Satoko Kiyuduki. Geijutsuka. Shoulder-a-coffin Kuro.
There’s something about her story telling that is unique, I can’t tell what it is. Every time I read her comics, I’d say, “I don’t know how she does it.” and then I buy a copy.
Geijutsuka got animated, but that unique feeling from the comic is missing in anime, even though they’re the same story.
Mammalian history and evolution. Starting from Dimetrodon and proto-mammals, then covering the astonishing diversification of the mostly tiny fuzzballs during the Dinosaur Age, to the fabulous bloom of the past 66 million years when mammals took over the ecological niches opened up by the fire/iceball from the sky.
Fascinating read: The Rise and Reign of the Mammals: A New History, from the Shadow of the Dinosaurs to Us, by Steve Brusatte. ( Stephen L. Brusatte - Wikipedia)
I’m on a non-fiction streak. Cartography, Wittgenstein, mammalian evolution, and now history of science:
In The Map of Knowledge by Violet Moller, the author tracks three works of major scientific importance on their travels through time and geography. She follows Euclides’ Elements, Ptolemaeus’ Almagest, and a selection of works on medicine by Galenus from 500CE to 1500CE on their historical journey through 7 cities: Alexandria, Bagdad, Córdoba, Toledo, Salerno, Palermo, and Venice. ( Violet Moller | Historian and Author)
Woah I haven’t been here in a while… and I finished a couple of books since:
Children of Memory by Adrian Tchaikovsky, the third book of the Children of series. It was good. I got some of the twist about half-way through, though the final revelations did surprise me a little. It had an interesting discussion about what it means to be and existing and be alive… From the series, I think I still prefer Children of Time.
Beyrouth-sur-Seine by Sabyl Ghoussoub, which recounts the author’s personal struggles about his identity as a French person of Lebanese descent, and his family’s history as they go through the wars and conflict in Lebanon. It was an emotional book, going back and forth between present and past. Very touching.
Currently reading short stories from Balzac.
I first wanted to post this in the positivity thread. Because a bad text gave me such a positive insight!
I have just read some texts from Nietzsche. And it opened my eyes a bit.
Nietzsches says women are bad and stupid. I think they are great.
He says nihilism is the way (for example no God and no soul). I think there is something precious in this world. Perhaps God and the soul don’t exist exactly the way human believes. But there is something.
He says moral is bad. I think moral is good.
Read Nietzsche and simply think the opposite.
Re-reading Blindsight.
(Again.)
Woo! 
Now reading In Cold Blood by Truman Capote and uh, can’t believe he got away with claiming some of this was 100% true.
I just started re-reading my favourite novel, The Bridesmaid by Ruth Rendell, and I found an error I never noticed before. On page 10, the feature statue is said to be holding the flowers in its left hand. On page 15, they’re in its right hand. This is an error – this is not a supernatural story.
I’m surprised I haven’t hit more in her books in general, due to her prolific-ness and also that she was a very forward momentum person. She apparently never re-read her own books. But she kept a hell of a lot of balls in the air within any one book.
I try to keep such errors at bay in my WIP game, but I feel there’s a high danger of them, because it’s IF and the creation is fragmented, and because the creation’s taking years.
-Wade
I read less non-fiction than I used to, but I’m currently reading Sid Meier’s Memoir! and I feel like a lot of folks in this space would enjoy it. Neat look at early computer gaming, and some solid tidbits of advice (I really like his note about always doubling or halving things when making games; never do things in small increments to start).
Ken Follet’s The Armour of Light was an impressive journey through the early 19th century. I especially liked the parts about the forming of the weaver’s union in England set against the upcoming steam-industrialist class of factory bosses. Of course, being a Ken Follet novel, there’s an almost-but-not-quite airport novel plot driving the story, but , also being a Ken Follet novel, he pulls it off without being too sentimental.
Napoleon looms in the background until the second half, and without being present himself, his armies drive the characters to a satisfactory end.
My main reason for not liking it as mush as the previous books in the Kingsbridge series is very much my own escapationist sense. Late 18th/early 19th century is a bit too close to “real life”.
I’m now reading the 08/15-trilogy by Hans Helmut Kirst. (Also known as the Gunner Asch-books).
