Rate the last book you read

"The Colour Out Of Space" by H.P. Lovecraft.

Lovecraft is a master at building horror through mystery, abnormality and suggestion.

8/10

 

"The New Jim Crow" - Michelle Alexander (8/10)

Great book! Definitely an eye opener!
It becomes a bit redundant when it goes over the same topics of discussion, over and over, as if the point wasn't already beaten over your head, but nonetheless; great book! Highly recommend!

 

The handmaid's tale by Margaret Atwood 5/5

I really like dystopian stories both in films and written fictions. Dystopian stories are in nature speculative fictions, they explore the possibilities that might happen based on the current social and political trends. This is what this novel is about, it explores a possible near future, where far-right extremist groups took control of the United States via an organized coup d'etat. And later, established a totalitarian regime called the new republic of Gilead.

This regime is structured in a way that reduces women's opportunities to nothing outside of childbearing, literacy is forbidden, and fertile women are raped and impregnated by the new rulers of this system; the commanders. Despite this all depressing setting, what really stuck with me is how it's the theme of resistance that drives the plot of the novel. Something that I find refreshing in this all gloomy tale. It send the message, that even in the worst circumstances, one should never give up the possibility of resistance nor hope, there's also the way the main characters establish connections with each others to preserve their sanity and hope.

 

The Silmarillion by J.R.R. Tolkien, edited by Christopher Tolkien.

Man.

I don’t know, man.

I started reading it because I wanted to check out Amazon’s show, Rings of Power, and see what they messed up. Which is a weird thing in itself. Why is canon and original authorial intent so important to us? I did find a lot of discrepancies, but then found that Amazon didn’t have rights to The Silmarillion, and were in fact contractually obligated to not be accurate to that particular resource. They have rights to the Appendices, so they have to do that without doing The Silmarillion. Stupid. So that whole thing is a wash.

The book itself has a reputation. Slow. Rough. I agree. So many names, I’m grateful for the index so I could check real fast on who that guy was again, and was frequently angry at the index for throwing out spoilers. Oh yeah, he was the guy who was Turin’s friend and was killed by him??? Dang it. How does that happen? The style is basically a lot of summary, so there’s not a lot of space to get invested in characters, which is okay because there are tons of them. And tons of places. And many of the characters and places have multiple names.

What’s weird to me, though, is that I spent so much time with this fake lore, when I could have spent it reading the Romance of the Three Kingdoms, or the Ramayana, something of equal difficulty, but could perhaps help me understand another real world culture a little better.

I don’t know. I have some more nerd cred now, I guess. And now I know werewolves and vampires are actual Arda canon, so maybe D&D is more Middle Earth than I thought. In that sense I do understand my own culture a little better, so that’s good.

Now I’m just glad to be finished, so I can start something else.

 

"Loose Girl" - Kerry Cohen (7/10)

Very eye opening on the female experience of promiscuity and what can drive a woman to that insatiable state of mind of needing constant attention.
Good book, but very triggering.


"Auschwitz" - Miklos Nyitzli (10/10)

Brilliant book about the assistant doctor to the infamous "Angel of Death" Josef Mengele in the concentration camps. What a horrowing book!

"Without Conscience" - Robert D Hare (8/10)

Famous and great psych book about Psychopaths and their psychology and sociology and how they come to be. Most i have read in other articles, but it was disturbing and appalling to read about child psychopaths trying to manipulate their siblings, parents and doing awful things to others. Heart breaking.

 

The Outsider by Stephen King 5/10 (so far)

Technically the audiobook. I'm not even halfway through it, and I'm losing interest. It's taking too long to get good and it seems like it just drags on

 

Elizabeth I: A Study in Insecurity by Helen Castor
10/10

Well written book that looks at Elizabeth I through the lens of psychology. Sometimes it's easy to learn about history without thinking about how events impact the people involved. Never thought of how she was impacted by her Mother being executed on the orders of her Father, but the author did a good job of showing how that would impact someone. It made me glad I didn't during such a time.

