#fiction reading

[liskantope]

I'd appreciate if there were some variant of Cliffsnotes/Sparknotes freely accessible out there for Almost Nowhere. I've started reading it and am up to the ninth chapter, but my reading has progressed in fits and starts (a recent trip at close quarters with other people made it impossible entirely for a solid week); my reading comprehension is pretty terrible to begin with; and I find Rob's complex, cerebral style of narrative, while engaging, to often be challenging to follow.

It would be really great if someone just had a bunch of quick chapter summaries and a list of character specifics written down somewhere.

[wrongpublishing]

Author reading + open mic: BT Hayes (06/08/23)

Also featuring:

Arthur DeHart

Briar Ripley Page

Buy a copy of Dionysus and I Ship On Cabernet and Talk Sh*t from Wrong Publishing:

[thoughtportal]

If you haven't read any short stories in a while, it's a great time to get back into them. A ton of truly excellent books of short speculative fiction came out recently, and wondrous new tales are appearing in magazines all the time. We talk about some of our favorite new books of short stories — and we offer some tips for writing some short fiction yourself.

[grunklebongrip]

When a fic doesn’t fit my head canons but it’s well-written

[knebellindemann]

[theaftersundown]

*writes two paragraphs after months of literally nothing and it took three hours*

[my-castles-crumbling]

Me at age 13, exhausted at school after staying up all night to read fanfic: I can’t wait until I’m an adult and I can stay up reading without any consequences!

Me, an adult, exhausted at work after staying up all night reading fanfic: Fuck.

[beepboopappreciation]

Is this anything

[angelicasdigitaldiary]

Hi hi 🤍

How are we feeling today?

For me, I’m feeling super tired today. Didn’t get enough hours of sleep because I procrastinated all my assignments until the night before/morning of everything was due. I’m trying to get rid of this habit.

It’s currently 9:30pm. So I will try to get proper rest tonight and settle into my routine of reading before sleeping. But I’ve been unable to get through the graphic parts of the book I’m reading (Lady Tan’s Circle of Women) iykyk.

-Angie

[aesethewitch]

When I was a kid, we moved into a house that had a huge lilac tree out front. It was mostly rotten, and it needed to be taken down before it fell. It took a while, but eventually, it was gone.

Mostly. A couple years later, little lilac babies popped out of the ground in its place. My mom was determined to get rid of them, because she'd planted a beautiful flower garden there, and the lilac trees would overshadow and kill the whole garden. I insisted on saving at least a few saplings. She said fine, but I had to dig them out and put them in pots myself.

So, I did. I spent days digging little lilac bushes out of the ground and putting them into pots. Some couldn't be saved, but some could. When all was said and done, I had five brand-new lilac saplings. Seven or eight years old, and it was my absolute pride and joy.

Three died due to sun scorching, severe drought that no amount of watering could save, and perhaps just being moved from their place in the ground. But two survived, and I was awfully proud of them! I'd go out and talk to them every single day. I watered them by hand and made sure they were fertilized properly. I learned all about their favored environments, and I was determined to make sure they lived.

One of my mom's friends saw what I was doing with the lilacs. She asked if she could have one to put in her backyard, and I agreed on the condition that she take very, very good care of it.

It's now fucking enormous. I'm talking ten feet tall and bursting with beautiful purple flowers every spring. My mom still gets updates each year as they start to bloom, which she forwards to me. And all I can think is, "That's my friend! Thriving some twenty years on, there it is."

The other tree nearly died, too. It lived in a pot for far, far too long. I wanted to plant it somewhere in my parents' yard, but my mom was reluctant. Eventually, we agreed to put it in the far back garden. It grew okay for many years, despite the shade, but in all these years, it's never bloomed.

Last year, the massive tree casting massive shadows over the lilac and the garden cracked in half and fell. It tumbled into the garden, crushing part of the nearby shed and destroying a few plants beneath it.

It missed my lilac by inches.

The clean-up is long done. The rest of the tree has been cut down, and my lilac has full sunlight for the first time in fifteen years. It won't bloom this year, I know. But it's got new shoots up. It's taller than ever. I spent half an hour a few weeks ago praising it for surviving all this time, dreaming about its future and telling it how I believe it'll become the tall beauty it's always been meant to be.

