Topic: Nintendo Life Book Club

Started reading The Private Life of Chairman Mao and it’s strengthened my already-deep interest in communist states, especially the atrocities committed in China by Mao. Part of my intrigue of Mao in particular is how he’s been completely ignored by mainstream Western education despite him killing up to 80 million people in his own country, worse than Hitler and Stalin put together.

The book was written by Li Zhisui, who spent 22 years as Mao’s personal doctor, and was there by his side when he died. It’s a very insightful story and gave me a new appreciation of just how horrible a person Mao was, from his daily habits, to his womanising, poor hygiene, indifference to millions of his own people starving, and more.

I’m about 20% through the book, and I haven’t read many lately that’ve enslaved me this mercilessly.

@jedgamesguy

I've got a Mao's China trilogy of history books on my wishlist by Frank Dikotter. GoodReads users enjoyed them.

Mao is still revered as a god by many in China. Every morning, thousands of Chinese line up in Tiananmen Square, having taken a pilgrimage from all around the country, to lay down flowers at his tomb and wait for their turn to see the body inside of the man himself. Think of the line to Disney World, and then multiply that by 10. It literally winds around and around the block.

In Hunan province, similarly, a pilgrimage to his hometown is much the same. He climbed this mountain. He swam in this river. He ate this food. Many restaurants and shops have a framed picture of him on the wall. There are big illuminated wall clocks of his face for sale, with those rays of holiness emanating from his visage.

I was invited to one graduate student's home. On the walls were giant posters. One of Mao. One of Marx. One of Darwin. And one of Stalin.

China is wild.

@MontyCircus that is so gruesome

yeah it's super wild how easily you can access the internet even in China and yet it doesnt help one bit

@jedgamesguy The womanizing parts of Zhisui's journal were added by the western publisher to spice the book up. Zhisui said so himself.

And judging world leaders by their 'death count' is very reductive.

@moomin yes I’m fully aware of the changes, I knew about them before I started reading the book. As if Mao’s portrait wasn’t already interesting enough, sadly.

In this case it’s very much justified judging leaders by their death toll. If we considered any of these communist leaders great without looking at their death tolls, that would be reductive too. The figures are mind boggling.

I've finally been able to get my hands on Amulet Book 9, and it's a great book.

It's not the best book in the series imo, but it's definitely the ending we all wanted for the series.

finished reading Needful Things last night. Back to reading Wheel of Time Winter's Heart.

also in May Im going to preorder the new upcoming Stephen King short story collection You Like it Darker.

and getting back into buying and reading the rest of old Star Wars novels like the Swarm War Trilogy

@XandertheWise what did you think of Needful things? As for Wheel of Time, I started the first book but had to return it before I had finished . It's the next series on my list. Earlier we chatted about Brandon Sanderson - if you make it to the final Wheel of Time book, Sanderson finished it for Robert Jordan, so you may get an introduction to his writing with that book

I read Needful Things before a long time ago. Rereading it these days especially any old Stephen King book I notice things I didn't pay attention to due the movies based on the books being more popular back then. the book having Gaunt turn into an actual demon and his car turning into a demonic horse carriage a long with a hunchback person that I don't think I paid close attention to when i first read the book many years ago. that and I saw the extended version of the Needful Things movie on TBS back in the mid late 1990s where they included the two housewives and their Elvis stuff

as for Path of Daggers and me being busy with Winter's Heart I had to watch a couple of recap YouTube vids from Wheel of Time Lore to recatch some stuff I might have missed while reading the beginning of Winter's Heart

just finished Wheel of Time Winter's Heart

just got the paperbacks of Star Wars Joiner King and Stephen King's The Talisman today so I'm going to be reading those for the rest of this month.

Even have the new You Like it Darker which is coming soon next week hopefully

just got the new Stephen King book You Like it Darker in the mail and hour ago. So Ill be reading that the rest of this month even though I'm busy with reading The Talisman

Stephen King repeats himself so much, most of his books could be half the size.
Says the person who is currently in the middle of reading the Dark Tower series for the fifth time

But having a break from it to read Kurt Cobain's favorite book Perfume by Patrick Süskind

I also have the new Stephen King book, You Like it Darker. The first 3 stories are pretty good.

As for his regular novels, I want The Stand Uncut paperback so bad along with Insomnia.

Misplaced my copy of Gravity's Rainbow so I started reading A Frolic of His Own which is equally good

@drunktusken Would The Stand Uncut be about 2,000 pages ? The Stand, as is, is just about as perfect of a book as it gets. I've heard nothing about this, very curious,,,

No. The Uncut version of The Stand for paperback is 1, 153 pages. the old hardcover of It has more pages than that i think

@drunktusken Ah - that makes sense

I'm tackling the Silmarillion right now. Beautifully written. Cool to see how Middle Earth came to be.

@Mallow9623 Quite possibly my favorite book.

Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep is next up for me to read. I expect it'll be a real laugh riot.