 

A Hunter-Gatherer's Guide to the 21st Century: Evolution and the Challenges of Modern Life by Heather Heying and Bret Weinstein

I like what it says, I just don't know if any of it is accurate. I guess I don't understand what evolutionary biologists actually do, other than piss off feminists. I'll give it a 4/5 I suppose, though it would be 5/5 if I was confident I could trust it. As it is, I don't know if they're dishing good advice or just telling a good story. They want us to avoid blue light, eat natural foods as much as possible, pair-bond with a mate (and don't do porn), raise some resilient kids, and beware Chesterton's fence. That is, the institutions and ideas we don't understand so we think we can just get rid of them without negative consequences.
One of the things mentioned is that rats can be hooked up to a heroine feed and give it to themselves on demand, but as long as they have a stimulating environment, or as I imagine it was Bret who phrases it, there are "cool rat things to do," they are largely uninterested. Their conclusion is addiction is more a symptom of lack of stimulus than anything. I'm like, yes. It is good to stay busy doing something constructive. But people are more complicated than rats, at least I hope. That's a reductionist angle, I think?

The Mountain of Kept Memory by Rachel Neumier

I mentioned once in a YouTube comments section that I tended to shy away from fantasy with a female author's name attached because there's a greater than 50/50 chance there's going to be a heavy Romance plot line in the mix. It's a branding issue. Robin Hobb is fine, because it's intentionally a gender-neutral name. N.K. Jemisen is fine, it's initials, so it's not saying "Hey look at me, I'm a lady author writing fantasy, just tryin' to break into this ol' boy's club!" All it's saying is, “I'm writing over here,” so even when I know the author is female, she is intentionally branding as gender neutral which means Romance may be present, but is not emphasized. And then there's known quantities. Ursula K. LeGuin is legit, her work doesn't shoehorn BS romance plot lines. Carol Berg has romance sometimes, but usually around the same level as Brandon Sanderson. But if it's an unknown author with a female name, odds are strong it's going to be Romance with some dragons or gryphons or whatever thrown in to mix it up. I was verbally excoriated for this opinion. Yessir, just a close minded bigot who won't give lady authors a chance. So I gave this random lady fantasy author a chance, and wouldn't you know it, there was a BS Romance plot in the mix.
I don't hate it when people fall in love. I hate literary romance where characters are hyper-idealized and deciding the other person is trustworthy enough to get married and have a family with is too easy. Doubly so when they are given every reason to not trust one another like, oh, one party invades the other's country. But it was all a misunderstanding, you see. The guy really didn't have a choice. And he's very sorry now, so it's all right. And of course he's so handsome and a perfect gentleman, and made sure when he was invading that all of his soldiers, down to the very last one, were gentlemen as well. Because that's how war works, you see. It's triple frustrating because the fantasy/sci-fi elements of this novel were interesting and fun.
3/5

 

The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle by Haruki Murakami: 8/10

I liked this book a lot when it shined. I read it for school, and I've never read a full translated book before. It had a deeply complex story with many characters that developed in various ways. There was a lot of adult content, mainly intense descriptions of sex and a few scenes too violent to read. They added to the plot in a significant manner, however. I understand why the book is so popular, but I am not as into surrealism like others. Also, I like loose ends tied and satisfying endings, which this book only half has. A very confusing ending with a lot of metaphors. I liked reading through the book though, my favorite storyline was that of Lt. Mamiya's.

 

Letters from a Stoic by Seneca
8/10
It is a good book, teaches some of the main principles of stoicism in the form of letters Seneca wrote to someone. I gave it an 8 because there are a few parts where I disagree.

 

Dopamine Nation and Molecule of More (7/10)

Great stories and decent writing. Some references to scientific studies, but the scientific rigor was lacking and a lot of the ideas in these books were speculative. However, some great concepts are introduced that updated my understanding of habits, addiction, craving, and desire.

 

Mistborn: Final empire by Brandon Sanderson (3/10)

Brandon Sanderson has a big army of fans. I read this book, but I don't see the appeal. I really like Brandon's way of writing, no superfluous description or prose to try to sound fancy. I really can't stand the way that authors like GRRM write, where he spends entire pages describing food. Where Brandon fails however is that his characters are pretty shallow. And he constantly introduces new characters at a breakneck speed forcing you to keep track of all the characters.

