Done reading these books:

38. Die drei Sonnen (The Three Body Problem), Cixin Liu, 561 pages

39. Der dunkle Wald (The Dark Forest), Cixin Liu, 816 pages

40. Jenseits der Zeit (Death's End), Cixin Liu, 992 pages

41. Die wandernde Erde (The wandering Earth), Cixin Liu, 688 pages

So the other two books came out in german a few months ago and I finished them now. I re-read the first one to be fully prepared for the other two. I don't like spoiling things, so I am just gonna say that in general the wait has been worth it. As far as science fiction goes, the World that Cixin Liu has created is the one that I like the most, with questions about how disovering other alien civilisations might impact society and technology. The books feature complicated theories about future scientific developments but everything is well explained in an easy to understand fashion.

The wandering Earth:

Collection of ten short stories, varying from an earth where ants and dinosaurs co-exist and develop a technologically-developed civilsation, to the title story where the sun is expected to become a red star and humanity trying to push earth out of the solar system to escape and others. Some of the sort stories are continued in another short story in the book.

Great book. Despite the length felt like a short book. If commiting to reading the trilogy is not something for you, I would definitely recommend reading this one.

28: Streams of Silver by R.A. Salvatore

I'm digging this series. It's probably my last for June but I'll pick up the 3rd Icewind Dale book and start it today and see.

Icewind Dale is an excellent trilogy. If you like the world and rpgs you can play the game. You should read the Drow series of R.A.Salvatore.

I'm a notoriously slow reader and very bad with deadlines/goal setting so I'm not doing the challenge, but I've been trying to read more for a couple of years now. I even have a reading list that shows what I've queued up to read [alphabetical order in the list, not necessarily the order I'll read them in] and what I've already finished. I threw up a link in case anyone wants some recs on some books to read [be aware, most are in the YA fantasy category]

Currently, I'm reading an old classic: Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Café - Fannie Flagg

I have the DVD somewhere, but it's been a hot minute since I've watched it, and the book supposedly differs quite a bit from the movie, so this should be interesting [I've only just started]. Being Southern myself is probably what's making it easy to read stylistically [read: accent], though now this makes me wonder if there's a novelised version of Steel Magnolias. I should look that up

i finished reading some books

#12 A Court of Mist and Fury and #13 A Court of Wings and Ruin

i read the first one in the series in may and i loved it. the second was a vastly superior book because it took kind of turn a departure from the story the first set up in a really refreshing way as it explored the more mysterious/interesting side characters from the first. it also took advantage of assuming you are already familiar with the world from the first book and you are thrown into it

the third is alright. a large portion of it is devoted to tying up a bunch of loose ends in a giant battle. i dunno about you guys but i find trying to picture battles/combat really hard when reading text. some things kind of end abruptly, deus ex machina style and you are left scratching your head a bit

all in all, dope series

i have no clue what to read next. i have a bunch of stuff on a to-read list still but i want more and more fantasy

i did the same thing earlier on the year and was surprised at how much i ended up enjoying it because i'm typically allergic to anything relating to the tribulations of high school romance/coming of age stuff. it was more nuanced than i was expecting

@jackho please add 2 books to my total for June

I'd like to not share the titles because they're incredibly specific to my job, but they were psychology related, and good reads honestly.

Magazines count towards our reading goals as well, right? I finished reading the current issue of computer related magazine c't:

This issue's main article is about biometric data and what may happen if your data gets into the wrong hands.

If anyone else has updates for June try to get them in today/tomorrow.

