The fear of losing oneself to the animal and the pressure on the children belong to a more mature audience.

I read every one of those MFers when I was like 12.

So is it in my reading level, teacher?

Yes

I actually have one animorphs book from the thrift store. I do like these classic 90s kids books with ultra heavy themes. I might get to this soon since I only have one more goosebumos book left to read in my possession right now !!!

First book of the month - Man's Search for Meaning by Viktor Frankl

Viktor Frankl is a psychotherapist and holocaust survivor, and the main body of the book recounts his experiences in Auschwitz and other concentration camps. The version I have also includes sections focused on his school of psychotherapy, which is called logotherapy.

This book is a quick read - at time harrowing but with an overall optimistic viewpoint - which I think everyone should read. If you're interested in philosophy, existentialism or psychology - there will definitely be something here for you.

Frankl's experiences and viewpoints are so interesting because of his unique position - a first hand account of life in concentration camps from a psychotherapist. While he highlights that he can't be objective, he does a good job of imparting a sense of camp life. He weaves anecdotes with general observations, discussing his mental state and that of his fellow camp mates. Some of his observations are very profound and will stick with me.

The only issue I had with the book were the logotherapy sections - I thought these would be interesting but they just dragged on. I understand that these are his psychological theories and he wants to impart them, but the 40 pages on why they are more useful than traditional psycho therapeutic methods really dragged.

Read these last month.

13. Max Brooks - Devolution (@Absurd-Ditties)

14. Genki Kawamura - If Cats Disappeared From the World (@Asandir @RainyG)

15. Thomas Sowell - Black Rednecks and White Liberals

Devolution - this novel absolutely fucking slaps and I'm so glad I picked it up. Set in a cushy high-tech settlement innawoods where tech professionals LARP that they're getting in touch with nature, until a series of natural disasters cut them off from the outside world and a family of motherfuckin sasquatch, having been displaced by the disasters, find the village and begin nightly sieges on the hapless sapiens. Turns out nature isn't a beautiful pure thing but a ten foot ape that'll tear your face off.

I never really considered bigfoot a horror character but this makes a damn fine case that giant, super-violent apes would in fact be QUITE scary. It's such a cliche but I can't remember the last time a novel made my heart race. It's also quite 'cinematic' in a good way, it was no surprise at all to learn this was originally sold as a film concept, it would translate almost seamlessly to the screen & while the inevitable adaptation ought to be killer I found this so vivid and snappy I feel like I've basically already seen the film.

While it's definitely a thriller there's also slightly more to it thematically than I expected, it sets up a load of explicitly Rousseauian ideals and then (only slightly metaphorically) rips their head off, making it a nice unexpected follow off of last month's Blank Slate, and it quite cleverly draws comparisons to real events where people anthropomorphized nature and greatly overestimated how peaceable wild animals are.

There's even a bit theorizing bigfoot's evolutionary trajectory, they descended from a real giant ape and evolved for stealth as humans were their main prey, followed human migration across the beringian land bridge and stayed there up until the modern technology of more recent settlers forced them into hiding.

Also, didn't find out until just now that this guy is the son of Mel Brooks and Mrs. Robinson.

If Cats Disappeared From the World - Yeah I'd say this fucked me up quite sufficiently. This one is quite cinematic too (also has a film adaptation & was written by a producer) though not in as good a way - I think a lot of the humor with the satanic doppelganger would work better on screen. Wish it were longer too, I think the concept here has way more potential but even as a screenplay it would be fairly short and light.

Black Rednecks and White Liberals - a set of long essays covering (in particular) american history and the development of black american culture. I'd imagine Sowell's takes would be characterized as politically incorrect but they're well argued.

20) The Necessity of Finance by Dr. Anthony M Criniti IV

While money management is part of the topic of discussion, the book itself brings to light the importance of studying finance. The author explains that finance should be seen as a topic that is different from economics. Reason being is that while economics focuses on the wealth of regions and nations, finance focuses on the individuals of those regions and nations.

