A good bulk of my reading catalogue for the past few years has been non-fiction writing around game development. I love books like Blood, Sweat, and Pixels by Jason Schreier and Masters of Doom by David Kushner because of how they explore the turmoil and triumph of people who pour everything into their craft. Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin thusly was a delicious proposition of a book for me. A fictionalised documentary on the life and times of two rockstar game devs covering 30 years of their messy personal histories? It was an easy sell before I started, but by the time I had finished the final chapter, I was amazed by the sheer breadth of what this book goes for.

TTT sees estranged childhood friends Sam and Sadie reconnecting in college to make video games together. Gaming is a central point in the story, from the artistry behind how games are made, to their importance in comforting the downtrodden. Zevin writes so competently about them that the biographical elements of the book are a huge draw on their own. So often, I read a book or watch a movie where games are spoken about like the writer has only ever experienced them third hand. Here, you can really tell the author did their homework to try and speak about the making and playing of games in a way that feels true to what they mean to people in real life.

The other recurring theme here is about the value of relationships. Whether it’s parental or platonic, we see how love is absolutely transformative in our lives, how it sustains us and gives us the ability to push past both daily defeats and great tragedies. Of particular focus is the friendship between the two leads. Even if their chemistry may not be electric in their dialogue, the love language of the creative process they share is at times hypnotic to read, and can feel more palpable than a lot of love stories put to paper. The constant push and pull of their dynamic can be frustrating at times, but I was quite touched by how Zevin opted to navigate the messiness of a guy-girl best friendship.

These were just the most immediately obvious points of discussion, but as mentioned up top, it is hard to capture how much ground is covered here. Everything ranging from disability, mixed identities, misogyny across a number of industries, grief, endemic violence in America, and so much more become topics of discussion. All of this is portrayed through non-linear storytelling and incredibly varied structures in the prose that meant that every chapter was bringing something new and interesting to the table.

While I was certainly never bored, I wasn’t always blown away by some of the writing decisions. Many people are going to bounce off of this book because the constant lack of or poor communication between Sam and Sadie can come across as downright melodramatic at times. While I was satisfied how things are left with them, I can imagine many others will be left annoyed and disappointed with how their friendship didn’t mature with the pace it should have. Some of the supporting cast also suffers in the writing in a similar fashion, lacking some interiority to the point of feeling like caricatures. The most distracting thing for me has to be plot threads that get introduced that never get proper pay-off or come to unsatisfactory conclusions.

The book implies that Sam’s inflating ego is going to have a destructive effect on his work and life, but it only ever drives a wedge between him and Sadie. The woman in question also has an abortion that gets two pages of writing before disappearing from the plot and feels like it was only there to give yet another reason for her and Sam to fight

Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow does so much and I think it does a lot of it well. It is a love letter to people who make games and the people who play them. It is a fascinating exploration of what compels us to do the things we do and how the people around us drive us to action. In this great scope, so much hinges on how much you can buy into the relationship between Sam and Sadie. For some, it’ll be a slam dunk and for others, it’ll be a bit of a let down. I personally recommend you give it a try either way.

Edit: broken spoiler tag

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I just finished "The Bell Jar" and really want to share my thoughts and read everyone else's. Coming into this book, I knew it was about depression and I knew Sylvia Plath took her own life when she was quite young, but I wasn't prepared for all the emotions reading it.

First of all, let me just say that I don't think I've ever related so much to a character as Esther Greenwood, and I do not mean this as a compliment to myself at all. She is complex, she is flawed, she has a lot of work to do. And just like me, she is strong minded, she was a genious in school and then struggled to make friends, she sounded rude when she didn't mean to, she was mean and treated others as inferior without meaning to do it. All this was very relatable to me, a 26yo woman, for the better and for the worse, and this was the first time I saw a character like this.

