What books are you reading now?

erik · Post by **erik** » Wed Apr 13, 2016 5:00 pm

My understanding of Amazon sold bizarre porn fiction humor is that the joke is mostly having tricked people into buying clickbait titles.

Leress · Post by **Leress** » Wed Apr 13, 2016 5:33 pm

At first I this was the new name for the person that wrote all those erotic books that I posted early, but it looks like it's a different person.

Mask_De_H wrote:Chuck Tingle has to be some kind of parody writer, right? He wrote Fucked in the Butt By My Butt and the sequel: Fucked in the Butt By "Fucked in the Butt By My Butt".

There is even a video trailer for the book

https://youtu.be/25jjTt0I0x8

Checking through his twitter feed it really looks like it.

https://twitter.com/ChuckTingle/status/ ... 5392025600

His "bio"

Dr. Chuck Tingle is an erotic author and Tae Kwon Do grandmaster (almost black belt) from Billings, Montana. After receiving his PhD at DeVry University in holistic massage, Chuck found himself fascinated by all things sensual, leading to his creation of the "tingler", a story so blissfully erotic that it cannot be experienced without eliciting a sharp tingle down the spine.

Chuck's hobbies include backpacking, checkers and sport.

Stahlseele · Post by **Stahlseele** » Thu Apr 14, 2016 2:09 pm

Massive Spoilers for the new WH32K Series ahead.
http://wh40k.lexicanum.com/wiki/War_of_the_Beast
Wat . . just . . wat . .
The hell are they smoking? x.x

Following the disastrous Proletarian Crusade, Terra seemed out of options. A astonishing incident took place where a surviving Crusade ship landed on Terra, carrying 3 Orks including an "ambassador". Identified as an entirely new sub-species of the hyper-evolving Beast Orks, the ambassador spoke Gothic and was able to arrange a meeting with the High Lords thanks to Vangorich and the disbelief of the palace guards. The Ork ambassador, identifying himself as Bezhrak, demanded the surrender of Terra or face death. The High Lords were speechless, unable to give any coherent response. Disgusted by their cowardice and lack of resolve, the Ork ambassador left just as Eldar vessels appeared over the Imperial palace.

Fucking SERIOUSLY?

Darth Rabbitt · Post by **Darth Rabbitt** » Thu Apr 14, 2016 2:50 pm

Why are you guys still expecting WH40K to not be stupid? I mean I don't like it beyond some of the miniature designs but I figured everyone here who does knew how goddamn stupid it was (except Elennsar of course).

name_here · Post by **name_here** » Thu Apr 14, 2016 3:36 pm

The Beast's Orks are different. For as-yet unclear reasons they've managed to basically get a galactic-scale psychic network going and are markedly more intelligent and disciplined than normal. That's relative; they understand that ambushes are a good idea but don't get what "radio silent" means. But basically this is apparently what happens when every Ork in the galaxy is united under a single Warboss, which is why everyone feels it is very important to make sure that never ever happens again.

Stahlseele · Post by **Stahlseele** » Thu Apr 14, 2016 3:47 pm

Orks, an ORK AMBASSADOR LANDED! On Holy Terra! To ASK FOR SURRENDER! After most of the human population on the planet has died. On the most heavily fortified Planet in the whole fucking galaxy. The ENTIRE MOON is a Weapons-Platform. They have continent sized Battlestations floating in Orbit around Earth! And the Palace, WHERE THE GOLDEN CORPSICLE SITS is defended even more heavily with shields and an Entire LEGION OF THE EMPERORS FINEST! Basically a step Between Primarch and Space Marine. AND THE ORKS JUST WALK IN BECAUSE NOBODY BELIEVES IT COULD HAPPEN! And then ORKS ASK FOR AN END TO THE FIGHTING! ORKS! ORKS DON'T DO THAT! Their Idea of Heaven is a Daemon World of Khorne where they get to fight for enternity even if they die! And then because nobody has 2 Braincells to rub together in the IMPERIAL PALACE OF ALL PLACES APPEARANTLY, they leave in a Huff! AND THEN ELDAR MATERIALIZE ABOVE THE FUCKING PALACE SOMEHOW! THIS did not even happen in the Horus Heresy, which is, according to the article about this abortion, STILL THE BIGGER CONFLICT BETWEEN THE TWO!