@Absurd-Ditties @Asandir @Atlas @Boss @Crink @Dean @DistractedDuck @FoAngel @Ganon-Dorf @Haggard @Joltopus @Kiwi @Little-Rena @Malachy @MercyfulDeath @Peaceblossom @Peregrinus @Phobotech @Quisty @RainyG @SevenSeize @TheReviewTrickster @TopazAzul @Welldoneshellfish @Yomuchan @ZJ

January:

1. The Deeper the Water the Uglier the Fish - Katya Apekina

February:

xxx

March:

2.Sweet Salt Air by Barbara Delinsky

3.Barbara the Slut and Other People by Lauren Holmes 

4.Dark Matter by Blake Crouch 

5.Saga, Vol. 1 by Brian K. Vaughan 

6.Sex at Dawn: How We Mate, Why We Stray & What It Means for Modern Relationships by Christopher Ryan

7.Essentials of Classic Italian Cooking by Marcella Hazan

April:

8.Where the Crawdads Sing by Delia Owens

9.How to Love (Mindfulness Essentials #3) by Thich Nhat Hanh

10.Tampa by Alissa Nutting 

11.The Boho Manifesto: An Insider's Guide to Postconventional Living by Julia Chaplin

May

12.An Object of Beauty by Steve Martin

13.How to Be Alone: If You Want To, and Even If You Don't by Lane Moore

14.The Gargoyle by Andrew Davidson 

15.The Virgin Suicides by Jeffrey Eugenides

16.Every Word You Cannot Say by Iain S. Thomas

17.Women Who Run With the Wolves: Myths and Stories of the Wild Woman Archetypeby Clarissa Pinkola Estés

June

18.Shout by Laurie Halse Anderson 

19.Sex and the Goddess: An Intimate Exploration of Woman’s Erotic Spirit and Sacred Sexual Power in Myth, Legend, Life, and History (Volume One) by Karin E Weiss

20.The Remarkable Journey of Coyote Sunrise by Dan Gemeinhart

21.Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind by Yuval Noah Harari

The Four Pillars of Investing by William Bernstein

15) A whole lot of online articles.

Thought I could get to my other book but things didn't pan out well. I should be able to get back to reading books soon.

12. Steven Pinker - The Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Human Nature

Excellent read. A humanist take on biological apriorism and its implications in everything from child rearing to art.

Only about 52% through Halfing's Gem by RA Salvatore, so I'll post my june haul:

January (4)

1: Children of Ruin by Adrian Tchaikovsky

2: Welcome to the Occupied States of America (First Contact) by Peter Cawdron

3: The Hobbit by J.R.R. Tolkien

4: The Fellowship of the Ring by J.R.R. Tolkien

February (5)

5: The Two Towers by J.R.R. Tolkien

6: The Return of the King by J.R.R. Tolkien

7: The Silmarillion by J.R.R. Tolkien

8: Starship Troopers by Robert Heinlein

9: Storm Front by Jim Butcher

March (5)

10: Fool Moon by Jim Butcher

11: Ancillary Justice by Ann Leckie

12: Ancillary Sword by Ann Leckie

13: Ancillary Mercy by Ann Leckie

14: Provenance by Ann Leckie

April (6)

15: Maelstrom by Peter Cawdron

16: The Man in the High Castle by Philip K Dick

17: The God Engines by John Scalzi

18: The Accidental President: Harry S. Truman and the Four Months That Changed the World by A.J. Baime

19: The Last Emperox by John Scalzi

20: The Forever War by Joe Haldeman

May (4)

21: Forever Free by Joe Haldeman

22: Homeland by R.A. Salvatore

23: Exile by R.A. Salvatore

24: Sojourn by R.A. Salvatore

June (4)

25: Neuromancer by William Gibson

26: The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes by Suzanne Collins

27: The Crystal Shard by R.A. Salvatore

28: Streams of Silver by R.A. Salvatore

I've been enjoying it. I did read Drizzt's origin series back in May. While those were more polished I think Icewind Dale has more variety of adventure and it's not so gloomy, which I guess is expected since Drizzt's story takes place in Mezobareson.

