What have you been reading or listening to lately?
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Just started the audiobook for Dungeon Crawler Carl a few days ago. Love the narration. Genre is LitRPG, which I understand to mean you’re reading about someone playing a game, as I understand it. So it’s not literature, but it is fun.
I feel like the pitch meeting or whatever inspired him to write this book went like this:
Teacher/Instructor: Write what you know
Matt Dinniman: I don’t know shit. All I’m good at is, I’ve beaten NetHack over 37 times!
Teacher/Instructor: Well write about that then…
…and he did.
I’m not sure if there’s a closer game than NetHack (or Hack or Rogue) that the game part of DCC would be about. Obviously the end-of-the-world stuff is tacked on, and the achievements and loot boxes make it modern, but the core gameplay seems to be taken from NetHack. And if you’ve ever played that damned game, you know how hard it is and how rare wins actually are. But we’re not here to talk about games, so I won’t get into what it is.
LitRPG doesn’t necessarily mean you are reading about someone playing a game, although there are definitely those types of books as well. I’m my eyes it is a story that has rpg elements built into the story. MC’s gaining levels, items with stats, or even building a town that a building increases x resource per day.
Dungeon Crawler Carl is a great series. I just don’t recommend listening to it in the car with the little ones lol. If you like the DCC books there is another LitRPG book. The name escapes me at the moment but it’s about a guy that is working at an RV Park in the desert when the apocalypse comes. It’s also a very good series, I’ll see if I can’t find the name somewhere.
You are thinking of BuyMort the Shopocalypse Saga and it is also great!
More litRPG would come in the form of Beware of Chicken which is actually referenced a few times later on in the series of books when he talks about the cloudy sword sect and Raul the Crabs general existence seems to be to nod to beware of chicken.
Also Solo Levelling is great too
Thanks. I’m new to LitRPG and that was my impression. I realise Crawler Carl isn’t playing a game, it’s his reality (unless it ends up being all a dream or something), but it’s very game-like.
Then there’s Ready Player One where they’re playing a sort of real-life game (the egg hunt), but I wouldn’t call it a LitRPG.
I’m on the latest Murderbot book Platform Decay. I love the series.
Way too short, as always (except for vol 4, I think?) :D
Just re-read V for Vendetta. Depressingly familiar. Need to rewatch the movie.
Now rereading Blood Child by Octavia Butler. I normally hate short stories, but Butler is an exception.
I’m between Murderbot (Martha Wells) books at the moment.
I’m listening to Theo of Golden through Libby. It’s not changing my world but it pretty wholesome.
I recent finished Dungeon Crawler Carl and I’m looking forward to starting the second in the series.
Finished the fourth book in the ‘Children of Time’ series.
‘Children of Strife’ by Adrian Tchaikovsky. Book covers three different eras of human space exploration. Tchaikovsky writes like a cross between Terry Pratchett and Arthur C. Clarke. Whimsy and humor slamming into hard science at the speed of light.
Classic = “The Silver Metal Lover” by Tanith Lee. In the future, robots are absolutely perfect. Too perfect. Way, way too perfect.
It’s odd that it’s Tchaichovsky’s biggest work but it’s almost the only thing of his I haven’t read. It’s on the list though.
I just started reading The Dispossessed by Ursula K. Le Guin. I’ve only read the first chapter.
I’m also reading the Collected Ficions by Jorge Luis Borges. I’ve only read a few but I’m enjoying them.
finished Ask for Andrea and The Alchemist’s Secret, and started Pretty Girls by Karin Slaughter. Seems like this is another banger book. Will probably give it a 4.5 or 5 out of 5. Up next: piranesi by susanna clarke.
Just finished Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir.
There was only one cringey moment I can remember:
spoiler
“Hold on, Ms. Stratt,” said Justice Spencer. “This is still a court of law, and you will remain for the duration of these proceedings!”
“No, I won’t,” said Stratt.
The bailiff walked forward. “Ma’am. I’ll have to restrain you if you don’t comply.”
“You and what army?” Stratt asked.
Five armed men in military fatigues entered the courtroom and took up station around her. “Because I have the U.S. Army,” she said. “And that’s a damn fine army.”
Idk it just seems a bit shoved in there.
Otherwise I liked it a lot :)
I just finished Automatic Noodle, Annalee Newitz, which was pretty okay. The themes about trans and marginalized groups rights were well done with the robot analog. Unfortunately I thought the dialogue was cringey at times and I never resonated with any of the characters. I enjoyed the setting and world building, but the length and rushed pace of the piece compounded my negative feelings.
Currently reading A Parade of Horribles, Matt Dinniman, which I’m enjoying but feel like the zaniness is maybe getting out of hand? Well see, only a quarter in.
I felt that way about her book Autonomous. I thought her message about autonomy was great, but the book got a little cringy at times. I’m still happy I read it and I will recommend it to folks I think will enjoy it, but it was a bit underwhelming.
The part that was really cringy for me was
Spoiler
When one of the characters was helping the bot aim correctly at a shooting range, then he got a hard on from shooting the bot’s gun. Just kinda weird.
Oh yeah, automatic noodle left me wishing there’d be more done with that world!
The Waste Lands book 3 of The Dark Tower by Stephen King
Audiobook The Witcher: Blood and Elves by Andrzej Sapkowski
Just over 6 hours into Children of Dune. I read through the series when I was 10 years younger, but always skipped this one. At the time I just didn’t have this book though I had the rest. I like it so far; lots of the same overall concepts coming over from Messiah. I had an idea of what took place in this book, but I’m really enjoying the subtlety here even more than the previous 2 books.
I just read “Brightly Shining” by Ingvild H. Rishøi. I suppose its more suited to read in wintertime, but it’s such a good book.
Alcoholism is a theme, just fyi.
I discovered it via Dua Lipa’s Book Club, which imo is worth checking out.
I’m working my way through “The Children of the Jedi” by Barbara Hambly, one of the less enjoyable books actually so far, I think it’s just the author. They’ve introduced some characters and ideas as stuff you should already know. Seems like they wanted to flesh those stories out later?
After I’m reading another collection in the same theme as the last, it’s still Asimovs “wonderful worlds of science fiction”, but instead of empires this one is Spaceships.
bouncing back and forth between a family read of Treasure Island and Debt: The First 5000 Years.
I am coming towards the end of the fifth book in the Lee Harden series of books. It is a decent continuation of the story and I don’t regret delving into it but that damn dog had me choked up again in this fucking book! XD
