression. It's easy to read the book as anti-homosexual — which it probably was, it was written in 1871 after all — but even ignoring that, reading Carmilla's overt affection is very creepy. After all, she is feeding upon the object of her affections, Laura is slowly dying as Carmilla kills that which she professes to love. As Carmilla says, "Love will have its sacrifices."

Dracula fed on Lucy because he was a monster who needed blood and she was a convenient target. Carmilla feeds on Laura because she loves her and wants them to become as one. It's more sinister because of the romantic aspect. The book even makes a point of explaining that Carmilla feeds on and kills multiple other people through the book — peasants from the local villages — but these she subdues with force and kills quickly. Her love for Laura makes her prolong Laura's suffering, feeding on her gradually and causing all the more distress for it.

Carmilla then is a story about the destructive power of love. It's about how love can be a twisted, vile thing. Obviously, there's a message that homosexual love is vile, but we'll just have to chalk that one up to the book's age. We know better now and can reject that message. But we can also see the twisted nature of an obsessive love, especially one not reciprocated. Hell, a parallel could possibly be drawn between Carmilla and Laura and the sort of parasocial relationships that have become so common with the rise of the internet.

I think my point here is that Carmilla is old and carries an inherent prejudice, but it is still somewhat relevant in its overall theme and is creepy in its way. You've just got to forgive its apparent homophobia as a product of its time. Not ignore it, but recognise that that isn't the only thing about it.

I know I'm waffling on at this point, but Carmilla, like Dracula, isn't related as a fictional narrative, but as epistolary. The story is framed as documents Laura has written relating the tale years after the fact. It's interesting that some of these most important vampire stories are presented as factually as possible, because there was a point in time when vampires were considered to be real, genuine things.

Vampires came from eastern European folklore, but as the belief spread, eventually actual doctors and magistrates and state officials would be sent to investigate reports of vampire attacks and even attend vampire executions. These learned officials would write their reports and findings and relate the vampire activity and destruction as real things they had borne witness to. For some time it was held as documented, empirical fact that vampires were real, as attested by some of the most educated, high ranking, and trusted people in various countries. So it interests me that books like Carmilla tap into that and present themselves as real accounts.

And I just think that's kind of neat :rosa:
 

Cfrock

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Frankenstein by Mary Shelley
Having never read this before, and having never seen any of the movies, my only understanding of this story was "Big Monster" and "First sci-fi book" and "This is why the West lags behind Asia in the field of robotics". It was very different to what I was expecting.

The whole story is consumed with guilt and injustice. So many innocent people suffer for crimes others have committed and the question of responsibility keeps coming up. Is Frankenstein to blame for abandoning his own creation? Is the creature to blame for making the decision to kill? Is there something immutable in Nature that made the tragedy inevitable?

The creature itself is intelligent and well-spoken, once it learns how to speak. There's a whole section in which the creature narrates it's short life to Frankenstein that is moving and sad and makes you feel sympathy for the thing before reminding you that it is a killer. The creature threatens to murder Frankenstein's loved ones unless Frankenstein creates a woman for the creature, and that whole thing is somethign I found very interesting.

On the one hand, the creature is clearly predisposed to goodness and compassion, but the world at large rejects it and treats it as a threat based on its outward appearance of horror. This denial of empathy and love is what drives the creature to violence and having a woman that is like him would end this suffering as their would be another living creature that understands him, that he can relate to. But on the other, the creature bluntly declaring that the only thing stopping it from wreaking havoc and destruction on those it hates is the promise of a woman whose literal purpose in life is to be his companion. It's hard not to draw a connection there to modern incels who are filled with hate and believe their problems would all be solved with a devoted, subservient, unblemished woman.

The creature deserves pity for the prejudiced rejection it constantly faces, but does its own suffering justify visiting suffering on others? And does the ultimate responsibility for that suffering lie with Frankenstein for daring to unravel the secrets of Nature and steal from God, as the other title "The Modern Prometheus" suggests? That part is where the book's lasting influence on science fiction comes from, the idea that just because we can doesn't mean we should. And once we have, can we control what we've done?

