Bookclub

fourteenwings · 2023-07-24 04:36:33

Funny "Inappropriate Books" story; some parents tried to "protest" by borrowing every single book from a "Pride" display, which led other parents to buy like 10x the books for the library and donate like $15,000 to the library.

Maybe the culture war really is dumb and unwinnable.

More aptly; liberals may be insane but they mobilize to a degree conservatives could only dream about.

glennmagusharvey · 2023-07-24 18:51:13

fourteenwings wrote: »

Reading for fun is a better way to spend your time than not reading at all...?

There's multiple things I intend to read "for fun", and I don't really want my reading goal to be swamped by a chain of LNs from the same series without touching anything else.

Maybe the culture war really is dumb and unwinnable.

This whole "culture war" thing has been stupid since the very beginning.

fourteenwings · 2023-07-25 09:14:02

Eh, sometimes I enjoy it.

Relatedly, I really never want to read another YA novel with the phrase "racially charged" in it ever again.

A few reviews on goodreads actually praised American Royals III for "tackling racism and sexism" but by George those were the worst parts of an already kind of terrible sequel. It genuinely used the Standard 90210 "no idea what to do with the plot so we'll just add a car crash" sequence.

Also,

Me reading a Katharine McGee novel: I hate this book so much.

Me finishing a Katharine McGee novel: Man I can't wait for the next one of these terrible books!

fourteenwings · 2023-07-31 15:46:05

As you've all probably guessed by now, I've been on a bit of a middle-grade and early YA kick re:reading books. I recently read and thoroughly enjoyed Amy's Story from the Portraits of Little Women series and now I'm planning a major The Clique reread (you probably also know that's my second* favorite book series of all time.

So whilst looking for Clique books (I don't actually have copies of all 14 books anymore, before today it was just the first three and a few here and there) I found a lot of great stuff!

First was 2 Clique books I didn't have, plus two from the Summer Collection mini-series; Massie and Kristen. I wish I could find Dylan's story again because Dylan is my second favorite PC member after Alicia (whose Summer Collectiln book I've always held on to.

Next was some Amazing Days of Abby Hayes books from later in the series that I haven't read. These books are from the early 2000s, but I only read them as a teenager, mostly the early ones.

Abby Hayes was kind of disciunt Madison Finn, though the series were very different (especially with Madison being more Clique age-range and Abby being super early middle-grade) they shared a style (and a protagonist with red hair).

Funny thing is I was just thinking abiut this series a few weeks ago, as part of my future middle-grade mega collection. Glad I was able to get a few to start with.

Not to spend too much time on them, but I also got some Ninjago chapter books. I feel like I've owned at least one before, I'll have to look it up on Goodreads.

Finally I got my hands on a Secret Kingdom book. I remember this series from back when I was a teenager, when absolutely everyone was trying to rip off Rainbow Magic. IIRC, like The Ashleys series, they came free in magazines at some point.

I don't really super care for these sorts of books but I love the art these books have, though I totally forgot they existed until I saw the book. It's really beautiful and enchanting.

*Speaking of The Ashleys, I think it might be my favorite book series ever versus The Clique, which is funny because The Ashleys is a direct and obvious ripoff of The Clique. Iunno, The Clique series goes on for too long and after book 10 involves the Pretty Committee (literally a grouping of 5 mean middle school girls) having been destiny foreseen by a psychic, whereas The Ashleys was cancelled before anything that super-dumb could happen.

However, thinking back, Ashley Li's plots with her art school boyfriend did get a bit much, whereas romance in The Clique was always fun (especially the Soul M8s era). I guess The Clique might win out in the end...

fourteenwings · 2023-08-01 04:38:38

Anyways, I mentioned the Secret Kingdom art, so here's a sample of a whole bunch of it;

On the subject of covers, I always preferred the UK variants of The Ashleys covers, versus the originals (the middle) and the later US editions.