It's an interesting reading and the information is easy to follow. I haven't seen this much energy on a topic related to money management since high school economics. Well, and also since the last time I was able to watch Kramer on CNBC.

UPDATE: I finally got my prizes for the reading challenge and -con event! Got a gift card, a create-your-own game manual, cup, bookmarks and a book.

Done reading these books:

60. Die Kinder der Zeit (Children of Time), Adrian Tchaikovsky, 672 pages

61. Die Kinder der Zeit (Children of Ruin), Adrian Tchaikovsky, 672 pages

62. Das Mädchen, das Geschichten fängt (The Archived), Victoria Schwab, 432 pages

63. Die Stadt und die Stadt (The City & The City), China Mieville, 416 pages

Children of Time:

In this book series, we go an adventure of gigantic scope: humanity is aiming for the stars and has sent out numerous spaceships to several planets to terraform them, unleash monkeys on them and make them go through evolution quickly via the help of a nano-virus. Pioneer of this planned procedure is Doctor Avrana Kern. But humanity is still fighting among themselves and one strong opponent of the terraforming plans has infiltrated the ship and decides to blow the whole thing up. Avrana Kern escapes in a small space ship, the monkeys are lost but the nano virus ends up on the planet and finds another host - spiders. From here, the book is divided into chapters that showcase how the spider civilization develops and chapters that showcase the last human spaceship and their growing desperate efforts to find a new place to live after a global earth war has thrown humanity back into the stone ages, only leaving few humans alive that try to rebuild what's been lost.

Children of Ruin follows the events of the fist one. I liked this one as well but I don't want to spoil anything.

Great books. Seeing the growth of spider civilzation was super interesting and I must give credit for managing to make spiders so compelling that I ended up caring a lot about their outcome.

The Archived:

16 year Mackenzie Bishop has been trained for years by her grandfather to become a Keeper - someone who works for the otherworldy Archive, a sort of library but instead of books, it holds so called Chronicles, bodies that are forever sleeping (atleast that's the plan) and hold all the memories of the dead person. However, some of them wake up sometimes and try to escape, first ending up in the so called Narrows, sort of like long corridors with doors that connect the real world with the Archive and other places. From those places, Keepers must return them to the Archive, sometimes via convincing them with words but often via combat.

Aside from her work as Keeper, Mackenzie also has to deal with her grief, since her younger brother died one year ago in a car accident, the responsible driver got away unidentified. When grief gets too much, she asks one of the librarians, Ronald, to let her see Ben's Chronicle. A Chronicle is just a record and they can't return to life - they quickly become irritated and basically turn hostile and crazy, hence they must be captured by the Keepers.

After moving to a new place with her griefing parents, a Hotel turned into appartments, the cases of outbreaking Chronicles rise and soon after Mackenzie comes across one that somehow seems to of stable mind unlike other Chronicles, Owen. He woke up because he wants to solve the mystery of the murder of his sister - who was killed in the same appartment where Mackenzie lives now. Mackenzie must decide - bend the rules to solve an old murder case - or follow the rules.

Good book. Also has a sequel.

The City & The City:

A murder happened in the city Beszel. Inspector Tyador Borlú starts to investigate what seems to be a normal case until it becomes clear that the murder likely didn't happen in Beszel but in Ul Qoma, Beszel's twin city. The two cities mostly occupy the same space but citizens of both are trained and then forced to actively ignore the other city and its citizens by a higher order going by the name of Breach who appear when a breach of the border occurs, for example when a citizen of Beszel looks too long at a building that only exists in Ul Qoma, etc.

Tyador Borlú must go to Ul Qoma to investigate further - and after being allowed to to so, steps into mysteries that have a huge scope - rumours of a third city hidden between Beszel and Ul Qoma ...