Now, there are definitely somethings I thankfully don't share with Esther/Sylvia Plath, like the infinite amount of racist remarks, fatphobia, her treatment of other girls (the definition of a "not like the other girls")... While reading the book, I decided to look at this with the silver lining that our society evolved to a point where just reading this makes my blood boil. Racism is definitely not over, but writing things like these nowadays would not be acceptable anywhere, thankfully. I will also add here the insanity that was the medical treatment for depression back in the day, because even though I studied it in history class, it's still insane to read about shock therapy and lobotomies irl (not so fun fact, the inventor of lobotomies was my country's first nobel prize, insane)

I also think it's important to discuss the theme of this book: depression and mental health. This was the most realistic depiction of depression I've ever seen in a book and it was heartbreaking. Knowing Sylvia Plath wrote this book while going through depression and her first suicide attempt (and just before taking her own life) just made it all the more real, reading this book you know the author is describing something she was going through herself. I really like that Esther wasn't just a perfect girl who was then sad and mean; she was flawed the whole book, with good moments and bad moments, and her moments of spiraling were so raw that I had to stop reading often.

Another thing I would like to adress is the feminism in the book. Esther was a feminist in some ways: against being forced to marry a man, against patriarchy, against inequality between men and women. She wanted to be a strong, independent woman and that was pretty cool to read. However, I think it's quite obvious that she wasn't a perfect feminist. As mentioned, she constantly criticizes and feels superior to all the girls in her life. She also has quite a toxic relationship to men in general, which I guess would steam from Plath's difficult relationship with her husband (though the book was written before his affair I think). It's an interesting topic to discuss an imperfect form of feminism.

In general, I liked the book. I didn't love the structure of the book with the back and forths because it got confusing at parts, but I also kind of assumed it's to show how the brain of a mentally ill person works. Im also quite curious to watch the movie coming out in 2027, I do think Billie Eilish fits the character of Esther

Hey!

I've been influenced by BookTook to start the audiobook of the Russian-language, Ukranian-authored fantasy (maybe sci-fi?) YA novel Vita Nostra by Maryna and Serhiy Dyachenko.

As a disclaimer, I quickly need to say I am severely not the target audience for this book. I am double the age of the main chararcter at the beginning of the novel, and even at 16 I found YA a cheesy genre. And yet!

Since I've been quite busy with work, I decided to go for the audiobook, and in hindsight that was quite a happy coincidence.

Let's start by saying, and maybe that's a credit to the translation (I don't speak Russian unfortunately), that the writing is literary, in a beautiful prose, and absolutely stunning in descriptions and historical/cultural context scoping. I don't know much about Eastern Europe in the 90s, and still I consistently found myself immersed in the landscapes, the little-town vibe descriptions, the post-sovietic dark academia. And that's just half of the world building the authors have achieved here.

The other 50% of the world building is the most original feature in this novel. If you've read and appreciated Babel by RF Kuang, you will probably enjoy Vita Nostra's Weltanschauung. The core idea that the universe we inhabit is a narrative one, and words (and signs!) have creative capabilities, is something I've always dreamt of seeing explored in non-fiction as a philosopher of language, and the literary choice of exploring it through a coming-of-age story is somehow enticing in the end.

You're forced by the world-building and the main character's arc to learn how Vita Nostra's universe works step by step, little by little, consistently being swept away by its complexity alongside a main character that, through the messy confused lens of a growing girl's eyes, is at the same time attracted and repulsed by the almost Lovecraftian discoveries on her academic path of transformation.

The ending, although open, was incredibly well written. I've been looking at reviews online, and I've found some readers have found it confusing. I think the main plot point which might have been missed by some could be the direct quote of John 1:1, the definition of λόγος, and the Chomskian theoretical/semiotic infrastructure of the world the novel ultimately offers. I am not entirely confident some nouances of the plot can be accessible to non-specialists, and especially young adult non-specialists. So maybe that's the question I'm asking here: do people who have read this book and know nothing or very little about philosophy of language, cognitive studies, and semiotics understand the ending?

Another issue I've found raised by other readers is the meaning of the early tests with Farit Kozhennikov, which according to some has not been fully explained. I think the authors did a great job at positioning it in the wider structure of the plot, instead:the tests were aimed at testing Sasha's endurance, and her discipline, and her ability to compromise on her ethical stances and habits for a higher purpose. Basically, her faith .

