What Are You Reading Right Now?

[Kenshi]

I dreamed it lol

Ultimately, Calvin and Hobbes was never made into an animated series.
Too bad, I would have watched it.

[Dark Cloud]

@Kenshi Like T.V? I always have believed that Calvin & Hobbes deserve to be on the big screen.

[Kenshi]

@Kenshi Like T.V? I always have believed that Calvin & Hobbes deserve to be on the big screen.

@Dark Cloud

You brought back a good memory for me, thanks bro.

[Dark Cloud]

@Kenshi Your welcome, I liked and still like lying in bed reading my copies of Calvin and Hobbes with a snack, like cheese & crackers with cut up garlic sausage. Alongside a glass of milk with an Oreo.

[Laser Kiwi]

@Dark Cloud@Kenshi

Oh man, the C&H discussion gives me some major nostalgia. Hot summer days, coming back from the pool to a tall glass of Kool-Aid (remember the invisible watermelon kiwi flavor?? shit was dope), a tuna sandwich, and half a book of C&H before a nice siesta.
My favorite storylines were Revenge of the Baby-Sat and the Mutant Killer Monster Snow Goon. Honorable mention to the mysterious noodle incident.

[Kenshi]

@Dark Cloud@Kenshi

Oh man, the C&H discussion gives me some major nostalgia. Hot summer days, coming back from the pool to a tall glass of Kool-Aid (remember the invisible watermelon kiwi flavor?? shit was dope), a tuna sandwich, and half a book of C&H before a nice siesta.
My favorite storylines were Revenge of the Baby-Sat and the Mutant Killer Monster Snow Goon. Honorable mention to the mysterious noodle incident.

@Laser Kiwi

I miss the kool aid man commercial

Hider

[Vyce]

@Kenshi @Laser Kiwi @Dark Cloud

Tangentially related, but have you heard of the webcomic Hobbes and Bacon? It was a fan tribute comic that was only four comics long, but it did bring back a bit of C&H nostalgia.

[Laser Kiwi]

@Vyce I LOVE Hobbes & Bacon. It's probably my favorite piece of fan media ever created tbh. It's the resolution I didn't know I needed.

[Dark Cloud]

@Dark Cloud@Kenshi

Oh man, the C&H discussion gives me some major nostalgia. Hot summer days, coming back from the pool to a tall glass of Kool-Aid (remember the invisible watermelon kiwi flavor?? shit was dope), a tuna sandwich, and half a book of C&H before a nice siesta.
My favorite storylines were Revenge of the Baby-Sat and the Mutant Killer Monster Snow Goon. Honorable mention to the mysterious noodle incident.

@Laser Kiwi

I loved both of those storylines.

[Dinh AaronMk]

Xhou Enlai: A Profile

[Kassarock]

So I've just started The Mirror and the Light by Hillary Mantell, the final book in her trilogy about the life of Thomas Cromwell, possibly the finest historical fiction series of the century thus far. I'm only a hundred or so pages in and its already living up to its predecessors. Its a shame the book did not make it onto the Booker Shortlist, the prize its two predecessors won, as so far it seems every bit as captivating and beautiful as the last two.

You see, Mantell has such a grasp of language that sometimes her work reads more like prose poetry than anything else, something I think you rarely see in historical fiction. There's also the driving immediacy of it all as well, created through her skilful use of the third person present, it really makes it feel like events from 500 years ago are happening right now in front of you. And then there's Cromwell, intelligent, cunning, funny, sympathetic, ruthless, compassionate Cromwell. I know how it all must end for him. And yet I do not want it to.

But nothing lasts forever, and the more dizzying the rise to the most glorious of heights, the greater the fall to those deep and terrible depths.

If you haven't read this series yet, go and do it. You're missing out.

[POOHEAD189]

I am reading the Black Company by Glen Cook. Really interesting so far. I have a few little criticisms but it's enjoyable.

Also I just ordered this Omnibus!

[Fiscbryne]

@POOHEAD189 What criticisms do you have for it? I confess to having an unopened copy of The Black Company which I have been eyeing up but haven’t yet read—but after a reread of Berserk, I’m itching for more darkness.

I recently finished Celeste Ng’s Everything I Never Told You, a novel about the death of a mixed Chinese-American family’s eldest daughter Lydia in the ’70s, focusing on the events leading up to her death and the fallout afterwards. Save the distraction of Lydia’s blue eyes (which, though pointed out in the narrative as “defying genetics,” felt like a poor way to indicate her greater proximity to whiteness) it’s a poignant novel about social expectations, the model minority myth, the perpetual foreigner stereotype, and things left unsaid.

[POOHEAD189]

@Fiscbryne Honestly my criticisms are marginal. My initial complaint was that Glen Cook wrote in a minimalist style I wasn't used to, but something to note is that the entirety of the Black Company is written in-universe by the Company's Annalist and Physician named 'Croaker' so it reads more like a diary or a memoir (though it's still very much a novel series). Also, as you might expect, characters who get a lot of screen time just sometimes die out of the blue, which makes sense since they're fighting a war. All in all, while I would enjoy a tad more description for various things in the prose, it's a great story so far. Highly recommend!

[Kassarock]

Hey, I forgot this thread existed, oops.

So I just finished Thank You For Your Cooperation by Adam Wasserman. This book was a gift from a friend, because they knew I GM the Paranoia Tabletop System and this was apparently somewhat inspired (see: ripped off) from it. For those of you that don't know, Paranoia (and this book) are both set in sci-fi dystopias where humanity has somehow destroyed the world and now lives in an underground bunker under the totalitarian control of a paranoid and insane AI computer.

Overall it was a mediocre experience. The best parts of the book in my opinion were its setting and world building, which were largely lifted from its influences, and to a lesser extent the rather action packed plot. When it came to characterisation, it is pretty abysmal, esepcially so for the main character who was a text book Gary-stu with multiple unexplained hidden talents and frankly came off as something of an obnoxious arsehole when I think he was supposed to be likable. There characters who were supposed to be very intelligent, with very dumb plans, and a love interest who does something so repugnant to the main character it is ultimately inconceivable to me that he (or anyone else for that matter) would ever want to be with her.

There were some nice moments, particularly in a character that partially represented the child-like wonder and joy of experiencing a world outside of the totalitarian nightmare of the bunker. There was one particularly excellent scene where they show the main character fish living in river, it really conveyed just how magically it would be to see creatures that lived under water for the first time.

I also had some issues with the writing style, it was a very colloquial first person, but it didn't seem to completely commit to writing in the voice of someone raised in the kind of environment the story portrays. Lots of word choices that stuck out to me, and made me go 'but how does this character know about X?'. The author also has a habit of jumping around in the narrative, often jumping straight to an event and then explaining how they got there afterwards. It worked once or twice, but felt overused by the novel's end. It's also a self published affair, and unfortunately my edition was not particularly well proof-read.

I am currently reading On Friendship by Michel de Montaigne, a collection of Essays, by the author that first popularised the format. Not too much to say since I've only just started it. But it seems pretty readable for a 16th century translated philosophy text.

[Mole]

The Perfect Servant: Eunuchs and the Social Construction of Gender in Byzantium by Kathryn M. Ringrose