 

Neuromancer by William Gibson

I wrote up a full review on Goodreads, but it's spoiler free and I have thoughts about it that are particularly relevant to this community. We're here to quit porn, and I believe part of that is developing a healthier relationship with sex and Neromancer, well. It's complicated.

This book was mentioned in this thread before, and the reviewer said there were triggers. He's right. As I said in my more general review, this is textbook "male gaze." The narrator mentions women's bodies a lot, the women are sexually aggressive. It doesn't get wildly explicit, not into erotica territory, but it's definitely triggering. I don't know if it had anything to do with my falling off my 180+ streak. I had a lot of other things contributing, still do, but this book certainly didn't help. But I'm not sure if these triggering elements were intended as escapist fantasy elements, or part of a comment on the bleakness of the future, a cautionary tale. I guess it's what you make of it.

If you want to read the book sometime in the future, you can stop now. It'd be worth it, too, the novel is definitive Cyberpunk and well worth it, a brilliant piece of prose and, possibly, genius characterization. If you don't want to read it or you don't care, just be aware. Spoilers ahead.

The protagonist, Case, is a former pro but he was broken and now he's a drug addict with a death wish. He gets picked up by a sexy badass cyborg assassin and brought to her boss who offers a deal; they'll fix his body if he'll do a job for them. Of course he agrees. When he wakes up from surgery, Molly, the sexy badass cyborg assassin, promptly screws him.

Why the hell would she do that? She wouldn't, I thought. There's no way. There is nothing about Case that makes him screwable. He is an intentionally flat character, very little personality, a drug addict, and he just woke up from surgery which does not usually trigger a woman's arousal. It probably wouldn't be comfortable for him, either, but he seems to go with it because sex is always good. Right? This part pissed me off, because it definitely looks like escapist male fantasy. Romance for dudes. Hot girl initiates sex for zero reason at all, I've seen this plot in porn a thousand times.
It gets worse. They keep having sex, but she only seems to want him. Throughout the novel Case objectifies other women. Most seem to be attracted to him, despite his lack of qualities. There's a whole genre dedicated to this kind of thing. On the surface level it's stupid, bad writing, which is kind of frustrating because the prose, the setting, is so good. Plus, this novel has been so critically acclaimed, I'm mad at the literary establishment for promoting this bullshit. But is it bullshit?

Molly, it turns out, got the money to turn herself into a cyborg by renting out her body. She had a chip implanted in her brain, one that would turn her consciousness off, make her perfectly compliant but she'd have no memory. The perfect setup, right, she could be the most accommodating prostitute and not suffer any of the humiliation or trauma that could go with it. But the alterations she was implanting as she earned her money interfered with the chip, and she started remembering things. It broke all the way during a violent session. It's unclear if she decided to be an assassin before or after this bloody event, but it's clear that mixing sex and violence was triggering for her. We know for a fact that people attempt to process trauma in strange, counterintuitive ways. She's a fictional character, obviously, but it's possible Gibson intended to have Molly choose Case because she was in control. A sexually aggressive woman is a male fantasy, but on her end, he was a safe target. She slept with him, not in spite of his lack of personality but because of it.
All of the women are similarly broken. Two are also drug addicts, one might be and is also just plain weird. Case objectifies a fourth woman, but she's a cop and doesn't act sexually toward him at all. Case does not end up with Molly in the end. She leaves. He finds another girlfriend. He also goes back to drugs. He has a lot of sex but none of it is good, it's not fulfilling. It's just another drug. This isn't a happy book, Case is not a hero, if you think about it, you don't envy him or want to be like him at all. Or at least, you shouldn't. He doesn't comment on the emptiness of the drugs or the emptiness of the sex, but he has nothing to compare it with. Neither do the women he uses, and who use him. His world is a nihilistic one where meaning is stripped away, where his only motivation is survival and even that is half-hearted. It's not just him, either, the denizens of the Sprawl, the hustlers, are desperately shifting money, working their deals, building their angles, clawing at one another. We encounter a wealthier demographic, tourists at a resort who are no better than the hustlers in the Sprawl; busy with hedonistic, drug fueled mania, desperately trying to feel good through cheap, artificial means. There are only a handful of characters trying to do anything more meaningful than staving off depression, and some aren't even human. The only group of people that seem to have any amount of satisfaction are the residents of Zion, which the Matrix directly references. Their emphasis is on love. Human relationship.