I have only dabbled in D&D and never got into RPG video games so I'm not as familiar with the worlds but I recognize a lot of places used in games like Baulders Gate in the books. I've been meaning to brush up the basic literature of D&D, Fantasy and Sci Fi so I've been reading Drizzt, LOTR, Neuromancer, etc. I may revisit some of my favorite sci fi and fantasy series and see if I notice any other winks to the classics.

11. Dale Carnegie: A Combined Edition of How to Win Friends & Influence People and How to Stop Worrying & Start Living

read most of this last month. felt good to finish a longer book i guess since its one physical book its one for me but its like 2 put together, guess that makes up for times when i read super short books. lol idk i should stop focusing on semantics and just focus. maybe using coffee again will be something i can alchemize into having good reading habits, and maybe better habits and environments overall. i have a bookmark in sort of too many books right now, one on communication design, one book from MAPS about all the ketamine studies, one old ass walter savitch book on java, and a few more even i think. it sucks to be this loose and disoriented but its a lot better to use all of this to keep me hanging on to focus than to give up entirely

Gloomy is the Underdark. Gloomy and enchanting.

Necromancer heavily influenced Shadowrun, if you're familiar with it.

LITFAM UPDATE:

COMING OUT OF MY CAVE AND I BEEN DOING JUST FINE GOTTA GOTTA BIG BRAIN

BECAUSE I READ IT ALL EDITION

Are we still in quarantine? I think I've lost all track of the goings-on in the surface world, but another month is gone and 2020 is already half over, and all I have to show for it is some new literature swirling through the tunnels of my neuro-web. Hope things are looking optimistic from inside your book forts.

Another decent month of gainz. @Kiwi has taken the lead in goal progress, knocking @RainyG to second place while Asandir continues to quietly dominate.

Top Fam

1. @Asandir (16)
2. @Kiwi and @Malachy (4)
3. @RainyG (3)

Mistakes are impetus to the greater good (the greater good).

@Absurd-Ditties @Asandir @Atlas @Boss @Crink @Dean @DistractedDuck @FoAngel @Ganon-Dorf @Haggard @Joltopus @Kiwi @Little-Rena @Malachy @MercyfulDeath @Peaceblossom @Peregrinus @Phobotech @Quisty @RainyG @SevenSeize @TheReviewTrickster @TopazAzul @Welldoneshellfish @Yomuchan @ZJ

I work the same way and have been in gamer mode lately. I mitigate it a bit by listening to audiobooks while playing whenever I can get away with it.

Explain 3 stars for this mastery. The bit about Peugeot alone melted my mind for like half a year. Sometimes I'm about to fall asleep and then I remember the bit about wheat domesticating humans and I spring upright in a cold sweat.

If you want, yeah. That's some wild cover art.

You can count this as two if you want (I definitely would).

Without exaggeration I probably have 50 different books lying around at varying levels of progress.

I read some of this a few years ago and didn't finish it. While I'm sure it's good in its own right I'm willing to bet the disproportionate popularity it gets is based on the title alone. Something about it compels one to give it a try.

That's good to know, because I read a lot of magazines.

Done reading these books:

42. Die Knochenuhren (The Bone Clocks), David Mitchell, 816 pages

43. Fuchs 8 (Fox 8: A Story), George Saunders, 56 pages

44. Wuhan Diary: Dispatches from a Quarantined City, Fang Fang, 352 pages

45.Das Ende des Bengalischen Tigers - Ein Roman in elf Geschichten (Revenge: Eleven Dark Tales), Yōko Ogawa

, 220 pages

The Bone Clocks:

Main character is Holly Syke, who is a 15 years old teenager at the start of the book. Everything seems normal aside from her "imaginary friend" Constantine who somehow manages to lead one of Holly's bullies into a car accident. Holly is deeply scared by this event but a doctor by the name of Dr. Marinus helps her and Constantine vanishes just as quickly as she appeared.

