Books

Hey everyone!

We're about six months into our first [email protected] Book Bingo challenge. If you didn't know about it, or if you've been debating joining, there's still plenty of time to participate! You do not need to fill a whole card to complete the challenge: 'bingo' is only five squares in a line.

If you're already working on bingo, how's it going so far? Doing any fun challenges? Having trouble with any squares or rules? Any and all feedback is welcome and appreciated!

We'll be doing another post in a few months for 2025 bingo suggestions, and a turn-in post at the beginning of April.

On behalf of myself, Dresden, and JaymesRS, thank you for being here, and happy reading!

One doesn't simply "walk into Powell's for one book..."

$550 later...

("They come in SETS?")

Two soldiers declare a fight to the death, and give each other a year to plan. One starts a mercenary troupe, the other starts a domestic terrorism cell.

Meanwhile, a paralyzed billionaire invents robot bodies and becomes a cyborg. He tries to share this technology with disabled people everywhere, but instead his tech becomes a global arms race between those two soldiers.

https://terranomicon.com

After my grandfather passed, my grandmother decided to move to an apartment and so wanted to downsize. She asked the family to take whatever they wanted.

I went for the old and the odd. Some books are over 200 years old.

This one is maybe 100 and odd.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/21506018

> Literary Arts’ Portland Book Festival, presented by Wells Fargo, returns Saturday, November 2 to ten stages at six partner venues in downtown Portland’s south Park Blocks. The festival will feature on-stage author discussions with over 100 authors and interviewers, drop-in writing workshops, pop-up readings, an extensive book fair, and local food trucks in this city-wide celebration of books and stories.

Beyond just marking up an e-book, are there any devices that would also allow you to edit the file itself?

Does this book ever pick up? I’m about a quarter of the way in and so far ‘The Adventures of Mary Sue As She Looks For A Date’ is just not doing anything for me. I remember tears ago hearing of it and thought it’s political world building, but so far it seems to be nothing more than ‘theater kids rule the world but- no touching.’ It seems like it wants to dive into the politics, but then again very other page it derails itself itself with ‘those damn eyes.’

Idk, I guess I’ve probably already made up my mind, but would be interested to know if it ever gets out of its own way.

More info on their About page. But essentially, they take a small cut to cover operating expenses, and the rest of the profit from the book sale goes to whatever local bookshop you choose, as long as it's participating.

They also operate in the UK here.

They appear to be pretty legit, though one downside I've read is returns are more clumsy than other storefronts.

She is the first South Korean winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature. The Vegetarian is her best known novel.

Internet culture loves nothing more than adopting half-understood academic jargon. And more and more I'm seeing the phrase "media literacy" to mean: being smart enough to come to the correct interpretation, or even worse: being able to decipher authorial intent.

I'm a 'death of the author' kind of guy, but we all should agree that any text will have multiple valid interpretations, so long as you can back it up with the text.

I wanna stress that I'm not gatekeeping the phrase, I just want to promote the idea of media education over the smug notion that one person reads books better than another.

• October 15th: An Instruction in Shadow releases in the US & Canada in paper, ebook, and audio formats.
• October 17th: An Instruction in Shadow releases in UK and the rest of the world in paper, ebook, and audio formats.
• October 22nd, 12 noon GMT: Reddit AMA begins
• October 23rd, 12 noon GMT: Reddit AMA ends

So far, I’ve read a poetry book on Libby called El Regalo that goes ‘yo soy alegría que tu serás tu y yo soy yo’ and I’m waiting to read Don Quijote on the same app.

Anyone know what ¿libros en español yo puede leer? I read clásico ficciones.

So I recently got an e-reader and have started collecting e-books for it, but a lot of books seem to only be available through Amazon/Kindle. I don't want anything to do with that company. Where do I even start looking? I have my local library apps and have scoured Project Gutenberg and some similar sites. While this is great for classics and older stuff, I want newer books too, specifically science fiction and fantasy. Have looked at author's websites but they typically link to Amazon or physical copies.

Why You Should Read The book Atmoic Habits? Here is a short podcast that will make you clear.