Great book. What impressed me the most is how immersive the book was, I could imagine that place vividly and the anxiety that comes with always being forced to notsee, notsmell, etc. anything from the "other" city.

33: Uglies by Scott Westerfeld

Finished this book on Friday. Recommended by a friend as a brain worm of a series that sticks with you after you read it. It's YA dystopia. I found the book interesting and I'm reading the sequel now. World ended and the new society that came up figures we had all these wars because we were gross to look at so they perform plastic surgery on everyone at 16 years old to make them into weird anime caricature with big eyes and perfect skin. But there's a secret about the surgery they don't want you to know and there are rogue bands of "uglies" living out in the wild who know the truth.

I read both of these right around new years and easily 2 of my favorites from recent sci fi. The premise was pretty interesting and I liked how the spider society was made so different. I didn't want a story about human brain animals having a human society but with gross monster bodies and what we got was really interesting. 2nd book I also enjoyed even though reviewers said was just a repeat but with octopi - I disagree it was an interesting continuation of the story but now with 3 civilizations.

Another of my all time favorites from the last few years. Meiville has a way of writing a story that sticks in your brain long after you read it. I find myself recommending City & the City to many people. In my mind I was imagining this taking place in some weird supernatural Berlin during the cold war - the way he describes the 2 cities as separate but you can tell them apart by clothes and architecture and with seemingly incompatible cultures.

Finished The Millionaire Next Door: The Surprising Secrets of America's Wealthy today.

Solid book. I feel like I already agreed with most of its messaging of being frugal and avoiding an overly consumption-based lifestyle, but it did really impress me by introducing an idea of a PAW (Prodigious Accumulator of Wealth) and a UAW (Under Accumulator of Wealth) and then exploring the various ways that the two different types of people handle their finances and their careers. It was stuff that you would assume to be the case like PAWs not spending money on luxury cars or clothes every year and investing their cash back into their businesses or into the stock market, but it was nice to see it mapped out and back up with lots of cited articles, research studies, and tables/graphs of data. Noticed a lot of similarities in the teachings of financial guru, Dave Ramsey, in this book, so I'm wondering how much, if any, inspiration he drew from it when he was getting started in his radio career in the 1990s.

I marked a lot of passages in this book, so I'll likely be coming back to it over the years for the practical advice it gave. Felt like a companion piece to The Simple Path to Wealth book that I finished last month.

I only read if there is a promise of a Pizza Hut Personal Pan Pizza (tm) in it for me.

I read Freedom by Margaret Atwood. I was a little disappointed by this one...

Freedom is part of a series from Penguin Books called "Vintage Minis". In the series, some of Penguins most popular authors talk about some of the key motifs in what it is to be human. I was excited to try one of these out, as the series features some great authors and I love the idea of reading their thoughts on big ideas.

Unfortunately, this book is just a cobbled together mess of previous writing from Atwood. The sections aren't even well connected - it starts with an article she wrote for the Guardian newspaper and then goes on to give you 100 pages of the handpaids tale... One hundred pages?????? Those pages barely connect with the theme of freedom in any meaningful way, and the exceprt is so long you might as well just read the book? And then it finishes on ten pages from Hag Seed... which apart from being set in a prison, say nothing about freedom.

I don't know if every book in the series is like this... but this didn't endear me to the series. If you've read a good one let me know, otherwise I probably won't be trying these again.

Nearly forgot to post about this one!

I read the Color Purple by Alice Walker.

Man... This is an amazing book. I find it a little hard to pin down exactly what I loved about it - I think it has something to do with the way Walker weaves spirituality into the book in a really down to earth way. The "God" Celie ends up drawing strength from feels to me a lot more relatable than most representations I see in books.

The story of the novel follows Celie, a poor black woman living in 1930's in the U.S. - who endures terrible abuse from a young age. (If sexual/psychological violence upset you, the start of the book may be difficult). The book follows her life, mainly through her prayers/letters to God as she moves from a place of profound hopelessness to a place of... contentment I guess? This is a story where you find the moments of happiness and that has to satisfy you.

