Books

Post about books!

 
I like autobiographies.

@Dex Stewart  

 
Just joking. But I haven’t read an actual book recently,  
though I did learn alot from this russian-language audiobook:
 
Soviet Civilisation by Sergey Kara-Murza.  
Link

Looking at the last book I wrote, finished in 2014, I wrote 82,000 words in 79 days. I wrote about 1,044 words per day. I’ve worked on the current book for 13 out of the last 23 days (something, unfortunately, came up and I couldn’t work for 9 days, putting me very far behind) and have so far written 12,400 words, more or less the same words per day as the last book. I really could have finished it in 30 days, but now I don’t know if it’s possible.

I got two books recently I haven’t read yet,a biography of Houdini and Jimmy Carter’s A Remarkable Mother.  
I mostly read comics and graphic novels now unless I see an intresting biography.

The new book I’m working on about deception will have fake endorsements on the back.
 
Genuine Fake Praise for Bloody Murder:
 
“My wife’s boyfriend loved it!”  
– Michael Hunt, Washington Shitpost Book Review
 
“People are apparently calling stuff like this wickedly funny!”  
– Dave, SomeGuyWithABlog.com
 
“This book is gay in a good way! The best trans-lesbian murder mystery you’ll ever read!”  
– Charlene X. Mbembe, BLT Magazine
 
“No longer under federal investigation!”  
– Rose Glen Chamber of Commerce
 
“A psychedelic black comedy with a twist that will leave you wanting to read it again! It’s like The Neon Demon meets The 120 Days of Sodom.”  
– Billie Ugly, The Atlanta Urinal-Review
 
“Come to our state and spend lots of money at our casinos. Please. We swear Philadelphia doesn’t smell like urine anymore. Okay, it does, but it’s not that bad when there’s a breeze.”  
– Pennsylvania Gaming Control Board

@UrbanMysticDee  
I love you.

Just got my copy of the book in the mail. It’s lovely. It’s like absolute proof that I exist and the culmination of one of my lifelong goals. Just one little mistake I noticed that somehow escaped three 7-hour long editing sessions: one of the chapter titles is all capital letters. If I didn’t have to rush this through production at the last minute I probably would have caught it. Then again, maybe I wouldn’t have.

@UrbanMysticDee  
Hindsight is 20/20.  
Giggle.

Got two books in the mail today.  
First up is this Art and Making of X-Men.  
Full of fascinating behind the scenes designs and storyboards,info straight from the creators,it’s so cool.  
Also I got this,just because it’s better than having several more children’s books lying around.It includes the Gift of Maud Pie book,so it’s of course something I had to have.

The two books I’m working on that take place at the same time will have epilogues further linking them together, hinting at a future showdown between the serial killers and the vigilante in a sequel that will never happen because they’re not even in the same league. It would just be revenge porn at that point.

Are we counting audiobooks, or is this thread just too cool for vocal performances, music and the use of their own hands?

@lasty  
Sure.

@Havoc  
Sweet, I’ve been listening to Fellowship of the Rings. Yeah, it’s basic-bitch and I’m not far into it yet, but it’s still a mostly interesting story.

Two updates:
 

I’m torn on the direction to go with the book. I want to write two different stories. I want to do the abusive romance story where they plot to murder one person and at the same time I want to have them murder like 50 people because the media turn murderers into celebrities.

@UrbanMysticDee  
Maybe have them try to murder one person and have them accidentally kill a bunch instead? Cutting someone’s brakes can have some spectacular and unexpected results.

I have to rethink the book. The only scene so far that I actually wrote is where they kill the sheriff’s deputy and take his car and weapons to pin the killings on him, because a crooked cop who goes off and kills people, especially in this age, is very believable. Originally they were just going to dispose of the body, but that wouldn’t work because then he’d be thought of as a victim too (which he is). His body has to be put somewhere at the end of the story to be found so that he can be blamed for everything, but he has to be made to appear to have died in some way that would just leave a skeleton, otherwise people would know that he was innocent because he’d obviously died before all the other victims as evident by his decayed body. The only thing I can think of is for him to start a fire and die before managing to escape. He’s not going to commit suicide by jumping in a vat of chemicals, that’s stupid. The only way would be for him to die in a fire.
 