The book overall is a great exploration of magical thinking, of growing out of your roots and family of origin, of getting consumed by a worldview, and of the concept that every choice demands a renounciation. It's also a strong agrument for free will, which I did not expect to find so elegantly depicted through time travel/loops of all things.

On Reddit I've found a thread I can locate any longer where someone mentioned the novel might make an argument on simulation theory as well. I don't find that to be correct. From my understanding of the plot, reality really is influenced by "speech", and the technologies to overwrite reality are only available because reality is affected directly by them.

In any case, Vita Nostra is a great book. The only thing I've found icky is the oversexualization of young women, and sometimes the language around this topic sounded quite harsh, but... Hey, what can I say, this book came out 20 years ago. Maybe it was different times. Maybe. Let me know what you think.

My god, what a book. It took me a good while to get into it and it was a slow burn, but I couldn’t put it down after a while, and it moved me deeply. What a beautiful and thought-provoking read.

I am particularly impressed by Le Guin’s masterful way of playing with perception through clever perspective-switching. You start off thinking Genly Ai is a reliable narrator and a good guy. It’s even easy to overlook his pretty blatant misogyny. Then slowly you realise his perspective is incredibly limited and limiting, and he is frequently just plain wrong or self-sabotaging. This takes the book from a simple hero’s journey to a much more complex and interesting reflection on culture, communication and the (im)possibility of understanding one another. I loved it, but it’s also a pretty challenging read that I imagine isn’t for everyone. I’d love to hear others’ thoughts on it.

Also, this was my first Le Guin - what should I read next?

By Jasper Fforde

I just finished and it was a fun read. It took me two days only because I had so much else going on. Great for a pick up book when in a line, have a few minutes to yourself, or about to pick up the kids.

A modern fantasy, where there's weakening magic, politics, advertisement deals, and the quark beast.

As with Fforde it is never what you expect. I will refrain from going on so I don't spoil anything.

Rating it a lovely 9/10. I wanted a touch more action, but that's personal taste.

I am excited to find the sequel! If you want more to chew on I recommend "Shades of Grey". It was my first of this author and I fell in love. Society based on color perception. A surreal adventure!

In many other forms of text-based media, there are often a good mix of single vs multi authors; TV shows, movies, academic articles, non-fiction books, etc. Yet novels are almost exclusively written by a single author. Why is that? Some of the best fictional movies/TV come from a pair or team of strong writers that bring different strengths. Why doesn’t this apply to novels?

Finally picked up the first Red Rising novel, after hearing about it for years, and it left me with some thoughts!

Going in blind, the dystopian aspect, the - "hunger-games-in-space" setup really caught me off guard.
And especially at the start, there was such a edgy tone to the narration and setup, which, along with the casual violence really did bring up the reminiscence of "YA"

At first I wasn't impressed but when the worldbuilding began to open up, the twists in revised history were revealed, I began to really enjoy this book and reminded me how fun the YA dystopian genre could be.

The pure adrenaline, hype, excitement that pulsed with the MC's anger, wrath, and war path, I was right there with him. The book did a great job making you feel like a God of War.

The tension of the animalistic pack-peer heirarchy, between Darrow, Cassies, Titus, etc- Which of the golden boys will end up on top? The social unrest that's so related to school-years. Its been a while since I"ve read a book that really involves itself in that and I forgot how fun it can be.

A few things I wasn't a huge fan of..

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Quickly Humanizing the Worst: Titus and Tactus

With characters like Titus and Tactus, who committed grape, or were attempting to, it was very difficult to gulp down how quickly the novel seemed to try to make me feel emphathetic towards them, and let them off the hook.

There are many other books that contain such brutality, but generally don't so quickly and easily flip it and to make me feel bad for them or completely let off the hook and join the protagonists. They are typically branded as villians throughout. The only other times I've seen it happen were in other YA dystopian novels.

And I understood Titus's reasoning, when the twist was revealed, yet it still did not justify or make me feel emphathetic towards him to the point where the main MC refered to him as "brother" so quickly.

