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[Nordlicht]

If you don't mind a bit of Sci-Fi:

Maybe something from the Strugatskys? Snail on the Slope, Roadside Picnic, Beetle in the Anthill, Definitely Maybe, The Doomed City.

Not Russian, but eastern European: Solaris from Lem.
His Tichy (Short-) novels are philosophical, but not dark though, more like  Munchhausen Stories.

Both are not the space-battle and alien Sci-Fi, more like Philip K. Dick.

[WealthyRadish]

I could really use some dark Russian philosophical novels. I've been looking at How the Steel Was Tempered, but I also have only read a little of Dostoevsky. Any suggestions? Really looking for the slow build.

With Dostoevsky, it sounds like Crime and Punishment is exactly what you're looking for, if you haven't already read it. Brothers Karamazov is another that I've read that's much more of a comedy, but is quite dark (the "Inquisitor" bit still sticks with me). Tolstoy's Anna Karenina would be another place to look.

I don't know firsthand how the translations compare, but the ones I've read without any complaint were the P&V versions of Crime and Brothers and the Maude translation of Anna.

[Cthulhu]

I've read a bunch of books in quarantine.  Read all of Charles Stross's laundry files books, mostly good but similar to reading all of Black Company in one go you start to notice how the writer operates and it can be a problem.  All of his books seem to have a sitcom style cold open inciting incident, a very abrupt and short climax, and a longer denouement which often looks back and explains what happened in the climax.

Also read his Eschaton books, Singularity Sky is good, Iron Sunrise is okay.

Also read A Fire on the Deep finally, it's damn good.  Weirdly, today I saw a thing on how deepfake is getting good enough that you can run video chat on super low bandwidth and have an algorithm reconstruct the image to high definition, which is something predicted in A Fire on the Deep with evocations.

Currently reading Conan of Venarium, which is the generally accepted first story in the Conan chronology, where he's twelve and Aquilonia invades and colonizes Cimmeria.  Pretty good so far.

[Yoink]

Crime and Punishment is probably one of my (many) favourite books, though I read it about ten years ago now. Damn, that's a long time. Holy crap I am getting old.    
I never managed to get through Brothers. As for other Russian authors, I remember liking The Master and Margarita, though I'm not sure that was depressing enough for what you're after.


Anyway, I've read a few books lately. Currently I'm reading War by Sebastian Junger - it's basically written from the same notes and experiences he and another guy used to make the documentary Restrepo, which I was meaning to watch for a long time but found it was removed from Netflix.   
The book is pretty good, but after reading most of a book called Poppy by Gregor Salmon, I think I kind of prefer a linear, chronological type of non-fiction writing. I mean, Salmon was a bit unusual in that, rather than going with a dry account of big-picture kind of things, it's basically just a straight-up, rather personal account of Gregor's trip to Afghanistan in order to research the book, with the occasional informative digression.   

War (the book) was researched over a few visits throughout a year or so, and the scenes tend to jump around all over the place depending on what point the author's making or what phenomenon he wishes to explain, and it doesn't give specific dates so it is hard as heck to keep track of. Plus, once someone's been mentioned even briefly he apparently expects the reader to remember their name and who they hell they were - unless it's someone who has already been adequately described, in which case he sometimes gives you a wholly unnecessary refresher course on who they are, haha.   
It's still an interesting read, though. I just think I might have preferred the documentary, which seemed pretty great from what little I watched of it.   


Oh, and I read Looking For Alaska, which looking back doesn't seem like it was all that mind-blowing but it made me feel lots of feels at the time, so that's the main thing. Put it this way, I gave it a knee-jerk five-star rating on Goodreads right after finishing it, which says that I enjoyed it greatly.   
I'm here to do that, enjoy books, not dissect them critically.   

Before that, I read... uhhh... I can't remember. Oh, well quite a while ago there was Vernon God Little which immediately became a favourite. Cannot recommend it highly enough. Then more recently there was a book called White Noise by Don DeLillo which was pretty weird and claustrophobic but overall very good, even if I would have liked to see more of the characters.   

Also, the other day I happened upon a stall selling one dollar books for charity or some shit, and they turned out to have a great selection of lesser-known classics. I picked up a hardcover copy of The Mosquito Coast, a book I borrowed from a library and loved but never owned, amongst others.

[Uthimienure]

I also read Looking For Alaska maybe 15 years ago right before my only vacation to that beautiful state. It was a very good book.

If anyone wants the real-deal, full of firsthand accounts of what it was like to be a tank crewman in WWI and WWII, try this one that I'm almost finished with. Be prepared for some visceral descriptions of what happens when tanks are brewed up. Overall, very fascinating, eye-opening, and informative.

       Tank Men: The Human Story of Tanks at War by Robert Kershaw

I was surprised by my daughter when she said she wants to read it.

[martinuzz]

I have recently read 'The curious incident of the dog in the night-time', by Mark Haddon.
It was a good read, can recommend.

[MCreeper]

Have reread "Big Lin and Little Lin", this time fully appreciating grotesque communard satire on stuck-up corrupt richies instead of just WTFing as a child. Was disturbing, is disturbing.

[Frumple]

Just burned through Seaborn over the course of a few hours, up to the point of the brutal cliffhanger that's going to be there until at least next sometime next year. Pretty damn slick sailing focused fantasy litrpg, though, for what's currently written.

[delphonso]

This is a cool website.

[Parsely]

Have reread "Big Lin and Little Lin", this time fully appreciating grotesque communard satire on stuck-up corrupt richies instead of just WTFing as a child. Was disturbing, is disturbing.

Huh, any way I can read this online?

[JoshuaFH]

So I decided to pick up 1984 in my desire to become somewhat knowledgeable in the classics of literature, and while I picked up a lot of the book through osmosis from Extra Credits and such, the actual book is quite a bit more than the summaries would make you think.

It's very frightening to read something in the book, and then think "That's just like *real life event*" and not conclude that the motives behind them are similar as well. Overall, I think the fictional world set up is unrealistic, if only because the dystopia as explained in the book relies on both extremely numerous and highly competent people to run it, while simultaneously snuffing those people out of existence so they can't use their competence against the government. The overall motives behind it were also unbelievable, as the motives to create such a dystopia are so cartoonishly evil as to be beyond belief. Not that it is entirely realistic, there's people in existence and throughout history that are as comparatively petty and spiteful as these characters, and I question those people's motives as well, as they defy common sense.

The last fourth of the book is a little kick-the-puppy-esque, just to drive home how Satanically evil the main villains are, but I guess if you want a picture of the future, just envision a boot stomping on a man's balls, forever.

[hector13]

I dunno, man, some classics are overrated.

Then again my interest in classics was Moby Dick, and I read a little over half because Melville writes like a narcissist with a short attention span.

[JoshuaFH]

I dunno, man, some classics are overrated.

Then again my interest in classics was Moby Dick, and I read a little over half because Melville writes like a narcissist with a short attention span.

By coincidence, what motivated me to read was playing "The Longing", which has long periods of non-action, so I started reading in order to multitask as my character chisels a crystal for 20 minutes or something. The game itself has books in their entirety available, which includes Moby Dick, so I could check that one out next if I wanted.

[Enemy post]

Just finished reading through the new Dresden Files book.

[Dostoevsky]

<1984 talk>

If you're up for more classic dystopia, there's always Brave New World. Notable in part for the followup book arguing 'hey, we shouldn't be trying to actually do that'.