Reading and Such Like
Oct. 23rd, 2024 02:50 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
lydamorehouse It's Wednesday again, so it's time to check in with what people are reading or have read.
As usual, my reading has been heavily focused on cyberpunk-ish titles. Last week, I mentioned that I had started listening to an audiobook of Body Scout by Lincoln Michel. This book gets approximately 3.5 stars on Goodreads and that seems fair and accurate to my opinion of it. I'm not really a body horror or a basebal fan and this book has a lot of both. Even so, I found the characters very compelling, probably because I am generally a fan of the noir detective, which our hero Kobo, is not exactly, but he is certainly cast strongly in the mold of.lcohen , you said you might be interested in this because you like baseball? I hesitate to recomend it to you, however, because there is not only the aforementioned body horror, but also a LOT of violence. Our hero gets beaten up a LOT.
I failed around, like one does, after finishing Body Scout, not sure what I was in the mood for next. Eventually settled on another audiobook that is equally dark and is definitely cyberpunk, called When the Sparrow Falls by Fred Sharpson. The audiobook narrator is amazing, first off (he has a very cool British accent), and secondly the story is incredibly compelling in an 'always-having-to-watch-your-back authoritarian future' way. Like, no one likes the old Soviet Bloc vibe, but you can totally understand why a story set in a future world like that would be INTENSE. In basic terms, the premise of this one is that our hero, Inspector South, a low level cop-type bureaucrat in a Luddite/Human Supremicist enclave, gets assigned the job to escort an AI driving a body that looks exactly like his dead wife's around, things get weird and tense fast.
The actual book blurb probably does a better job of describing it, however. I recommend looking that up.
Kai1ban, my podcast co-host for Mona Lisa Overpod, and I have the next two episodes already recorded, so we had a skip week this week in order to continue research a few more titles for our Cyberpunk & Horror episode. I've been asking around various social media sites for good recommendations of cyberpunk short stories with a hint of horror, and I got a good list... which I am only just starting to work my way through. One story that I read that I'm not entirely sure qualifies called "Talk to Your Children About Two-Tongued Jeremy," by Theodore McCombs. It's about the danger of school bullying, if that bullying came from a learning app, and how a certain social economic class is hyper-focuses on getting their kids into The Right School, etc. I really liked it and what happens in it is tragic and awful in places, but I'm never sure what magic quality makes something horror rather than just "kinda dark," you know?
I just looked to see what I had read in terms of manga... and, speaking of horror, I am horrified to discover that I haven't reviewed anything for almost a month! Yikes! Well, that's another thing I will add to my to-do list today, which is see what I can find in terms of cyberpunk manga with horror vibes (and, yes, I've already read Blame!)
And you? Are you reading anything that you want to share? Anything you want to complain about?
As usual, my reading has been heavily focused on cyberpunk-ish titles. Last week, I mentioned that I had started listening to an audiobook of Body Scout by Lincoln Michel. This book gets approximately 3.5 stars on Goodreads and that seems fair and accurate to my opinion of it. I'm not really a body horror or a basebal fan and this book has a lot of both. Even so, I found the characters very compelling, probably because I am generally a fan of the noir detective, which our hero Kobo, is not exactly, but he is certainly cast strongly in the mold of.
lcohen , you said you might be interested in this because you like baseball? I hesitate to recomend it to you, however, because there is not only the aforementioned body horror, but also a LOT of violence. Our hero gets beaten up a LOT.I failed around, like one does, after finishing Body Scout, not sure what I was in the mood for next. Eventually settled on another audiobook that is equally dark and is definitely cyberpunk, called When the Sparrow Falls by Fred Sharpson. The audiobook narrator is amazing, first off (he has a very cool British accent), and secondly the story is incredibly compelling in an 'always-having-to-watch-your-back authoritarian future' way. Like, no one likes the old Soviet Bloc vibe, but you can totally understand why a story set in a future world like that would be INTENSE. In basic terms, the premise of this one is that our hero, Inspector South, a low level cop-type bureaucrat in a Luddite/Human Supremicist enclave, gets assigned the job to escort an AI driving a body that looks exactly like his dead wife's around, things get weird and tense fast.
The actual book blurb probably does a better job of describing it, however. I recommend looking that up.
Kai1ban, my podcast co-host for Mona Lisa Overpod, and I have the next two episodes already recorded, so we had a skip week this week in order to continue research a few more titles for our Cyberpunk & Horror episode. I've been asking around various social media sites for good recommendations of cyberpunk short stories with a hint of horror, and I got a good list... which I am only just starting to work my way through. One story that I read that I'm not entirely sure qualifies called "Talk to Your Children About Two-Tongued Jeremy," by Theodore McCombs. It's about the danger of school bullying, if that bullying came from a learning app, and how a certain social economic class is hyper-focuses on getting their kids into The Right School, etc. I really liked it and what happens in it is tragic and awful in places, but I'm never sure what magic quality makes something horror rather than just "kinda dark," you know?
I just looked to see what I had read in terms of manga... and, speaking of horror, I am horrified to discover that I haven't reviewed anything for almost a month! Yikes! Well, that's another thing I will add to my to-do list today, which is see what I can find in terms of cyberpunk manga with horror vibes (and, yes, I've already read Blame!)
And you? Are you reading anything that you want to share? Anything you want to complain about?