Topic: Nintendo Life Book Club

With the release of the Dune movie on the horizon YT is pulling down all the Dune audiobooks.

Makes me one sad panda.

Some months ago, I've read Martin Gilbert's Second World War: A Complete History, a 700 page long book that's a great general overview of the war. (I even had dreams about it after finishing it).

Recently I've finished The Uninhabitable Earth, about climate change and its future effects.

I've been reading another WW2 book, An Army at Dawn, which is about the allied fight in North Africa. It's really, really detailed and over 700 pages long. It's also the first in a trilogy (not sure if I'm going to read the others, I think I've read too much about WW2 this year)

Right now for this month since its Halloween time, Im reading the old 1980s horror novel The Ceremonies by Ted Klein

I'm brushing up on the classics right now. I recently finished reading Franz Kafka's The Trial and Metamorphosis. I also just finished Dostoevsky's The Idiot. I'm currently reading The Great Gatsby. It's a quick read, so I'm considering Orwell's 1984 afterwards. It seems appropriate for the times.

As far as modern authors go, I finished Haruki Murakami's Killing Commendatore recently. Great book, though Wind-up Chronicles remains my favorite.

With nonfiction, I've been dabbling with the collected works of Descartes and Consciousness by Annaka Harris. I read a little over halfway through Victor Frankl's Man's Search for Meaning, but got a little board after the autobiographical part.

Finished The Excorcist recently. What a magnificent book. I was blown away by how graphic and putrid this demon and the book was(compared to the movie); the thing had the mouth of a sailor. A part made me wince to the point I just skimmed through the pages to finish the chapter. Not for the easily squeamish, I'd say.

Also, finished Who Goes There? Great book, The creature is fascinating to learn about, this thing can replicate anything perfectly, and no one would be the wiser. It's terrifying, to say the least, A blue-skinned humanoid beast with 3 big red eyes that are filled with anger and hate that no woman, man, or child can match. I would like to see this creature again in a book, movie, or even a game. But I don't think that's ever going to happen. Shame, it's one of the unique monsters in literature.

I'm a nuisance for picking up way too many books at once and maybe finishing some of them. On my current bedside doom pile...

• Not All Fairy Tales Have Happy Endings (Ken Williams) - a deep dive into the rise and fall of Sierra from the point of view of its founder, a really interesting read if you're into this part of gaming history
• Killing Commendatore (Haruki Murakami) - I do like Murakami's works, although this one's maybe a bit long in the tooth. There's always a pleasant, relaxed feeling you get reading them. Finished 1Q84 earlier this year too.
• How to Survive The End of the World (When It's In Your Own Head) (Aaron Gilles) - soul food for my anxious brain
• The End Of Everything (Metaphysically Speaking) (Katie Mack) - horror food for my existential dread brain
• The Coral Island (R.M. Ballantyne) - so I have this big shelf of classic lit that I've had since I was very young. I'm not much of a classic lit person but I occasionally feel obligated to read one of them. Anyway, this one is... uh. Colonialism! Yay! Yeah, there's books that haven't aged well but this one seems a particularly uncomfortable read in the modern era.

The sequel to Ready Player One which has just been released is being slated, the writing itself seems very clunky. I've seen some of the paragraphs (and the ones chosen are probably the worst in fairness) and yeah it's bad. I rarely ever see a book this vocally slated on social media like this before, normally it's because a fan-fav character has died or the subject matter is controversial.

I never read the original, I watched the movie and it just seemed to be making references rather than it being it's own love letter to geek culture so I never bothered with it.

I've just started reading a fancy Jules Verne collection I got for Xmas where it is nicely bound with gold pages. I've finished Around the World in Eighty Days but now I can't decided to read either Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea or Journey to the Center of the Earth next.

@jump The trouble with the movie is its constrained by licences, has all the dark bits cut out, and all the relationships are rushed to keep the runtime down.

It also skips the school section of the book completely, and has the first challenge already unlocked from the get go. Which I understand, but it feels like you skip Parzivals introduction in favour of spectacle

@Wargoose I take it you're talking about Ready Player One and not Jules Verne.

To be honest I just found the movie too Mary Sue-ish where because he loves geekdom more than anyone else he's able to win the day, in particular it was the Buckaroo Banzai reference that rubbed me the wrong way but I can't remember what it is now.

I get the appeal where it feels like a constant high five for being into the same things but I wanted something more. Like Future Man or Scott Pilgrim which had clear influences, nods and homages didn't solely rely on them to work and become greater than the sum of their parts.

Essene and early Christian history.

anyone know of any other sci fi book series thats kind of like Hyperion? Ive already read the first Mistborn Trilogy and im more into Star Wars so no Star Wars recommendations since I still have a bunch of Star Wars books to read.

something similar to Hyperion is what Im asking

@urrutiap I'm not a big sci-fantasy fan but you could try Enders Game, it's about a kid being trained to lead a future army against space bugs. It was actually apart of recommended reading in the US army for it's tactical thinking. Also which Dune is a classic and could scratch your itch.

No thanks. Ive already the Dune books up to Chapterhouse and going to read Sandworms of Dune pretty soon.

as for Enders Game Ive seen the movie once or twice. Weird story

@urrutiap The Enders Game movie is thrash, and not a strong advertisement of the book. It’s kinda strange that the writer say the book is not adaptable to film but then let’s it’s be adapted. Got to get that dolla dolla I suppose.

I'm half way through: Praying With Mother Angelica. On the sorrowful mysteries chapter. Going to start re-reading the Dr. Slump series for the 6th time later~ 🤣✌

@Wargoose @jump I can't believe it took six weeks to find a post on Ready Player One on the forums! I have a ton to say about them, so here goes; Consider everything below me spoilers for Ready Player One. Don't TL;DR this because I have some good points.

I think the book was better than the movie by a long way. The movie was still really enjoyable, and remains a spectacle today, but because it was a movie, the creative liberties from the book couldn't be applied. Which is a shame because some of the scenes are pure nostalgia fuel for the right kind of people. I was born in the early 2000s so it doesn't apply to me at all. Some scenes in the movie felt like they existed purely for nostalgia fuel, and while this applies to the book as well, the book weaved them in well enough that it doesn't feel like a plug and play.

First off, the Hunt for Halliday's Easter Egg is much, much easier and way less earned than it was in the book. For one, there are no gates; extra challenges to progress the story. Instead each key contains a clue that segways into the next key quest. The fact that the whole movie is spent finding three keys over... the timespan of about three days, makes it feel cheap. The hunt in the book took well over eight to nine months, and featured a few timeskips as well. The pacing felt real.

I've been going through the hidden gem that is Jonathan Carroll and his entire catalogue of works, and also got Kamran Pasha's "Mother of the Believers", a fantastic version of the story of Mohammed the Prophet (PBUH).

Check out Carroll's "The Land of Laughs", "Bones of the Moon", and "Outside the Dog Museum".

I've been on a small kindle kick lately, so I finished reading two books I had on hold. Them being Coraline and Resident Evil Underground. Both rather short novels, but enjoyable nonetheless. I'll now move onto the next Resident Evil novel, Nemesis, to continue that.

I also have Alan Wake and Bioshock Rapture, but I think those will wait until I'm done with the Resident Evil ones (after Nemesis, it's Code Veronica, and finally, Zero Hour). Maybe I'll even read them all this year! Oh la la.

It's too bad the writer couldn't continue expanding her novel universe, so I don't expect them to continue much of what Underground and Caliban Cove (her two original entries) set up, but these three remaining books should be fun either way.