Sadly I gave away all my UK variants, and I currently only have the late US edition of the fourth and final book. Hopefully I can collect all four UK editions soon.

fourteenwings · 2023-08-10 11:17:34

Currently reading The Valentines 1: Happy Girl Lucky. It's by Holly Smale, who wrote the super successful (in the UK, and even then only amingst 12-15 year olds, mostly girls) Geek Girl series.

It's about family of (mixed-race, because diversity, literally*) superstar kids who are acting royalty. This first book centers on last-born Hope, who is insanely boy crazy and can't be in the lomelight until she's 16.

It's pretty hilarious, despite modern trappings. The author even makes fun of herself at one point.*

fourteenwings · 2023-08-14 16:06:42

I was reading the 27th book-banning op-es of the month in the NYT when I realized no modern child even reads anyways so maybe this is kind of a dumb thing to waste time on caring about.

The ones who want to read gay stuff will find a way anyways (I did).

fourteenwings · 2024-01-03 04:40:03

All the Books I Read This Year (Commentary to come)

Chronological List

Organized List

My Favorite Books of 2023

Something New Under the Sun
The Last Girl
Happy Girl Lucky
Bratfest at Tiffany's: A Clique Novel
Amy's Story: Portraits of Little Women
Haruki Murakami's Birthday Stories
There's a Boy in the Girl's Bathroom
A Jar of Dreams

My Least Favorite Books of 2023

The Betrothed
The Creativity Code
The Chalet
The Gossip File: A Dirt Diary Novel

My Favorite Books of All Time

Gossip Times Three
All's Fair in Love, War and High School
The Method
The Forgiven
Seven Second Delay
The Machine
Something New Under the Sun

Favorite Book Series

The Clique
The Ashleys
The Thousandth Floor
Honorable Mention: The Selection Series.

lrdgck · 2024-01-03 10:12:50

I read, like, three books that year? Too little spare time for anything that's not shitposting and meme browsing. A bit better off if you count short stories and reading from a cell phone.

glennmagusharvey · 2024-01-04 00:49:57

I know I read three books last year.

Altina the Sword Princess, volume 1
Altina the Sword Princess, volume 2
Spice and Wolf, volume 1

I stopped after the first two since I didn't want my whole list to be light novels, but then for months I never found time or motivation to read anything else, aside from me realizing that I could use a few longer trips to make progress on S&W 1 and finally get that done at the end of the year.

I had set my reading goal at 6 books...and I couldn't even get to that lol.

Hopefully I can this year. I just set a goal of 6 books again. Low-hanging fruit is more light novels, but I want to read something other than that. I actually just bought a new book that I would like to read, and also started on another LN (Altina vol. 3), so...yeah.

fourteenwings · 2024-01-06 15:06:04

Don't be too impressed. I mean, at least 10 of those books are middle-grade, and those can range from actual novels to "not really a book" ie 100ish pages of big-ish text. I though there were more, but the bulk was YA.

I want to read more straight-up novels this year, but I always prefer stuff with high-school/middle-school age protagonists.

My Favorite Books of 2023

Something New Under the Sun

This book is a little hard to describe, but basically a (book) writer goes to Hollywood to work on a movie based on his books, only to discover he's the leading lady's gofer on the set of a movie that's turned his thoughtful, pondering prose-based discussion with his (late) father into a Blumhouse vampghost film. Whilst he's gone, his depressed and insane wife has taken his Earth-child-slash-savant daughter to a commune in the middle of nowhere.

Also, the actress used to star in what sounds like a zany-but-secretly-deep CW-esque show, California has replaced Water with Smoother, Manufactured (Dementia-causing) WATR and did I mention that soon the world will end due to the Earth raging against climate change? I mean, yeah, that last part did suck as much as I thought, but the rest of the book made it worth it. It's a wonderful read and I really recommend it.

The Last Girl (aka The Mary Shelley Club)

Ah, YA, my favorite genre, combined with my (former) favorite movie genre, horror. So as you'd expect with modern YA, we have Diversity MC (Latina) with a Dark Past dealing with a misfit group of sort of friends, one of whom she slowly falls in love with in the classic "Hey Hey You You I Don't Like Your Girlfriend" sense (ie he's already dating the Most Popular Girl in School).

