[ SECRET POST #2301 ]

[case]

⌈ Secret Post #2301 ⌋

Warning: Some secrets are NOT worksafe and may contain SPOILERS.

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Notes:

Sorry for lateness, had internet issues.

FOR LIVESTREAMERS: Please post stream announcements under the events thread instead of in the General Comments. And here's your warning: huge images are going to just be deleted. ):

Secrets Left to Post: 04 pages, 078 secrets from Secret Submission Post #329.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 0 - broken links ], [ 0 - not!secrets ], [ 0 - not!fandom ], [ 0 - too big ], [ 0 - repeat ].
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
Suggestions, comments, and concerns should go here.

Comments

Bookchat!

[(Anonymous)]

Hey, F!S! What are you reading? What have you finished reading lately? What do you want to read that you just heard about? What books are you hyped about? What general opinions about books do you have? Tell me about them.

Re: Bookchat!

[(Anonymous)]

I'm slowly reading the Parasol Protectorate series. It's pretty funny.

Re: Bookchat!

[(Anonymous)]

I'm on the second book of Lindsey Davis' Marcus Didius Falco series, which are basically detective novels set in Ancient Rome.

I'm not sure yet if I'm thrilled about them - I didn't like the first one that much, but my ebook was really badly localised so that didn't help. So if anyone has read them, do they get better as the series goes on? I'm liking it enough to want to finish it though, I just have a big weakness for not-too-serious novels set in Rome.

Re: Bookchat!

[castle_anon]

I've got Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter from the public library, but I haven't started it yet. I also nearly doubled my Ray Bradbury collection with a trip to a used bookstore I found downtown. Now I've got Fahrenheit 451, The Martian Chronicles and Something Wicked This Way Comes.

I've only read 451, though. It's one of the ones that I just bought used ("Something Wicked..." I got for Christmas) and I'm a little disappointed that I didn't hold out for an anniversary edition with a forward by Bradbury, but I also only spent 61 cents and a classic cover, so I guess it all evens out.

Re: Bookchat!

[loracarol]

I just finished rereading Mercedes Lackey's "The Black Swan", and I forgot how icky I found everything but the titular character until I found myself skipping all the POV sections but hers. Ah well. I'm planning on getting through the Stravaganza series at some point, I've read the first three books, but I want to read the whole series. :3

Re: Bookchat!

[(Anonymous)]

Do comic books count? I'm almost finished The Essential Dykes to Watch Out For by Alison Bechdel. It's a lot better than I expected.

There are a LOT of books I want to read (most of them sci-fi), but the next one on my list is Swords and Deviltry by Fritz Leiber. I'm also going to re-read Gulliver's Travels, because the last time I tried to read it I was 13 years old and I got bored and put it down halfway through. Hopefully now that I'm older I'll be able to appreciate it!

Re: Bookchat!

[dreemyweird]

GODDAMN THANK YOU NOW I'LL NEVER GO TO BED

Am currently reading The Red Wheel by Alexandr Solzhenitsyn. It was meant to be twenty volumes long, but thankfully he never finished it. I think that he's a very, very talented writer (even if some of his scenes are ridiculous, especially the erotic ones), but this is so bad I can't even. At least language-, character- and plotwise. What is good about it is the incredible amount of historical facts and details. The dude was sure hardworking! This research is amazing, it's better than in many genuine non-fictional works on the matter.

The last book I finished prior to that was The Flying Inn, and here is everything I think about it: http://fandomsecrets.dreamwidth.org/774029.html?thread=638351757#cmt638351757
(warning for tl;dr and literary fangirling)

Then there also was The Critique of Pure Reason, and it sure is good, although I do not see it as the cleverest book on metaphysics ever. His German syntax makes it rather dreary at times, but there are some incredibly interesting ideas (such as the one about the difference between "empirical" and "real" things).

Not exactly a book, but I'm all over the place waiting for my Les dossiers du Professeur Bell to arrive. This is an absolutely ridiculous French comic about Bell and the supernatural. As a fan of Murder Rooms, I just want to lie down and die of happiness that something like this exists.

BOOKS ARE AWESOME

General opinions: I have this thing I call "literary death". In short, this is an aesthetic theory that says that literature is saturated with mortality.
Just take a widely known and loved character; say, let it be Sherlock Holmes.
Not only was he himself thrown into a waterfall and taken out of it later on, but both his prototypes are dead, his creator is dead, and all the people who knew Conan Doyle are also likely to be dead (or will be dead in the nearest future). The man in question, I must remind you, has technically never existed.
Hence Sherlock Holmes is not simply dead, he's dead in the power of five.
Naturally I do not doubt that upon hearing this some Holmesians would recite the famous poem written by Vincent Starrett; and to this I shall say that there’s nothing more cold and deathly in the entire business than this image of time that froze like a fly in a piece of amber. What lacks motion must also lack life.
/not a serious theoretical opinion, just a sad mind game.

