Re: Recommend some books

If you haven't read them, I'd definitely recommend the Sherlock Holmes books by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. I decided to read them after becoming deeply enthralled with the BBC series, they're quite good.

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Re: Recommend some books

Sakai definitely has his distinct art style.  His is one of those books like Love and Rockets or Strangers in Paradise thats just been running forever and as long as the creators are alive, it will have a fanbase.

Eddie Doty

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Re: Recommend some books

And he hasn't gone insane like Dave Sims, always a plus!

(a thread about creators, in all art forms, who have gone over the edge might be interesting)

I write stories! With words!
http://www.asstr.org/~Invid_Fan/

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Re: Recommend some books

Teague wrote:

Snow Crash.



Also, Snow Crash.

Not the best book ever, but my favorite. The one I go back to the most.

At the beginning of the novel, the main character, Hiro Protagonist, discovers the name of a new pseudo-narcotic, "Snow Crash", being offered at an exclusive Metaverse [internet, this was published in 1992] nightclub. Hiro's friend and fellow hacker falls victim to Snow Crash's effects, which are apparently unique in that they are experienced in the Metaverse and also in the physical world. Hiro uses his computer hacking, sharp cognitive skills, and sword-fighting to uncover the mystery of "Snow Crash"; his pursuit takes the reader on a tour of the Sumerian culture, a fully instantiated anarcho-capitalist society, and a virtual meta-society patronized by financial, social, and intellectual elites.

I started listening to the audiobook today during work. I'm not that far in, but I'm really digging it so far.

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Re: Recommend some books

I just finished my second Neal Stephenson (Snow Crash Guy) book- Cryptonomicon. 1,100+ pages of WW2 cyptology and undersea cable installation insanity. I enjoyed it, but it made me appreciate Snow Crash all the more. This is a guy who can write narratives that read like encyclopedias, just toning it back and having fun. Like the worst babysitter who was cajoled into teling a some hyperactive kids a bedtime story.

On a different note, 'White Teeth' by Zadie Smith, has some of the most incredible and richest characters I've ever read (the fact that she wrote it when she was 24 makes me... sad). The plot itself isn't all that much to talk about, but it almost would have been distracting if it were.  I guess that's not a glowing-sounding recommendation, but it's a pretty incredible book.

This is actually a super great thread. I've finally started reading again, and was just in a bookstore this afternoon thinking, "I wish I had some recommendations". Neil Gaiman is my new happy place, so I think I'll have to snag 'Good Omens' tomorrow smile

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Re: Recommend some books

Ian wrote:

On a different note, 'White Teeth' by Zadie Smith, has some of the most incredible and richest characters I've ever read (the fact that she wrote it when she was 24 makes me... sad).

What's the Tom Lehrer line?
"It's people like that who make you realize how little you've accomplished. For example, it's a sobering thought that when Mozart was my age, he had been dead for two years."

I write stories! With words!
http://www.asstr.org/~Invid_Fan/

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Re: Recommend some books

Anything by Ray Bradbury, but Fahrenheit 451 and Something Wicked This Way Comes in particular.

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Re: Recommend some books

I really enjoyed The Ascent of Money. It's basically a survey course on the history of cash. You might already know some of it, but I learned more than I expected and it was a fun read.

http://www.amazon.com/The-Ascent-Money- … 1594201927

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Re: Recommend some books

Currently re-reading The Tipping Point, the book that put Malcolm Gladwell on the map (it's fine, not as good as Blink, not as interesting as Outliers) and Anonymous, the book about - uh - Anonymous.

If you've never read Gladwell, you're missing a part of our modern culture you want to be exposed to, and Anonymous is the most thrilling non-fiction book I've ever read. Recommendation for all of the books heretofore mentioned.

(Outliers first.)

Teague Chrystie

I have a tendency to fix your typos.

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Re: Recommend some books

Teague wrote:

Currently re-reading The Tipping Point, the book that put Malcolm Gladwell on the map (it's fine, not as good as Blink, not as interesting as Outliers) and Anonymous, the book about - uh - Anonymous.