Gibson portrays the sex in his novel as cheap, seamy, and ultimately meaningless. If that's supposed to be a bad thing, however, it's only lightly implicit. Case never says anything about it, one way or another. He does get angry when the villain objectifies Molly, the same way he objectified Molly and every other woman he's encountered, and I don't know if that's Case lacking self-awareness, or Gibson. In the same way, I don't know if there isn't any comment about the disappointment of sex because Case's lack of awareness of anything better, or if this ignorance is also shared by Gibson. It makes sense that Case is ignorant. He was raised in a culture where the negative consequences of promiscuity are supposedly erased. Prostitution is normalized, cheap and easy, there's no shame attached. It's the Sexual Revolution fully realized, the utopia we always wanted... and it's miserable. Sex is cheap because it has no value, and humanity is poorer for it. It also makes sense that Gibson might be ignorant. The working class culture I lived in when I served in the military unironically enforced that same, "more sex, any way you can get it" mentality. Strip clubs can always be found right outside military installations. As porn has grown increasingly normalized, and as the Universities and pop culture keep trying to "liberate" women by telling them they must "have sex like a man," there seems to be a lot more sex out there but less love, and less satisfaction. I see this forum filled with young men pursuing cheap, meaningless sex, because they don't believe there is anything better. They see sex as nothing but a power game, they think marriage is a scam, and the strange thing is, feminists preach the same thing. Both believe they can use one another, and as long as everyone is consenting, everyone will be okay. They have bought into the lie porn told us, that sex is nothing but a transaction. In so doing, men and women both close themselves off to the hope of a satisfying future with a single, pair-bonded mate.

I don't know if "Neuromancer" was intending to warn us of the impending doom so-called "free love" would wreak on us, or if it's an unwitting manifestation. Either way, the sex in this book isn't really sexy at all. It's poor, and sad. It's just a thing the character does to distract himself from his wretched state, and I know a few people around here who can relate.

 

Not necessarily a book, but I reread Bone by Jeff Kinney to relive my childhood a bit. My favorite graphic novels of all time. I wasn't sure it would hold up since it's been 10 years since I made it. However, seems like this graphic novel was written for adults too because it's absolutely fantastic. First of all, the art work is stunning and contributes well to the world-building. Also the premise of cartoon characters being inserted into a LOTR-style world is very original and creative. My favorite character is Phoney Bone because he gives zero fucks about morality and stays with that mentality throughout the series. He's like an anti-hero character who's instantly funny because he has little character development even while things get darker throughout the story. The story does well with the humor even with such dark moments like murder and monsters. Also, weird elements in the story such as the fact that animals like bees and racoons talk and smoke cigars contribute to the originality. As for the main characters, they have very complex backgrounds and see a lot of character development. To give a simple perspective on the story, it is a basic hero's journey storyline that includes humor that actually contributes to the originality rather than hinders it. It's not like Marvel movie puns and penis jokes either. A lot of adult-humor that doesn't really have to do with NSFW content, so if you are a kid you'll think it's funny and if you're an adult it's even funnier.

I really like how the story begins light hearted and slowly builds up through little misadventures that still include massive plot points. The story changes suddenly during the Old Man's Cave segment where actual fighting and death begins. That is the point where the story goes from good to great.

I've seen reviews online and the main thing people have a problem with is the ending, maybe because it feels rushed and maybe because some characters acted out of character. I don't really have a problem with the character development because after the climax everything is satisfying and all the endings are well deserved. There isn't really anything in the story that is controversial, I like most of the choices the author made.

The only things I didn't like were some of the underdeveloped characters and stuff we didn't here about again. I wanted to here more about what happened to Rock jaw the mountain lion, a character named Jonathan, some of the animals from the middle of the story, and maybe a scene where the Bones returned to boneville, but that is okay.