THAT SHITS ON BASICALLY THE ENTIRETY OF THE WH40K CANON!
And something like this after how good the 30K/Horus Heresy stuff was!

maglag · Post by **maglag** » Thu Apr 14, 2016 4:11 pm

I just love how before the ork ambassador, the Imperium's best plan was to get as many humies as they could in ships and drive them closer to the orks so that they could hit them with swords.

Try to outnumber and outmelee the orks. 40K imperial strategy at its finest.

Go figure how they were feeding the golden toilet enough fresh psykers in the meanwhile.

Stahlseele · Post by **Stahlseele** » Thu Apr 14, 2016 4:13 pm

And then they get beaten by the orks technological superiority . .
Yes, complete role reversal between orks and humans -.-

DSMatticus · Post by **DSMatticus** » Thu Apr 14, 2016 5:20 pm

I didn't think the people who fapped that hard to orks knew how to read or write. No, but seriously, that reads like cringy fanfic. I don't really give a shit about 40k canon, but that is just bad.

Stahlseele · Post by **Stahlseele** » Thu Apr 14, 2016 6:11 pm

Yeah. I wonder what happened to our spiritual Liege . .
It might be his doing to justify the Imperial Fists going back up to full Legion.
Which is strange, because he usually fapps to the Ultramarines.
And the Black Templars i guess, so there is that <.<

edit:
i happen to like the orks.
mostly because their happy go lucky mentality makes the grimdork neckbeard fanboys go ballistic.

name_here · Post by **name_here** » Thu Apr 14, 2016 9:16 pm

The short of it is that the Orks are a genetically engineered super-soldier project that's gone wrong. Hence their aggression, strength, numbers, and capacity to pull super-advanced technology out of their ass while simultaneously mostly using ramshackle pieces of crap. That's been Ork canon for a long time.

Somehow the Beast has started them on a process of returning to being super-soldiers via their collective psychic field thingy; the Inquisition would dearly love to know how. So they're getting even bigger and higher tech while simultaneously getting smarter and more prone to doing things like hit-and-run attacks to lure enemy forces into an ambush, though they're still notably undisciplined.

As of the end of book 3, due to a series of poor decisions resulting from politicking among the High Twelve (the situation is catalyzing them becoming the High Lords Of Terra) Sol is pretty much only protected by its fixed defenses. When a moon and attendant fleet teleport into orbit directly over the Imperial Palace the orbital defenses cannot stop them.

As for the Custodes, they're not a factor so far. During the series they only defend a subsection of the Imperial Palace and security for the part still in active governmental use is provided by other forces; prominently the Imperial Fists until they stopped being plural. The non-Custodes security forces have been unable to stop Vangorich, Grand Master Of The Officio Assassinorium, from popping up unexpectedly wherever the hell he wants.

Blicero · Post by **Blicero** » Tue Apr 26, 2016 1:06 am

I recently finished M John Harrison's Empty Space, the third of his Kefahuchi Tract novels (the first two are Light and Nova Swing). They are all nominally science fiction (mostly space opera), although a third of Light takes place in 1999, and a third of Empty Space takes place in the near future. Like pretty much everything else Harrison has written, all three are extremely bleak, extremely fragmented, and extremely well-written. I would probably call Harrison the best prose writer that I have ever encountered. If you've read his Viriconium stuff, I would call the Kefahuchi Tract novels all comparable to "In Viriconium" in quality.

For these books, he uses a lot of modern scientific jargon from string and quantum field theory. They're not hard sf by any means, and you don't really need to know exactly what he is talking about. But these are the only fiction I've ever read that mention non-abelian gauge fields or qubits, and they are mentioned in a vaguely plausible context. And Harrison is the only author I know who could write a sentence like this: "Shockwaves sang through the dynaflow medium like the voices of angels, the way the first music resonated through the viscous substrate of the early universe before proton and electron recombined."

Korwin · Post by **Korwin** » Tue Apr 26, 2016 7:00 am

You might like this one:
http://www.baen.com/warp-speed.html
and the prequel:
http://www.baen.com/the-quantum-connection.html

regarding the modern scientific jargon.
the second one gets very crazy, with nanotechnology, Quantum Connection/teleportation, etc.

OgreBattle · Post by **OgreBattle** » Thu Apr 28, 2016 2:17 pm

Cynic · Post by **Cynic** » Tue May 03, 2016 5:08 am

So I've gone back to College and its kicking my ass.