If you've never read Gladwell, you're missing a part of our modern culture you want to be exposed to, and Anonymous is the most thrilling non-fiction book I've ever read. Recommendation for all of the books heretofore mentioned.

(Outliers first.)

http://www.colbertnation.com/the-colber … -people-go

He has a lovely singing voice.

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Re: Recommend some books

That was...

...truly adorable.

Teague Chrystie

I have a tendency to fix your typos.

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Re: Recommend some books

Teague, if you want a thrilling hacker culture non-fiction book, I highly, highly recommend Underground:
http://suelette.home.xs4all.nl/undergro … ground.pdf

Julian Assange is lead researcher on the nonfiction book, which basically chronicles the early days of underground hacker culture in the late 80s, and quickly spirals into a paranoia/conspiracy thriller with
basically young hacker kids stumbling on top-secret government plans, as well as millions of dollars in
debit card accounts and going on the run from the police, feds, and beyond.

The story is absolutely nuts and some of the most engrossing non-fiction I've ever read. I recommend jumping to chapter 3 if you want to get to the coolest stuff, though it can be a bit overwhelming.

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Re: Recommend some books

I just finished the Hellhound of Wall Street. This book is amazing. I'm going to re-read it this weekend. It's perfect if you want to understand more modern regulation issues or the S.E.C in general. But I need some light reading now, so I'mma check out Underground tonight.

http://www.amazon.com/The-Hellhound-Wal … 1594202729

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Re: Recommend some books

Sad to see the revival of this thread got claimed by the DiFpocalypse, but we must soldier on. Here's some spooky recs for the fall season!

The Cipher by Kathe Koja
Have a moldering old paperback of this one at home—it's long out of print, but the ebook is still available and a new print edition is finally coming out next year. A group of thoroughly unpleasant misanthropes have their lives take a turn for the strange when they discover a seemingly bottomless hole in the floor of their basement. What starts as innocent experimentation turns sinister when they lower a camera down and something inexplicable comes back—and as more people fall into the Funhole's orbit, their lives begin to unravel.

One of the most important examples of the genre's early-90s backlash to the popularity horror attained in the late 70s and throughout the 80s—bleak, nasty, and incredibly strange.

The Drowning Girl by Caitlin R. Kiernan
A schizophrenic woman attempts to claw her way back into sanity by reconciling the two realities she holds simultaneously in her memory and by discovering what a girl named Eva Canning has to do with both of them. Kiernan herself is schizophrenic, and wrote one portion of the book when she was off her meds—the whole thing is laced with a nightmarish, hallucinatory quality, but that section in particular is a stunning piece of writing.

Kiernan's best stuff is her short fiction, but that's harder to find in cheap form as most of her collections are published in limited runs by Subterranean Press. Her story "Interstate Love Song (Murder Ballad No. 8)" might be her masterpiece, and is available in the anthology The Best Science Fiction and Fantasy of the Year Volume 8 from Solaris Books.

The Conspiracy Against the Human Race: A Contrivance of Horror by Thomas Ligotti
Ligotti is mostly known for his horror short fiction, but this is a book-length work of pessimist philosophy that draws on the cognitive science of Thomas Metzinger to explore all the ways in which being alive is in no way all right—we are, Ligotti argues, nothing more than ghosts in the machine, simulated selves whose consciousness is only an illusion and who would be better off exterminating ourselves en masse to end the perpetuation of suffering. Y'know, some light reading. (For those of you who enjoy evil clowns, his short story "The Last Feast of Harlequin" is excellent.)

Blindsight by Peter Watts
Last time I recommended this before the site fritzed out, Teague ended up reading it and being fascinated and frustrated in equal measure—make of that what you will. tongue Covers a lot of the same philosophical territory as Ligotti—it's a first contact story gone terribly wrong, a riff on Alien that's really an excuse for venturing into the terrifying possibilities of intelligence without sentience and what it would mean if our consciousness really were just a glitch in human evolution.

Last edited by Abbie (2019-09-08 05:50:45)

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