Overall : 9/10

 

"I'm Glad My Mom's Dead" - Jennette McCurdy (6.8/10)

I had really high expectations of this book.
With all the the hype and the reviews, I was expecting a balls-out, deep, psychological exploration
Of Jennette dissecting herself, the relationship with her mother, relationship with her father and brothers
Her status as an actress, Her views on herself and people before, during, and after fame,
What Hollywood was like before MeToo and afterwards, before and after ICarly,
The whole nasty business with Dan Schneider from Nickelodeon, and the aftereffects after her mother passed.
Nope.
And usually, I never buy into the hype because I know whenever the media hypes something up,
About 95% of the time, it's always bullshit and hot air, regardless of what medium of art it is.
And though it's not a terrible book by any means, I was disappointed by it. Not very, but still.
Like I said, I thought she was going to be reading into every situation, but she wasn't.
Instead, it read more like journal entries, which can be effective when done right, and at first,
I thought she intentionally made herself sound naive in the beginning of the book to make the audience sympathize with her. It worked.
Then, by the time I was almost at the end of the book, no, this was all her, authentically.
Now, I get it, I sympathize,
I come from a background of abuse and I know how crippling it can be to your emotional
And psychological awareness of certain things, and maybe I am being too harsh,
But man, couldn't ya dig deeper into yourself? Couldn't you connect the dots when you finally came to understand that what happened to you was abuse??!
I don't mean to sound harsh because I have a lot of empathy and sympathy for the girl.
I just wanted her to rip herself open emotionally because it felt that she was still very guarded on how she truly felt about the whole thing of fame and her mother.
It felt like she was exhausted and didn't wanna look for a deeper meaning behind any of the things that happened to her
Or what was happening around her. My theory, this book was just something that she was waiting to get off of her chest for her entire life. Almost like a weight to let go of.
Just a journal to publish for her to emotionally exorcise these demons and walk away.
Necessary, but I wanted more. But I understand.
The things I liked about her book was that she was funny, and very blunt and honest.
She held no punches about herself, so I applaud her for that.
Well, despite what I think of the book and my expectations, I hope she's finally at peace.
Having a controlling parent who directs and overlooks and controls your life in every aspect can be devastating.
But through interviews, she seems like a cool, and down-to-earth gal to hang out with though.
I have the utmost respect for her anti-fame/anti-celebrity thought process and views.

I guess, in the end, I kinda shot myself in the foot here for believing the hype and holding this book up in high regard without even reading it first. I really wanted it to cut bone, but it didn't.
Not a bad read, but I won't be reading it again.

 

The Remains of the Day by Kazuo Ishiguro, excellent 9/10

 

Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn 5/5 I guess

Setting: passable
Plot: twisty
Characters: plead the 5th
Prose: excellent in bursts
Messaging: hard to say

Definitely easy to spoil and I wouldn’t want to do that. Relevant to this audience, there’s a lot of sex in this novel but it’s mostly vague and/or literary. Erotic sex is flashy and sensationalized. It’s fantasy. Porn in text. Literary sex is uncomfortable, sometimes violent, designed to repulse rather than entice. There’s a lot of mention of more pornographic sex, both direct as porn, and also just the kind of sex porn promotes, but it’s mostly one character imagining what other characters are getting up to, it’s not detailed and doesn’t really happen. You can avoid this one if you meed to play it safe for now, but there aren’t any hard “no” scenes, in my opinion. Neuromancer was worse about it than this.

There’s a piece of female perspective applicable to this crowd of mostly young men, shaping their ideas about heterosexual relationships and how we pursue them. From pages 299-301 in the paperback.

