On this note... if I remind you at the end of this month, can I revise my goal up? I think I've gotten into a good reading groove and I want to challenge myself! @jackho

My first book of June was 12 Years a Slave by Solomon Northup. My bookclub decided to read this before everything kicked off in the U.S., so it has unintentionally ended up being somewhat topical.

This is an insightful account of one man's experience of abduction and slavery. It is very much "an account" - while the story is exciting at time, the purpose of the book is to record honestly what he went through and the business of slavery in Louisiana.

That said - I really feel everyone should read this book. I "knew" things about plantation slavery before reading this but reading the story of someone who has had their liberty taken really drove the emotion home.

I don't think anymore needs to be said - everyone should have some understanding of this period and this is a great account to do so.

May has been unusually harsh in the reading realm. Thought I could finish the book I started reading but things didn't progress as I would have liked. So it got ditched and I began reading another book of which I'm reading through a lot faster than the previous. Hope to have something to report by the end of the week outside of online articles.

I read the Dilbert Principle when I was in high school; a much needed break read at the time. I read the comics as much as I could and enjoyed the TV show during the brief time it was aired.

25: Neuromancer by William Gibson

This is the first in a trilogy that I'm not sure I'm in the mind to finish at this time. I wanted to like this book but I never did get into it. The world is burning and a cyberpunk dystopia just doesn't have the same pull it used to. high school me would have absolutely loved this.

Since I was listening to the audio when I was driving home this evening I didn't notice that the story ended and an afterward by Jack Womack began until he started talking about the author, William Gibson. I was surprised to find that the audio continued to that but stranger things have happened (See: the afterward to the really shitty Peter Cowden novel i read in January).

I've decided that I don't like Forwards or Afterwards in the books I read. I would rather allow the book speak for itself. I haven't yet found my understanding being any better after having some literary icon phone in an explainer to put a story into the modern context.

I've dropped the ball quite a bit. I still haven't picked up a book for almost 3 months. I should be able to get back into soon as winter is upon us here in Oz so that should make for some delightfully lazy-keep-warm-in-bed reading.

I've not been touching any books lately. I've found I tend to rotate hobbies, going all in and only playing games for a couple of months, then only watching TV shows, then only reading etc rather than keeping a balance throughout the year.

I did start a couple of manga series, and I haven't counted comics on here before, but want to post about them somewhere so here's as good as anywhere. They're both horror series by the same guy, Shuzo Oshimi.

The first, Happiness, is probably the more conventional, given it's a vampire series. What really stands out more than anything else is how well Oshimi handles motion. I didn't question it while reading, but thinking back the thing that stuck with me most was how his vampires move. Extremely unnatural, and being able to portray that in still images is hugely impressive. It's just nice to see vampires without any of the sugar coating. They're animalistic and creepy as fuck, and the protagonist's fight to supress his new urges has big junkie withdrawal vibes. Generally makes looking like a vampire seem like a really bad time, which is what I want out of the genre.

The second I picked up because I was itching for more and couldn't find volume 2 of Happiness in stock anywhere. It's Inside Mari, a bodyswap story that promises a horror twist, but at the end of the first volume it hasn't really delivered on that yet. Premise is Very Anime. Creepy otaku college drop out has been casually stalking a high school girl he sees at a convenience store for months, until one day she catches him following her, and the next thing he knows he's waking up in her house and in her body.

It feels like more of a slow burn that Happiness, it's floating the idea that, as his body is continuing on as if he'd never left it, he's effectively a murderer as this girl's conciousness has disappeared. Will give the next volume a shot but when I'd heard "body swap horror" I was hoping for more actual body horror stuff, or playing up the idea of losing your identity and the body dysmorphia that it'd come with, that sort of thing. Will keep going since that potential is still there, but it's the lesser of the two for now.

Done reading these books:

26. Die Ladenhüterin (Convenience Store Woman), Sayaka Murata, 145 pages

27. Moshi Moshi, Banana Yoshimoto, 304 pages

28. Satoru und das Geheimnis des Glücks (The Travelling Cat Chronicles), Hiro Arikawa, 240 pages

29. Verdächtige Geliebte (The Devotion of Suspect X), Keigo Higashino, 320 pages

Convenience Store Woman:

Keiko is a 36 year old woman. She has no children and was never in a relationship. Since she was young she always struggled to fit onto society and caused uproar with some of her unconventional behaviours - like suggesting to eat a dead bird or punching two kids who were fighting to stop the fight.

