Doki-doki
This topic doesn't work quite well so group it is
How to join & Group Rules:

  • leave a comment in this thread about last book you read (comment should include your impressions of the book), then send a request through Steam
  • when winning a GA mention a book or author instead of "thanks".
    Example: "History of Sparta". Did you know that Spartans were unbeatable till they forgot about Lycurgus austerity laws and indulged in luxury?

FAQ:

  • any book discussions here are also welcome, no need to join the group;
  • rejoining - 1) at least after a month of being kicked/quitting 2) new reading-related comment required

Steam link
SG page

6 years ago*

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Nera, I'm kinda curious as to why I'm blacklisted by u ;__;

Did i do something wrong?

5 years ago
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probably cause of your 401 groups and wonderful collection of "Luxors".
Off-topic questions are the other way people.

5 years ago
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Mhmm I see. No idea what's wrong with giving out luxor and I give out max 2 copies. Plus I do give out great games too but oh well. Didn't know joining group is bad plus i don't leech games, but yea Thanks for telling me :)

Plus it's not any random blacklist since I'm in your group and I can't see it hence it's not off-topic. So I am just asking.

5 years ago
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I recently finished listening to Giants' Star, the third book in a series by James P. Hogan. The first ones are Inherit the Stars and The Gentle Giants of Ganymede. It was quite a different book from the first ones, but I enjoyed it a lot. I enjoyed the others too, so I figure it'd be good to talk about them here.

First of all, I have to say that the books were written in the 70's (the first was published in '77, the last in '81), and they reflect the science, technology and society of that time, so people sensitive to these things might have an issue with them. Personally for me they were a minor bother at most, certainly not enough to detract from the books.

Inherit the Stars is purely scientific discussion. The book basically have people finding stuff, trying to understand it, and some of the logistics and management involved. Which might not sound that appealing, but I loved the book. The premise is that people found a 50,000 year old human in a space suit on the moon, and are trying to understand where it came from.

The Gentle Giants of Ganymede has less scientific discussion, although there's still some of that. It's basically human happily meeting aliens. A general feel good book in which (like in the first book) very little happens.

Giants' Star is completely different from the first two, in that it's completely cloak and dagger, with last minute saves, although not a lot of action. It's fun as a culmination of what the first two books introduce, and I enjoyed it both for the tension, the humour in the somewhat absurd situations, and the idea behind it. I somewhat missed the scientific debate and discovery from the first books, but it was still imaginative enough on the scientific front (especially for the time).

I've read that the next books aren't that great, so won't try to get them, but I definitely enjoyed these.

5 years ago
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Sounds good. Adding them to my list. I suck at science but I love books that put science back in science fiction.

5 years ago
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I just finished The Dead Zone by Steven King.

I can't say too much without spoiling this book... It's my first Steven King novel I ever picked up and finished... I don't count The Mist because that's a short story. I liked the book for the most part. It's a book filled with misfortune though. A lot of it... It has a few likeable characters specifically the main character... But that's actually a huge problem because this character you like gets shafted by life over and over without any real good reason...

Ill leave my truest of thoughts in a spoiler block. Anyone who hasn't read the book or doesn't plan to then feel free to spoil it on yourself.
Johnny deserved better than that ending... F*** you Steven King.

5 years ago
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Finished the sequence Hobbit - LOTR for 2nd time.
It was even better than the first time !! So many amazing lore, side stories and characters !
Now it's time for Silmarillion ! :D

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5 years ago*
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The Silmarillion is simply majestic. I hope you did enjoy reading it. :D

5 years ago
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I have not read everything yet, but for now it's been fantastic !
No doubt I'll reread it as soon as I finish it !! x)

5 years ago
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Great! :D

5 years ago
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How have they not made a movie (couple of movies even) off The Silmarillion yet?? Instead they scraped the Hobbit over 9 hours of movies!
Such a brilliant book!

5 years ago
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I hope they won't ruin it just like they did with The Hobbit... But there are rumors of a series, produced by Amazon, based on The Silmarillion! :)
I don't know how to feel about. The Silmarillion is way harder to be translated into movie: too many characters, too many stories, style too high and biblic. Not really the teen drama or teen comedy they always try to create on screens, because it would be liked by more people. Silmarillion is like the Bible in some ways, and movie makers haven't bene much interested in the genre in the last 50 years.
Yeah, you see, I'm a little fanatical about it XD

5 years ago
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Yeah I think it may end up getting significantly reduced in various ways. I think they went with the Hobbit because they could recycle characters from LOTR and people would feel connected. Nothing like that in the Silmarillion and it may be too epic to be contained in the small screen. I'll give them a chance, we'll see.
Hey there are things that are worth being fanatical about, right? ;)

5 years ago
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Totally, especially when they are as beautiful as The Silmarillion :D Some of the Quenta are just so high, so beautiful! Sometimes I really wish I could have visited those times and places _

5 years ago
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The last book I read was Insomnia by Stephen King.
If you want to read this book - beware, here are spoilers:
There is actually not much to talk about this book. I will just write thoughts, which get into my head.
I think it's a bit prolonged, main character needed to wait for too long while he discovered his abilities and the plot was obvious (when he saw "bold doctrors" I instantly got the main idea). But still I liked the reference to his "Dark tower", which I want to read later. Also the description of auras were interesting, would like to see them myself :D
In the end, I wouldn't recommen this book. Despite it's name you mostly will get bored and fall asleep right away.
BTW, now reading The Hobbit in english and really enjoy it (but need to use dictionary often).