BUt what am I reading....

Seamas O'Siachain and Tim O Sullivan's "The Eyes of Another Race: Roger Casement’s Congo Report and 1903 Diary" -- Man, King Leopold II of Belgium was an asshole. Colonialism sucks. Oh yeah.... a conflicted gay Indiana Jones-like figure in Roger Casement. He also makes some amazing puns about cruising for gay lovers in Africa and Britain in his diaries.
~~

Adam Hochschild's "King Leopold's Ghost" -- A more sensationalist version of what happened during this time in the Congo. Leopold is still an asshole.
~~

A lot of Terry Pratchett. But others have all talked about Discworld so...I can't be bothered.

~

Longes · Post by **Longes** » Tue May 03, 2016 9:42 am

I've decided to listen to Journey to the West audiobook. It's 96 hours long. Sadness ahead.

Maxus · Post by **Maxus** » Tue May 03, 2016 6:02 pm

Longes wrote:I've decided to listen to Journey to the West audiobook. It's 96 hours long. Sadness ahead.

I keep meaning to find a good translation and buy a copy. If only because Sun Wukong is fucking nuts

Longes · Post by **Longes** » Tue May 03, 2016 7:40 pm

Maxus wrote:
Longes wrote:I've decided to listen to Journey to the West audiobook. It's 96 hours long. Sadness ahead.
I keep meaning to find a good translation and buy a copy. If only because Sun Wukong is fucking nuts

Russian translation began with an hour long intro from the translator providing historical background on the described events (Xuanzang's journey), as well as explaining literary roots of the novel and its influence on future chinese literature.

ckafrica · Post by **ckafrica** » Fri May 06, 2016 11:22 pm

Just finished book four of Peter v Brett.s Demon Cycle. it's about a world where demons spawn at night and society has close to collapsed as they have lost the knowledge of how to fight them. Pretty good series though book three kind of drags at times and you have ignore some logistical inconsistencies of the setting. Can definitely tell he played a lot of dnd

Meikle641 · Post by **Meikle641** » Sat May 07, 2016 6:32 am

Hmm, don't think I've read book 4 yet. Did it come out recently?

ckafrica · Post by **ckafrica** » Tue May 10, 2016 6:38 am

2015. Book 5 is supposed to be out in2017

Meikle641 · Post by **Meikle641** » Tue May 10, 2016 8:13 am

Oh. Oh right, I'd read book 3 on a trip the year before. Haven't bought many new books in 2015 or 2016.

phlapjackage · Post by **phlapjackage** » Mon Jun 06, 2016 2:58 am

ckafrica wrote:Just finished book four of Peter v Brett.s Demon Cycle. it's about a world where demons spawn at night and society has close to collapsed as they have lost the knowledge of how to fight them. Pretty good series though book three kind of drags at times and you have ignore some logistical inconsistencies of the setting. Can definitely tell he played a lot of dnd

I'm reading these right now, on book three. It's a weird blend of Attack on Titan and something like Earthdawn/D&D. I can easily envision what the video game version of these books would be: you play as Arlen, gradually gaining wards and powers. Siphon magic from demons you kill. During combat you have a magic meter and can use "special moves" of having Rojer come fiddle or Leesha come heal/firebomb. You find herbs to use and also hidden caches of weapons / money / new wards etc. Mounted combat and travelling, upgrading magic, abilities, weapons, items...it's all there. I can even see somewhere along the lines allowing an alternate character, you can play as Arlen or

Renna

But wow, I just got to the part where

Inerva is making her dice, and they're described as 4-sided, 6-sided, 8-sided, etc...and they predict the future. It MUST be a sly, not-so-subtle wink to the reader, no ?

ckafrica · Post by **ckafrica** » Sat Jun 18, 2016 4:51 am

Brent is an admitted roleplayer so the fact that it reads like an adventure module is no surprise. Same with Adrian Tchaikovsky's Shadow of the Apt series.

It is not an unusual passtime for writers apparently

phlapjackage · Post by **phlapjackage** » Fri Jul 01, 2016 7:13 am

Reading Marko Kloos books, guy does a pretty good mil-sci-fi series..and he's an Aliens fan to boot

Dammit, just found out that Guy Gavriel Kay is doing a reddit AMA...looks like I'm 10 hours too late

https://www.reddit.com/r/books/comments ... vriel_kay/