When she became 19 years old, she started to work in a convenience store and found that place to help her fit in - the clear instructions of the work and how to greet customers and her striking ability to subtly copy speech behaviours of her co-workers make her daily life easier.

However, both her family and friends want her to get a "proper" job, get married. But Keiko lives for the convenience store.

Great book. Theme is fitting in society and repercussions for refusing to do so and finding your own niche where you can be happy. I was interested in this one after @RainyG mentioned it. What he wrote is a great summary of the themes in the book.

Moshi Moshi:

Yoshie is a twenty year old woman. Tragedy has struck her and her mom recently, as her father, a musician, decided to commit suicide together with a mysterious woman. The book describes Yoshie's attempt at a new chapter of her life by moving to Shimo-kitazawa, first alone, then moving together with her mother. Dreams of her father trying to call her haunt her often, as coping with death and the uncertainty of the circumstances while trying to move on take a toll. Regardless, Yoshie manages to find joy in the new city, learns to appreciate Shimo-kitazawa as a place to call home and finally regains some inner peace.

Good book. Story sort of moves on slowly and some repetition is also present but over all a pleasant read. Also naming yourself Banana after the Red Banana Flower is pretty cool.

The Travelling Cat Chronicles:

A story in parts told from the perspective of the former stray cat Nana. Nana was hit by a car and suffered a broken leg. The young man Satoru, who previously gave him food sometimes, takes him home until the broken leg is healed. When that time arrives, Nana decides to stay with Satoru.

5 years later, Satoru and Nana go on a journey together as Satoru is looking for someone to take care of Nana. Along the way, they meet with friends of Satoru, each meetup also features a flashback into Satoru's life when he met those friends and what they experienced together. But as all things end so does the journey eventually - and Nana doesn't know that this is their last journey together.

Beautiful book. Very touching tale of pets and their impact on our lifes.

The Devotion of Suspect X:

Yasoku is a single mother, as she ended her relationship with her abusive husband Togashi years ago. She has moved multiple times to escape him but he has found her again. Things turn for the worst when he visits her appartment and attacks her daughter. In fear, Yasoku ends up strangling the man. Her neighbour, the genius math teacher Ishigami who secretly loves her, quickly finds out what happened and offers to create an alibi for her.

The police officer Kusanagi struggles to solve the case - the alibi of Yasoku and her daughter is not perfect but not suspicious either - and no other suspect exists. Kusanagi has no choice but to ask his old friend Yukawa, the physician, for help. Yukawa and Ishigami are friends too and Yukawa struggles as his suspicions about Ishigami rise.

Great book. The murder is clear from the beginning but the path to the full truth is great.

This is mad - I picked up "If Cats Disappeared from the World" by Genki Kamawura based on your review a few weeks back - and I'm reading it right now. What a weird coincidence.

I'm really glad you liked "Convenience Store Woman", you really summed up the story elements better than I was able to! It's definitely an interesting read - I think Murata has a great way of cutting to the heart of societal issues in an interesting narrative way.

Some of the other books you mentioned here sound interesting, will try to check them out!

Sure thing. Also, fwiw, when replying you might want to remove the @ tags from the quote or else everyone gets a notification for your post.

Welcome to the weeb book club. I picked up both of these books as well based on both of your posts, nearly finished Cats last month but I've been more into nonfiction lately. I appreciate the Japanese tendency to keep novels short.

Have you tried any of his other books? I read God's Debris a couple years ago (it's short) and absolutely loved it. You can get PDFs of it quite easily.

Yeah and fuck "introductions" as well - the kind that almost invariably spoil the book you're about to read and sometimes take up 30% of the volume. Had to learn the hard way not to bother with those. Forewords and afterwords are good however in nonfiction, where there might be new information since the initial publications, or cases where the historical context it was published in is important.

Envious. I can't stand the summer heat, thankfully it lasts about two weeks over here on average.

