Book Recs
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@bear_necessities I watched her doc, it broke my god damn heart. I cried for hours. Paris Hilton that is, holy shit that is a heavy story.
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still can’t say too much about it but she honestly inspired a lot of us to come forward. Q1 2024 is when a lot more of our stuff is set to come out, if anyone is looking for more stories and docs on the subject.
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Hello! I just finished the book Things We Lost in the Fire by Mariana Enríquez and highly recommend it. It’s a short story anthology, though there is some connective tissue between the stories. I read it in English, so there may be something lost in the translation but ultimately it was very good.
I won’t spoil it too much, but the genre is broadly horror, though it can be quite subtle at times. Enríquez is an Argentine author and lived as a child through the coup of 1976 and subsequent junta period. Some of this is illustrated in her work, but she refers to the period rather than describes it directly (except in one specific case). I think that the violence in the book is a representation of that period given how she portrays it in terms of generational trauma.
There are some content warnings for it, notably violence in general. It’s not an extreme horror novel (think more Stephen King, not Jack Ketchum) and doesn’t go into too much detail about the following:
Sexual assault/rape, self-immolation, mild body horror, inferred child abuse
There is one scene of violence towards an animal. It’s about a paragraph long and not very heavily described in detail. A lot of folks have issues with that subject, so I figured I’d mention it.
Okay! All that aside, if you are a fan of horror in general, gothic horror, or (in a couple cases) cosmic horror, you should check it out.
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The Blacktongue Thief by Christopher Buehlman was, in my opinion, excellent.
The Daughter’s War by Buehlman came out this summer and is a prequel to The Blacktongue Thief. Very different than the Blacktongue Thief, but very good.
The Bright Sword by Lev Grossman. Another take on the Arthorian legend. If you enjoyed the Magicians you’ll probably like this
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Thred Necro!!
I’m reading Dungeon Crawler Carl and it is like a mash up of the most upsurd scenes where the GM is basically of the mindset, “Fuck it. Roll and let’s see what shit can happen.”
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@junipersky a friend of mine recently recced that and I have been listening to the audios a lot. I LOVE DONUT
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I’m literally obsessed.
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I’ve been listening to the audio books myself the past month!
Endlessly impressed with the one-man-show that the narrator is capable of putting on. I think it does sag occasionally (The Iron Tangle comes to mind), but it’s been such a different tone to my previous binge of the Cosmere that I’m all in on the dark comedy romp that it is.
God damn it, Donut.
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I’m partway through the Inevitable Ruin right now. I’ve got to drive across the state for work in a couple weeks and am a little worried I am going to run out of books before the next one comes out.
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Because this is topical for me today with the final part of Wind and Truth coming out (yay, finally, I can start it!) …
Cannot possibly recommend the company Graphic Audio enough as an audiobook experience. It was my gateway drug back into reading after an embarrassingly long stretch of fractured attention span. Their tagline is ‘A Movie in Your Mind’, which it pretty well succeeds at. They make everything a full Radio Play experience, with sound effects and music and a sprawling cast of voice actors for each book.
The only downside is that they do tend to retain the same voice talent, so if you bounce around between some series, you’ll be like, “Hey wait, why’s Wit here? Oh, no, he’s not. Just the same voice.”
Either way, cannot recommend it highly enough. The actors really swing for the fences, and when it lands, it lands so well.