Re: Bookchat!

[dethtoll]

I'm reading William Gibson's "Burning Chrome" -- a collection of his short stories. For the 4th or 5th time.

I kind of want to get into Guy Gavriel Kay's books based on a review of his latest one. http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2013/04/what-were-reading-river-of-stars-by-guy-gavriel-kay/

Re: Bookchat!

[cakemage]

Just finished reading Redshirts by John Scalzi, and am about to start on Agatha H. and the Clockwork Princess by Phil and Kaja Foglio. I've also recently started reading the fourth Avatar: The Last Airbender graphic novel, and as soon as I'm done with that I'm going to start on the fifth volume of the Sailor Moon manga. Additionally, I have a couple of fantasy/steampunk short story collections I'm looking forward to getting to.

Anyway, I really enjoyed Redshirts. It's the first Scalzi novel I've ever read, and I'm trying to decide which of his works I should check out next. I would welcome any recommendations.

Re: Bookchat!

[making_excuses]

I read the first Hunger Games book yesterday, I was pretty much underwhelmed. I assumed it would be better (more groundbreaking) than it was. It wasn't bad as such, just not as great as I was lead to believe.
I finished the QI book of General Ignorance today.

I read Inside Out by Maria V. Snyder and I am almost done with Outside In which is the second book it that series, I find the books to be okayish for SciFi/Future worldy/teenager books. I also read Where She Went by Gayle Forman the same day (last week I think?) as Inside Out, and I would have loved that book if it had ended differently, If I Stay, the first book in that series is one of my favourite teenagey books.

I am also currently reading:
Good Omens* by Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchet, The Hobbit by J.R.R Tolkien, Name of The Wind by Patrick Rothfuss, Delirium by Lauren Oliver, En Annerledes Barndom by Iris Johansson, Smoke and Mirrors by Neil Gaiman, How To Be A Woman by Caitlin Moran, The Fry Chronicles by Stephen Fry. A Game Of Thrones by George R. R. Martin, Fragile Things by Neil Gaiman and I will just stop now, there are probably loads of other books lying around that I am halfway into, but those are the ones I could see in my bookshelf with bookmarks in them.

*I am always reading Good Omens, really slowly...

And if it wasn't clear from my comment, I love books and I love reading

Re: Bookchat!

[(Anonymous)]

I'm reading The Famished Road by Ben Okri (it's... interesting) and finished Arcadia by Tom Stoppard (really fun). It's for a particular exam, so I haven't found the time to read books for myself since... last june, with Catching Fire. And I have three books (Good Omens, The Count of Monte-Cristo and Mockingjay) I desperately want to read but can't.

I really want to try A Song of Ice and Fire, but... no time!

Re: Bookchat!

[elaminator]

Do comics books count? >.> Cause I'm always excited about new Young Avengers and Hawkeye. I'm reading Tim Drake's Robin run and Nightwing, and I'm about to get into the No Man's Land arc. It's intimidating me with its length. *insert rimshot here*

I also want to read Young Justice, Red Robin, Cassandra Cain's run as Batgirl as well as Stephanie Brown's run as Batgirl annnnnnd some others. (I'll probably never finish all this.)

After seeing the Catching Fire trailer I decided I should finally read the book but...then I went back to comic books. So IDK when I'll fit that in, but I'm really looking forward to reading it.

Re: Bookchat!

[writerserenyty]

Rereading Bleak House. ... yeah.

Re: Bookchat!

[greenvelvetcake]

I just burned through all of the Song of the Lioness and the Immortals quartets, been on a big Tamora Pierce kick lately.

I'm supposed to be (re)reading Boneshaker for the book club I have going with my friends, but I keep getting distracted.

What general opinions about books do you have?

I LOVE BOOKS

Re: Bookchat!

[landly]

Finished Atonement yesterday. It was pretty good but I had to struggle a bit with the first part; it didn't manage to hook me.
Next I think I'll be reading The Princess Bride, and I've been meaning to reread Don Quixote for a while, see if it's still as funny as I remember.

Re: Bookchat!

[al28894]

I actually finished reading Teeny Tiny Gardening by Emma Hardy, of all things!

Now, I'm kicking back on the books until I can sort out my current projects. There's been several books that I've already bought that I haven't yet read completely (The Fault In Our Stars, Funny Airline Incidents, House of Leaves and a few others) so that's gonna be what I'm reading for the next few months.