Finished the audiobook of The Way I heard It by Mike Rowe.

Adored this book. I've always thought that Mike Rowe was a fascinating dude since I first saw him as the host of Dirty Jobs on Discovery Channel. He's got an amazing voice (Which is great since he was the narrator for the Audible version of this book) and an amazing view on the world that we live in. I've always appreciated his willingness to salute the working man with jobs that a lot of people would look down on and I adore the fact that he's given a lot of time and money to his foundation that seeks to give money to people working in the trades like carpenters, plumbers, and so on.

He managed to do this autobiography in a really fun way, too. Each chapter starts with a random story about a famous person, but doesn't tell you who it is until the end of it, similar to Paul Harvey's "The Rest of the Story" broadcasts. I won't spoil any of them here, but there's a wide variety of them and they're all pretty entertaining. I was able to guess some before they were revealed, but there were a lot that I learned about for the very first time. It was pretty educational in a way that I wasn't expecting from a book about a host on the Discovery Channel. Definitely a cool thing if you're into trivia.

As far as the autobiographical bits go, there was a TON of cool stuff in here, ranging from Mike talking about his childhood in Maryland to singing in various opera productions as a young man to his early TV days on the graveyard shift hawking garbage on QVC to hosting a whole bunch of cancelled shows in the 90s before finally making it to the Discovery Channel and becoming the icon that he is today. There's a particularly insane story he tells about living for free as a caretaker in a "haunted" house that was owned by a rich person that's worth the price of admission alone. I still can't believe that happened to him.

Man, I really dug this book. Highest recommendation I can muster for this one.

Angrily staring at my pile of volumes 3-10 of Happiness while volume 2 is still in the fucking post.

I did read more Inside Mari and I'm still not really getting the horror I wanted, it's much more of a mystery story with a protagonist struggling with the guilt and shame of the pseudo-murder they think they've committed. Interesting enough to keep going but I'm still itching to get back into Happiness.

Re-finished Live and Let Die.

Great book, terrible movie.

At 6/5/20 07:07 PM, Jackho wrote:

Didn't know there were other books but will see if I can find it.

Finally got a book read!

14) The Ultimate Guide to Zombies by Dave Robertson

It's a quick read covering the history of zombies dating back to the 1900s. Reading about the real life accounts had some serious 'Lost Tapes' vibes to it. Though the Seabrook encounter for some reason reminded me of Bloodborne. I was thrown off a bit at the mention of White Zombie until the author clarified he was talking about the movie and not the band.

From real life encounters to pop culture, the author covered as many bases as he could and yes Zombieland made the cut in more ways than one. There's a section on survival when it comes to zombie encounters which included different types of weapons along with the importance of selecting one that are best suited for you. Double-tap and cardio made the tip list also and the buddy system made a light appearance.

He was even gracious enough to share websites that host courses on surviving disasters and yes zombies was used a lure. From the 1900s to modern day, he shares how the 'zombie model' has changed from slow bumbling corpses and evolved into speedsters determined to mow you down. An interesting highlight that really caught my eye as remember seeing it during the press conferences of E3 2014 was the Dead Island 2 trailer (the vacationing family one).

I didn't know it won an award for cinematography but he mentioned how it was played backwards and showed how far zombies had come. Another interesting tidbit was reading about zombie themed wedding events of which I didn't know people would actually go that far with planning. For me, it was an interesting read and I'm sure a lot of the information will spark some interest.

On an unrelated note and apologies if it's a weird question but...do the Night Nurses from Silent Hill count as zombies? Just curious because they surfacing in my head while reading.

So I read "If Cats Disappeared From The World" by Genki Kawamura (based on the review from @Asandir) I thought this was fantastic - its very emotional and beautiful written.

It almost feels like Kawamura starts the book so simply to relax you before introducing the thoughtful elements of the book. Then as you move through the narrative, these elements layer together and slowly weave together to create some very profound moments.

I loved this book - if you're interested in it check out the review from @Asandir -they offer a good review of what the story covers.