Shortly after, events lead to Holly Syke running from home and living on her own. From here, new chapters with timeskips between them and from the perspectives of people that are connected to Holly Syke in one way or another unfold. But Holly Syke is not the only connection - two forces, the Anchorites and the Horologists, both having pyschic powers and ways of living longer, the first via sacrifices, the later by being reborn but keeping their memories play a pivotal role that drags all characters into their long ongoing war.

Good book. The supernatural stuff wasn't quite doing it for me but reading about Holly Syke's life and all other characters chapters and their perspective and getting an insight into their lifes was great.

Fox 8: A Story:

Fox 8 is a happy fox, lliving in the woods together with his group of foxes and his best friend, Fox 7. All of that changes when a supermall and a parking place get constructed in the forest, leading to the river not having fishes anymore and many animals fleeing the woods, resulting in the foxes being starved for food.

Fox 8 and Fox 7 decide to visit the super mall to get in contact with the humans but the outcome is deadly for Fox 7. Struck by grief and unable to find back to his group, Fox 7 seeks out a new place to live but never forgets his vision : asking the humans why a species being able to create such beauty acts in such cruel ways.

Great short book. Fox 8 learned the human language by listening to humans, so the words are mostly written incorrectly, similiar to what you would find in the early pages of Flower for Algernon. Book is filled with cute illustrations and an important message.

Wuhan Diary: Dispatches from a Quarantined City:

A book version of 60 blog posts that the author Fang Fang, a citizen of Wuhan, wrote that showcase her experiences with the lockdown of Wuhan due to the corona virus. From deaths of aquintances, the very early stages of the pandemic and the failings of the government to act quickly, to multiple attempts to censor and denounce her blog and documenting how the citizens of Wuhan helped each other.

Good read, liked to get the perspective from another country and how the corona virus affected that region and how it was handled.

Revenge: Eleven Dark Tales:

Collection of 11 (surprise!) short stories that are both stand-alone but also connected in some ways. From a mother buying strawberry cake for her dead son who died in a freezer, a young woman whose heart is on the outside requesting a bag to protect it, an old man who is the curator of a torture instrument museum and caretaker of a tiger, etc.

Good book. Whole book is dominated by an athmosphere of unease and things just being slightly off - unsettling because what's wrong is unclear until it gets revealed. Similiar in tone to The Strange Library Haruki Murakami.

29: The Halfling's Gem by R.A. Salvatore

Finished the other day. Took a couple days off reading.

I really enjoyed the Icewind Dale series. I'll have to revisit RA Salvatore when I'm in a fantasy mood again.

Next up is The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood. It's on kindle unlimited so I'll give it a try.

Finished the audiobook of Jesse Ventura's They Killed Our President.

Fascinating book. I've been a big fan of Jesse Ventura for several years now (The fact that he went from being a professional wrestler to the governor of Minnesota to a prominent conspiracy theorist is still incredibly mind-boggling to me) so I felt that it would be pretty cool to get one of his books through Audible. I chose this one because I knew his backstory pretty well through interviews so I didn't want to pay for his autobiography, but I hadn't heard a lot about his thoughts on the assassination of President Kennedy and that was the focus of this.

I'll say it up front: This is a conspiracy theory book. If you find those sort of things to be repulsive or annoying, you won't enjoy this. Jesse does a good job of providing evidence for his claims and leaving things open enough to where you can draw your own conclusions as to what you think actually happened. His central thesis basically boils down to "the government's 'official' version of this story is full of holes and here's why" while also giving a lot of information on the potential conspirators (Vice President Lyndon B. Johnson, the military-industrial complex, the mafia, etc.) against the President and what motivations they would possibly have to kill him. While it's a bit unsatisfying to get the "here's what really happened" take on the events, I do appreciate that he simply raises questions and points out inconsistencies with what were all told by our leaders about that fateful night in Dallas in November of 1963. Better yet, Governor Ventura brings all of these events into a modern perspective by talking about the forces that were involved with this conspiracy are still very active in our world today and how we should be responding to them.

