What are you reading?

[Truck_1_0_1_]

Finished Water Margin last week.

Wonderful ride from beginning to end, super-engaging and fun, also tragic and serious, it is a wonderful Wuxia tale of Chivalry and Ancient (ish) China.

Similar to Suikoden (the game is heavily-based on the book for everything but plot), Song Jiang is the leader of 108 chivalrous members of the, "fraternity," essentially band together on Mount Liangshan, with the hope of receiving an amnesty for their crimes (they have all committed a grave crime, either murder or grand larceny, etc.) and to serve the Song Dynasty, as they all put their country first.

Very similar in tone to Rot3K (it WAS written by the same guy), this is less of an epic of battles, deep military strategy and the battle for a crown and more of an epic about brotherhood, characters and minor military strategy. The characters are all more-relatable and their hijinks are more fun and interesting (but the larger story as a whole, is not up to the same level).

Still great stuff and soon I will get Journey to the West and continue my romp through the Chinese Classic novels.

Sagacious Lu is a boss.

10/10

 

[red]

i'm reading: never growing up, jackie chan.

 

[ShinChuck]

I've been reading a ton of Ellery Queen mysteries over the last year, and I'm just about on the last one.

Well, the last Ellery Queen novel starring Ellery Queen, since Ellery Queen also wrote a bunch of stories not featuring Ellery Queen as the main character.

Ellery Queen being both the protagonist, the "author", and, in reality, the pen name for the two cousins who wrote most of the EQ novels.

...sounds mildly convoluted when I write it out.

I've also just got started on the Mabinogion.

 

[Truck_1_0_1_]

On chapter 43 of Journey to the West and it has been a great read thus far!

Of the classic Chinese novels, I definitely enjoyed R3K and Water Margin more, but JttW is a different novel, both in tone and everything than those two: I can definitely see how this one is more beloved though, as it is a much more fun and traditional story, that is transcendent over all aspects of literature and life, as opposed to the other two that are deep-rooted in Confucianism, Chinese culture and just China in general.

Sun Wukong really is an awesome and hilarious character, I can also see why/how he has been parodied/homaged a shit-ton. I'm looking forward to how the novel progresses!

 

[Jigen]

Reading this masterpiece. Perhaps the best written prose in all of English.

 

[Truck_1_0_1_]

I finished Journey to the West 2 (3?) weeks ago and I absolutely enjoyed it immensely.

Not as much of a fan of it as R3K and Water Margin, but still had a great time reading it: if it truly set the standard/archetype for those types of anthology stories and the like, then I can see why it is so copied and homaged (and parodied!). Monkey truly is one of the great characters of literature and I'm glad that the, "heroes," get what's coming to them in the end: it shows that elements of karma, nature, the human condition, etc., (which are adhered to throughout the book) do count for their worth in the very end (where many books set rules and standards and then throw them away at the end): principled and "disciplined," writing is the best.

9/10

Gotta find something else to read now: I never imagined a few years ago that I'd read even one of the 4 classic Chinese novels, but now I've read 3! Red Chamber doesn't look like my cup of tea in the slightest AND it isn't set in ancient China, so unless gifted to me, I won't be reading it (and even if it is, not sure if I would lol). I was looking for Jurassic Park among my books, but can't find it: it's somewhere in my house...

 

[red]

ai weiwei, 1000 Years of Joys and Sorrows.

i also borrowed from the library, mel brooks, All About Me! My Remarkable Life in Show Business

 

[ShinChuck]

I read a ton in 2022 after a few years of reading very little, and I'm hoping to do it again!

Right now I'm working on the second book of the Dragonrealms series by Richard A. Knaak. His Dragonlance book, The Legend of Huma, is one of three fantasy titles that got me into the genre as a young lad, but for some reason it took me decades to look into his other work. I quite liked the first book, so I'm going to keep reading the series until burnout.

The podcast 372 Pages We'll Never Get Back--a sort of book club where they discuss books of questionable quality--just started a new one called Edison's Conquest of Mars, a 100+ year old sci fi book that's a sequel to the American knock-off of War of the Worlds and also stars Thomas Edison... and it's quite possible Edison wasn't consulted first! The podcast is a ton of fun and hosted by Conor Lastowka of Rifftax and Mike Nelson of MST3K/Rifftrax.

I'm also reading A Year with Aslan, a little book that features a passage a day from the Chronicles of Narnia, just as a little nostalgic inspiration for my daily life.

 

[Mr Propane]

My friend downloaded Prince Harrys book and even though i dont care about the royals i just may give in a read for the drama as i got a couple of long flights coming up

 

[Kiba]

I finished Journey to the West 2 (3?) weeks ago and I absolutely enjoyed it immensely.

Not as much of a fan of it as R3K and Water Margin, but still had a great time reading it: if it truly set the standard/archetype for those types of anthology stories and the like, then I can see why it is so copied and homaged (and parodied!). Monkey truly is one of the great characters of literature and I'm glad that the, "heroes," get what's coming to them in the end: it shows that elements of karma, nature, the human condition, etc., (which are adhered to throughout the book) do count for their worth in the very end (where many books set rules and standards and then throw them away at the end): principled and "disciplined," writing is the best.

9/10

Gotta find something else to read now: I never imagined a few years ago that I'd read even one of the 4 classic Chinese novels, but now I've read 3! Red Chamber doesn't look like my cup of tea in the slightest AND it isn't set in ancient China, so unless gifted to me, I won't be reading it (and even if it is, not sure if I would lol). I was looking for Jurassic Park among my books, but can't find it: it's somewhere in my house...

I read Dream of the Red Chamber in East Asian Lit class. It's very metaphysical, I guess. Not an adventure like Journey to the West. It's the slow indie foreign film of the Chinese classics. Probably a good call ^.

 

[Seaman]

I'll clang from here instead of opening a thread:
Please, can somebody point me to any book related to the Sega Superscaler board series?
For now all I got it's whats avaliable in form of tutorials for road engines, 32x & Saturn documentation. But please, if you know about books about any of these:
Outrun, Power Drift or perhaps even Konami's Racin' Force (just found Lou's Pseudo3D reference to Charles McDonalds reversing and his note/update).
I believe the plenty avaliable info about Novalogic's heightmap voxel terrains helps into figuring Konami GX System pseudo voxel chip so I reached for that too... the problem its that the visual results seems to me like too much brute in comparison (I mean, like too much "Next step" while Konami GX feels more SuperScaler++).
Argh, what a brick. Sorry pals.