The Name of the Wind on a friend’s recommendation. It didn’t grab me at first but it’s starting to pick up. It’s nice to have an easy read for a change.
Anybody who wants to understand literature, you NEED to read John Truby’s 2 books ( which absolutely-obsolete Campbell’s “Hero With A Thousand Faces”, and oceans of other such books )
“The Anatomy of Genres”
“The Anatomy of Story”
IF you don’t understand the huge amount of stuff in them, THEN you don’t understand literature.
There are niggles: he thinks “village” means Wild West village, I think “village” means Tribal Village, as somewhere between 0.5 & 2 million years of history indicate, but such things are minor, compared with what he got right.
There is other stuff, ie things specific to languages/cultures that English cannot represent, e.g…
But those 14 Genres, those are the templates we form our mind on.
Please give yourself a huge gift, & read 'em.
Anybody wanting an equivalent for presentations, then Weissman’s “Presenting to Win” is the equivalently-spectacular one,
& anybody wanting an equivalent for editing, Coyne’s “The Story Grid” is the one.
www.TVTropes.org is also a required resource for understanding literature, though it is limitless & easy to lose days/years in…
For me, yes. I notice that whenever I’m reading on my phone (night mode, blue light filter, lowest light setting), I will stay awake longer, my eyes strain, it takes me longer to fall asleep. When using my kobo (not backlit, but still lit - it has those leds all around the screen that light it up from above!!), it’s like I was reading a paper book, except I can read in a dark room without any strain to my eyes whatsoever, and I can take on any position without having to adjust the light source!!! An absolute game-changer in terms of comfort. In fact, I think my eye strain is even lower with the e-ink reader compared to regular paper indoors, because I have a better light source no matter where I sit in my room.
Right now I am reading An Urban History Of China by John Lincoln. It might not be everyone’s cup of tea, but I am enjoying reading it, since I am a sucker for anything history.
Just finished the Remembrance of Earth’s Past trilogy by Cixin Liu a couple days ago…it’s reminded me of how mind-blowing and mind-expanding sci-fi can be. It’s an incredibly bleak and yet somehow still hopeful series and aside from issues with how Liu handles characters, I can’t wait to re-read it after I’ve had some time to digest the ideas in it. Definitely recommend if you like big ideas in sci-fi and can deal with some iffy character writing.
Friend’s bookclub has been working through The Locked Tomb trilogy which has been fun (both to read and to watch other people encounter).
Outside of that, I’ve been slowly working my way through The Knot Book (about mathematical topology, not kinky stuff), a book about “The Shambhala guide to Sufism”, and “Inside Scientology”.
I’ve been going through library books trying to find something at least somewhat straightforward about the modern Sufis and their beliefs/texts/rituals, but all the books I’ve encountered so far seem to be way more concerned with the historical lens of “Westerners through the centuries trying to grapple with the concept of Sufism and disagreeing with each other about what it is”.
I’ve started Cyteen by CJ Cherryh - I’m the type of person that reads dozens of books at once but everything’s else gone on hold for Cyteen.
Amazing so far but can’t shake the feeling that I’ve read the plot in the beginning before. I think Cyteen is too long / complex for me to have read it as a teen and forgotten about it, but I have read the Alliance/Union series in pub order up to it. Is there another book in the series with clones that includes a dinner followed by + a river boat journey?
Currently reading Deep Work, the premise sounds interesting although the book starts of a little too money-focused for my taste. Finished Learning to Die in the Anthropocene, although it’s refreshingly honest it didn’t really have anything “Everything is F*cked” didn’t say.
I randomly picked up Ruth Ozeki’s Tale for the Time Being at the library and couldn’t put it down. It really was the level up of literature I have been waiting for. While it did have a few words I needed to look up, it was generally very approachable and enjoyable to get through. What I also appreciated was that even though some of the subject matter is difficult, it is not so detailed and exploitive that it created a triggering response, at least for me. I really look forward to reading more of her work. I’m shocked I had never heard of her and only bumped into this book by chance!
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