I know there is a hypocrisy in the way I judge these things, since Darrow and many other characters commit brutal acts such as murder and violence- that I don't treat the same way or shun from redemption or emphathy.

But reflecting deeper, perhaps it is because there are many types of physical violence. I can much easier understand hot blooded revenge, ego spats, etc, than I can understand pure psychopathic sadism.

Like even if Titus didn't commit grape, I'd still feel a way about trying to protray him as sympathetic, just for sadistic torturing and violence alone, he felt psychopathic and creepy.

And grape, falls into this later category that is this incomprehensible sadism.

Later on with Tactus, I felt made even worse, for how little penalty he actually faced, how his would-be victim didn't care to see him punished, and how he was able to join the protagonists as a high ranking member and left hand to the MC.

I found Darrow ordering himself to be whipped for Tactus's crimes to be.. very very corny.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Favorite and Least Favorite Moments

One of my favorite "God Killer" moments of the novel was when Darrow killed Apollo. Striking right at the core theme of the novel; when the game is rigged, you attack the game itself.

The laurels were rigged, Darrow's awnser to Dancer's card game was to eat the card, and during this school battle royale, when the proctor's rigged the game, my favorite moments were when Darrow tricked, defied, and finally attacked the heaven's itself.

The pure childlike adrenaline, hype, excitement, it was all there as he brought the war to Olympus and fought Jupiter.

In contrast, my least favorite moments was at the start. Darrow's wife, Eo- felt like such a prop character. Her attempt to put a battery in her husband's back to start a revolt, was so poorly executed from her pov, and her uncalculated defiance.. felt frustrating.

Another deeply frustrating moment, was when Darrow, using his quick intelligence, managed to finally capture the infamous Jackal, a character truly terrifying in his shadowey buildup, someone Darrow geniuenly feared- and yet, at the cusp of victory, decides to play with.

It was so annoying to see Darrow do anything other than quickly break the Jackal's back and leave him paralyzed. Rip Pax, a very lovable character.

I loved that Mustang didn't betray in the end, and the contrast between her and her psycho borther. Polar opposites, where one is a cold blooded sacrificer, while Mustang teaches Darrow a better way to lead, representing the ideal of what a Gold could be.

For Cassies, I was actually sad they didn't patch things up. As uneasy as it was, I enjoyed their Golden duo friendship. Perhaps I was niave, but I hoped, having pretty much killed him once, Cassies' anger would have abated. An allyship with his family agaisnt the Governer's would have been interesting.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Conclusion

At the start, I wasn't too thrilled by the book's edgy tone, but man, sooned it picked up and was such a fun ride. Pure, coudn't-put-it-down entertainment I haven't felt in a while.
To me, it feels like the male equivelant of Fourth Wing in many ways, the same demonination of fullfillment fantasy.

Love to hear you guys' throughts on the first book, what was your guys' impressions, favorite moments, worst moments etc?

Welcome readers,

Have you ever wanted to ask something but you didn't feel like it deserved its own post but it isn't covered by one of our other scheduled posts? Allow us to introduce you to our new Simple Questions thread! Twice a week, every Tuesday and Saturday, a new Simple Questions thread will be posted for you to ask anything you'd like. And please look for other questions in this thread that you could also answer! A reminder that this is not the thread to ask for book recommendations. All book recommendations should be asked in /r/suggestmeabook or our Weekly Recommendation Thread.

Thank you and enjoy!

​

The Prince of Nothing Trilogy by R. Scott Bakker is the modern lord of the rings. It's like if Cormac Mcarthy wrote an epic fantasy novel. Bakker's background is in philosophy and has an interest in neuroscience he uses these concepts to dismantle and recreate the conventions of the epic fantasy genre.

If I was being reductive Lord of the Rings meets Dune through the lense of Blood Meridian exploring the nature of free will and consciousness.

