I love books recommended on here but unless I specify you mfs will recommend theory. You all read anything captivating without overt political themes?

  • Moonworm [any]@hexbear.netEnglish
    24·
    3 months ago

    Slowly chipping away at Brothers Karamazov. Despite all his wordiness and digressions, it contains some of the craziest drama unfolding within the space of hours I’ve ever read. Reality TV doesn’t hold a candle to these passionate, often drunk, Russians. And of course a drip feed of theological dialogues plus extensive detailing of contemporary Russian culture rounds it out.

    The man does really have a way woth identifying all the little ways that people behave and navigate an interaction, putting on faces, jockeying for position, getting right up to the threshold of something before their pride stops them.

    Sometimes it feels a little slow, but then something just fucking gobsmacking will happen and you’ll put up with a little more talking about an ancillary monk’s ascetic practice so you can find out what cruel trick Grushenka will do next.

    • Red_sun_in_the_sky [any]@hexbear.netEnglish
      4·
      3 months ago

      I’ve only started reading (just at the start) and I have to yet read more. Its very good and as you say so dramatic. At the start I remember the father ridding of his first son and also if he did not forget him he would send him away cause he would get in the way of all the druken orgies. I was blown away this book rocks.

      I sadly had lot stuff going on so I haven’t gotten back to it. But I want read it so bad.

    • gueybana [any]@hexbear.netOPEnglish
      15·
      3 months ago

      ‘No theory pls’

      I would have minecrafted you if you literally suggested a number theory book lol

      • Tomorrow_Farewell [any, they/them]@hexbear.netEnglish
        3·
        3 months ago

        Oh, no, I hate number theory. I hate numbers. My hatred for numbers is why I study math - I want to start studying it for a living and get as far from working with numbers as I can.

        I was thinking of something like Ore Ø.'s book on graph theory, or Jech’s book on set theory, etc.

  • JoeByeThen [he/him, they/them]@hexbear.netEnglish
    13·
    3 months ago

    This week I’m working through China Meiville’s Bas Lag trilogy. Just started the Third Book. First time reading him, I’m in love.

    I recently read Manhunt by Gretchen Felker-Martin, which was really good.

    Oh, also read Octavia Butler’s Kindred. Awesome stuff.

  • chickentendrils [any, comrade/them]@hexbear.net
    English
    13·
    3 months ago

    Read The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho recently. I don’t read a ton of fiction, I don’t have visual imagination (unless I do DMT or a lot of dabs) so over the top visual descriptions don’t do anything for me.

    Oh and Hiroyuki Nishigaki’s “How to Good-bye Depression: If You Constrict Anus 100 Times Everyday. Malarkey? or Effective Way?” which is pretty funny.

    • FishLake@lemmygrad.mlEnglish
      3·
      3 months ago

      Love that book. I really enjoyed the concept of the Shatterlings too. Reynolds is just great in general.

  • Sulvor [he/him, undecided]@hexbear.netEnglish
    8·
    3 months ago

    Working my way through The Wheel of Time series by Robert Jordan right now. Pretty standard high fantasy, Tolkien inspired.

    If you’re looking for something more light-hearted, maybe some Discworld?

    I read the Three Body series last year, very engrossing hard sci-fi imo.

    • Red_sun_in_the_sky [any]@hexbear.netEnglish
      4·
      3 months ago

      I wanna read this wheel of time. I knew about it cause brandon the mistborn finished them or some shit. I’m interested.

      I also want to get into discworld. I found a book from the series in like weird thrift sale. It was thud if i remembered.

      I did read three body problem. I currently am reading the third one. The books are pretty good.

    • Coca_Cola_but_Commie [he/him]@hexbear.netEnglish
      3·
      3 months ago

      WoT is funny for me because if you look at who I am (demographically speaking), at the age I am, and at the sorts of books I enjoy I should love them. But I read them at exactly the wrong time in my life and hated them, and now I feel like it’s pointless to revisit them, that that first experience with them will forever taint my opinion of what I suspect are, at the very least, perfectly serviceable fantasy fare, certainly nothing worthy of hatred.

      I happened to visit a used bookstore, while on vacation in a different State to the one I live in, and there was a box with copies of all the books that had been released up to that point (I think this was right before the first Sanderson book came out). Of the 12 books, 7 were hardcover and in very good condition, though the 5 paperbacks were a little beat up. Got the whole set for, IIRC, $38. Bought the Sanderson ones too, even though I never did get around to reading them, just for completion’s sake.

  • Muad'Dibber@lemmygrad.mlEnglish
    8·
    3 months ago

    A confederacy of dunces. Outside of catch-22, it’s maybe the best satire book ever written. Highly recommend the barrett whitener audiobook.

  • Coca_Cola_but_Commie [he/him]@hexbear.netEnglish
    7·
    3 months ago

    I recently read For Whom the Bell Tolls by Hemingway. In my opinion a very very good book. It’s about a young American man, Robert Jordan, who is fighting as a dynamiter in the Spanish Civil War on the side of the Republic. In particular, the book is mostly about him briefly working with a Republican guerilla group, with him carrying orders that they’re to blow up a bridge.

    I’ve owned a copy of the book for a while, but what spurred me to finally read it was a scene from Cyberpunk 2077. The player character, V, will pick up a copy of For Whom the Bell Tolls and then recite an apt and haunting quote at a funeral, if the player makes the correct choices. The only problem is, as I discovered upon finishing the book, the quote isn’t actually from For Whom the Bell Tolls it’s from a book of short stories that Hemingway complied, including some of his own, titled Men at War. I’m not sure if the quoted short story is even one that Hemingway wrote. That said the quote feels like something that could’ve come from Tolls, so I’m not too upset about it.

    I can’t say if it’s a good book because I’ve only read a tiny bit of it but I am currently reading Ancient Persia by Josef Wiesehöfer. I’m only reading this book because I saw a recommendation to read the book From Cyrus to Alexander by Pierre Briant for people looking for a good work on ancient history that’s still approachable for laypeople. And not even in the introduction to that work but in the fucking Translator’s Preface it says, paraphrasing: “readers not already familiar with the entire history of the Persian Empire, Alexander the Great, and the entire corpus of Ancient Greek literature on those subjects will not find this volume useful. I recommend any reader not so familiar to read Josef Wiesehofer’s work on the subject.” So now I’m reading this.

    • Wertheimer [any]@hexbear.netEnglish
      9·
      3 months ago

      “You can win a girl with a poem, but you can’t keep a girl with a poem. Not even a poetry movement.”

      Even your small town library ought to have Baudelaire, which counts as getting started on 2666 since one of his lines (idiosyncratically translated?) is the epigraph for that one. “An oasis of horror in a desert of boredom.” From The Voyage.