@neglectedbooks @books @CDEccleshare https://youtu.be/1Fvymx7ZMXg

\#podcast #books #review #habits #AtomicHabits

Do you feel guilty when you read fiction some times? Do you feel like it's a frivolous pursuit? Sometimes, I do, because I'd think to myself "might as well watch a TV show", and I hardly ever watch TV shows because, to me, they're a waste of time. But damn it, some of these novels are so good and I can't stop once I started reading them.

I wanna read something that's fucking brutal with fighting and sex and all the things, but also WELL WRITTEN (so NOT George R.R. Martin, I can't stand his shit). I want Lord of the Rings on crack and steroids.

Still reading The Twelve by Justin Cronin. Book 2 of The Passage trilogy. Enjoying it enough to not give up, but not enjoying it enough it enough to read it quickly, so it's going slowly. Going to try to speed up and finish it quickly.

What about all of you? What have you been reading or listening to lately?

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A regular reminder about our Book Bingo, and it's Recommendation Post . Links are also present in our community sidebar.

Looking for an interesting series, where the books are written from animals point of view. Kind of like Orwell's Animal Farm, but more fantasy / sci-fi / action.

We may follow a group of fighting turtle, or a rat's journey to home after getting lost, things like that. If taking example from movies, Ant Z is an example.

Any recommendations?

This may sound dumb, but I've never read for this man. I've always just heard about him on social media but never ventured to read his work. Opinions, please. Should I invest? Feeling like fiction lately. I've read so much non-fiction through throughout my life that I think I deserve a couple of fiction books to get busy with for a little while. Thanks in advance

EDIT: Thank you so much to all who answered. I have read and appreciated every single comment. I have decided to start with fairy tale since I ran into the book at Walmart. So giving that a shot to see. Thank you so much

You may find these readings interesting. Would enjoy hearing from you if you do!

https://lemmy.world/c/critics_of_tech https://lemmy.world/c/variety_bookclub

She is ignoring the birding book in favour of Lord of the Rings. Nerd.

I started reading last year, mostly productivity stuff, but now I’m really looking to jump into fiction to unwind after a long week of uni, studying, and work. I need something to help me relax during the weekends without feeling like I’m working.

I’d love some recommendations for books that are short enough to finish in a day but still hit hard and are totally worth it. No specific genre preferences right now. I'm open to whatever. Looking forward to seeing what you guys suggest. Thank you very much in advance.

I've got a large collection of e-books, but I've always just read them on my phone. Finally broke down and bought a proper e-reader with the nice e-ink display. Why didn't I do this forever ago?

It's got a backlight, but using it under a lamp with reflected light is just so much easier on my eyes and feels more like a paper book. I also haven't read a book written on dead trees in a good minute, so sitting under a lamp just brings back a missing piece of the experience I didn't even know was gone.

I also just can't get over how "fake" the display looks. Fake is usually not used to describe something positively, but in this case, it's a huge praise. The text and book cover images just look like they're printed on a sheet of paper and slipped inside to make the device look functional...like a movie prop. Turning the backlight on diminishes this effect somewhat, though (which is another reason I prefer to leave it off).

I also love that I can just set it down and not worry about coming back to a dead battery, lol. The reader app on my phone is set to prevent it from going to sleep or turning off the screen, so sometimes I'll set it down to go take care of something else, forget, and come back to a nearly dead battery.

To everyone who has recommended these gizmos to me, I finally get it. I know I said reading books on my phone was good enough, but I was wrong.

Reading The Twelve by Justin Cronin. Book 2 of The Passage trilogy. Around 180 or so pages in, and we are still in the past, the story is interesting, so reading about these characters, but I am still not sure if it will have any effect in the future / present, or it's just for world building. I am now invested enough now to see where it goes though.

What about all of you? What have you been reading or listening to lately?

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A regular reminder about our Book Bingo, and it's Recommendation Post . Links are also present in our community sidebar.

Can anyone recommend some SciFi books with well written female characters?

I've recently read Ancillary Justice by Ann Leckie and am looking for well constructed, non male, well thought out characters.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ancillary_Justice

Holy shit! This book is insane. I'm half way through it, and I can't even express how I feel about this book. Masterpiece? Doesn't give it justice. I've never done this in my life over a book (and I've read well over 500 books for the last 30 years), I got emotional during some parts of this book. I have ADHD and it's very hard for me to focus when reading, unless it's an extremely good book like this I guess. This probably sounds silly to some. The reason why I'm only just finding out about this book is because I'm new to the West. An immigrant if you will, and never heard of this book until a couple of weeks ago. If you haven't read this book; I highly recommend it. Alexandre Dumas is a genius.

