I don't know how popular the topic is overall, but Yukio Mishima's Confessions of a Mask, published 1949, is largely a biographical account of what it was like to be gay in imperial Japan, was a highly acclaimed novel right from the start and made Yukio internationally famous.

And yeah comics count, as per the OP, alternate formats like that or audio books count if you want them to. Hitchhiker's Guide is an excellent read also.

Done reading these books:

69. Das Lied des Achill (The Song of Achilles), Madeline Miller, 416 pages

70. Der Pate (The Godfather), Mario Puzo, 640 pages

71. Ich bin Legende (I Am Legend), Richard Matheson, 398 pages

72. Carrie, Stephen King, 304 pages

73. Untergrundkrieg (Underground: The Tokyo Gas Attack and the Japanese Psyche), Haruki Murakami, 400 pages

The Song of Achilles:

Told from the perspective of prince Patroclus, who ends up being banished from his home and exiled to Phthia after getting in a fight with another boy and accidently killing him. There, he lives under King Peleus and his son, Achilles. Patroclus keeps to himself, even more so after rumours about the reason for his banishment rise. But Achilles notices him regardless and soon they end up friends and over the years, more.

Achilles is destined to be the greatest hero of them all - but all greek heroes meet a tragic fate and even clutching sand out of the hour glass won't change that. The fight for the kidnapped Helen of Sparta and siege of Troy is where Achilles is destined to rise to eternal fame - and die. Thetis, his goddess mother, insists that he fights in this war as this is his only chance of becoming a legend - otherwise his whole life will crumble into averageness, not something that the proud warrior Achilles would ever accept.

Beautiful book. I am familiar with the story of Patroclus and Achilles so I knew how things would end but I still immensly enjoyed this telling of their intwined fate.

The Godfather:

Vito Andolini, a poor boy from the village Corleone must escape the murderers of his father, as they plan to get him too. After escaping, as a tribute he changes his last name to Corleone. The book details his rise to one of the most powerful mafia bosses in New York. All is well until the Corleones are asked to partake in selling of drugs - the Don refuses and soon after gets shot multiple times. He manages to survive and the Corleones have to play their cards wisely to not get destroyed in the imminent mafia war.

Great book. Was super immersed in that book. Probably going to check out the movie as well at some point.

I am Legend:

Robert Neville is likely the last human on earth - as everybody else is dead, or worse - undead, turned into vampires that come out at night. At day, they are paralysed - a perfect opportunity for Robert to hunt them each day, just to return to his lonely home and barricade his house for the night. Right from the start of the book his despair is obvious - the situation and the loss of his wife and his daughter brought him to the brink of madness. Under emotional stress he still seaks out to find the origin of what turns peolpe into vampires - and a potential cure.

Good book. Before reading this, a few years ago, I have seen the movie with Will Smith that is loosely based on this novel.

Carrie:

Carrie White doesn't lead an easy life by any means: she is relentlessly bullied by her classmates, one of the major events is them throwing tampons at her when she gets her first period at the age of 16. One reason for her being an outsider is her being forced to pray at school by her fanatical mother. All that stress bottles up and Carries telekenesis powers break through - they did so for the first time when she was three but now she starts to learn controlling them.

Unfortunately, a cruel prank at the prom breaks Carrie - and her powers go rampant and the small town she lives in will never be the same.

Stephen Kings first book - and it's good. The story contains interviews and testimonies of people involved in the catastrophic events which makes this a fast paced read.

Underground: The Tokyo Gas Attack and the Japanese Psyche:

In this book, Haruki Murakami takes a closer look at the events of the Aum Shinrikyo sarin gas attack on the Tokyo subway in 1995. He does so by doing interviews with people who suffered from the attacks but survived them and in some cases the closest relatives from the ones who died.

At the beginning of the book, Murakami explains why he finds that important - because he is not happy that the ones who committed the attacks get showcased in TV and humanised while the victims are just names mentioned in passing. Real people who had their life ended or permanently burdened with longterm health issues. In particular the story of one young woman who fell in a coma for months and suffered severe brain damage and was fighting with all her willpower to regain some fragments of her former normality was very touching to read, as well as one of a (at the time of the attack) pregnant widow showing old tapes of the deceased father to her daughter.

In addition, the book also has some interview with members of the sect Aum Shinrikyosarin. Their perspective is very interesting to get an insight in how the religious group worked and how over time Aum Shinrikyosarin changed into a more violent version of itself. Some of the interviewed former members were far removed from these events and still can't find balance between the Aum Shinrikyosarin they found solace in and the Aum Shinrikyosarin that also lead to the horrid terror attacks.

