Best Book You Read Latey

[peng]

shameless shilling: im really enjoying the book i got in my daggermag BOX OF TRASH shipment

the book is action right from the get go so im not stumbling through lengthy passages describing shit i dont care about which is a really attractive feature since im illiterate and have a very smooth brain

[SpaceLions]

hey guis does audiobook count as reading..?

yeah why not? I actually think the best way to talk about any kind of media (because there's so many varieties now and people feel like they should discuss them separately) is as "text." A text is any durable collection of ideas which can be transmitted from one person to another. across space and / or time .. so, yeah, audiobook is a text but so is a cathedral and a comic book and a video game... You read a text not just by receiving it passively but by actively decoding it and placing it in context. so you could "read" Assassin's Creed Unity or whatever if you truly had nothing better to do

this is a tangent from a great thread, but I'm working on a theological treatise so I've got a bunch of weirdo vocabulary to test out

To get back on topic lemme tell you about one of the most fun books I own. I read it before bed every night. It's this collection called The Essential Ellison and it's a doorstop sized collection of Harlan Ellison stories filled with his notes and commentary and introduction after introduction after introduction ... I don't think anyone will ever write better stylish pulp purple prose than Harlan Ellison, and even when his ideas are a little shopworn or predictable he writes with so much guts that you can't help but smile at just how vivid and how complete he can get. He also dedicated the collection in part to Alfred Bester which warms my heart

Check out the cover:

Uncle Harley was such a gift. He is why I prefer writing short stories over novels. Some ideas just play out quicker, and I'm the kind of person who's ideas are very short. Someday I hope to be as good as he was.

[don]

shameless shilling: im really enjoying the book i got in my daggermag BOX OF TRASH shipment

the book is action right from the get go so im not stumbling through lengthy passages describing shit i dont care about which is a really attractive feature since im illiterate and have a very smooth brain

I'm glad you like it! I love those old action books from the 70s and 80s. The market for that kind of escapist but masculine action lit is pretty much dead and I can't figure out why. Do people not want to read about karate battles and mysterious deaths anymore?

[Penseroso]

no joke read the original Conan stories. Very high test and fun to read

[cdmell55]

Huxley's observations have become fully realized, but even he couldn't have predicted this shit storm

Recently moved to a big city for the first time and was especially blown away by this

City life is anonymous and, as it were, abstract. People are related to one another, not as total person­alities, but as the embodiments of economic functions or, when they are not at work, as irresponsible seekers of entertainment. Subjected to this kind of life, indi­viduals tend to feel lonely and insignificant. Their ex­istence ceases to have any point or meaning.

https://www.huxley.net/bnw-revisited/

[GenerallyKilling]

no joke read the original Conan stories. Very high test and fun to read

this, esp. tower of the elephant. savage sword of conan had some pretty good comic adaptations of a lot of the classic stories, but that's a whole other thing

[UniversalWorldBaby]

just finished this book after picking it up for christmas and it's been an insightful book into the state of media and popular cultural critique as a genre as a whole.
I won't spoil too much here, but I will say that this book of his is much more personal than most in his past and it could not have come at a better time (perhaps in 2016?)

[nfl69]

reread celine - journey to the end of the night recently, one of the great works of fiction

[peng]

I'm glad you like it! I love those old action books from the 70s and 80s. The market for that kind of escapist but masculine action lit is pretty much dead and I can't figure out why. Do people not want to read about karate battles and mysterious deaths anymore?

im by no means an expert but i have to imagine publishers and editors really forced authors into the Young Adult genre. gotta have everything nice and watered down as much as possible and broad enough to sell to a 4 quadrant readerbase, and if we're lucky we might even get a movie or TV adaptation!

[containercore]

I'm glad you like it! I love those old action books from the 70s and 80s. The market for that kind of escapist but masculine action lit is pretty much dead and I can't figure out why. Do people not want to read about karate battles and mysterious deaths anymore?

im by no means an expert but i have to imagine publishers and editors really forced authors into the Young Adult genre. gotta have everything nice and watered down as much as possible and broad enough to sell to a 4 quadrant readerbase, and if we're lucky we might even get a movie or TV adaptation!

You can also blame perennial man-childism for that (as well as woman-childism, probably more so). Harold Bloom famously said that kids growing up reading Harry Potter would only have the capacity to read Stephen King (ie trash literature), but he was too optimistic there, the HP generation just grew up to read more YA. It's popularity is due to people genuinely wanting read it and millennials genuinely wanting to write it. If you really want to gaze into the abyss look up booktube on youtube.