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What BOOK(s) are you reading?
Over the next couple hundred pages I realized that while it remains a, at best, average book about the environment and a really poor book about people who used to live on the land (i.e. indigenous folks), it is one of the best books I've ever read about rural and semi-rural America and its positives and contradictions. What's so good about it is that it wasn't written as a response to Trump's victory (an entire genre) but was written a long time ago and is supposed to be about the land and such. You're not intended to walk out of it with some simple message or anything. I'd recommend it before any of these genre books about rural Americans. It rang very true to my childhood in the Midwest and my wife's childhood in a very rural area of the Great Plains.
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- Dr. Mabuse
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- Ambassador of Truth
ROADSIDE PICNIC - Arkady and Boris Strugatsky
SPECTACLE (THE ASTONISHING LIFE OF OTA BENGA) Pamela Newkirk.
Currently reading HARD TO BE A GOD by the Strugatsky Brothers
It's been a couple of years since I've had the time to read non-script related works.
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Dr. Mabuse wrote: THE THREE BODY PROBLEM and THE DARK FOREST - Liu Cixin
ROADSIDE PICNIC - Arkady and Boris Strugatsky
SPECTACLE (THE ASTONISHING LIFE OF OTA BENGA) Pamela Newkirk.
Currently reading HARD TO BE A GOD by the Strugatsky Brothers
It's been a couple of years since I've had the time to read non-script related works.
I've been thinking about getting those two Strugatsky books for a while, they are still sat on my wishlist and could be a good summer read. Please can I ask your opinion on them?
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- Dr. Mabuse
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- Ambassador of Truth
I saw the most recent cinematic offer of Hard to Be a God and loved the concept. So far I'm digging it.
I need to watch STALKER (Roadside Picnic film adaptation) at some point.
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The pacing is off, too. The story basically restarts itself three times. You think you know what it's all about, but then that plot and those characters are abandoned for a new setting, and it turns out that those last two hundred pages didn't really matter that much. The villain doesn't really make himself known for almost half the book and does little until the last hundred pages.
Anyway, the first two are solid and very worth a read, but if you skip this one, you're not missing out on anything.
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- ThirstyMan
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- D10
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Just started the second trilogy Spy Hook, Spy Line, Spy Sinker set in 1988. Good stuff so far.
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I am currently onto The Guns of August by Barbara Tuchman. I've never read any of her work and it is definitely a very breezy read. I am up through the "Plans" section that runs through four of the major powers' (Germany, Great Britain, France, and Russia) plans and preparations for war prior to August 1914. I also have The Proud Tower on my shelf, which I will move onto once I finish this one.
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- ThirstyMan
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- engineer Al
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- D6
- Mama mia!
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- Sagrilarus
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- Pull the Goalie
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After that, I read Night by Elie Wiesel, which was excellent and depressing as expected. The writing is very clean and crisp packing a ton of content into its tiny page count. This was not one that I had read throughout my education, but my wife said it had been assigned in high school. I highly recommend it.
My brother gave me two light reading books for my birthday: The Power of the Dark Crystal, Volume 1 and The United States of Absurdity: Untold Stories from American History. The first one is the first book of the sequel graphic novel series and I enjoyed it, but it did not blow my mind. It felt similar enough to the original movie where it has cool world building and an archetypal story. I might pick up the others to read, but it would not be a priority. The second book was by the creators of the podcast, The Dollop, which my brother loves and I have never listened to. The book was humorous and went over outlandish real events. It was very light and would be what I would call a "bathroom" book in that it was series of three-page stories that were not deep, but interesting enough to fill five minutes.
I am now reading The Rising Sun: The Decline and Fall of the Japanese Empire, 1936-1945 by John Toland. I am through the first section of the book and am so far quite impressed with the amount of detail and research he has done. I hope the rest of the book lives up to my first impressions.
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By contrast, I am reading The Last Mughal and it is brilliant, brilliant stuff. You can almost feel Delhi and the swirling cultural melange of the city in the middle of this firestorm.
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- Sagrilarus
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- Pull the Goalie
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