Between the interviews with people who suffered from the attacks and the ones with sect members Murakami talks briefly about what reasonings he sees for a group like Aum Shinrikyosarin surfacing - how many people feel lost in Japans society and seek a place where their sprituality is appreciated and not only their workforce.

Great book. I am thankful that Murakami went through a lot of work to give the victims a voice, to give them a change of not being forgotten.

That's interesting - I had never heard of that! If I ever see a copy somewhere I'll definitely check it out. Expand the cultural understanding a bit!

Finished reading Mary Shelley's Frankenstein.

(Not the same book I read, but I don't find the cover of my version online)

Another classic done. And as with almost all classics I have to say that I'd rather watch/read a modern adaption of the story. The writing style can get annoying at times. People take so damn long to get to the point! They don't say "I cried" they say "when I beheld the scenery of my beloved home town with it's mountains and valleys and the clean air, my heart filled with joy, and I thought back to the days of my childhood, which I spent in joy and happiness with my cousins, and tears gushed from my eyes". Damn.

I'm really slacking on my reading these days. @Lilaa recommended me "Jeu Mortel" but I've yet to see the book in the library (I suppose requests take a while) and I'm a bit cheap to buy a book whose content I don't know if I can read or not.

If anyone else has updates for August get 'em in soon

@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

Reverse Design: Super Mario World by Patrick Holleman

I got this for a friend who is designing platformer games, but decided to read through it anyway. It was quite a refreshing, and insightful look into game design decisions that went into SMW, and can be of use to any aspiring game developer seeking to get their foot into platform level design.

37: Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee by Dee Brown

Finished this morning. Really depressing read but important history they glossed over in school. I wish they had more and longer first hand accounts from the Native American tribes written of in the book. Most of it felt like a dry history lesson with short quotes here and there. I did find it compelling and hard to put down.

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

July (4)

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

30: The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood

31: The Sandman Audible by Neil Gaiman

32: Axiom's End by Lindsay Ellis

August (5)

33: Uglies by Scott Westerfeld

34: Pretties by Scott Westerfeld

35: Specials by Scott Westerfeld

36: Extras by Scott Westerfeld

37: Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee by Dee Brown

Books read in August:

Man's Search for Meaning by Viktor Frankl

The Color Purple by Alice Walker

Freedom by Margaret Atwood

A ClockWork Orange by Anthony Burgess

The Inugami Clan by Seishi Yokomizo

Good month of reading - hopefully can keep it up through a busy September!

I finally finished my Fruits Basket manga I couldn't remember where I left off so i started from scratch.

I was going to move onto the games of thrones series. However.... And feel free to judge me.....the new instalment of twilight, midnight sun has come out so I've added that to my list in front of GoT.

Been busy doing side hustle work this month, nothing new for me.

I'm almost finished Astonishing the Gods by Ben Okri and The Coming of Conan the Cimmerian by Robert E Howard. Both have very different feels, which is why I switched in the first place and also what's taking me so long. Come Be My Light suffers this as well. So... Unless I finished a book and forgot about it, no movement on my part

august

17. Stoner by John Williams

18.The Power of Kindness by Piero Ferrucci

i finally picked up where i left off on stoner probably over a year ago just to be able to say i finished it but i actually enjoyed it a lot more than i did last year. i dont know if its my perspective or if the second half of the books makes the fucked up shit in this guys life more and more dramatic until certain aspects climax. its serene and almost transcendental in a way how it describes his entire life up to his death. i think the way he sort of has a victory in his life with katherine is really strange and it almost feels like reading something more bdsm oriented as this guy decides to keep living a shitty life and stay stationary at his university teaching job, it's interesting how it's almost like the antithesis of some sort of early era self help/wealth book that talks about opportunity and making decisions and being motivated and this guy in stoner in a way is just like yeah i'd rather fucking rot, but i suppose he did pretty well at teaching and enjoyed it but its puzzling why he seems so paralyzed

trying to start reading faster so i can wipe out some text books i have had a bookmark in for way too long and then get through enough books to get closer to my secret goal of 30 which i might not get close to if i get too sidetracked or sacrifice reading time with other stuff,, life can be a bitch wish i could cut out sleep some times

Get that money brostilda. Do you have an audible account?

Negative, most of my work involves editing, so I don't have much chance to listen to anything while I'm going, not anything I can pay attention to anyway, I usually just put a stream on but when I'm editing audio I usually silence everything in the background.

Dang. Want I just sit next to your bed and read you a couple pages every night?

