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[Rose]

Posting to watch here. And maybe get book recommendations.

[Vector]

Spoiler: Goal (click to show/hide)

My goal for 2021:
- 12 books of either enjoyable fiction or educational non-fiction. If I read a book and I don't either learn much or enjoy it, it doesn't count. I want to push myself to open my horizons more instead of just mechanically reading through things.
- The Great Chinese Classics I haven't finished yet: Romance of the Three Kingdoms, Water Margin, the one based on Water Margin, The Scholars.
- 6 books in languages that aren't English. Manga counts as a third of a book.
- 4 math books, cover to cover, that aren't required for class.
- 4 books on education theory.
- 4 books on prison/carcerality.

Personal modification:
Finishing books I started in 2020 or earlier is OK.
I'll keep track of the other things I finish in a separate list.

Progress: Finished Dragon Republic. It's pretty good? Basically a Chinese high-fantasy retrace of the WWII/leadup to the PRC period with an unheroic female protagonist based on Mao. I'll definitely read the third one. I don't know that it was satisfying enough to be part of my 12-book quota, but for now, I'm calling it good enough.

Put a bunch of the education + carcerality books on hold. Now reading The City We Became by NK Jemisin. She's great.

[Frumple]

I've seen pretty solid reviews for the broken whatever series by that'un. Mentioned fairly often in relation to notable new-ish sci-fi/fantasy.

... reviews also note they're like consistently and crushingly negative on a lot of fronts, though. Fairly brutal, nasty stuff, more or less, which just annihilates any personal interest, heh. Also a bit of a shame our patrons aren't big on sci-fi/fantasy, so we don't tend to bring many in unless someone actively requests them.

But yeah, part of my job these days is collection development (i.e. buying books and stuff for a library), so... review browsing is something I'm literally paid to do, which is nice

[Vector]

Yeah, they certainly aren't cheerful books, but I didn't find them to be grimdark for the sake of being grimdark, which is where I personally have more trouble. I couldn't read more than a couple of the Game of Thrones series, for example, but I've read 6 of Jemisin's books so far.

[A Thing]

Hold on OP*, you've read the Story of the Stone? Great! Finally someone else that has. I still haven't put my feelings on the novel together even though it's been about a 1-2 years since I finished it.

As for books, I have a couple. War & Peace I've had for several years and am only a couple hundred pages in, I might finish that this year, maybe not. I've also got Orwell's Burmese days, which I haven't started, Bram Stoker's Dracula, and Out of Africa by Isek Dinesen. Out of Africa is a book from a university class that we didn't end up reading, I might end up trading it for things fall apart by Chinua Achebe, or read that scramble for africa book that has been mentioned here. Considering reading Cien Aņos de Soledad in Spanish, but not sure if I´m good enough yet.

I think I read about 12 books last year? All of the Narnia books (don't ask,) Germinal, Witcher books 1-3, and then Homegoing by Yaa Gyasi for the previously mentioned university class. I suppose I'll go for 10 books of my own choosing this year, because really I didn't read much at all last year.


*gonna not use your username because of your no quote rule

[Vector]

Story of the Stone

Yes It's one of my favorite books. I highly recommend it for anyone with any interest in classic literary fiction.

[Yoink]

Finished High-Rise early this morning whilst on the can. Since Goodreads counted that as my first book towards my challenge (yes, I made my challenge from here all official by creating it on my Goodreads account too, not that that means anything) I guess I will, too.   

It was a good book, for the most part. I kind of wish Goodreads let you give ratings out of ten so that I didn't feel the need to keep giving so many books five stars, but oh well. Some of it seemed a bit bizarre, but that's not necessarily a bad thing. Even if some parts felt a little far-fetched, the fantastic imagery encountered at various points throughout the book more than made up for it in my opinion.   
Yes, I am aware that the whole thing was quite possibly an overwrought metaphor for society at the time. Meh, I just enjoyed it at face value.   

[Frumple]

Bloody hell I finally finished reading through everything currently existent of the legend of randidly ghosthound. Took most of a month, 1,477 chapters, somewhere over 10 thousand royal road pages, a bit short of 2.8 million words. Pretty sure I read some other stuff in the process but I can't remember anymore!

And, like. It's alright litrpg stuff. Not great, but mostly not terrible or anything. Parts are weird (the later MC romance subplot in particular was very left-field/insta-love-ish from what I parsed), but it's pretty consistently readable.

But I am extremely ready to read something else now, ahaha.

[delphonso]

Oh, well, hello there, this thread.

Goal - read 12 books at least this year.

3 fiction books, since I will certainly do that by the end of February.
3 non-fiction histories, biographies or the like.
3 non-fiction academics, such as that paper on the use of facial expressions in Chinese communication that has been sitting on my desk for 3 months.
2 books in not English (above kids book level, I guess. Maybe depends on the language.)
1 thing I wrote and actually consider finished.

Anything above the number in those categories won't count toward the 12, but I might keep track anyway.

Currently reading: Bandersnatch by Diana Gyler (a book about C.S. Lewis and Tolkien's writing group's impact on each other)

[Vector]

I just wanted to pop in and say that I'm really glad people are enjoying the thread. I've been doing some reading myself and hope to updoot tonight

[Nordlicht]

I like book threads. Currently waiting for Becoming Animal to arrive in the next days.