Today I finished EC COMICS PRESENTS… THE VAULT OF HORROR, which was an audiobook presentation of some classic horror comic book stories from the 1950s. Basically, the recording company did a whole "radio drama" production that re-imagined these old stories in modern settings with multiple voice actors, music, and immersive sound design.

INCREDIBLY well done as far as the technical aspects go. Clearly, there was a lot of love put into this project as a lot of people lent their voices and technical skills to making everything seem as creepy and authentic as possible. For the most part, I could easily let my suspension of disbelief set in and just lose myself in a fully realized spooky world with the characters that were presented to me. There was an odd out-of-place sound effect or two that might have pulled me out of things for a second (There's this door opening sound that's so generic and gets used in TONS of Hollywood productions and I'm sick of it. It popped up here), but as someone who works as a "professional" (Kek) in audio production, I was really impressed with the job that they did.

The stories were all pretty solid, too. Some of my favorites included "Portrait in Wax!", "The Curse of Harkley Heath", "The Strange Couple", and "Escape!". No stinkers were included, but some of the subject matter did repeat itself. There were two voodoo stories and FOUR werewolf tales in a collection that had about 24 stories total. They were all scary enough to justify putting in this collection and I know that the people working on this were just adapting what had been written in the 1950s, but I'd be lying if I didn't acknowledge that I reached a point where I was like "ANOTHER werewolf story"?

Overall, really glad I listened to this. Probably stretched the definition of a "book" with it basically being the audio of stage productions of comic book stories, but oh well. I got it off Audible so I'm including it in this challenge.

You can listen to the free podcast version of these stories here as well!

I finished The Amber Spyglass and with that I also finished the His Dark Materials trilogy. I don't know what I expected, but I surely didn't expect the story to take that turn, when I finished The Golden Compass.

The third book deals with a multitude of characters and their fight in the greater scheme of "good vs evil", as well as Lyria's and Will's coming of age. If you are interested in these books be sure to get your hands on the UK editions as the US editions seem to be toned down a lot. This is also about the sexual awakening of two characters (as I've said, coming of age), but as we all know, anything sexual doesn't fit too well with US editors. If only they'd carry around an arsenal of guns...

Done reading these books:

30. Menschenjagd (Running Man), Stephen King, 350 pages

31. Frühling, Sommer, Herbst und Tod (Different Seasons), Stephen King, 720 pages

32. Das Mädchen, das in der Metro las (The Girl Who Reads on the Métro), Christine Féret-Fleury, 176 pages

33. Der Kleine Prinz (The Little Prince), Antoine de Saint-Exupery, 96 pages

Running Man:

The year is 2025. TV is free for everyone - and the most popular show among them all is "Running Man". The participants are free to be killed by anyone for an entire month - if they manage to hide and survive they will earn one billion dollars. Ben Richards, father of an ill child, unable to pay for the medical treatment, decides to take part in this game. Book is divided into 100 chapter that function as countdown to Ben Richards oddysee.

Good book. One of the books that King wrote under the pseudonym Richard Bachman. Has some similiar themes to Fahrenheit 451, with tv being both a tool to keep the poor people under control and exploit them for entertainment.

Different Seasons:

Book that consists of four novellas, basically short stories that are too long to be a short stories and too short to be a novel.

Rita Hayworth and Shawshank Redemption is a story of two men being charged and imprisoned for murder, the narrator Red, being guilty and the former banker Andy Dufresnem, who is not guilty. Red has found success with smuggling desired wares into prison. Andy becomes one of his customers by requesting a sort of miniature picking axe for harvesting minerals and later a large poster of Rita Hayworth. Both become old men in prison but Any never gives up his dream of freedom.

Apt pupil is the story of a boy who becomes very interested in the history of Worldwar II and finds out that one of his old neighbours, Arthur Denker, was actually a Nazi war criminal back then. He decides to force him to talk about his crimes or else he will contact the authorities. Both end up being dragged down into darkness.

The body is a story of four boys finding out that another boy was run over by a train and they seek out to look for his corpse. The story is told by one of them, who turned out to be a writer and recollects what these events mean to him. Kind of reminded me of Huckleberry Finn, vibe wise.

The breathing method is a story of a mysterious club where succesful men gather to tell each other stories, with the story "The breathing method" being the main focus. Revolves around a doctor helping an unmarried woman through her pregnancy and delivering the baby - no matter what.