Sent a request for group. Sorry if there are mistakes in text.

5 years ago
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May I know why my request was rejected?

5 years ago
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Made a request to join just there. Last book I read was quite a change from what I'm usually into, which is science fiction. I've read the first Bakemonogatari novel which covers the sub stories Hitagi Crab and Mayoi Snail. I actually really enjoyed it since the anime seemed to cram a bunch of those panels with text on them into single frames. The book lets you read all of it at your own pace.
Other than that, I usually like to read sci-fi. (Also halfway through Red Mars by Kim Stanley Robinson sshh dont tell anyone ive not finished it yet, its a long one) (Oh yeah my names Dozzle on steam, different to this one.)

5 years ago*
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The last book i read was The Art of War by Sun Tzu. I actually bought 3 different versions/editions and read them at the same time, comparing each other. I'm very impressed by how most of the situations in the book set in chinese conflicts and battles from some centuries ago can apply to normal life, changing your way of viewing the world around you.

5 years ago
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Well, a group called Books & Coffee sounds perfect for me! I would like to join. I'm 30 books into my current goal on Goodreads of reading 40 books this year (would have been more by now if I didn't read so many short stories), but I'll probably revise it soon to a goal of 50, since I think I'll be reaching the current goal with time to spare. The last book I finished (yesterday) was the original 1930 version of The Hidden Staircase by Carolyn Keene, which is different enough from the 1959 rewritten version to warrant reading separately. I thought it was a good read, though the antagonist was almost cartoonishly evil. Interesting, too, was that there was no mention of Bess or George, so I suppose they must have been introduced in a later book in the series. Here, Nancy tackled the mystery solo. If you'd like to discuss it more, please let me know.

I'll send my request on the Steam group next.

5 years ago
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Book-themed cat bump 🐈

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5 years ago
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May I know why my request was rejected?

5 years ago
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5 years ago
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There're so-called aesthetic and cognitive needs, which reading's perfect for. Why would you force yourself to read fiction though with so many practical books and/or hobbies around for ya?

5 years ago*
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5 years ago
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If it helps, reading fiction gives you a larger vocabulary than non-fiction, makes you more empathetic, and may improve your social skills. Also, it's just fun. But if you prefer other activities, so be it! There's room for all types.

5 years ago
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5 years ago
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I still agree with your friends who say you just haven't found the right book for you but I disagree with their method. I do believe there are books out there for everyone and by that i mean a book (or more) for each of us but sometimes they're hard to find and it's a very personal quest so random book recommendations based on what they liked won't help. Unless they know you extremely well.
But that doesn't mean it has to be fiction. Fiction is escapism in its purest form so it can help with depression, but you can find other escapes in other books. If you'd rather read about science or the cosmos or books that you feel will have a more direct impact on your life, all the more power to you for knowing what you want.

5 years ago
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Although it's true for most people (most people love to read novels just to be distracted), I wouldn't call reading fiction escapism. To some extent I share Razielite's views about fiction (I find non-fiction more satisfying and useful too), but if you choose well, novels can be very rewarding because they are great at defining what it means to be human.

Luckily, I found the link I wanted to share here. Nassim Taleb's words on fiction https://www.nuggetsofthought.com/2018/08/22/taleb-literature-books.

Fiction is a certain packaging of the truth, or higher truths. Indeed I find that there is more truth in Proust, albeit it is officially fictional, than in the babbling analyses of the New York Times that give us the illusions of understanding what’s going on. Newspapers have officially the right facts, but their interpretations are imaginary – and their choice of facts are arbitrary. They lie with right facts; a novelist says the truth with wrong facts

5 years ago
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I guess escapism was the wrong word because I didn't mean just a distraction from one's life, although novels can be just that and it's fine. I've had a sometimes unpleasant childhood and I couldn't wait to dive into one book or another but I think it was more about jumping into someone else's shoes and experiencing other lives and dreams, and hopes or even despair through eyes, and in places or times different than my own. Whether I was searching for something different or reaching for common grounds even in the most likely places, I'm still unsure but I'd say that I now completely agree with that beautiful quote.

What I love most about reading is visiting my fellow humans through a little window into their worlds and finding truth that binds us.