Where did you get this? I'm very interested but not so much in the 30£ kindle asking price. Interested in his Half Life and FF7 books too, but the idea of spending 90£ on three books can gtfo.

Are you aware you're an author's wet dream? Buying and actually finishing the whole series even when you didn't seem to enjoy the original or even (some of) the follow ups that much. You're the reason absolutely every genre novel is a 3+ book saga and amazon loves promoting the first book of a series.

I loved the book way more, felt like Alex had more depth and I loved the language conceit, felt like I was fluent in Nasdat and enjoyed the few chapters it takes to figure out the words.

By far the most notable difference from the film though is that the final chapter is completely absent - Kubrick's copy of the book ended on chapter 20, with Alex being "cured" without the final chapter where he goes back to his violent ways only to improve on his own terms. That last chapter really clicks the whole novel into place for me.

Interesting take.

What do you think he should / could've done? I felt the point of it was to highlight the quiet triumph of stoic perseverance thru an imperfect life. There are infinite people living that & the fact is they missed their opportunities and just don't want the upheaval required to undo their lives, if the option is even available. On top of that the real perspective doesn't even kick in until it's all already gone. Sort of like Kierkegaard, life can only be understood backwards; but must be lived forwards. William Stoner is a microcosmic homage to a billion unremembered lives.

It reminds me of this scene from Synecdoche, New York and a monologue toward the end of the film: "what was once before you an exciting, mysterious future, is now behind you. Lived, understood, disappointing. You realize you are not special. You have struggled into existence, and are now slipping silently out of it. This is everyone's experience. Every single one. The specifics hardly matter. Everyone's everyone."

I have my sources. Interested?

I'd say I had an excuse with Uglies because it was recommended to me by a friend based on the whole series arc being good, but looking over my reading list especially grouped together by month I can tell I'll read all of a series in a row or even multiple books by the same author. I find it difficult to return to a series after a break because I forget so many details if they're not fresh in my mind so I'd rather keep my head in the same world.

Maybe I'm a completionist?

I find Amazon will recommend me books that are in the middle of other series like Book 2 or Book 3...and usually aren't even series I had started.

I do give up eventually. I tapped out pretty deep into the Sword of Truth series (amazingly there are still novels being published from it!). It did take a lot. I was not happy with it after about the 4th or 5th book and I think I read 12 of them before I gave up.

Ultimately I have to blame my need to complete a series on Terry Pratchett because I got totally hooked on Discworld years ago and was compelled by some higher power to seek out and read every last one of those and there were 40. I have almost the whole series in paperback.

I finished Drive-Thru Dreams: A Journey Through the Heart of America's Fast-Food Kingdom by Adam Chandler today.

This book made for some nice and breezy summer reading. It basically served as a history of the growth of the American fast food industry from its humble beginnings in places like Wichita, Kansas to becoming the towering international behemoth that it is today while also exploring surrounding topics like how cars developed to accommodate drivers that increasingly went to drive-through portions of restaurants instead of eating at home and the rise of brand Twitter with a focus on that Nuggs for Carter story that blew up a few years ago.

This book was neither a blind love letter to fast food or a total condemnation of the business. It stated that fare from places like Burger King obviously isn’t the most healthy dining option and that the business has a lot of unsavory business practices while also celebrating a unique American institution that has now taken over the world. Glad I finished the one.

🌮🍕🌭

Ha, thanks for the offer, but I should get some heavy reading in this month. Irving Fishers "A Theory of Interest" is on the list. Nothing like a 500 page 90 year old book about finance to shake the rust off.

Rama Series by Arthur C Clarke and Gentry Lee.

Humans discover an alien vessel and explore it and humanity is forever changed. Humans discover new technology, new alien races and new interactions.

It only took me about nine months or so to open a book, but I finally have a book to add to my finished list.

Last night I finished ATLA: The Rise of Kyoshi. I thoroughly enjoyed the book, but it did this thing throughout the book of getting to something really interesting, jumping to a completely different thing, and then a few paragraphs later jumping back to the exact spot of the really interesting thing. Once I got used to that the book flowed like a river of wine. I plan on starting the sequel ATLA: The Shadow of Kyoshi tonight, hopefully that's a bit more consistent in the writing.

LITFAM UPDATE: NUMBER OF THE BEAST EDITION

Not sure if you've heard but apparently it's still 2020, we're only like 66.6% done after all that effort. Still many literary nights ahead in this global war of word consumption.

Good progress as usual. @Kiwi became the third person to become the first person to hit their goal this year. @Boss has slain his official goal but his dank, dark secret one still lurks ominously under the floorboards.

Meanwhile @Malachy is just about to hit his second goal for the first time just to show off and @TopazAzul is right on his heels.

