December 2021 Reading Thread

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Some what?
litrpg -
short for literary role playing game, is a literary genre combining the conventions of computer RPGs with science-fiction and fantasy novels.


good example : alterworld, survival quest, the trapped mind project
 
litrpg -
short for literary role playing game, is a literary genre combining the conventions of computer RPGs with science-fiction and fantasy novels.


good example : alterworld, survival quest, the trapped mind project
Ah, no thanks
 
Prompted by the thread on Villeneuve to film Rendezvous With Rama, I’m just starting reading the book again for the first time in many, many years:)
 
Still struggling with fiction a bit. I've picked up my copy of "Vanished Kingdoms" by Norman Davies, which is brilliant but such heavy going I've only made it 2/5 of the way through in a year. It's a history of various defunct and half-forgotten European nations, such as Burgundy and the Grand Duchy of Lithuania.
 
After listening to a recent history podcast by Tom Holland, I ended up reading Rasputin by Douglas Smith. Highly entertaining subject matter.
 
Still struggling with fiction a bit. I've picked up my copy of "Vanished Kingdoms" by Norman Davies, which is brilliant but such heavy going I've only made it 2/5 of the way through in a year. It's a history of various defunct and half-forgotten European nations, such as Burgundy and the Grand Duchy of Lithuania.
Try his history of the UK. I think it is called The Isles, or something like that. Really good.
 
After listening to a recent history podcast by Tom Holland, I ended up reading Rasputin by Douglas Smith. Highly entertaining subject matter.
or you can see the king's men. is a character in the movie
 
Gillian Slovo "Every Secret Thing" (1997)

Autobiographical account of the author attempting to make sense of her own and her parents' lives. Her parents, Joe Slovo and Ruth First, were both deeply committed activists in the struggle against apartheid in South Africa. Her mother, Ruth, was assassinated by letter bomb by the South African police Mozambique in 1982. Her father, Joe, once White South Africa's most hated man, lived to become deeply involved in the negotiations to end apartheid, then Mandela's Minister for Housing, before dying of cancer in 1995. His funeral was attended by 50,000 including all senior figures of the ANC.

Not my usual fare, but a friend told me it was "a masterpiece". I can't pronounce on that, but I certainly found it immensely moving and powerful.
 
Spook Street by Mick Herron is exactly like how I (well, Danny) thought it was going to be: excellent dialogue, iffy plot. Unless something very clever happens in the next fifty pages, it's going to be a matter of enjoying the journey more than the destination. I've noticed a tendency in these books to introduce pretty unbelievable little communities of spies, and for the stories to revolve around inter-departmental feuding, as if there are no actual enemies out there anymore and all that matters is contending with the ghosts of the past.

I remember Joe Slovo, whose name cropped up a lot in the news when I was small, along with Archbishop Desmond Tutu and Pik Botha. My first inkling that the world out there was a grim place.
 
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Finished Song of Achilles by Madeleine Miller, which was excellent. Tough to make a story this well-known (The Iliad) compelling, but it was a gripping and gut-wrenching read. Makes me want to go back and tackle the original again, since I haven't read it in over 20 years...

Now I have 2 books going... continuing with the Deed of Paksenarrion as an omnibus on the kindle. I very much enjoyed the first book, even if it got a bit repetitive at times. This second book so far is noticeably closer to the D&D source material, but still very readable. Also reading All Systems Red, book one of the highly regarded Murderbot series by Martha Wells. Entertaining enough so far, though between the sci-fi and the snark, this one is a little outside my usual tastes.
 
Having finished Hogfather I shall continue with the Dickens trilogy I have, with The Chimes. One of the stories I found difficult to read if I remember correctly. Dickens can be... difficult.
I mean, just look at that long winded paragraph. He could just as easily say, There are not many people, young or old, that would sleep in a church.
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Having finished Hogfather I shall continue with the Dickens trilogy I have, with The Chimes. One of the stories I found difficult to read if I remember correctly. Dickens can be... difficult.
I mean, just look at that long winded paragraph. He could just as easily say, There are not many people, young or old, that would sleep in a church.
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True, but there's something compelling about the way Dickens wrote that. I suppose it means I have a love for purple prose. But there it is.
 
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