I think next year, I'll see flowers.

[liskantope]

Update on my progress reading Almost Nowhere: I'm just about a third of the way through, and I'm enjoying it and intrigued by it enough to continue. But I'm not comprehending the lay of the land at an ideal level. This is slightly confounded by the fact that it's not entirely clear that I'm supposed to entirely comprehend the lay of the land. But I'm probably supposed to be following the plot closer to 100% than the degree to which I am following the plot.

At the moment, if someone were to ask me to give a summary of who all the characters and groups of sentient beings are and their motives and situation and so forth, I would be able to answer only in pretty vague, inarticulate terms. I also, if asked what specifically confuses me about the plot, would have a hard time explaining in more than vague, inarticulate terms, except to gesture at particular ways in which I don't really understand how all the timey wimey stuff works (in terms of what kind of time continuum each character is living and acting in or limited to). This doesn't speak volumes about my success at reading this first third.

I'm curious about where the plot is going and what will be made of the weird metaphysics of the universe, but I think the number one reason I want to continue reading is that many scenes of the book (almost all involving intense dialog) flow in a crackling way that I find enjoyable to read and which provides me with the type of escapism I look for in fiction, although in this case it's escapism into a generally more alien, abstract environment than I'm accustomed to from other fiction.

It's almost certainly the most cerebral fictional narrative I've ever read, and I'm allowing "fiction I've ever read" to include the first fifteen chapters of Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality by Eliezer Yudkowsky, whom I generally view as one of the most cerebral intellectuals to walk the earth. Emotional intimacy, for instance, seems quite thinly dispersed so far, unless I'm not comprehending with enough emotional depth to pick up on some of it. But the characters by and large do feel real and emotionally engaging enough for me to care quite a lot what happens to (at least most of) them and to entice me to keep going in this long journey.

[parksprout]

2024 Fiction Reading List

Hey!! I meant to make a post compiling my reading list and goals for this year forever ago, but never got around to it! So bwomppp here it is!! I think in the future I'm going to update this with when I started and finished a book, but because I didn't record the dates for most of these they'll just be listed as completed!! Wayyyy too many of the books I've read this year are me rereading childhood favorites, but tbh I just got back into the habit of reading daily this year so I'm UNASHAMED!!!

If anyone has reading suggestions, or wants to talk about any of the books on this list, feel free to DM me :3

READ SO FAR -

Babel, R.F. Kuang

The Poppy War, R.F. Kuang

The Dragon Republic, R.F. Kuang

The Burning God, R.F. Kuang

The Lightning Thief, Rick Riordan

The Sea of Monsters, Rick Riordan

The Titan's Curse, Rick Riordan

The Battle of the Labyrinth, Rick Riordan

The Last Olympian, Rick Riordan

The Lost Hero, Rick Riordan

The Son of Neptune, Rick Riordan

The Mark of Athena, Rick Riordan

The House of Hades, Rick Riordan

The Blood of Olympus, Rick Riordan

The Hidden Oracle, Rick Riordan

The Dark Prophecy, Rick Riordan

Dark Rise, C.S. Pacat

Dark Heir, C.S. Pacat

The City of Brass, S.A. Chakraborty

The Kingdom of Copper, S.A. Chakraborty

The Empire of Gold, S.A. Chakraborty

The Darkest Part of the Forest, Holly Black

Howl's Moving Castle, Diana Wynne Jones

TO BE READ: but honestly this list is SO MANY BOOKS and college is SO busy so there's no shot I get through these in four months

