nothing really, whole year been on a cool down

2025 imma go stupid tho

This was the first year in a decade or so that I picked reading back up, and I’m so glad I did. I’m having an absolute blast having it as a main hobby again, and I’m planning on reading a lot more in 2025.

In no particular order:

The Road
Sharp Objects
I Am Legend
The Hike
Dark Matter
The Bluest Eye
My Year of Rest & Relaxation
The Troop
Gone Girl
Pyongyang: A Journey in North Korea

thoughts on my year of rest and relaxation? i read it a couple of years ago and didn’t enjoy it very much lol. i liked lapvona by the same author a lot more

honestly, I really enjoyed it. It was a very different read than anything I’ve ever read in my lifetime. I’m very intrigued to see how this gets made into a movie

might finish a few more books but i’ll count em for next year, also no counting rereads and no order

Will to power - Nietzsche
The “Russian” Civil Wars 1916-1926 - Smele
What was Bolshevism - Lars Lih
Pere Gorit - Balzac
A Feast of Crows - George RR Martin
Mythologies - Roland Barthes
History of the Second World War - Hart
Moby D*** - Melville (prob my favourite for the year)
Liberty or Death The French Revolution - McPhee
Anna Karenina - Tolstoy

Hm
Children of Dune - Frank Herbert
Plato - The Republic
How to read like a writer - Prose

Sacred and Terrible Air by Robert Kurvitz - The birth of the world of Disco Elysium, this book is as good or better than the game depending on what you're looking for. It moves away from the polemical political aspect of the game and focuses more on the humans and world, and my GOD is it an incredible world. It actually gave me the same feeling as playing the game did, something I thought could never be replicated.

Amulet by Roberto Bolano - Maybe the best from one of my favorite authors. It's hallucinatory, navel-gazing, and gripping. I learned about the various poets and writers who influenced Bolano and who he held in esteem (including an amazing section at the end where Bolano just name drops writers for dozens of pages, somehow my favorite portion of the book). Truly a writer who could conjure an image like no other.

The Disappearance of Josef Mengele by Olivier Guez - I'm not going to say this book made me feel for Mengele (I wish he could die again but even worse this time), but it did convince me that even the worst monsters among us can live pathetic human lives and die pathetic human deaths. Much time is spent recounting how various Nazis avoided prosecution and lived their lives in relative comfort, fascinating to consider at a time so removed from WWII. It's a great portrait of how a sick person carries their sickness with them and cannot be free of it until they make themselves free.

Cain by Jose Saramago - Saramago has two books where he takes a humanist approach to biblical characters, one about Jesus (amazing book) and this one, about Cain. The world's first murderer wanders the earth forever, cursed to never live in peace. He ends up being party to many stories from the bible and through all seeks to understand the god which pre-destined him to be a murderer. It's short, it's deep, and it kicks ass. Read it!

The Sympathizer by Viet Thanh Nguyen - For a while at the start I was pretty unimpressed, but after a certain point the narrator's self-reflection begins to spiral and the reader is party to the fragmenting of the narrator's mind. I was afraid this book would be too sympathetic to the South Vietnamese position in the war, but it is more concerned with the human cost spent fighting a civil war. Neighbors killing each other, groups of friends with wildly different allegiances, refugees pitted against each other in their new home countries. Proxy wars are ugly as hell.

since this post i’ve finished 3 more books and made it to 25 total. i think im done for the year lol.

I'm working on writing a novel, so I've been reading more for inspiration lately (not in order).

Salem's Lot by Stephen King
The Vampire Lestat by Anne Rice
Fevre Dream by George R.R. Martin
Ghoul by Michael Slade
Dark Places by Gillian Flynn
Death Bed by Stephen Greenleaf
A Head Full of Ghosts by Paul Tremblay
Dune Messiah by Frank Herbert
City of Glass by Paul Auster
The Maltese Falcon by Dashiell Hammett

What’s your novel gonna be about?

It's a vampire novel that's an allegory about a toxic relationship.

My protagonist is a vampire who doesn't want to kill, so he uses heroin to quell his cravings for blood and wants to find a way to restore his humanity by reversing his vampiric curse.

There's more to it than that but that's the basic premise.

Hard

u gotta check out Bram Stroker Dracula then, not the best horror book imo but still a classic and gives u a neck fetish

Gonna pick reading back up in 2025. Miss this medium

it’s so much fun man. my goal was 5 books this year and I read over 25, including comics and short stories. Think ima raise my goal to 30

I’m afraid of vampires

Got me a kobo e reader, goal is to finish a book every other week. Almost got to that this year I think

Okay dude

Aye man if you don’t stop stalking me I might have to get the police involved.

Also how is the Will to Power compared to his other works? Only main work of his I haven’t read aside from Birth of Tragedy and Human All Too Human. Always been skeptic since it was edited posthumously.

1. The Remains of the Day (1989) - Kazuo Ishiguro
2. My Brilliant Friend (2011) - Elena Ferrante
3.The Tunnel (1948) - Ernesto Sabato
4. Wolf Hall (2009) - Hilary Mantel
5. Therese Raquin (1868) - Emile Zola

I’ve been reading mangas all year, but I need to get back to straight books! I saw your list and I’m definitely gonna read some that are on there

1.) All the Pretty Horses
2.) In Cold Blood
3.) Never Let Me Go
4.) Norwegian Wood
5.) Catch 22 (Currently 1/2 through but obsessed)

Melville and Tolstoy in the same year

bless man what manga do you recommend?

Just my fav this year, no particular order

Greek lessons - Han Kang
Department of truth - Tynion IV (issue #17 so far)
The Anthropologist - Savas
Evol - Kaneko (vol 5 rn)
Dark forest - Liu
Dementia 21 - Kago
Ultimate spider-man - Hickman (issue #12)