What are you reading, Veeky Forums?

Shitty fan fictions mostly. I know they are terrible, but for some reason I love reading them.

I think I have one of these for Nietzsche (well, more than a few) although it's mostly exam stuff for taking cert test

Wheel of Time: Crown of Swords
send help, please

His 30 years war book was also really good.

Be aware: conventional Veeky Forums wisdom is that you should read other Dosties before TBK, as that's apparently a grand summation of his themes.

I'm working my way through the 11,147 pages of Malazan.

Plato was pretty ripped.

Discworld.

>Plato was pretty ripped.
Well it does translate to "Broad Shouldered", and was actually his nickname he got from being a wrestler.

Heck, he styled the Academia after the gymnasiums created by the Olympian Academos, since the whole point of them was to train and exercise the mind as one would the body.

Plato had NO dumpstats

Which kind of pisses me off that people are so dismissive of Monks because aside from the obvious Asian influence you could totally be a Plato-esque Greco-Roman wrestler pugilst dude who's also a philosopher.

Got a ton of good shit for Christmas. Right now I'm reading the Time Traveller's Guide to Elizabethan England, next up is going to be either Neuromancer or the TT's Guide to Medieval England, and after that I'll get to Lord Foul's Bane

Socrates had CHA as a dumpstat, though
Everyone who wrote about him agree that he was ugly (and yet, genius enough to make everyone admire him or hate him)

A bunch of Christian Cameron novels.

The series end payoff is worth it.

But if Plato had decided to go adventuring, he would've used a spear and shield, as Greco-Roman wrestling is pretty useless against multiple and non-human opponents.

Working my way through The Black Company and Malazan Book of the Fallen.

The Black Company's writing is pretty bad. Malazan's isn't much better.

The Social Conquest of Earth by E. O. Wilson. Only just started, but it's looking to be a fascinating read.

Well he also didn't have special innate power that allows you to punch spirits and suplex dragons so yes he would be using a spear and shield.

I suppose he could also be a Fighter but I also like my intellectual dudes to be ripped and punch philistine bitches in the face with education.

Just about a hunnit pages into Return of the King. For some reason I've avoided it for a long while. And after a string a shit tier reading its been great.

Slowly moving through The Dying Earth. Vance is pretty amazing.

TBC's writing is pretty dry but it makes sense for it to be like that. I feel it's a good fit, unlike say in his Garrett books.

Veeky Forums here, I'm an english professor, ask me for a recommendation

No, Socrates had a super high charisma and happened to be ugly, which is not factored in to charisma but you could maybe pretend is counted by a flaw that penalizes skills

NO!

>TBC's writing is pretty dry but it makes sense for it to be like that. I feel it's a good fit, unlike say in his Garrett books.
Honestly it almost felt a parody of itself occasionally.

Okay what would you recommend me?

I read nothing but nonfiction last year. So I'm about to start Infinite Jest.

Dead Souls by Gogol

>
This post.

What do you like?

My whole life I just assumed Jamaica was a happy place. Goddamn.

Yeah, I guess. Read them a long time ago, but remember laughing at the way he resolved huge battles sometimes. "...And then we took the keep", boom, done. Something like that.

...

Got a load of books for christmas, but currently reading Metro 2033. It was in my reading list for a few years since the game came out and I managed to get it for free as part of a promo for a convention. It wasn't until a while later I realised it was signed by the author. Pretty delighted about that.

Because of what, reggae? I'm not usually bringing this up but stuff like gay killings have been pretty well covered.

Probably because dude weed lmao.

Re-reading the Tao te Ching and Art of War for a character heavily inspired by Kill Six Billion Demons.

Started reading that one (Europe's Tragedy - a history of the thirty years war) just a while ago. It starts with trying to explain the situation that lead to the war(s) exhaustively which is kinda nice, but his writing style is very dry and that makes it feel meandering. I guess I'll keep with it though.

Yeah, pretty much because Bob Marley was from there and he seemed cheerful. I'm very ignorant about Jamaican history, it's been a shock to realise a lot if it's comprised of hell and nightmares.

This post.

A gay thread

...

How are you liking Amber? I read the first two books and lost interest.

Just finished this.

This shit Veeky Forums recommends can sometimes take a terrible turn.

I really liked his dry writing style.
I'm legit on the autism spectrum though, so that may have had something to do with it.

Next on the list is this.

Besides textbooks, Captain's Fury by Jim Butcher. I think I might switch it up with something else before reading the fifth book in the series because I'm getting a bit fatigued of it.

Salvatore's The Night of the Hunter.

I think I read that a few years ago. Is that the one that's basically a very vulgar version of the Aeneid?

Not the first dude but Amber was my favourite series when I was but a wee lad. Infinite multiverse and sword fights and pithy comebacks. I wish I could find a group to play the TTRPG.

I also loved Lord Demon by Zelazny. Dragons, waifus and pocket-dimensions!

