Recently listened to the audiobook for Good Omens, after having it recommended to me a hundred times. This was a Terry Pratchet and Neil Gaiman collaboration—two authors whose works (from the ones I’ve tried, at least) have always fallen either a little or very flat for me. The first few scenes of Good Omens really won me over. It was surprisingly witty and clever, and made some fun observations about society and religion and whatnot. Reminded me of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy in a way (not as funny as that IMO, but that’s a high bar). The main demon and angel characters were charming, and bounced off each other well in their conversations. Their shared desire to delay the rapture as best they could was an excellent premise.
Sadly, that was only about 10-15% of the book. The rest of it was completely boring to me, which is impressive when it’s a story that’s supposedly about the impending apocalypse. Most of the book follows a whole bunch of characters who are not nearly as funny or interesting as the first two. Felt like over half the book was devoted to the joke of “what if the antichrist was just a regular elementary schoolboy who had long banal childrens’ conversations with other kids?” Other scenes devoted to characters like a witch and witch-hunter or the four horsemen of the apocalypse are marginally more interesting (in that they do things), but lack the chemistry or wit of those opening scenes with the Earth-loving demon and angel.
Maybe a case where I’d enjoy the TV show a lot more?
Kind of interested in seeing whether genre crosses over between literature and games for people here (and movies to an extent, but that’s a different topic).
I love scifi books, and I love scifi settings in (video) games. But on the other hand, I love playing games in the horror genre, but I hardly ever find horror literature that I can engage with to a similar degree, it just leaves me fairly cold.
I don’t read much at this age, but I actually just finished Jurassic Park. I watched the movie last year and so my friend got me the 2 books for Christmas
On my end, I think traditional fantasy (say, medieval-ish stuff) always finds a home in me, be this games or books. I’m not too sure I do like sci-fi gaming; I love sci-fi reading, though. And I also had a spell of horror books, but I’ve never managed to end a horror game either. To be completely honest though, I think I like gaming more on the gameplay aspect than on their story aspects, so if the world makes sense, I kind of like.
I’m pretty sure I’d like dystopic/holocaust games as well, even though I’ve never finished one.
Reading through the Agent Pendergast series. Novels by Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child. Absolute nonsense, but so much fun. Like action B-movies with science and horror bits. Tropy, but always with a twist and a tweak here and there to keep it fresh. Currently on book number 9 and still amused and entertained.
This also means that I have already read more books this year than in the whole of last year. Glad to be reading regularly again.
Self-Destructive Tendencies - My Brief Thoughts on Overcoming Unwanted Intrusive Thoughts: A CBT-Based Guide to Getting Over Frightening, Obsessive, or Disturbing Thoughts
Warning(s) for: topics pertaining to ableism and ableist language.
Summary
Not only does this self-help book use the word “crazy,”-- a term that, inherently, stigmatizes mental illness, and, due to its long-term casual usages, trivializes the struggles of having said illnesses – but it also does so multiple times on its back cover and first non-table-of-contents page (a.k.a. “books’ first-impression sections.”) Not only that, but it also has text in its back cover’s first paragraph which ableistly excludes people with mental illnesses from its purview that reads, “If you suffer from frightening, obsessive, or disturbing thoughts, you… may… worry what these thoughts mean about you. Do they make you a bad person? No! You aren’t bad–or crazy… many rational and good people have them.” How a self-help book can have been written in such a way that it almost seems designed to quickly drive away the people who could benefit from it the most is beyond me.
I started reading The Witches are Vardo a few weeks back. It’s set in 1600’s Norway and follows a young woman whose’ mother is accused of witchcraft so she’s trying to rescue her, as well as another woman who is also accused of being a witch but is trying to win the favour or the local lord - and thus save her skin - by routing out other witches.
While there is a very slight hint of something magical possibly happening, it’s a lot more real-world based that the stuff I usually read. It’s incredibly well written thought and I’m devouring it. Really great stuff.
I read that last year. I didn’t care for Lost World the movie, and I ended up not caring for the book either, though the two are about 90% different from each other. Jurassic Park is a tough act to follow, especially when the “park” half of the equation is no longer a thing.
Some of Malcolm’s random tangent rants felt on the mark though, namely the one about how the internet is humanity’s greatest evolutionary threat.
Knowledge Is Power - My Brief Thoughts on The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma
Since April of last year, I have been reading the book in question on an “on-again, off-again” basis, thanks in no small part to how often I needed time to process the revelatory information it contains in pertinence to who(m?) someone with trauma is and who(m??) they can become. Having finshed it, I feel confident in saying that it helped me to realize that I am disabled and not just someone who happens to have multiple debilitating conditions, giving me a fuller sense of identity that has, in turn, given me the ability to more openly talk about myself and my struggles as a disabled person and how they intersect with other facets of life such as art.
l ove the struggle with keeping hope / the child alive, the question on how to stay “the Good Ones” in a situation like this, but because the author never explains what actually happened to the world, I feel so torn. How can you keep up hope if you don’t know if there will ever grow anything in this place, all the animals are dead, like even the insekts, the fish in the ocean, there is a huge amount of water but still trees are dead. Can this world come back or is this just an endless end where ressources are getting scarcer and scarcer and in the end the last two people will fight over the last canned food and the surviver will eat themself?
In the end the son finding hopefully nice people (we only got a glimpse of them) did not give me any peace. The father died sad to not be able to protct his son any longer, but he died knowing he did his best on keeping him alive, but it might not have been the best if staying alive for the son is just a downward spiral with now new companions.
I do not regret to have read this. I was looking forward to get time to read and finished it in three days. It has an impact on me and I will think about this for some time, but I might have choosen the mothers “road” instead of the journey to nowhere in hell, depending on what happened to this world.
I question if I should bother with the movie. Most of the time I prefer the books over the movies.
The Road is one of my favorite books though it’s a pretty tough story and I remember not liking the ending. I remember enjoying the movie as well so maybe you will too. It has Aragorn in it. I haven’t enjoyed other books written by McCarthy so it’s hard to recommend him as an author.
The only Sanderson book I’ve read! I started Mistborn and got distracted with other books… I really liked Elantris though. I have a Sanderson fan friend who warned me it would be slow/boring but I thought it was just fine. I guess in comparison to the excitement and popularity of his other books, people might see it that way but compared to an average book, I thought it was pretty great.
I just finished my reading checklist I made in 2023. I’m not the fastest reader, and my progress does get slowed down when I have to purchase books, but I am still very proud of myself. There were only two books I couldn’t read due to their out of print status.