For what it's worth, the book helped to convince me JFK's death was totally the result of a coordinated assassination plot. The American government has done it to the leaders of other nations, why couldn't they do it to one of their own that was actively trying to slow down the big business of foreign wars?

It can happen is a poor argument that it did happen though - lone gunmen can, and have, taken out presidents before. In the US alone 4 or 5 presidents were assassinated and several more survived attempts, and most of those were mentally ill assailants acting alone.

16) ABM is B2B by Sangram Vajre and Eric Spett

Pretty much a to the point explanation of how not to advertise your services and how not to go after clients. It's like an essential guide of etiquette, more or less, of making money by working with the right kind of people with a thought out gameplan. About a 170 or so pages, may be a quick read if you're not stopped all the time.

17) Batch of online articles by Various

Reading more online articles lately which range from virus coverage to IT support to best bang for your buck tablets.

Trying to get my bearings for another book but not sure what I want to read next.

It be like that sometimes you know

January:

1. The Deeper the Water the Uglier the Fish - Katya Apekina

February:

xxx

March:

2.Sweet Salt Air by Barbara Delinsky

3.Barbara the Slut and Other People by Lauren Holmes 

4.Dark Matter by Blake Crouch 

5.Saga, Vol. 1 by Brian K. Vaughan 

6.Sex at Dawn: How We Mate, Why We Stray & What It Means for Modern Relationships by Christopher Ryan

7.Essentials of Classic Italian Cooking by Marcella Hazan

April:

8.Where the Crawdads Sing by Delia Owens

9.How to Love (Mindfulness Essentials #3) by Thich Nhat Hanh

10.Tampa by Alissa Nutting 

11.The Boho Manifesto: An Insider's Guide to Postconventional Living by Julia Chaplin

May

12.An Object of Beauty by Steve Martin

13.How to Be Alone: If You Want To, and Even If You Don't by Lane Moore

14.The Gargoyle by Andrew Davidson 

15.The Virgin Suicides by Jeffrey Eugenides

16.Every Word You Cannot Say by Iain S. Thomas

17.Women Who Run With the Wolves: Myths and Stories of the Wild Woman Archetypeby Clarissa Pinkola Estés

June

18.Shout by Laurie Halse Anderson 

19.Sex and the Goddess: An Intimate Exploration of Woman’s Erotic Spirit and Sacred Sexual Power in Myth, Legend, Life, and History (Volume One) by Karin E Weiss

20.The Remarkable Journey of Coyote Sunrise by Dan Gemeinhart

21.Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind by Yuval Noah Harari

July

22.Action: A Book About Sex by Amy Rose Spiegel

23.Online Seductions: Falling in Love with Strangers on the Internet by Esther Gwinnell, Nancy Cooperman Su

24.Never Enough: The Neuroscience and Experience of Addiction by Judith Grisel

I agree that It's certainly possible that it truly was the work of one lone nut, but the book makes a point of showing how there were so many forces that would have benefited from Kennedy being killed and removed from office as U.S. President and just how weird the investigation into his assassination was. There's still a ton of things that don't make sense when you read into the "official version" of the story.

You'd think if it was truly just one scumbag that had no connection to the government that there would have been a quick and comprehensive look into the matter that completely and logically explained everything to soothe a nation that just witnessed its leader take a bullet to the head in broad daylight.

Saw an excellent interview with professional wrestler Kota Ibushi who says he hates books because they force images into his brain. I've been thinking about it and laughing for about 3 days now, I love it so much.

This is almost as good as a podcast I once listened to where someone talked about not being able to read because while the voice in his head would start off normal it would increase in volume the longer he read until it was shouting the words.

Who did the interview and what is the name of that podcast?

It was an excerpt from a Japanese interview that did the rounds on wrestling twitter this week. No more to it than that amazing quote.

The shouting anecdote is from an episode of 2 Good Boys, couldn't tell you which one though.