[Caz]

Does fanfiction count as a book?

All I read is trash. And textbooks. But after a chapter of them you don't want to read anything in it with multiple syllables. So, to the trash.

[Jimmy]

Bloody hell I finally finished reading through everything currently existent of the legend of randidly ghosthound.

Yeah, I gave that one a go, and lost interest quickly when the author just kind of goes 'meh, humanity's boring, let's take the MC to alien-world!' There's a ton of potential in watching humanity go through an apocalypse, but instead he just buggers off to go do a tournament arc.

[Frumple]

Eh, he comes back, for what it's worth. I think most of what I've read has been on earth or significantly interacting with it, though the latest bits are gearing up to haul off again. 'Course, Earth's actively less interesting (for MC McOPmutt, anyway) at this point, so it's not even a bad thing, exactly. Spear world is something of a pit stop (twice, ha), yeah.

... thaaaat said, though, if you have something against tournament arcs it is strongly the wrong piece of fiction for you, ahaha. There's been at least, uh. Five? Six? Maybe seven? More? A lot of the bloody things at this point. 2-3 on spear place, like another four or five on earth, maybe another on other-major-planething-that's-not-warplace? Author likes them their tournaments.

E: Though the whole apocalypse thing is handled at least somewhat interestingly (if slowly. Very slowly. Major event one past the actual initialization and whatnot still hasn't happened by chapter 1.4k ), overall. Definitely in a way I haven't seen very often so far as the MC's relationship to everything going on, so there's points there for originality.

E2: Any case, I guess I'll see how long I can keep remembering to post something when I finish one. Next up is The Runesmith, clocking in at a respectable 200-ish thousand words. It's also litrpg (this is going to be a theme, by the by), isekai stuff where some dude gets schlepped into a preteen's body with mage stats and zero class compatibility, and goes crafter with bonus skills from being a tech repair guy or somethin' like that. Fairly slow burn (200k words in and MC still hasn't actually broke through to the starting line for the class they're aiming for), though plenty of the downtime stuff is basically just timeskipped away, which is nice. Decent crafting crunch, okay amounts of merchanty bits and conflict, not much in the way of romance divergence yet, all in all pretty decent. Pointedly, it's about a 14th the size of ghosthound and took a day to read through instead of a month :V

Anyway, what's there so far is pretty readable and it's overall not bad as isekai litrpg goes! Which, I mean. Isn't saying much, considering how isekai litrpg goes? But, y'know. S'alright. Gave me something to read for an afternoon and a bit.

[Vector]

I read some books:

Dragon Republic - RF Kuang
The Burning God - RF Kuang
Marbles: Mania, Depression, Michelangelo, and Me: A Graphic Memoir - Ellen Forney
Are Prisons Obsolete? - Angela Davis
Prison by Any Other Name: The Harmful Consequences of Popular Reforms - Maya Schenwar & Victoria Law
Post-Traumatic Slave Syndrome - Joy DeGruy

Spoiler: Goal (click to show/hide)

My goal for 2021:
- 12 books of either enjoyable fiction or educational non-fiction. If I read a book and I don't either learn much or enjoy it, it doesn't count. I want to push myself to open my horizons more instead of just mechanically reading through things.
- The Great Chinese Classics I haven't finished yet: Romance of the Three Kingdoms, Water Margin, the one based on Water Margin, The Scholars.
- 6 books in languages that aren't English. Manga counts as a third of a book.
- 4 math books, cover to cover, that aren't required for class.
- 4 books on education theory.
- 4 books on prison/carcerality.

Personal modification:
Finishing books I started in 2020 or earlier is OK.
I'll keep track of the other things I finish in a separate list.

Progress:

Spoiler: 12 Awesome Fiction/Nonfiction Books, 1/12 (click to show/hide)

Post-Traumatic Slave Syndrome - Joy DeGruy

Spoiler: Great Chinese Classics, 0/4 (click to show/hide)

-zip-

Spoiler: Non-English Language, 0/6 (click to show/hide)

-zip-

Spoiler: Unrequired Math Books, 0/4 (click to show/hide)

-zip-

Spoiler: Books on Education Theory, 0/4 (click to show/hide)

-zip-

Spoiler: All About Prison, 2/4 (click to show/hide)

Are Prisons Obsolete? - Angela Davis
Prison by Any Other Name: The Harmful Consequences of Popular Reforms - Maya Schenwar & Victoria Law

Spoiler: Other books, 3/0 (click to show/hide)

Dragon Republic - RF Kuang
The Burning God - RF Kuang
Marbles: Mania, Depression, Michelangelo, and Me: A Graphic Memoir - Ellen Forney

:I This is hard work, actually. Committing to read in order to open my mind up instead of just numbly going through pages of processed tree carcass is . . . challenging . . .

Marbles: Mania, Depression, Michelangelo, and Me: A Graphic Memoir was somewhat helpful to understand one of my bipolar friends. I knew about the broad strokes already but seeing things laid out sequentially and pictorially gave some new insight into what it might feel like to be that depressed.