Homestuck.XYZ 2.0

I've decided to begin a thread on books in general! Feel free to discuss your favorite books, books that are on your reading list, or books you're about to begin reading. Recommendations, whatever the opposite of a recommendation is... Anything goes!

I've just ordered two books on Amazon: Infinite Jest, by David Foster Wallace, and Eichmann in Jerusalem: On the Banality of Evil, by Hannah Arendt. I found out about Infinite Jest by PBS's video on Homestuck, and the plot summary seemed pretty interesting so I decided to buy it. Many reviews have warned that it's not the easiest book to read, but I'll try anyways and will report back to you guys! I bought Arendt's book because it was mentioned to me by a former Philosophy teacher I had a few years ago, and given recent events worldwide, it seemed relevant to read again.

My favorite book at this moment in time is The Stranger, by Albert Camus. It's really good.

ive started reading The Foundation Saga by Asimov like, a week ago and im currently at half of a recopilation of the empire books called Triptych of the Empire, which apparently takes place before the Foundation Saga so idk. its interesting, thats for sure

Just started House of Leaves, it's kinda rough at times but the entire format of the book is interesting enough to make me want to read more. It's also a total bitch to explain to other people, so there's that

sigmatic wrote: ↑

Sat Jan 04, 2020 2:27 pm

Just started House of Leaves, it's kinda rough at times but the entire format of the book is interesting enough to make me want to read more. It's also a total bitch to explain to other people, so there's that

Ooooh, I've been meaning to read that one too! I'll definitely add it to my reading list.

Mogworld. Great book.

I don't read much, but when I do I usually pick up something extra fun. Mogworld is that extra fun.

Plot is, hundreds of years ago an aspiring wizard who couldn't cast a spell is killed along with his school by a horde of invaders. In the present day he has been resurrected by a necromancer in order to be a minion. Problem is, the wizard just wants to be dead.

The necromancer is beseiged by holy-men who have been sent by a God who turns out to be a rogue developer of a game called Mogworld, a revolutionary new MMO where the NPCs have unique AI that makes them very unique. When you start the game, you enter one of these NPCs and it becomes your character.

Very good book, I would highly recommend. It was written by Yahtzee, the yelly guy who reviews games as quickly as he can.

(Side-note: a forum-based book club is a very interesting idea I think could be explored

sigmatic wrote: ↑

Sat Jan 04, 2020 2:27 pm

Just started House of Leaves, it's kinda rough at times but the entire format of the book is interesting enough to make me want to read more. It's also a total bitch to explain to other people, so there's that

Ohhhhhohohoho, House of Leaves is SO damn good, it's an absolutely wonderful mindfuck and one of my favorite pieces of Cosmic Horror media. You're in for a treat!

sigmatic wrote: ↑

Sat Jan 04, 2020 2:27 pm

Just started House of Leaves, it's kinda rough at times but the entire format of the book is interesting enough to make me want to read more. It's also a total bitch to explain to other people, so there's that

I don't care if it's basic bitch-tier "experimental literature" but House of Leaves is my favourite book ever (if you don't count homestuck lmao), as a concept it's so fascinating and it does things format wise that I wish were more common in physical books
not to mention is does the meta of several authors battling over the story SO MUCH BETTER than post-Homestuck stuff does, so if you like the idea of that but dislike how HS has been doing it, I would highly recommend House of Leaves

that being said, yes, it is a VERY difficult book to read. took me a year the first time I read it because it was just,, that demanding

My favorite part about House of Leaves was the visceral terror and immediate format screw when i concluded that the house granted wishes, and was trying to grant MY wish to learn more about itself through taking over and forcing all these different people to write about itself. I felt so damn floored my guy.

The bit that fucked me up was

BrobyDDark wrote: ↑

Sat Jan 04, 2020 5:41 pm

(Side-note: a forum-based book club is a very interesting idea I think could be explored)

oooo, I'd definitely be up to organize something like this, if there is enough interest!

Sokota wrote: ↑

Sun Jan 05, 2020 4:42 am

BrobyDDark wrote: ↑

Sat Jan 04, 2020 5:41 pm

(Side-note: a forum-based book club is a very interesting idea I think could be explored)

oooo, I'd definitely be up to organize something like this, if there is enough interest!

I'm definitely down for something like this!

I'm down for a book club. I need reading material...

Update on Infinite Jest:

I've started to read it, but unfortunately I've had a busy week and couldn't make it too far in. But so far, it's a very interesting book. It's written in somewhat of a stream-of-consciousness Salinger-ish style with more complicated concepts and words. Plus, if you're a sucker for NCAA related things, there's good stuff there.

I'm still willing to start that Book Club discord server, by the way! I just want to see if more interest for it pops up.