It reminds me a lot of Catch 22 with its scathing satire of military culture, but its tone is somewhat more mellow and the humour a bit more “funny because it’s funny” instead of “if I don’t laugh I’ll cry myself to sleep or scream myself to madness”. Very interesting to read military satire about the German army, written by a German who was himself a soldier and a member of the NSDAP from the '30s until the end of WWII.
The title refers to a German pistol which was hated by the soldiers for its cumbersome use and maintenance, yet it stayed in active duty because it was not quite bad enough to justify the costs of making a new model. The number of that model of pistol, 08/15, became an expression for something inadequate, of poor quality, that somehow persists through time.
I’m finally reading a couple of Jorge Borges short story collections: Ficciones and Labyrinths. I consider myself to be fairly well-read yet I haven’t really encountered an author like him before. He is definitely an original.
Also, digging back into some William Gibson books. I have only read Neuromancer so far. Reading the Burning Chrome collection of short stories right now. I like the noir and sci fi feel of cyberpunk in general and the way Gibson tosses you into his fully formed worlds and leaves it to you to figure it all out. I often need to reread parts to orient myself but I enjoy diving into the layers of his stories.
Immortal alert!
I’ve been doing less well than expected in maths, even though i still get a very high score. I have to say that most of the reason is my failure to understand why math is so magical. I want to know, “why does sine and cosine function the way they do?” and so I get bored because it feels like an endless chore to me. So my parents decided, since I love music and computer science (both of which are vital parts of the upcoming book), I needed inspiration, in the form of…
This monstrosity.
I’ve only just started reading it, and it’s talking about music and canons and fugues (I take music studies as an elective subject and I don’t understand the difference), as well as art and M.C. Escher, and the blend between those two specific subjects (endless and that get higher and higher with each step). It’s very odd.
Somehow, I really like it though. Better than continuing the snowplow through Dreamcatchers, which is really good - but Stephen King drags the book on a bit too much.
Oh, and happy world book day!
Oof, I’ve always wanted to try this book but I’m too intimidated.
Yeah, it is pretty scary to look at!
A bit OT, but commenting on the maths’n’music overlap. I find maths has helped me a ton in understanding audio science, and therefore music production, and physics of sound and tuning, but I don’t think it’s ever been of use to me in composition in a lifetime of making music. At least not in any non-elemental way.
I mean like there are time schemes that come out of the low and prime numbers, 3, 4, 5, 6 (really just 3 again), 7, 8 (just 4 again), and from 9 on it’s getting less useful or it’s just multiples of primes. There are only 12 tones in the equal tempered scale. I don’t have to think about possible tones inbetween those. Pitch bend and timbres and reverb and harmonising will access them, and I use my ears. In that sense, actually adding microtonal notes amongst the twelve that I could hit reliably again and again, or being able to say I’ve got more specific notes in there on some instrument, has never interested me.
Serialism, which from one perspective is non-repeating number sequences, is maybe the most valuable attitude for my own tastes. You don’t even have to go anywhere near Xenakis levels. I like a ton of chromaticism and you are likely to get that if you keep moving to different notes you haven’t played recently. I think Nirvana’s Lithium is very elemental serialism. An eight note riff where only one note is repeated, giving the sensation of creating multiple possible relationships amongst keys at once, major and minor and in different directions.
-Wade
I finished Gingerbread by Helen Oyeyemi, an author which had been recommended on an old thread I made (thanks @EJoyce !) and it was a trip! The writing is so beautiful and lush. And it’s also so bizarre and weird and supernatural. Out of all the magical realism books I’ve read, this is probably one of my favourite.
Oh I love Helen Oyeyemi too, enough so that I’m disappointed not to have done the recommending 
I’ve actually like some of her other books even more than Gingerbread - What is Not Yours is Not Yours and Mr Fox are probably my favorites - but it’s hard to go wrong. I think she has a new one out that looks fun too (it’s about Prague and nested narratives), so this is a good reminder to pick that up!
Definitely going to read more from her later. But Le Guin is waiting for me (got a new book for my bday 
)
The spilled toothpick scene had my eyes rolling straight around inside my head. Odds and ends were good, but not King’s best work, tbh.
Oh my god saaaame. That was so silly, and not really important. He could’ve just… killed him off through brute force!