Books that I want... another True Singapore Ghost Stories book! They're just so mindlessly fun (and a bit scary) that I would sometimes being them with me to a function over other books.

Re: Bookchat!

[(Anonymous)]

Someone on the rpanons recc'ed me the Seven Brothers Trilogy by Curt Benjamin and it's perfect. I mean, it's not the most amazing book ever but it's an engaging story and best of all, it's what I've been looking for: set in an Eastern-based mythology/history/geography instead of Western Medieval, it's very clearly China, Mongolia, and Nepal being represented. The gods and mysticism are well-handled. And there's at least one canon gay couple who is just there, the fact that they're two men in love is taken as a fact and not used for preaching or special snowflake storylines. They're good characters and part of the story because they're soldiers/rivals/friends, not because they're gay.

When I finish the third book I'm going to be hurting for more Eastern-based fantasy. I only have one more Barry Hughart book to find and then where do I go for non-Western fantasy?

Re: Bookchat!

[kamino_neko]

Currently reading Fool Moon, the second Harry Dresden book.

It's not bad, but I don't think I'd be bothering with the series if not for the fact that there's only 2 people in my RP group who haven't read it, and the GM references them pretty often.

(It'd help if I actually liked Dresden himself, but I do not.)

Re: Bookchat!

[(Anonymous)]

Last book I read was called "I Am a Cat" by Soseki Natsume. It was actually only part of the whole book. Nothing on the copy I have said "Volume One" or anything like that, so I didn't realize I only had part of it until I finished it and looked at the Goodreads page.

Before that, I've read a book called Last Rituals, and The Hobbit.

Re: Bookchat!

[(Anonymous)]

I just finished Land of Dreams by James Blaylock which was really, really good. One of my favorite books I've read in a while. All of the characters were cool and likable and friendly, or weird and fucked-up and villainous, as appropriate. The setting was interesting, and all the magical stuff really was magical and interesting and creepy and just fucking strange. It's great. It's about a town in a slightly weird-seeming version of the northern California coast, where every twelve years there's a solstice and a circus comes to town and all this weird shit happens, and it's possible for people to go to the land of dreams. And the thing is there's all this insanely strange stuff in it but the book just takes it all in stride and I really love that. Check it out read it.

Now, I'm reading some John Bellairs books - he was my favorite writer when I was a kid, and I haven't read his books in years, and I just ordered a couple on Amazon out of nostalgia, and I still really love his work. On the more serious tip, I'm reading William Faulkner's Light in August to talk about with some friends - it was really interesting but at the moment I'm super bogged down in the Joe Christmas stuff. I just really don't care about young Joe Christmas' romantic life. Just guh. I'm also reading Hannah Arendt's On Revolution, because I totally love Hannah Arendt, and it's really interesting and great and insightful - I've actually read it before, but years and years and years ago. It's definitely very Arendt - touching on a lot of the same themes as Human Condition but in a more historical, rather than theoretical, way. It's great.

Anyway thats what I'm reading sorry I just wrote a billion words but I'm excited about books.

Re: Bookchat!

[(Anonymous)]

A Storm of Swords, aka A Song of Ice and Fire book 3. I'm about where the show is, but I can't read fast enough. :( The first three books are AWESOME. I heard it goes kinda downhill as of somewhere in A Feast for Crows, but I'll read as long as I'm hooked.

My opinion: I don't read enough. Probably because I'm generally too busy with video games. :(

Re: Bookchat!

[mechanosapience]

I'm off-and-on reading Dragonflight by Anne McCaffrey. I'm intrigued by the bits of politics we've gotten so far, but was kind of turned off by the scene where the newly hatched dragons chose partners.

Re: Bookchat!

[(Anonymous)]

I just finished Blue Castle (prompted by that secret the other day, it's as awesome as I remember :D) and am about to strt China Mieville's Un Lun Dun. I'm also TRYING to read the Batman/Superman: Public enemies graphic novel in Korean. Emphasis on trying lol.

Re: Bookchat!

[(Anonymous)]

I read Brave New World today. The distant ancestor of every Communist dystopia SF that came afterwards. Fascinating to deconstruct, but eh, not that spectacular in and of itself, at this late a date.

Re: Bookchat!

[(Anonymous)]

I just finished the second book in Kate Griffon's Matthew Swift series, which I read out of order (1st, then 3rd, then 2nd) and by doing so ruined most of the suspense of the second book, which is probably why I didn't enjoy it quite as much as the other two. Whoops.

This is probably one of those series where you either love the writing style or hate it. Personally I really like it.