Top Fam

1. @Asandir (14)
2. @RainyG, @FoAngel, @Kiwi, @Malachy (5 each)

Mistakes will be swept under the rug of time.

@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

Will include these in the next update, hopefully. Also congrats on another book @Atlas, slow pace beats no pace.

Suppose that's an even better strat, bait them into buying book 3 because it's discounted and then they have to get 1 and 2, and probably think they got a deal when they wouldn't have bought the series at all otherwise.

When you look at achievement stats on games it's clear the overwhelming majority of players never finish most games and I imagine the same is true of novels and especially book series, amazon impulse buys have probably severely skewed the books bought to books read ratio.

Then there's me who's only read the first entry even of books I nominally love. I do wish I had that kind of stamina to plow through a whole series in a row, but I have a kind of mortality awareness where I always think of the fact I'll only ever be able to read a finite amount of books & so need to optimize my choices. I can theoretically get a broader experience by reading the first book of five series than five books of one.

I think maybe the only series I've ever finished is the Edge Chronicles, I got up to date but even then it had newer entries that I never read. iirc it was three trilogies with each focusing on a different character of the same lineage in a Star Wars way, then one later final book that tied it all together that I never read.

I think the book was excellent and as harsh as I felt the plot was all the reasons you listed are exactly why it is good, but I guess when I think about or see this things my mind goes to the fantastical possibilities, like why wouldn’t he run away with katherine, get more involved with his daughter, confront his wife’s clear problems, at the same time it’s not super realist to think that way but that’s what I guess I sort of want for stoner because his perseverance made his seem so deserving of that victory and for life to seem sweeter as it is wrapped, even though I think him dying holding a book and it just becoming unclear is kind of profound and really funny tongue in cheek kind if meta lol, but like that video clip and the book together make me feel like I’m facing an all too familiar theme of life that while I know is really real, good to confront, and in it’s own way a beautiful and cohesive sentiment on what our lives are limited to, it feels like it’s coming from a strikingly decaffeinated world, or maybe just makes me feel decaffeinated lmao. I should prowl this thread for more recommendations because it was a good experience to read something that wasn’t just already laying around the house

I do remember reading this during the summer before my junior year of high school. It was required for my AP US History class. Maybe my teachers were cool enough to expose us to a decent amount of literature that showed how brutal the US government could be to the indigenous peoples in North America.

It's been roughly 11 years since that point for me, so I don't remember a whole lot about it, but I do recall thinking it was dry and kind of boring back in the day so I'm sure you're not off on that assessment. That's not necessarily a bad thing, though. Sometimes an honest account of what happened is needed...

My school didn't even offer AP history. We had an AP math class and an AP english class senior year. In college I majored in History and Political Science but I was a little bored of revolutionary war, civil war and the world wars so I took classes on international politics and history. History of the UN, modern politics of southeast Asia, post-colonial India and Pakistan and whatnot. I took the bare minimum of US history in college and that consisted of a 1000 level class with an instructor who literally popped a History Channel VHS into a TV each class.

It was also written in 1970 and I was pleasantly surprised how well it holds up today. If the worst I can say is it was a little dry that's a pretty good outcome. Can't believe that 50 years on it's still 'new' to some of us.

Finished reading Tetris: The Games People Play by Brian "Box" Brown this morning!

I normally don't read a lot of graphic novels, but this one caught my eye when I was looking at what was available on my local library's website, so I decided to give it a hot and it definitely didn't let me down. This was a masterful comic book that utilized a minimalist drawing style and limited color palette (black, yellow, and white) to tell the entire story of Tetris from its creation in the 1980s in the U.S.S.R. by a computer engineer named Alexey Pajitnov to the lengthy legal battles that took place over its publishing rights in various countries across the world to its place in modern gaming. In addition to this, the book also explored the idea of playing games as a whole and why human beings feel the need to indulge in frivolous "fun" activities that don't seem critical to our survival. I know that sounds kind of pretentious, but Brown does an amazing job of keeping things focused, fun, and as unpretentious as possible.

I do wish the book was a bit longer as I breezed through its 253 pages in about two days since there's not an incredible amount of text in any of the panels. It would have been nice to see a more in-depth accounting of what Pajitnov did after he secured his legacy with "The Tetris Company" in the 1990s, but I guess some would have considered that to be unnecessary fluff since the focus really is on how the game got started and became the smash hit for the Gameboy that we all know and love.

Highly suggest you read this if you enjoy Tetris in any way, shape, or form. I would rank this up there with some of the true graphic novel classics like Maus or Bone.