It's full of twists and kind of has an open ending that suggests there could be a potential series there, but it was a really good self-contained book.

The Valentines I: Happy Girl Lucky

Holly Smale is the bestselling author of the Geek Girl YA series, but nothing can go on forever (at least if you're not greedy like Lisi Harrison or Sara Shephard), so she ended that series at book 8 and started The Valentines, which is a series about 3 sisters (and sometimes their oldest brother) who are the daughters of an extremely rich and famous Hollywood/British Film family.

This first novel centers around the youngest daughter, Hope, who is vaguely delusional in the best way possible, and her intense relationship with her cute, blond, and extremely self-obsessed boyfriend whilst also trying to maintain her belief in her parents failing marriage (hint: neither works out).

This book is fun, hilarious, and almost always on point. Surprisingly enough, The Valentines didn't last too long, because it was written as if it was meant to be more than a trilogy. Unfortunately, I kind of know why...

Bratfest at Tiffany's: A Clique Novel

This was the year that I ~~finally found all of my missing Clique books~~ made a conscious decision to re-read The Clique series. I feel like this is one of the few books that is Peak Clique, because the series can go all out and yet miss in the worst way, especially when the main characters are distracted by boys (and especially when Massie can't get over her fear of kissing).

In this book, the Clique are forced out of their main school building into some overflow trailers with a bunch of LBR*s and Layne (but I repeat myself). Thinking on their feet, they make over not just the LBRs, but also the trailers into adorable Tiffany Boxes using nothing but their can-do attitudes and parent's credit cards. Take that, Bob the Builder.

*Losers Beyond Repair.

Amy's Story: Portraits of Little Women

When I first saw the Portraits of Little Women books, I thought they would be a sort of sad American Girl knockoff series exploiting the Little Women IP (which, apparently, is an IP even at all?).

What I found was a hilarious romp through Civil War Massachusetts, with the characters vividly describing not just the upsides ("I have enough money to get my portrait taken by the guy who took a picture of Lincoin!!!") but also the downsides ("Man, too bad all those cute boys have to die in war, but isn't that heroic???").

Amy in particular is a riot that can't seem to ever hold her tongue, which makes her first entry in the series my favorite.

Haruki Murakami's Birthday Stories

Ah, Haruki Murakami, BookTube's favorite (or is that least favorite) "misogynist". This book is actually a collection of Birthday Stories that Murakami has adapted for Japanese audiences that he decided to provide in the original English too, along with one story he wrote (which is about a woman, and doesn't feature her being demeaned by his evil, misogynistic ways).

Some of the stories are insane, but all are interesting. Another I really recommend.

[There's a Boy in the Girl's Bathroom

Despite the title, and even the hardcover version of the cover, this book is not about transgenderism or Gender Ideology. Rather, it's about the awkward people, normal people, and how some can traverse between the two with a bit of work and self-readjustment. It reminds me of Joey Pigza Loses Control, minus the diagnosed ADD and daddy issues.

Even though the characters are young, it feels as if something more is happening below the surface, and this is easily another book I'd recommend.

A Jar of Dreams

Japanese-American tween of the 30s Rinko, who is somehow not an American Girl character (I really seem to go for this "Not Officially American Girl" genre) spends her summer with her family in California. During the summer, her aunt comes to visit from Japan, and her family tries to start a laundry business.

Despite the overall light tone, the book delves deep into cultural issues before they boil over thanks to WWII. I mean by George at one point a rival laundry shop owner shoots their dog. The book also (lightly) deals with the racial animus Japanese-Americans dealt with back then in a realistic way (simply put, it's not just because someone called her "Reen-ko").

Aside from these books, I think I should recommend My Swordhand is Singing and The Edge. Both of these are also books from the Collin's YA Classics series along with There's a Boy in the Girl's Bathroom.