Great book. All stories are atleast good, with Rita Hayworth and Shawshank Redemption being my favorite.

The Girl Who Reads on the Métro:

Juliette loves books and often reads book in the Métro on her way to her work, an office job. In the Métro, she also takes notice of the books other people read. One day her path crosses with the man Soliman who made it his life mission to give people the book they need in their life by the help of couriers. Juliette decides to join.

Pretty boring book. The basic premise did sound cool but the finding the right book for a person premise is basically not explored at all and instead there is a lot of self-doubt-filled inner monologue that dominates any story evolving and the liite bit of story that actually happens also is just pretty random.

The Little Prince:

Well known book. Basically a little prince from another planet has landed on earth and meets a pilot, who is also the narrator. The prince tells the pilot about his home planet with three volcanos and his beloved flower and his travels on other planets, among them a planet with a lonely king, another with a man who counts and claims ownership over all planets, etc.

Book deals with themes like appreciating small things in life, the value of taking care of someone/something. Great book.

So I read "The Perils of Perception" by Bobby Duffy...

My Dad gave me this book last Christmas - I started reading it then, bounced off it and came back to it last week. When I got back into though I enjoyed it.

The idea of the book is examining why we are so wrong in how we see the world and questioning the biases and heuristics we use (a fancy word for the shortcuts our brains use to make decisions, answer questions etc.) The book is based on a series of surveys that compare people's perceptions vs. the reality on a range of topics, including immigration, obesity, internet access and poverty (among others). Duffy uses these comparisons to highlight the reasons for our incorrect perceptions, from anchoring and emotional innumeracy to misinformation.

I enjoyed this book, but having read some Kahneman some of the topics covered were familiar to me. That said, I will defeinitely keep this as a reference for my masters (if I ever get an acceptance from them).

I'd recommend this to anyone who is interested in statistics or sociology. The book is a good reminder, with similar lessons as those in "Thinking Fast and Slow". If nothing else, some of the graphs are pretty interesting in theselves.

26: The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes by Suzanne Collins

The prequel to The Hunger Games didn't have that great of reviews but I enjoyed it. I actually liked that Coriolanus Snow was a shitbag from page 1 to end. I was worried it would put him in a favorable light and was pleasantly surprised he was treated with, not contempt, but more of a free reign to show his entire ass. A lot of the novel happens inside his own head with a lot of major action happening a bit too quickly.

A few things fell into that prequel trope of fan service and making the story reference too much of the future to come. Elements of the hunger games being directly created by a teenage Snow or most of the parts that happen in District 12... But overall Collins didn't over do it like some prequels do.

speaking of prequels jumping all into the worlds of earlier published books I am starting on the Icewind Dale trilogy - the series Drizzt was introduced but is the next chronologically in RA Salvatore's fantasy universe.

Done reading these books:

34. Kleine Feuer überall (Little Fires Everywhere), Celeste Ng, 384 pages

35. Die Tribute von Panem - Tödliche Spiele (The Hunger Games), Suzanne Collins, 416 pages

36. Die Tribute von Panem - Gefährliche Liebe (Catching Fire), Suzanne Collins, 432 pages

37. Die Tribute von Panem - Flammender Zorn (Mockingjay), Suzanne Collins, 432 pages

Little Fires Everywhere:

Shaker Heights, 1998. The Richardsons stand before their burning house, the cause is Arson. The main suspect is Elena Richardson's daughter, Izzy, who also has gone missing. From her on, the book showcases what events led to this desaster. The Richardsons are what you would probably describe as the American Dream family - the father a lawyer, the mother a journalist for the Shaker Heights local magazine, the kids on a good path to study at the greatest universities. Elena Richardson has a clear vision of an ideal life - if you plan everything accordingly and work with those plans in mind, everything will work out.

Different from the vision of Mia Warren, a photographer, who often changes both jobs and living places, with her daughter Pearl at her side. Despite that, Elena Richardson rents her the rental house next door. Mia makes a promise to Pearl that they won't move anymore - and for the first time in her life, Pearl dares to make friends. She becomes friends with Moody Richardson and in general becomes very enamoured with the Richardsons.