Recently picked up Gideon the Ninth, which piqued my interest because the author used to be a fanfic writer, way back then. Like, 2012, when LiveJournal was a more common medium for fics than Ao3 is now. Well the review on the front describes it as "Lesbian necromancers explore a haunted gothic palace in space!", which was enough to pick it up.

Other than that, the last book I read that wasn't starting down on the Dresden Files was something for a class. Thousand Cranes, by Yasunari Kawabata. Thought-provoking, but not a page-turner. Needs a lot of reading between the lines and a fairly heavy knowledge of Japanese tea ceremony and post-WWII Japanese cultural norms.

Soooo I'm just gonna post the books I like here cause I'm a huge bookworm.
Brandon Sanderson is an epic fantasy author who's big thing is that a large portion of his books take place in the same universe, just on different planets. The underlying magic system is the same throughout, even though each series uses it in very different ways.
Just an example of the type of intricate magic systems he makes up, one is a world where everything is based on metal. Some people eat metal and get powers from it, some people can store attributes in metal and get it back later for a boost, and some people.... do other things with metal. It's called Mistborn and I highly recommend it! He's actually the author that got me into forums in the first place, and HS was recommended to me by someone in the Brandon Sanderson Discord server.

Another author that's a lot less known is Will Wight. He also has a kind of shared universe thing, although it's not quite as big as BS's. If you like cultivation novels where a lot of the story is based on getting constantly stronger, check out Cradle! He's also insanely popular for an indie author, most of his new releases are first in the fantasy category for a bit and usually the top ten overall.

But my all time favorite book isn't either of those authors. My very favorite book ever is Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality. It's a piece of Harry Potter fanfiction based off of the idea of 'what if these characters were actually smart enough to use magic to it's full potential?' It's by Eliezer Yudkowski, a name you may recognize (especially if you read Wait But Why) as basically the face of rationalists today. The concepts in there probably won't be as revolutionary to you guys as they were to me, but I was young when I read it and it completely changed the way I think! Not everybody will love it as much as I did, but I think most people will at least kind of like it.

Oh and My Immortal is obviously actually my real favorite but that goes without saying so I didn't even count it.

my favourite book of ALL TIME is John Dies At The End - it's the perfect mix of humour and horror. the way buddy writes any little thing is just so great to me, interspersed throughout are these faked excerpts that explore neat stuff the regular narrative wouldn't have time to. the plot is hard to explain and i wouldn't want to spoil anything anyways so i'll leave it at that. his other books are a mixed bag, and a lot of his articles are similarly incredible.
the movie fucking sucks.

Sokota wrote: ↑

Sat Jan 11, 2020 11:49 am

I'm still willing to start that Book Club discord server, by the way! I just want to see if more interest for it pops up.

heck yeah man

I've been reading coding for dummies because I want to learn coding

Unfortunately I don't read a whole lot anymore, lost most of the time for it and can't hold my focus on them for as long as I like to when reading something. However! I've read a few books in the past so I'll recommend just the few.
Maybe it was bad, maybe it was great, but I did love The Inheritance Cycle as a kid, although I never got around to finishing the last book... hm..... anyway. Your basic book about a non modern land, orphan boy family is killed by evil magic king, finds "the last" dragon, branded by dragon, well shit. now he's in charge of restoring Good to the land. Details are fuzzy but I feel as though thats the gist of the intro anyway. It gets a lot more complicated after that.
If having to read it for school didn't scar you too bad, or if you never were forced to read it and do work on it, Ender's Game is great, and so are the next few books in the main series. It's a huge world too and once again I definitely did not finish every book in the series. Fake fan I know. Look the ability to "think" yourself outside of the universe and then just think up something from the atomic level is a bit wack and I did not feel like reading further about that.
Kony 2018: The Search For Tupac. Have I read it? Absolutely not. Will I recommend it? Absolutely. It's a very funny concept from all I've heard. And knowing the person who wrote it, their humor is pretty great when it is at least a little bit planned as I hope it is in the book. There's also the movie Kony 2017 which I think you can find on youtube these days. They animated the whole thing themselves actual. An interesting character that Jessica Kellen.

eldritchCorvus wrote: ↑

Wed Feb 12, 2020 1:02 pm

I've been reading coding for dummies because I want to learn coding

Don't do that (unless it's already working for you.) Just think of something relatively simple that you think would maybe take someone who's good at it a half hour. Maybe an hour. Then just. Make it. Look up what you need as you go on Stackoverflow or wherever else on the internet. Once you understand the basic logic behind coding specific method arent difficult to design, even if you've never used the particular language, so long as you have internet access.

Sokota wrote: ↑

Sat Jan 11, 2020 11:49 am

I'm still willing to start that Book Club discord server, by the way! I just want to see if more interest for it pops up.

super late lmao but i would love to be a part of this. if it was already established then please send me a message :)

dew it