Three things:

>Beautifully illustrated copy of Don Quixote from the 50s
>God Emperor of Dune
>a textbook on Italian futurism I got from the Guggenheim.

TBK is the last novel you'll ever need to read. All other fiction is crap compared to it.

Read that already. As well as a lot of other Russian stuff.

I like a lot of different stuff, though I don't read a lot of fantasy or sci-fi. Recently I read Donna Tart's books and liked them a lot.

I'm writing a research paper on the causes of the Spanish-American War, so I'm reading this. Basically it gives an account of the production, service, and destruction of the USS Maine.

>tfw writing novel
>tfw thing its shit
>tfw can't go on

The more I write the more I hate myself! This isn't even my first novel. I fucking buried the others.

The new book in Jamie McFarlane's Privateer series. Which occasionally annoys me enough to write Jamie an email about how he got a detail wrong. To which he typically politely replies "thanks, and what else can I do to make it better?"

A week back I finished reading a friend's most recent draft of a novel he's writing.

It was awful.
At least he took my criticism well, and is self aware enough to know it's awful.

I thought I was bad at writing, but when I started doing peer reviews for other papers I realized I was not as bad as I thought I was.

I started reading a sort of fantasy novel titled Freja. It's pretty interesting so far. Apparently the writer is a veteran war reporter.

Anyway, it's set in bronze age Scandinavia and can be described as Norse mythology turned into some kind of fictional proto-history in which the gods are all just humans whose names and lives would turn into the basis for the pagan myths.

I don't know if it can really be called fantasy, though. There's no clear line between the superstition and the supernatural. They have rituals where they dance around the burning carcasses of dead animals to fertilize the soil, they read portents from dreams and bones, and they stay inside during nighttime because they think the darkness has the power to drive people mad. The characters all believe this stuff and the writing really gets across that they all see the proof of magic and gods everywhere they look.

This. Again. Like the fifth time.

Absolutely loathing the shit you write is an essential part of being an amateur writer, what is important is to keep writing and going back to edit what you have wrote until you hate it just a bit less.
Once you wrote and suffered enough you will find to hate what you spawn less and less.

The most important part is to not give up in the first place and keep writing through the pain.
Hang in there user.

...

The Fionavar Tapestry, Whit and Horus Rising, at the same time. I need to organize my reading

Consider Phlebas

Damn. Now I can feel my copy glaring at me from its place on the bookshelf.

I've been feeling the same way about my copy of The Hero with a Thousand Faces for a long time now. I know I should be reading it, I have the time to read it, but I still never get around to reading it.

This thread is far more Veeky Forums than I was expecting.

Basics of C#.

Bingo.

Truly a masterpiece reworking of an ancient classic for a modern era.

Some day I genuinely do hope a film is made out of it.

La Horde du Contrevent - Damasio

Veeky Forums would drool over it, it has everything you like and more

We interrupt the thread to WITNESS:

WITNESSED!

Alternating between the Overlord novels, the Pokemon Sun & Moon strat guide, and Anima: Beyond Fantasy's various Exxets.

Kill me.

How is the Fionovar Tapestry? I liked Tigana and Lions of Al-Rassan.

Just started it. It's good. That's all I have to say about it so far.

Stormbringer

I'm reading a book about a person of note with whom I happen to share a name. It's a pretty neat life this fellow lived.

Sucking at something is the inevitable first step to becoming sorta good at something. Paraphrasing a cartoon dog here but it's no less true.

Lustrum by Robert Harris. Sequel to the excellent Imperium. Both of which are fictional biographies of Cicero done in an incredibly engaging and accurate style.

I do audiobooks for a living.

...thank christ War of the Worlds is over and done with. That thing took fucking forever, and I swear you spend the entire book following the wrong brother about.

Guys
seriously
read this series

The start of Killer of Men really took me by surprise. It was about the only time in my life I've experienced the feel of not growing up with a life of smithing, hunting, reading, writing, running around mountains naked and fucking.

Trash LNs and a book on interwar range-finding techniques. Thanks /hwg/!

A Short History of Nearly Everything - Bill Bryson

Tacitus, the Annals. I'm not even kidding.

Fucking Germanicus was such a boss.

The Art of War and

He literally annoyed people so much that they sentenced him to be executed. Socrates is the epitome of high Int, low Cha.

>Penguin classics

I recently finished the epic of gilgamesh, I received it as a gift for christmas. Is there anything similar something with heroes or legends of old cultures?

This. 100 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000% this.

"The Golden Bough" and "Revolt Against the Modern World."

Though neither were written for the purpose, they're pretty much the manual for worldbuilding internally consistent fantasy societies.

What specifically are you looking for, in terms of story structure or tropes?

The icelandic sagas, Beowulf, the Vedic stories, and the Illiad are all good places to start.

The last thing I read was the Naked Lunch. Before that? Utilitarianism by JS Mill.

Someone recommend me something. Anything will work, just make it wacky and vaguely pretentious.