All is looking good but the Richarsons perfect way of living starts to show cracks that lead to numerous tragic events.

Great book. Picked it up on a whim as I was not sure if I would like the story but ended up greatly enjoying it. Highly recommended.

The Hunger Games, Catching Fire, Mockingjay:

Hunger games trilogy. Panem is divided into 12 districts. Each year the Hunger games are held, basically a battle royal where one male and one female from each district below the age of 18, so 24 combatants in total, are forced to fight in an arena till only one is alive. This year, Prim, Katniss Everdeens younger sister, is chosen. But Katniss can't allow that and offers herself as replacement. Now she has to find a way to survice the horrors of the Hunger games.

Great series. Recently the german translation of the prequel book (Hi @Malachy) came out and I remembered that the original trilogy was still on my to-read list. Aside from the romance stuff being a bit grating at parts and some minor pacing issues in the last book I had a great time reading these. Likely will read the prequel book in the near future.

When you read translated novels how well are you expecting them to merge into the other language with regards to pacing and style? Being a jingoistic 'murican I haven't read many foreign translated works in quite some time let alone current popular culture works.

A lot of Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes hinges on poetry and songs - I'd be interested to know how you think they do with that? I'm sure with big works like hunger games they make sure to get a team to properly translate novels to major languages but I wonder how that may change the tone of a work.

I basically cross my fingers that the translation is good- with some older things like Lord of the Rings, there exist versions from different translators so there's some choice in the matter. Localization is tricky, some books like Good Omens lose a lot of the humour.

With other books I have read I sometimes compare poems and songs and find that they are well translated, both in terms of content and style. It basically depends on the quality of the translation. I accept these shortcomings for the ease of reading in my first language, though. In general I am grateful for the massive amount of work translators do by trying to keep the translation as close as possible to the original style. The Planet Trillaphon as it stands in relation to The Bad Thing by David Foster Wallace is one book I read both in english and german and I was impressed that the german version manages to have essentially 100% the same tone.

Is the 80s Running Man movie loosely based on the book by any chance?

In the epilogue Stephen King talks briefly about the movie (saying among other things that he doesn't think that Arnold Schwarzenegger was a great choice for portraying Ben Richards), so yes. The movie seems to differ a lot, though, and not for the better.

27: The Crystal Shard by R.A. Salvatore

Since I just wasn't feeling cyberpunk I may as well continue my fantasy kick. Reading the first published books of Drizzt, the Icewind Dale trilogy.

I enjoyed it and it definitely has the feeling of a first novel but you can see why there are so many RA Salvatore novels these days. On to the rest of the trilogy for now.

I may have asked in a previous iteration of this thread, but at your proficiency why not just read them in english? With foreign books I hate the fact I'm reading a translation and not the actual author's work, and at the mercy of a translator's interpretation.

One reason is availability - most books I read are from my local library, and even though they have foreign books, the section is very small. Aside from that it's mostly about comfort - I am fairly fluent in english but reading in german is just more pleasant for me. I wouldn't outrule reading english books in the future though, especially stuff that I am looking forward to and that doesn't have a german translation (yet).

Holy shit I actually read a book.

It's been so long I can't remember what number I was on so...

???. Devolution by Max Brooks

The World War Z guy doing that again, but with Bigfoot? Aye, okay, get in injected straight into my fucking veins.

Look, it was never going to be high art, but it's a pseudo-documentary account of a load of Sasquatch kicking the shit out of a bunch of hippies stranded in the mountains while a mad old slavic woman desparately tries to forge them into fighters. It is 100% My Shit.

Go in expecting that and you'll not go wrong. It's short, and feels shorter because of the pace, and I could have done with a bit more build because it goes from 0 to 100 once the creatures actually show up. No teasing you with it, just right into folk getting absolutely destroyed by the big monkeys.

It's not perfect. On the one hand there's a reliance of cliches and stereotypes in place of actual characters, but on the other there's a bit where a Bigfoot picks someone up by the hair and helicopters them about like that one scene in Night of the Demon, so it sort of balances out.

Recommended. Delivered on what it promised in spades.