Topic: Books You're Currently Reading?

Worst "iconic book" I had to read was either Life of Pi or The Alchemist. Both of them had dreadful pacing and didn't really capture my interest until about 200 pages in and by that time it was already beginning to wrap up. The main plot of Pi doesn't even start until like more than halfway in. Better yet I had to read both for analysis in Grade 11 English class

@TheFrenchiestFry Oof, I got Sunset Song as my Higher English book. Now that was the most boring novel I’ve ever read. Pages upon pages of ‘bringing in the harvest’, a dodgy love triangle and a completely unlikeable main character. And incest, for some reason. At least we always got a Shakespeare a year, they were interesting!

I am also in a select minority that thinks 1984 is a bit rubbish. It’s undoubtedly a great idea and has some memorable ideas/lines but isn’t actually that good a book.

I do intend to re-read it at some point to see if I still feel this way.

@nessisonett There's only so many times I can be reminded of Romeo & Juliet's significance in creating the template for all future love stories before I just want to move on to something else lol

As a pretty big Dostoevsky fan, I've never really gotten on with Crime and Punishment: while it's a bit overly talky, The Brothers Karamazov is probably his most epic and important work, and The Demons is probably still the best work of conservative fiction ever produced.

I've also never been particularly fond of Camus' The Stranger, which strikes me as pretentious and pointlessly nihilistic. The novel shares no real insight on its sociopathic protagonist, and the man's almost complete absence of an inner life makes me feel like centering an entire work around him is a bit much.

@Ralizah I get that people can act pretentious about the stranger but I'm not sure it would've been considered pretentious when it came out.

I liked it a lot because I related to the main character, I don't think I'm a sociopath though 😂. It's more that I care about certain things and am quite indifferent to a lot of stuff that other people care about. The book just shows the farcical nature of how the lack of joining in with the condemnation of a perceived crime is actually worse than the crime itself. I haven't put that thought down particularly eloquently but hopefully you can understand it. I feel like if I gave as much thought to every single thing that happened in the world as well as making the time to condemn or condone it, then I literally wouldn't have any space in my brain to be well you know, me.

I feel like the book is especially relevant today in the age of the Twitter trial. Don't get me wrong, some very bad people get their just desserts but some mostly good people seem to get their lives destroyed by a kangaroo court that judges them for having an alternate viewpoint in life.

I do get that the book isn't for everyone though! At least it's a short read so you didn't lose too much of your life to it!

The 2nd star wars aftermath book. Not bad so far. Hopefully it will have a good ending.

I'm reading The Lost and the Damned by Guy Haley at the moment. One of the more recent Horus Heresy books. Always fun jumping into this universe.

Dune and the Frank Miller/Klaus Janson run on Daredevil

@LN78 Did you ever read either of Moore's novels?

@LN78 Yeah Jerusalem is cool, but I like Voice of the Fire.

@LN78 I definitely think Born Again and The Man Without Fear are probably peak Daredevil writing but I also personally have a massive admiration for "In the Hands of Bullseye" and "Arms of the Octopus due to how often Miller likes to show Daredevil getting beaten to a pulp during fights and exposing the fragility of his humanity.

Reading his material and then watching the Netflix series thereafter really shows how much of an influence his run on the character had on how he's portrayed in that show

@TheFrenchiestFry I loved the third series of the Netflix show just for how faithful it was to the Born Again run while still weaving in elements from other classic stories. I like the Kingpin stories way more than Elektra/The Hand if I’m being honest.

@nessisonett Elektra has been far from my favorite in terms of comic book love interests. Apart from Black Cat I just never liked the idea of a male hero falling in love with someone on their power level like Catwoman or Elektra, especially if they're morally gray in the case of the former. It's always been considerably more interesting seeing two characters from different walks of life form a connection, like Peter Parker and Mary Jane, or even Daredevil himself with Karen Page, which made the Born Again story even more heartbreaking

@TheFrenchiestFry Some couples are great, some just felt weird. My least favourite ones usually involve Black Widow, she seemed to get her claws into loads of heroes. I really hated Tony Stark and Maria Hill, that was just wrong. I liked Hawkeye and Mockingbird, Vision and Scarlet Witch and Gambit and Rogue though. I think couples usually just depend on the writing, it’s not like Rob Liefeld would make a particularly great romance story. Probably my favourite couple in Marvel is Wiccan and Hulkling just because of how stable and realistic it is, considering that they’re both powered. I agree about Black Cat though, I always hated how she got in between Spider-Man and Mary-Jane.

@nessisonett I like Black Cat specifically because she wants to show Peter the kind of life he could be living, free from all his personal responsibilities and turmoil, and it emotionally toys with him as someone who constantly feels that his personal and heroic life could crumble at any second if he didn't balance them out. It was actually really nice seeing them become close again during the Nick Spencer run on TASM after Otto Octavius basically threw that relationship into chaos. Rogue and Gambit are also great in terms of general chemistry. Rob Liefeld would be interesting in that department but I feel like Deadpool's romances only really work with Copycat. She's like the one persisting figure in his life who stuck with him, even going as far as cheating him out of prior commitments.

I’ve been reading the Empyre comics, the latest relatively woeful crossover from Marvel. While 12 year old me is squealing that Wiccan and Hulkling are married, they decided to completely sh*t all over their characters as usual. Got to love it when they ‘subvert expectations’.

@nessisonett Wiccan and Hulkling getting married was awesome but my fanboy moment was seeing Wolverine and Spider-Man leading the Fantastic Four (Wolvie in a blue suit actually looks really sick). It feels like now that Disney has all these characters under their belt for use in films again they can just go all out with crossovers in the comics to that extent like they used to. Shame that Peter didn't wear a bag over his head though

@TheFrenchiestFry Bag-Man was great, I was so glad he was in Spider-Man PS4. I’ve never actually been much of a Wolverine fan in the X-Men comics but I do like his crossovers and interactions with other heroes like Ms Marvel and Spider-Man. It’s not been the worst crossover but they really haven’t been great in a good few years.

@nessisonett Wolverine was great in that one issue of Ms. Marvel when they were going after mutants who were being used in The Inventor's plan in the sewage line. Wolverine is actually really well developed in solo stuff like his Chris Claremont solo series from the 80s (where he goes to Tokyo) as well as Old Man Logan. I didn't like the stuff with Spidey post-Parker Industries because it felt like Slott was just writing things in for his character just to piss fans off with the discontinuities in his personality, as well as bringing back his roomate Robbie Robertson just for him to be a dick to Peter even though they were like best friends during the 90s comics. The Nick Spencer run is actually really freaking good so far.