It was pretty good, I have to say.
 
Frankenstein by Mary Shelley
Having never read this before, and having never seen any of the movies, my only understanding of this story was "Big Monster" and "First sci-fi book" and "This is why the West lags behind Asia in the field of robotics". It was very different to what I was expecting.

The whole story is consumed with guilt and injustice. So many innocent people suffer for crimes others have committed and the question of responsibility keeps coming up. Is Frankenstein to blame for abandoning his own creation? Is the creature to blame for making the decision to kill? Is there something immutable in Nature that made the tragedy inevitable?

The creature itself is intelligent and well-spoken, once it learns how to speak. There's a whole section in which the creature narrates it's short life to Frankenstein that is moving and sad and makes you feel sympathy for the thing before reminding you that it is a killer. The creature threatens to murder Frankenstein's loved ones unless Frankenstein creates a woman for the creature, and that whole thing is somethign I found very interesting.

On the one hand, the creature is clearly predisposed to goodness and compassion, but the world at large rejects it and treats it as a threat based on its outward appearance of horror. This denial of empathy and love is what drives the creature to violence and having a woman that is like him would end this suffering as their would be another living creature that understands him, that he can relate to. But on the other, the creature bluntly declaring that the only thing stopping it from wreaking havoc and destruction on those it hates is the promise of a woman whose literal purpose in life is to be his companion. It's hard not to draw a connection there to modern incels who are filled with hate and believe their problems would all be solved with a devoted, subservient, unblemished woman.

The creature deserves pity for the prejudiced rejection it constantly faces, but does its own suffering justify visiting suffering on others? And does the ultimate responsibility for that suffering lie with Frankenstein for daring to unravel the secrets of Nature and steal from God, as the other title "The Modern Prometheus" suggests? That part is where the book's lasting influence on science fiction comes from, the idea that just because we can doesn't mean we should. And once we have, can we control what we've done?

It was pretty good, I have to say.

You should watch the Ken Brannagh and Robert DeNiro movie
 

Cfrock

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I've been reading some old stuff on my Kindle recently.

The Dunwich Horror and The Shadow Over Innsmouth by H.P. Lovecraft
I read some Lovecraft years ago and didn't really like it. Everything felt slow and expositional, but having read some 19th century stuff in the recent weeks I went back thinking I'd get on with the drier style more. And I did. I enjoyed both of these and can see the appeal of Lovecraft's writing. I'll probably go back and read some of the stories I did years back again and see if I appreciate them more.

Edgar Allan Poe
I got two volumes of various stories by Poe so it'd be a pain to list them all. They were alright. I wasn't as into them as I thought I would be. I've read The Raven many times because it's a masterpiece, but his prose lacks a lot of what makes The Raven great. The Pit and The Pendulum was my favourite story of the bunch.

Tell you what, Poe was as scared of being buried alive or bricked up in a wall as Lovecraft was that his great-great-grandad might have been black.
 

Dizzi

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Im reading the bartimeus trilogy which isnt a trilogy now....amd garth nixs angel mage on kindle which is kinda confusing me...
 
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I've read a lot of classical books but have never read detective ones. Now reading The Orient Express by Agatha Christie and sitting in my Portugal real estate during self-quarantine. So it didn't disappoint. Good mystery story. I am impressed by how she was able to write this complicated story in only 200 pages and I can't wait to pick up another one of her novels in the future.
 

GrooseIsLoose

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Outcast of Red wall
-Brian Jacques

Abandoned as an infant by his father , vermin warlord Swartt Sixclaw, Veil is raised by Redwall Abbey. But Veil does a real bad thing and gets himself banished.
Will Veil join Swartt ango against his host or will he turn his back on his Dad?
 

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