The first is a "vampire"* fighting book set in Medieval Eastern Europe, majorly polska as far as I'm concerned, whilst The Edge is a book set in Modern 2000s Britain about a young mixed-race boy who runs away from his abusive almost-stepfather along with his mother and experiences a great culture shock moving to the Northern parts of the country. I can't believe I'm recommending two whole books where the plot is somewhat "racism exists", (along with A Jar of Dreams I mean but they were good books.

*More like creature of Eastern European legend that was called a vampire but really isn't.

My Least Favorite Books of 2023

Okay, so this took forever, and somehow I don't really like wasting lots of time on books I hated. I'll try to make this brief.

The Betrothed: Kiera Cass fumbles the ending on a cancelled trilogy (aka "duology") that prioritized long passages of world-building over developing the characters into anything that made any sense. I was glad when the last random twist happened, even though I'd seen it coming ages ago.

The one good part? The outfit descriptions.

The Creativity Code: Mathematician tries to write a book about AI, writes a book teaching you math you can learn from some excited Pakistani book on YouTube.

The one good part? I learned about Al-Kwarizmi.

The Chalet: Seven separate Lifetime movies made into a single British thriller that is so timely it even references anti-vaxxers. I know the age of consent in the UK is 16, but man that teacher guy was gross.

Oddly enough, the worst part of the book is when he dies 2/3rds of the way through, revealing that somehow, the whole book is about some other weird but not very compelling revenge plot. Also, you don't introduce 4 main characters' tendency to have weird sexual parties with a bunch of other friends and then never mention it again

The one good part? Good descriptions of the French countryside. Also, I do like it when idiots don't realize that the Not Amazon Alexa in their house is part of the plot to destroy their lives.

The Valentines II: Far From Perfect The second novel in the Valentines series was the biggest fumble on this list, saving Kiera Cass that embarrassment at least. Second-daughter (and third overall Valentine child) Faith is "perfect" in public and has to try hard to maintain that image. Whaaaaat? Completely unbelievable! Boo-hoo. So she decides to... completely lose her mind, shave her head and become a total grossout, and somehow this plot just keeps going for ages and ages until she somehow comes out a perfect butterfly again in the least believable way possible.

I don't know if this could have been pulled off in a better way, because I couldn't really picture it. Frankly, it's hard for all my goodwill in a series to be destroyed so epically. There were signs early on in Happy Girl Lucky, but this book took all the worst parts of that and turned them up several degrees.

The only good part? Frankly, I did enjoy watching Faith try her best to be perfect, so the first 50 or so pages were quite inspiring. Afterwards, it was a mess, and I didn't even bother reading the third book in the series (despite purchasing it).

The Gossip File: A Dirt Diary Novel: This is the third 'Dirt Diary' novel, which was followed by the fourth, 'The Truth Game'. I read that first because it was the only one I could fin in-store, and it was quite fun.

This book isn't all that bad, but it kind of epitomizes all the worst parts of the two Dirt Diary books I read. Primarily plot threads that hang and are never followed up on, the protagonist being a brat and not recognizing it.

The only good part? Well, a lot of it was good, and this book is just mediocre. It's only on this list because my list was kind of short.

fourteenwings · 2024-01-06 15:18:09

Bonus! Getting started on this year's Worst Books of 2024 List.

Would I Lie to You: A Gossip Girl Novel: You would think the book series that the amazing hit CW series that I count as one of my favorites would be good, right? Well, these books are not good, and I frequently need to be reminded of that.

I'll start with the good part; there's an amazingly hilarious subplot involving Dan (who is in the city by himself whilst the rest of the characters take on the Hamptons) getting involved with gookish NYU geek Greg, who basically gets him drunk so he can make-out with him, which in turn makes Dan think he's gay despite hating kissing men with all his soul (and loins). This is a fun one-book plot, but it's somehow dragged on until the next book, which is how undecided this series is.