The barrier to entry for me was the language - I had difficulty parsing the colloquialisms that Celie uses. This may be in part because I am not from the U.S. - once I got used to phonetically reading the words it became a lot easier, but the first 50 pages were tough.

I think this might be a book that's assigned in high schools - so it might be cheesy to recommend it so strongly - but I really feel this is a great piece of fiction to have read. It speaks to how... even in terrible circumstances, you can find contentment in just being alive. That sometimes that's enough, and for some, that's all they have. I found something powerful in that, though I'm not sure I have the words to express it properly.

34: Pretties by Scott Westerfeld

2nd book in the series I started. This one I was not a huge fan of. The main character gets turned into a Pretty and with that comes cringey slang and the author turned the teen love YA trope dial to 11. But I'm already this deep so I picked up the 3rd installment and I like it better than the 2nd book here.

I'm now 4 from my 2nd goal. oops.

My Tricky autobiography just came in the mail! One of my favourite artists!!

36: Extras by Scott Westerfeld

Finished the 3rd book this morning and I liked it more than the first 2. It was darker and not as full of teen angst and cringey dialogue as the 2nd installment. Downloading the last book now

Done reading these books:

64. In ewiger Schuld (Fool Me Once) , Harlan Coben, 416 pages

65. Das Buch der Spiegel (The Book of Mirrors), E.O. Chirovici, 384 pages

66. Das Graveyard Buch (The Graveyard Book), Neil Gaiman, 312 pages

67. Zehnter Dezember (Tenth of December: Stories), George Saunders, 272 pages

68. Die Tribute von Panem - Das Lied von Vogel und Schlange (The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes), Suzanne Collins, 608 pages

Fool Me Once:

Maya, a pilot and ex-military is shocked to see footage of her husband Jason on the Nanny-Cam she recently got from her friend Emily. The reason for that is simple - Jason has been shot and killed two weeks ago, presumably by two armed robbers. Maya confronts her Nanny who claims that she can't see anyone on the footage and manages to steal the SD-card with the footage. Now Maya starts investigating and steps into a net of connected murders, all while having to ask herself if she can trust her sanity due to dealing from PTSD from her last military mission and her fateful decision.

Decent book. Kind of reads like a B-movie action thriller but it was alright.

The Book of Mirrors:

Peter Katz recieves the first part of a manuscript for a book - the author is Richard Flynn, a man nearing death due to lung cancer and earger to reveal the truth surrounding the murder of a famous pychology professor, Joseph Wieder. The manusript ends just before the final act and Katz hires the reporter John Keller to investigate further - from there on chapters are told from his perspective. One of the first people of interest is Laura Baines, math and psychology student and alleged girlfriend of Richard Flynn and also Joseph Wieder's assistant. More people are interviewed for testimonies and one thing becomes clear - all of them differ in various ways from Richard Flynn's record.

Great book. Deals with themes like reliability of memories and treatment and abuse of psychiatric patients.

The Graveyard Book:

A man named Jack turns out to be an ice cold killer, murdering a whole family - except a one and a half year old baby that manages to escape. The young boy gets to a graveyard and gets adopted by the ghost couple Mr and Mrs Owens, who raise him there and name him Nobody, since he can't leave this safe place - becaus Jack will never give up on killing him too. Story is divided in chapters that are sort of like mini stories that show Nobody Owens life and interactions with other ghosts and various mysterious creatures like ghouls, etc.

Beautiful book. I think I say this all the time but Gaiman is a wonderful storyteller.

Tenth of December: Stories:

Collection of short stories. Ranging from a mother pretending that her life and that of her children is wonderful to compensate for her own abusive childhood, to prison inmates getting injected with various drugs designed to increase and decrease the love that people feel for someone else to a young soldier being left by his wife for another man, losing his home and being rejected by his family members and breaking about losing everything that meant home to him, etc.