Still reading The Twelve by Justin Cronin. Book 2 of The Passage trilogy. Haven't read much more since the last week, but the few pages I did read are still in old time, and while they are interesting for world building, I can't make myself feel anything for characters that have been dead for 100 years, and have nothing to do with the "current" story. Still, like I said, going to read at least first 100 pages, and then see if I still want to continue.

Also started The Complete Fiction of H. P. Lovecraft. I have never gotten around to reading any of it, so wanted to read it all in published order. Couldn't find any good collection in local store, so started downloading all his work (which is in public domain), but then found out about the ebook created by "CthulhuChick", she has basically gone through what I was doing and compiled an ebook with his complete works, organized in published order (excluding his one story from very early days, and two other non-horror stories. Since I wanted to read those too, I just added them in myself).

So, enjoying this now. Have only read first couple of stories yet. Would love to see how his work evolves.

What about all of you? What have you been reading or listening to lately?

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A regular reminder about our Book Bingo, and it's Recommendation Post . Links are also present in our community sidebar.

This is an online library of Edgar Allen Poe, H. P. Lovecraft, Arthur Conan Doyle, Jack London, Anton Chekhov, Guy de Maupassant, Raymond Bradbury and other classic short story authors. Cookie-free, login-free, and with only tiny affiliate links at the bottom of pages to keep it running.

I read in both Arabic and English. Some books are very hard for me to grasp, so I find a translated copy and read it in Arabic. For example, I'm currently reading "the Count of Monte Cristo". It Has some old English that gets me confused a lot, even though I have a Kobo where I can just press and hold on a word to translate it, but still, the storyline as a whole got confusing, so I read it in Arabic. Much better. I'd love to hear from folks here :)

Finished Artemis by Andy Weir. It was a fun book, but a step below both The Martian and Project Hail Mary. Can't point out why, though I don't think it's because protagonist is unlikable. Still, not a bad book, and an enjoyable read.

I did get some Skyward's Spensa-like feel from protagonist. Maybe cause both of them were outcast, and has the attitude of being annoyed by the whole world.

Currently Reading The Twelve by Justin Cronin. Book 2 of The Passage trilogy. I am some 50 or so pages in, and I am not enjoying it much.

Slight spoiler about the setting so skip rest of the paragraph if you want to avoid it. The first book jumped some 100 years in the future after about 1/3rd of the book, and the future is now the "current" time. Book 2 started with a slight prologue of 4-5 pages, and then it jumped back to Year zero. Don't really care about Year Zero now, specially any new characters. Want to know what's happening in the "now". Maybe they will have some important part to play, I don't know, but right now I am not feeling much interested in the story.

Going to read at least 100 pages and then decide if I want to continue or not.

What about all of you? What have you been reading or listening to lately?

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A regular reminder about our Book Bingo, and it's Recommendation Post . Links are also present in our community sidebar.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/19239162

> The 60,000 books in the Joanine Library are all hundreds of years old. Keeping texts readable for that long, safe from mold and moisture and nibbling bugs, requires dedication. The library’s original architects designed 6-foot (1.8 meters) stone walls to keep out the elements. Employees dust all day, every day. > > And then there are the bats. For centuries, small colonies of these helpful creatures have lent their considerable pest control expertise to the library. In the daytime—as scholars lean over historic works and visitors admire the architecture—the bats roost quietly behind the two-story bookshelves. At night, they swoop around the darkened building, eating the beetles and moths that would otherwise do a number on all that old paper and binding glue. > > The library dates the bats’ entry to the late 18th century. That’s when records indicate the purchase of large leather sheets from Russia, presumably to protect the hall’s desks and tables from the nightly rain of guano. Employees use the same system today, while the books themselves are behind wire mesh, says the library’s deputy director, António Eugénio Maia do Amaral. (The bats’ tendency to pee next to a portrait of the library’s namesake, King John V, is harder to address.)