This does kind of work, because I can’t nuke the town, but there has to be some big event at the end. But what? What’s big and dramatic for a small town of very rich people where a whole lot of them can die all at once?
 
I know in the fake reviews I said this was like Neon Demon + 120 Days of Sodom, but it really started out as Life is Strange + Natural Born Killers (and I’ve had this idea swimming around my head since about 2016), so a lot of people have to die at the end to be true to the source material.

Imma have to put the horror story on hold. I was just struck with clarity and inspiration and I’ve written about 8 pages so far about atheism in America and how only by returning to Christianity can the West (and by extension humanity) be saved. I’ve got 4 chapters outlined already. I’m just stream-of-consciousness-ing this so far, I might not even put references at the end and just do this all off memory. I want to crank out at least 100 pages and publish this by the end of the month.

Look at that, the new book is an introduction and 6 chapters, just like the last one! Who’s betting this one will also be about 230 pages and not the 100 or so that I had originally hoped it would be? I already have about 20 pages written so far and I’m not anywhere near 1/5 done. This time I think I’ll set the price a little higher.
 
I’m already doing this one differently. There will be a select bibliography, but there won’t be 30 pages of references at the end since most of this stuff I’ve already written from memory, these books have just gotten the ideas flowing. The few quotes I use will just be cited in footnotes on the bottom of each page (the first one is my main man Nietzsche and is public domain anyway). I also want to include an index, which I didn’t get to include in the previous book due to time constraints.

I only have about 30 pages written and already I’ve got 2 sequels lined up. I don’t really want to write them, but inspiration compelled me to write this and the previous book, so who knows what will happen. Technically they’re prequels, I guess, which each one going further back in time. Part 2 is the Christian founding of America and the true history of slavery and part 3 is the myth of the Spanish Inquisition and the Black Legend. I’ve encountered so much fake atheist American history that I feel compelled to write what really happened.

Just started Fagles’ translation of Homer’s Iliad. Having a good time.

 
Flatland is an interesting read. It acts as a satirical critique of Victorian society, but also serves as a remarkably forward-thinking exploration of the concept of a metaverse.

I suppose this is the best place to talk about this, I can’t find a more appropriate thread for it. I just rediscovered something from my childhood, and it feels like some kind of divine revelation right now. O.O
 
 
Recently, I’ve been having these flashbacks to a book I remember having when I was younger, I’m talking around five years old. It had lovely watercolour illustrations, the kind that you could look at for hours because they where so pleasing on the eye, and they really helped bring life to the story for my young mind.
 
The book was an anthology series with a loosely connected overarching plot, about gnomes and fairies getting into hyjinks with forest creatures, with some life lessons like learning to appreciate what you have, finding the best qualities in everyone, and so on.
 
And then there where these dragons that lived nearby in a place called Dragonland, they were really cool and I think they played a huge role in why I find dragons so awesome today (that and the Spyro series, of course).
 
Gradually, the story started to veer away from loosely connected slice of life, and into a more serialised arch when an evil gnome captured a dragon and did some experiments on him to turn him into a winged, fire-breathing servant to cause mayhem.
 
And it led to an escalating series of events involving a dragon child being kidnapped and forced to use his magical fire to heat a gnome forge, and that nearly resulted in a war between the Forest and Dragonland. That was one of my favourite parts, because-and I shit you not-it had fully illustrated army lists, like some colourful kids version of a Warhammer Codex.
 
…and this whole time I thought I made it up, cause I could never find it again.
 
 
Well guess what? I just did. It’s called Woodland Tales, a collection of stories of The Woodland Folk series by Tony Wolf. After all these years, I can verify that it actually did exist and wasn’t just a fever dream I made up as a child.  
And now I’m really mad that my Mum gave the book away because I was getting too old for it, because I swear that book was so good and my flashes of memory of it where driving me mad.