“I was playing the girl who was in style, the girl a man… wants: the Cool Girl. Men always say that as the defining compliment, don’t they? She’s a cool girl. Being the Cool Girl means I am a hot, brilliant, funny woman who adores football, poker, dirty jokes, and burping, who plays video games, drinks cheap beer, loves threesomes and anal sex, and jams hot dogs and hamburgers into her mouth like she’s hosting the world’s biggest culinary gang bang while somehow maintaining a size 2, because Cool Girls are above all hot. Hot and understanding. Cool Girls never get angry; they only smile in a chagrined, loving manner and let their men do whatever they want. Go ahead, shit on me, I don’t mind, I’m the Cool Girl.
“Men actually think this girl exists. Maybe they’re fooled because so many women are willing to pretend to be this girl. For a long time Cool Girl offended me. I used to see men- friends, co-workers, strangers- giddy over these awful pretender women, and I’d want to sit these men down and calmly say: You are not dating a woman, you are dating a woman who has watched too many movies written by socially awkward men who’d like to believe that this kind of woman exists and might kiss them. I’d want to grab the poor guy by his lapels or messenger bag and say: The (female canine) doesn’t really love chili dogs that much- no one loves chili dogs that much! And the Cool Girls are even more pathetic: They’re not even pretending to be the woman they want to be, they’re pretending to be the woman a man wants them to be. Oh, and if you’re not a Cool Girl, I beg you not to believe that your man doesn’t want the Cool Girl. It may be a slightly different version- maybe he’s a vegetarian, so Cool Girl loves seitan and is great with dogs; or maybe he’s a hipster artist, so Cool Girl is a tattooed, bespectacled nerd who loves comics. There are variations to the window dressing, but believe me, he wants the Cool Girl, who is basically the girls who likes every f-ing thing he likes and doesn’t ever complain. (How do you know you’re not Cool Girl? Because he says things like: ‘I like strong women.’ If he says that to you, he will at some point f- someone else. Because ‘I like strong women’ is code for ‘I hate strong women.’)
“I waited patiently- years- for the pendulum to swing the other way, for men to start reading Jane Austen, learn how to knit, pretend to love cosmos, organize scrapbook parties, and make out with each other while we leer. And then we’d say, Yeah, he’s a Cool Guy.
“But it never happened. Instead, women across the nation colluded in our degradation! Pretty soon Cool Girl became the standard girl. Men believed she existed- she wasn’t just a dreamgirl one in a million. Every girl was supposed to be this girl, and if you weren’t, there was something wrong with you.
“But it’s tempting to be Cool Girl. For someone like me, who likes to win, it’s tempting to want to be the girl every guy wants.”

I don’t know if it’s because I’m particularly sensitive to complaints like this, but this struck me particularly as a recovering porn addict. There’s this idea floating around of the hyper-sexual girl, loves the attention, invites it, etc. The truth is, few women are Cool in such a way. Even when they seem to present like that, there are different reasons than I think and they definitely don’t want that attention from me.

 

The Ferryman
by Justin Cronin

Sci-Fi / Mystery

---

I liked the sort of dystopian setting, the ‘medical reincarnation’ and the mystery that surrounds the the obviously sketchy mechanics of the world. They’re well designed and well written. In general I liked the writing style. Since I’m someone who doesn’t visualize when reading I tend to not like overly long descriptions and I’d say The Ferryman was slightly more descriptive than what I usually like but it was still pleasant to read and never felt like it was pointlessly stretching the scenes. Pacing was relatively fast (which I like) but no parts of the novel gave me an impression they were rushed. The novel switches between first and third person depending on which character we’re following. It feels like a bit of an artsy thing to do, but I didn’t mind it. Both styles are written proficiently.

To me the characters are the weakest part of the novel. Our main protagonist Proctor is written in first person and has a well developed backstory, some happy and some traumatic experiences but he still comes off as a bland to me. I find it hard to really pinpoint some of his characteristics. He has a sense of honor and duty and is a ‘good guy’ who cares about doing the right things. He often thinks back on past events but it’s hard to see how they’re affecting his actions in the presence, if at all. I think that by trying to make him into a nuanced and balanced character he ended up becoming somewhat boring. I’ve tried writing novels myself and it’s a thing my own protagonists have fallen into plenty of times. It would have helped if some parts of his personality were a bit more extreme.

Thea, our other main character, is written in third person. I feel her personality is a bit under used and I don’t really get the why she wasn’t written in first person as Proctor was. I think it would have benefited her as a character.

I don’t want to spoil anything but I did not like the resolution of the story’s mystery. It’s not necessary a bad thing, but it’s just a trope which I’m not a fan of. As such I can’t say I feel satisfied with the novel’s ending even though it’s fine. There are no glaring plot holes and things fit, but I’m missing the feeling of a big payoff.

Overall, very well written, interesting setting, good pace, but not a big fan of the characters and the ending. If you’re looking for a somewhat dystopian, mystery, sci-fi novel, than sure you can give this one a go.

7/10