5 years ago
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I don't want to look annoying but why was my request rejected :(

5 years ago
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It's simply unpolite to ignore and blacklist without a reason :/

5 years ago
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well i have hundreds of stories on my steam list currently reading through them. in real life im currently reading a manga series based on alice in wonderland. but that doesnt stop me from owning normal ones from just words to pictures like my diary of the wimpy kid series. my family think im weird but i just love reading. great way to escape and experience something you wouldnt normally do. last story i read though was on steam called dandelion but because it stopped working i didnt finish it but i had finished it twice before. Not counting types like that my last book was my geek girl series by holly smale. It was a great read when i found it and it just made me want to get the rest and in fact I got 1 signed so pretty proud of that and its one of those types where i will just go back and keep reading and reading and never get fed up with it. with 6 main stories 3 mini stories its a set i would recommend for anyone open to the young women genre, it is also based on the authors own life slightly

5 years ago*
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manga series based on alice in wonderland

Pandora Hearts?

5 years ago*
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oh no its literally based on alice in wonderland. alice in the country of hearts, clover, joker and diamond but they stopped after writing 1 diamond probably cuz they went from manga to a novel XD

5 years ago
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5 years ago
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5 years ago
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5 years ago
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aw but thats no fun XD

5 years ago
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No, this is more fun~ Now people will wonder what's our little secret. ;P

5 years ago
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Just finished The Trench by Steve Alten. This is the sequel to Meg: A Novel of Deep Terror, which is the book upon which The Meg (film) was based. I actually read Meg first and then followed with The Trench.

To be honest, Steve Alten isn't much of an author. But so far his books are fun, cheap thrills that is may serve as a nice change of pace from whatever one normally reads.

After these two books, I need a break from them. They're that mediocre. But I will continue with them. Both were pretty formulaic -- monster appears, causes chaos, gets tracked, loses tracker, disappears, various interjections of no-name characters coming into the picture and getting eaten, and eventually hero comes and saves the day through some ridiculous way -- and I am curious to see how far the author is able to take the concept.

5 years ago
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Yay really nice group to be in. Never thought to search for it tho.
The last book which I read was The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald, I really enjoyed it. I like to read a lot of so called "classics" so I mainly focus on them.
My Goodreads profile

5 years ago
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Brothers Karamazov (volume I).

5 years ago
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hey great idea :)

i love so much reading ^^

my last book was Cyrano de Bergerac

5 years ago
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That's a nice group! May I join? I'm reading at the moment 1984, George Orwell. I can't believe how I failed to read such a great book until now, I'm really enjoying his writing, plus everything resembling a post-apocalyptic or dystopian world gets my interest in no time! :D

5 years ago
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Right? Chilling how current a book from the 40ies can be...
Classics can be frightening but there's a reason they're classics, not a Mark Twain classic ;) but more like Calvino said one that "has never finished saying what it has to say."

5 years ago
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That's yet another great quote from Calvino. To be honest, it seems like Orwell smartly pictures common human feelings and fears, such as forbidden love, lack of privacy and willingness to survive. Most of these were, are and will always be in our inner beings, helping us to relate quicker to 1984's universe, and to understand why it's an ageless classic.

5 years ago
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Very true. That's how you know great sci-fi or dystopian literature from the rest: it's about humanity first so even if premises and settings get old, the book still feels real and we always find some truth about ourselves in it.

5 years ago
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Totally agree! :)

5 years ago
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I wouldn't mind somewhere to gush about my latest Sanderson book.

5 years ago
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Right this moment I'm reading The Kingkiller Chronicle.

5 years ago
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I'm reading the Dirk Gently books by Douglas Adams. I'd loved his other books, and I was curious to see how much the recent TV show based on DGHDA was changed from the books.

And I'm rereading the Chronicles of the Imaginarium Geographica series by James A. Owen, which has the smallest fandom I've seen.

5 years ago
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Last book I finished: Talking as fast as I can: From Gilmore Girls to Gilmore Girls (and Everything in Between) by Lauren Graham.

I have to admit that I bought it mostly because I'm in love with Lauren Graham, but I also saw a few episodes of Gilmore Girls and liked them a lot (looking forward to, someday, see the whole show). The book is very light and easy to read. Many chapters with good jokes and funny real life situations. A lot of Gilmore Girls (of course), including a summary of the most important moments on each season. A little of biography and various useful advices, like the "kitchen timer" technique for writting that I'm applying at the moment. I liked it, fans of Gilmore Girls will probably love it.

5 years ago
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Tor.com has available for a short time the novella, The Ballad of Black Tom. It revisits HP Lovecraft's The Horror at Red Hook, referred to as HPL's most bigoted story, from a different perspective - that of a black man living in Harlem in 1927. Only available before 11:59 PM ET October 12th, 2018 (Tor doesn't provide much notice - I just got the newsletter).

https://ebookclub.tor.com/

5 years ago
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The Da Vinci Code

5 years ago
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Reading Neuromancer now, last book I read was Sword of Destiny.

5 years ago
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any thoughts?

about applying and GA comments - just a title (or quote) doesn't count, describe your impressions at least in a couple words

5 years ago
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Oh my bad. Sword of Destiny is a compilation of little stories by Andrej. They preceed the witcher games and are all pretty well written.

5 years ago
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Last book I read: Elanus written by Ursula Poznanski

5 years ago
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