The Books/Reading Thread

[CiG]

Any preferences or genres/topics/etc. you'd rather avoid? Fiction vs. nonfiction? bougie vs. pulpy?

Good question. I'm definitely more interested in fiction, as I can navigate non-fiction on my own pretty easily. Beyond that I dunno, did you have any recent favourites you could list off?

 

[Einherjar86]

I burned through Martin MacInnes's three novels this past summer. He's a Scottish writer; his most recent book, In Ascension, was longlisted for the Booker prize. It's heady science fiction--not in the hard sense, but more in the philosophical sense. I found it really addictive. It's about a scientist who gets roped into investigating some weird anomalies in the ocean and outer space. His one before that, Gathering Evidence, is my favorite. It's seriously unsettling. I'd call it almost horror, but it never quite goes there. It goes back and forth between a woman researching weird behavior among bonobos in Africa and her husband back in the UK who suffers a mysterious accident and starts getting visits from a strange doctor. Strange shit, but really good. His first, Infinite Ground, is a surreal little jaunt about an unnamed detective who investigates a missing employee of an obscure corporation. Reads like a cross between Borges and Kafka.

If you're in the mood for more straight up horror, Paul Tremblay is awesome. His most recent, Horror Movie, was really good. Right now I'm working through his Disappearance at Devil's Rock. If you want something other than sci-fi and horror, and I can think of some other stuff.

 

[CiG]

Cheers! I saved all those to my Goodreads wishlist. Definitely interested in that Scottish writer, those sound good.

Btw is Goodreads the best site for cataloguing and keeping up with books or is there a better one everybody uses?

 

[Vegard Pompey]

Goodreads is fucking garbage but I don't know if there's a good alternative that has caught on.

 

[no country for old wainds]

i don't mind goodreads. charts and avg ratings etc are obviously trash but like any sites of that nature it's as useful as the network you build.

 

[TageRyche]

Goodreads is good for keeping track of what you read but most everything else is hit or miss at best.

As someone who takes reviewing seriously, I put work into the reviews I write on the site and I get pissed by all the chickenshits who write reviews that barely meet the standard of being English.

 

[Cronopio]

They should re-design the site. It's very confusing.

 

[Einherjar86]

Cheers! I saved all those to my Goodreads wishlist. Definitely interested in that Scottish writer, those sound good.

Btw is Goodreads the best site for cataloguing and keeping up with books or is there a better one everybody uses?

Nice. I forgot to add that there's a tech/VR/deep learning angle to Gathering Evidence that makes it feel super relevant today.

I don't use Goodreads but I know lots of people prefer it for keeping track of their reading likes and habits. As far as keeping up with new books, I usually just keep an eye on the book review sections and editorials from a few venues. There are plenty of good open access sites like LARB, Public Books, LitHub, Electric Literature, etc.

 

[Vegard Pompey]

To be clear my issues with goodreads aren't with the community, of which I know nothing, but the utterly abysmal interface and the forced 5-point rating scale with no decimal ratings.

 

[CiG]

Yeah the rating system is trash.

 

[Bloopy]

I like the serendipitous method of just stumbling onto random books, eg. by browsing Facebook and finding out someone's written a novel. It's how I found 'Servo' a couple of pages ago, and am now debating whether to order a copy of Please Let Me Destroy You.

I'm also considering just visiting a couple of bookstores and making a few random selections (or looking for books I've been wanting to read) - radical in this day and age!