The Burning Maze, Rick Riordan

The Tyrants Tomb, Rick Riordan

The Tower of Nero, Rick Riordan

The Children of God's & Fighting Men, Shauna Lawless

Dreams of Sorrow, Shauna Lawless

The Words of Kings and Prophets, Shauna Lawless

The Land of the Living Dead, Shauna Lawless

The Jasmine Throne, Tasha Suri

The Oleander Sword, Tasha Suri

The Lotus Empire, Tasha Suri

The Bone Witch, Rin Chupeco

The Heart Forger, Rin Chupeco

The Shadow Glass, Rin Chupeco

Eragon, Christopher Paolini

Eldest, Christopher Paolini

Brisingr, Christopher Paolini

Inheritance, Christopher Paolini

Murtagh, Christopher Paolini

The Fork, the Witch, and the Worm, Christopher Paolini

Frankenstein, Mary Shelley

Dracula, Bram Stoker

The Hobbit, J.R.R. Tolkien

The Lord of the Rings, J.R.R. Tolkien

Demon Copperhead, Barbara Kingsolver

A Wizard of Earthsea, Ursula K. Le Guin

The Tombs of Atuan, Ursula K. Le Guin

The Farthest Stone, Ursula K. Le Guin

Tehanu, Ursula K. Le Guin

Tales from Earthsea, Ursula K. Le Guin

The Other Wind Ursula K. Le Guin

The Coldest Girl in Town, Holly Black

The scholomance, Naomi Novik

Iron Widow, Xiran Jay Zhao

Leviathan, Scott Westerfeld

Behemoth, Scott Westerfeld

Goliath, Scott Westerfeld

A Day of Fallen Night, Samantha Shannon

Priory of the Orange Tree, Samantha Shannon

Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norell, Susanna Clarke

The Night Circus, Erin Morgenstern

The Sword of Kaigen, M.L. Wang

The Will of the Many, M.L. Wang

The Strength of the Few, M.L. Wang

The Merlin Conspiracy, Diana Wynne Jones

The Waning, Wunmi Aramiji

Under the Earth over the Sky, Emily McCosh

The Adventures of Amina Al Sarifya, S.A. Chakraborty

The River of Silver, S.A. Chakraborty

Cruel Prince, Holly Black

Castle in the Air, Diana Wynne Jones

The Dark Becomes her, Judy I. Lin

[novelconcepts]

I Saw the TV Glow is such a uniquely, devastatingly queer story. Two queer kids trapped in suburbia. Both of them sensing something isn’t quite right with their lives. Both of them knowing that wrongness could kill them. One of them getting out, trying on new names, new places, new ways of being. Trying to claw her way to fully understanding herself, trying to grasp the true reality of her existence. Succeeding. Going back to help the other, to try so desperately to rescue an old friend, to show the path forward. Being called crazy. Because, to someone who hasn’t gotten out, even trying seems crazy. Feels crazy. Looks, on the surface, like dying.

And to have that other queer kid be so terrified of the internal revolution that is accepting himself that he inadvertently stays buried. Stays in a situation that will suffocate him. Choke the life out of him. Choke the joy out of him. Have him so terrified of possibly being crazy that he, instead, lives with a repression so extreme, it quite literally is killing him. And still, still, he apologizes for it. Apologizes over and over and over, to people who don’t see him. Who never have. Who never will. Because it’s better than being crazy. Because it’s safer than digging his way out. Killing the image everyone sees to rise again as something free and true and authentic. My god. My god, this movie. It shattered me.

[deadghostgirl12345]

*writes a sentence or two after writing nothing for days*

[mintfullyyours]

Thinking about patching up ex-husband Simon Riley. He comes in with the cloak of darkness not close to sunrise, a witching hour of sorts. Three slow deliberate knocks on the other side of your door. No more and no less. Staring at the mahogany frame, you could ignore him. It would be for the best.

But ghosts tend to haunt all night.

So you'll let him in.

You always do.

Bloodied knuckles with a nasty gash on his upper eyebrow. He'll hoist you onto the bathroom countertop with your legs spread as he steps between them. Firm hands grip your waist, grounding you in your stupid decision to let your ex back into your life. Again. He doesn't flinch as you swipe the alcohol soaked towel over his eyebrow wound. Determined eyes search your face in hopes you'll crack under his gaze.

"Ask me what happened." He whispers.

"No." you dab the towel more firmly on his eyebrow as it soaks the raging red liquid.

Simon grabs your wrist and leans down, his lips pressing into the shell of your ear. "Really?" Your heart pounds in your chest, as your body betrays you for your ex -- feeling a heat set every fiber of you ablaze. His teeth grazing your skin as he noses his way down the column of your neck and breathes in your unyielding scent. He knew the effect he still had on you and you hated yourself for it.

"Birdie really doesn't wanna know what I did to that bloke you went out with last week?"

part 2 here!!!