The rest of the book is basically about Blair and Serena, devoid of personalities, lounging around a gay fashion designers Hamptons mansion where it turns out Nate, the missing piece to their love triangle, is working for the summer whilst being sexually harassed by his boss' wife. This book is very much in love with having it's male protagonists be sexually harassed

Okay so basically Blair and Serena tell Nate to get in his dad's car which they just spotted, and they do, and they go back to the city and sleep in the same bed semi-naked. Then it turns out everybody is about to forget Serena's birthday, and at the birthday party her brother Eric throws for her she overhears Nate say he loves Blair, because I guess Blair exists and is female and....???? Yeah, iunno.

Now Serena loves Nate I guess, so she... writes him a 5 page letter, which Blair finds, which makes Blair hate Serena. Oh! Drama! Except it's all so dry and empty in tone/character I'm surprised there was more than one of these books to start with.

lrdgck · 2024-01-06 20:36:02

The first is a "vampire"* fighting book set in Medieval Eastern Europe, majorly polska as far as I'm concerned

My interest is picqued.

For reference, since you mentioned horror as your favoutite film genre, there's a horror movie The Shrine (or just Shrine, idr lol). A bunch of typical all-American youths of generically late high school-to-college age go to a village in the Polish countryside and get massacred. The Polish language also gets massacred. As does the typical look of Polish countryside and everyone and everything in it. I'm curious how that one you read fares in comparison.

Since we seriously bring up the books we've read, then for me it was mostly a pile of books on metal music history and lore, and beyond that is guesswork since I don't quite remember. Could have been some le Guin, and, I think, one book I read as a PDF (Seeing Like a State).

fourteenwings · 2024-01-07 12:48:33

Well, the official description for My Swordhand is Singing reads;

When Tomas and his son, Peter, settle in Chust as woodcutters, Tomas digs a channel of fast-flowing waters around their hut, so they have their own little island kingdom. Peter doesn’t understand why his father has done this, nor why his father carries a long, battered box, whose mysterious contents he is forbidden to know.But Tomas is a man with a past: a past that is tracking him with deadly intent, and when the dead of Chust begin to rise from their graves, both father and son must face a soulless enemy and a terrifying destiny.

So it's quite action-packed, and only slightly horror.

If I'm ever able to watch a movie ever again, I'll look into The Shrine.

fourteenwings · 2024-01-16 15:06:16

I keep forgetting to mention that I own a physical copy of SAO Unital Ring II but I'm yet to read it. Considering I never got around to ordering all the other volumes I probably never will. Also, reading LNs at work would reveal my power level (though this workplace is full of autists anyways).

glennmagusharvey · 2024-01-17 12:03:23

i'm not sure if i should say something about the idea of using "autist" as slang for someone with geeky interests but i guess by posting this i am doing so by default

fourteenwings · 2024-01-17 12:51:49

I like autists and think they are the best so it's not like I'm even slightly disparaging them.

I don't think I've ever heard the term be used in the same vein as r*tard or similar either.

Stormtroper · 2024-01-17 13:26:23

tfw Glenn hasn't seen my recent image thread submissions.

glennmagusharvey · 2024-01-17 18:52:24

i thought about the notion of equating the two, and i couldn't conclude that it was necessarily an insult in either direction, but it just struck me as a strange idea to equate the two

lrdgck · 2024-01-18 11:35:49

Aaah, NOW I remember I also read some two old-timey sci-fi books at ome time probably over the last year. The kind of stuff people wrote back when you could not badmouth the commies, so you wrote about little green men and hoped the censors wouldn't notice the greens are just the reds with a thin coat of paint.

The coolest idea so far was a totalitarian government which falsified basic physics so that people wouldn't notice it's not a rotating space station.

fourteenwings · 2024-01-27 05:51:01

The Herd: Brilliant writing, brilliant scene setting, characters were mostly good. However, I felt that the two main characters never really came to life, and their husbands somehow did, and got really, really gay for each other (subtext wise). I felt their friendship more than I felt the main characters'. There was an actual gay couple too though, which was a thing I guess.