Good book. Not all stories resonated with me but the ones that did impressed me a lot. Reminded me a bit of Night in The Woods, with the stories showing you uncomfortable realities that many face in their daily lifes.

The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes:

Prequel to the Hunger Games books, with the protagonist being the 18 years old Coriolanus Snow. I enjoyed this one but it kind of weakens in the last third and despite the length of the book the ending seems rushed. Was still cool to have an insight into how the Hunger Games that Kantniss particated in evolved into the horrible spectacle present in the trilogy.

"Learn Norwegian with Nils"

I finally managed to get through the book. You learn Norwegian by reading a story about a "nisse" (some sort of leprechaun from the Norwegian mythology, they help Santa Clause to keep an eye on children: If one misbehaves during the year -> NO PRESENTS!) who comes to life and wants to travel. I guess I will have to read through it again because of course you also have to learn a lot of grammar, and of course Norwegian grammar is different from English and German grammar while at the same time closely related to both, so it can get quite confusing to determine the correct word order in main clauses, sub clauses, etc.

The funniest thing about learning a different langauge is that you also learn a lot about your own language.

Most recent read: "Clockwork Orange" by Anthony Burgess

Interesting read. I found the first maybe 50 pages tough to get through - the Nasdtat lingo takes a while to pick up and it took a while to get into the mindset. That part was a bit of a slog, I ended up rereading a few sections over and over to make sure I was understanding it right.

The book itself is interesting, with some great commentary on UK society. I've seen some argue that the best points the book makes are about free will - for me, the satire on psychological and political thought around crime were much more interesting.

While I do think the book has some merit, I think the film is nearly as good? I would need to rewatch it, but as far as I can remember, everything in the book is pretty well covered in Kubrick's version. The film medium also suits it well - the slang feels more natural spoken aloud and you can pick up the intonation a bit.

If you've never seen the movie, or are really interested in checking out the source material for it - this is a decent read.

Go for it. I think one of our readers has already done so a few pages back. I've seen commercials for the show and was wondering about it's origins; now I know.

I was trying to figure out why that author looked familiar. Scrolled back up and realized why. My nephew had to read this during the fall; he didn't care for it but it was for a grade.

I absolutely hated everything I was assigned to read in school just by the mere fact it was required by a teacher. I think it's a nice little introduction to dystopia sci fi which caught on in YA in the last many years. The first 2 books aren't as violent and frightening as something like The Hunger Games but they're still a look at a not great future. 3rd book gets violent though and a major plot device is self harm. I was not prepared for that hard of a twist in style. Yeah major plastic surgery at 16, rigid adherence to average looks whatever some people rebel against that kind of thing then he leans way into body horror and self harm in Specials...

One YA book I read in school that really stuck with me was Feed by MT Anderson. Uglies was suggested to me as that sort of series - something you will think about after you've digested it even years later.

Shit, how many books have I posted about? 2? Uhm, yeah, I'm gonna have to add some. The Book Thief by Markus Zusak, Anne Frank's diary, Maggie: a Girl of the Streets And Other Stories, which is a short story collection published in East Berlin. Oh, and The Alienist!

I'm gonna post some of my thoughts real quick. The whole reason I wasn't updating was because I had tried multiple times and couldn't sit down and write my thoughts down.

BOOK 3: The Alienist by Caleb Carr

A thriller set in 19th century New York. It's fairly fun and the historical descriptions are really interesting. However, the characters are pretty one-sided and there's a lack of real adversity for a lot of it, almost being "We had trouble and then we waited a couple days and then we picked up something new" at moments. If you want a fun ride through New York in that time period, with some interesting psychology bits but nothing too deep, this is a book for you. To be honest, I might be selling it a bit shorter now, 'cause I can't remember it as well as when I finished it.

