The Books/Reading Thread

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I read this book years ago and then lost my copy to someone..can't remember who.
But it was a tiny slice of magic.



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Immortal-humans. Humans. 2015. Bows and arrows.



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Just great space opera sci-fi, kinda, but not really, in the tradition of Iain M Banks.
 

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Revisiting some old books that I haven't looked at in a while.

I read portions of this a long time ago, never made it all the way through. Fucking insane book:

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Read this a few years back for a seminar on The South and Modernism, but never had a personal copy. Bought one recently after watching the documentary 13th on Netflix:

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i'm a rationalist/secular humanist/atheist/moral relativist/whatever

i'm NOT a deity-worshiping person

I've been re-reading the OLD Testament, because, if you assume it's fiction, the Old Testament reads like a pretty good fantasy novel
 
Finished The Case Against Education. tl;dr: It was great. Caplan took what I thought in passing and from anecdote and added the data and fleshed out arguments, even to the point where things were worse than I would have thought. A solid exercise in confirmation bias!

Next on my list:

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Not a fan of legal literature being my wife is in law school, but The Canon is a fascinating look at human power and control and it’s canonical origins of humanities laws- Sublimely sinister 38E9B1FA-62F5-468D-81FF-DD4F1AF8AD5A.jpeg
 
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attention mieville fans: a four episode adaptation of the city and city starts on the bbc today.

What do you think are his best books?

I thought The City and the City was okay but I didn't really enjoy Embassytown and I gave up on Un Lun Dun, and it's pretty fucking rare that I give up on books. Figured I might try Kraken as a friend mentioned it before but if I don't enjoy it then fuck him.
 
I'm a Mieville fan, so I'm going to go ahead and answer too... :D

First, if you've tried three of his books and they haven't really clicked, then I'm doubtful that you'll enjoy his other stuff. That caveat aside, I loved Embassytown; but I can see how people would find it unenjoyable. It's not an easy book to read, and the plot details are quite opaque (intentionally so, I think).

I thought Kraken was fun, but it's actually at the bottom of my list. It felt like Mieville just goofing off with a deliciously absurd magical scenario/setting, and showing off how well he knows his Herman Melville, but not doing much beyond that. The thing I love about Mieville is that he's clearly a master of genre fiction conventions, and he's experimented in various categories (as indicated below). I actually haven't read Un Lun Dun yet, so I can't comment on that one. Of the ones I've read, I'd rank them as such:

The City and the City (detective fiction)
Perdido Street Station (weird fantasy/Victorian steampunk)
Embassytown (science fiction)
Iron Council (weird fantasy/steampunk/western)
The Last Days of New Paris (fantasy/alternate history)
The Scar (weird fantasy/nautical fiction)
Kraken (weird fantasy)

I should also say that his collections of short fiction, Looking for Jake and Three Moments of an Explosion, are really good.