"The Dûnyain," Kellhus said after a time, have surrendered themselves to the Logos, to what you would call reason and intellect. We seek absolute awareness, the self- moving thought. The thoughts all men arise from the darkness. If you are the movement of your soul, and the cause of that movement precedes you, then how could you ever call your thoughts your own? How could you be any- thing other than a slave to the darkness that comes before? Only the Logos allows one to mitigate that slavery. Only knowing the sources of thought and action allows us to own our thoughts and our actions, to throw off the yoke of circumstance. And only the Dûnyain possess this knowledge, plainsman. The world slumbers, enslaved by its ignorance. Only the Dunyain are awake.

"Why do men fear the dark?" "Because darkness is ignorance made visible" "And do men despise ignorance?" "No... they prize it above all things but only so long as it remains invisible"

"Lies are but clouds, giants that blow and rage only to pass, always to pass. But the Truth is the sky, everlasting and elusive, a shelter in the day, an abyss in the night."

"If the Gods did not pretend to be human, Men would recoil from them as from spiders."

"Truth and hope are like travellers in contrary directions. They meet but once in any man's life."

To read Bakker is to stand before a mirror that never gives back an image, only fractures, each crack a scar of absence. The abyss does not answer, it confirms: nothing lies behind the reflection, because the reflection was never there.

S.C. Hickman

Finished reading one of Brunner's mid sixties novels "The Day of the Star Cities", and this is where his work starts to get a little bit more interesting.

When the people of Earth first had a hint that aliens had arrived to the planet was completely catastrophic. All fissionable material and atomic bombs had gone off suddenly. And for months chaos, death and panic reigned before things had even gone back to normal.

At the time the reports of five star shaped cities appearing over the globe were already coming in. Huge areas of light that flickers and powerful free energy powerful enough to disorganize the human senses and impossible to even attack. The aliens had built bases on the planet; or are they even bases at all?

This is one of the books where Brunner began to start experimenting a bit with his stories. "Star Cities" is a mix between post-apocalyptic and alien invasion, but with a little bit more to it. For one the aliens are completely mysterious (Kind of like the aliens of Wyndham's "Out of the Deeps"), with their actual intentions being completely unknowable. Brunner even tackles the subject of religion, which runs throughout quite a big portion of the story.

Finally getting a bit of a taste of his more new wavy material. Still want to explore more of these mid sixties books and maybe even some of his much later stuff next time around, and maybe more of his earlier stuff or short story collections too, would love me some of that!

These are wonderful. Six actors performing a dramatic reading of the six shortlisted books:

- The End of Everything by M. John Harrison – read by Kathryn Hunter
- The Disappearers by Marlon James – read by Paterson Joseph
- Black Bag by Luke Kennard – read by Himesh Patel
- May We Feed the King by Rebecca Perry – read by Savannah Steyn
- The Things We Never Say by Elizabeth Strout – read by Maxine Peake
- John of John by Douglas Stuart – read by Lewis Gribben 

And I'll read the article, too!

Was there any book that, after or during reading, made you experience or see things that seem from another reality?

Here I'm not speaking just a visualization of a magical land or something of the sort, rather, something that was either genuinely unsettling, transformative or significant in some shape or form.

I had a few who granted me such experiences but I will describe the one that this account name is inspired by, The Aleph - Jorge Luis Borges.

In this short story, we are told of an object named the Aleph:

A small sphere that contains all points in the universe simultaneously, without any distortion, overlapping or reduction.

There he shows us the futility of trying to use words to describe something of this nature, no lexicon in existence would be enough for such a task, all attempts futile at the inception.

___

I reread this one quite a few times already, but during the first one, the result between the impact of the Aleph in my mind was what I imagine a LSD trip to look like, let me describe:

Rather than just seeing infinite images compressed to a point, my mind went directly to concepts, no sounds, no images, no nothing beyond pure concepts expanding within themselves with all the relations they ever shared with something else, like drops of water containing small universes filled with more and more drops of water.

It felt like all possible meanings of words themselves were compressed in my mind in tiny frame of reference (rather than a sphere, the 'time' of the experience felt like its shape.)

The perception of time became diffuse, it appeared like I spent a long time there, daydreaming about something I can barely describe, while in fact barely a few minutes had went by.

I won't delve on why and what I think that was, but I'm curious if others ever hard impossibility weird experiences or visions like that before and which book prompted it.