BOOK 4: Maggie, a Girl of the Streets and Other Stories

A collection of short stories by various 19th century American authors, including Herman Melville, Davy Crockett, Charles Wadell Chesnutt (the first African-American short story writer), Nathaniel Hawthorne and Edgar Allan Poe. It's got a nice amount of variety, but the stories aren't really connected thematically. However, it's a nice showcase of different kinds of stories. I particularly liked Two Temples by Melville, which was a cool personal story set in America and London, Miggles by Bret Harte, which I liked for its atmosphere and it's fun brand of weirdness and the titular Maggy, a Girl of the Streets, for its surprisingly modern depiction of domestic violence and the way it shapes relationships.

I'll talk about the other books too, and I'm still reading. I'm not sure I'll reach my goal, but I'll try my hardest.

21) Pivotal Moments by Susanne Birgersdotter

Like #Girlboss, Pivotal Moments follows the author through her journey through life. Despite dropping out of school, she powered through life working and excelling at every job obtained. Things took off for her when she drew up ideas for an app to help her daughter with math. From apps to public speaking, she experienced a lot of hardships along the way.

Each hardship was learning experience that she cherished and passed on to others so they won't make the same mistakes she did when starting out. It's a quick read for some and was interesting. I think one of the things I enjoyed most was how the author didn't paint a rosy picture perfect tale.

22) Reading Articles on Proper SEO

Like the title suggests, a great bit of articles were read on seo tactics and what not.

36: Extras by Scott Westerfeld

I think it was my favorite out of the series. That 3rd book had a plot which was based on using self harm to keep control was definitely not a good look. The city Aya lives in is somewhere in what is today Japan. They're obsessed with popularity and everyone is ranked on how popular their personal youtube/twitter like channel is. The more popular you are the more social rank and privilege you get. You get nicer things and a bigger apartment. Everyone has a personal floating camcorder that follows them around getting constant footage for you to use later to upload to the net and get hits and popularity.

The actual plot is also refreshing. it revolves around finding a dark secret and the narrative you can create when you share the story with the whole world. There's a cool twist at the conclusion that emphasises that point. Truth, betrayal and honesty are all dealt with pretty well. Plus Tally arrives eventually to blow some shit up.

Do graphic novels/Comics count? Probably not....If not, I picked up Hitchhikers guide to the galaxy a month or two ago and I've never gotten around to it. Maybe I will now.

The Inugami Curse by Seishi Yokomizo

This is a recent translation of a popular 1970's Japanese murder mystery/crime novel. The story is set in the 1940's, and follows a private investigator as he tries to unravel the mystery surrounding a wealthy businessman's strange will. I won't say much more as I wouldn't want to spoil the story.

As "classic" murder mystery novels go - this is pretty good. It follows the same type of formula as an Agatha Christie Novel, and suffers the same weak points as those novels. If you enjoy 20th century murder mystery, you'll probably like this.

I thought the translation was well done - it read quite faithfully while also having enough context for Western readers who would not be familiar with this period in Japanese history and society. One of the mysteries does center on how Japanese writing works though, I had to think for a second to realise what it meant!

The only thing that surprised me about the book was some of the themes and topics it covers. For something published in the early 70's (and possibly available in other formats before then), it quite openly talks about gay relationships and sexual assault (They're not main points for the mystery). Maybe its just my sheltered view of the world, but I didn't really think they were discussed in novels at the time. That said, its not like a very nuanced or forward looking view is presented on either topic.

I probably wouldn't be rushing to read another detective Kindaichi book - it was an enjoyable read but nothing that blew me away. That said, I think another one has recently been translated, so if I saw that somewhere I'd consider picking it up if the synopsis catches my attention.

They count. Included them myself in past challenges.

I'm pretty sure this was present pre-1970s in other story telling mediums. One such medium is graphic novels/manga. Read a book on the history of it and saw that there weren't many if any limits on subject matter.