As much as I like an even-handed approach in fiction, I do think this book presented the anti-vaccine position as being somewhat plausible and an okay position to hold. Personally, I don't think that's okay. There are many things to write about from the pro- and anti- side, but not this. Especially given that in the end, the mother whose child also turned out to be a hypocrite

I know people like to say men stereotype women as being crazy but women are never crazier than in chick lit aimed at the 24-56 crowd.

The character of Rosalyn was also very superfluous to the overall story, which was annoying because she was meant to be the bohemian counterpoint to the two main characters.

fourteenwings · 2024-02-18 13:11:14

I Am David: Man, this was kind of annoying, but also kind of great. The first half was painfully slow, but I haven't read a book where the main character went on a major adventure like David did in a long time.

The second half, with David meeting the Italian family and finally acclimating to reality outside the concentration camp, was pretty cool. I also liked that despite the book being about a boy escaping a concentration camp, it wasn't about the persecution as a Jewish boy (David is of an undefined ethnic background, just vaguely European).

I read a review that claimed the ending was way too happy/coincidental, with David happening to meet a woman who knew his mother, and maybe I agree. Overall, I liked it.

~~To be completely honest if I'd known David was going to be praying like every other chapter for long, long paragraphs I'd have probably not read it at all.~~

The Treatment: ie the only cure to The Program is...

This was a YA book, second in the six book Program series but the last book in the duology about these two characters. The premise of this series is that there's a suicide epidemic and so teenagers who are highly at risk are taken into a program where large swathes of their memories are erased in order to erase the 'triggers' to their depression or whatever.

This sequel picks up at the point where the protagonists, Sloane (oh gosh, this MC name) and James, have escaped from the Program and join up with the rebels. They include... well, they're literally three of them somehow? The rest are nameless or are elsewhere.

Okay so there's tough girl with a culturally appropriated no-way-this-was-written-after-2020 Dallas (blonde girl with dreadlocks), no-way-he's-not-gay Cas (Dallas' best friend) and Lacey, who was in the Program with Sloane and James and does not matter at all aside from when she gets captured and returned to the program.

So this book has a lot of problems. The first half is painfully slow, and it only stops being slow because it starts throwing giant fistfuls of romance drama at you in what should be a majorly sci-fi novel. Oh no! Dallas likes James and dislikes Sloane because of it! Oh no! Sloane is in a love triangle with James and a guy in his mid twenties (Realm) who abused his position in the Program to comfort her and cuddle in bed with her when she was catatonic...?

Oh no! It turns out Realm was Dallas' ex boyfriend who destroyed her mentally for no reason at all before reporting her to the Program for a reason that is never, ever explained (you do not understand how much I hated this plot point).

Anyways the main issue with the MCs is that they obtained a pill that can help them remember, but only one. So the ending involves James, who is this giant lack of personality (well, at least he has muscles), taking the pill, and Sloane deciding she is "too weak" to take the pill.

This whole book is so extremely full of those Twilight-era scenarios where the female protagonists go through so much gross stuff they think is perfectly normal, including the fact that the Literal Protagonist is too weak to handle her old memories, but her buff strong boyfriend isn't, and the whole thing where Dallas goes from being a kick-butt action chic* to a completely broken weakling who has barely recovered by the end of the book.

Then there's the fact that Realm basically gets away with what he's done to both Sloane and Dallas without facing any repercussions. It's really annoying.

It was also extremely inconsistent. If defeating the Program was so important, then why can the protagonist not handle having her memories back? Doesn't that mean The Program is actually good, important and necessary?

*To be fair it's also annoying that apparently Dallas is somehow the "strongest" character in this book since she always wins fights that don't matter against James and Cas**.

**Cas' full name is Casanova Vasquez, which is amazing no?

fourteenwings · 2024-03-10 14:20:09

Deep Down Popular, which might as well have been called "how to cover bait".

This book is indeed about a young girl who wants to become friends with a popular boy that gets injured, but by George is it a secret country story. It's not, as you'd expect, set in a metropolitan or suburban Coastal area, but in "flyover country" as you'd call it.

It was like reading a giant mishmash of Southern-adjacent stereotypes (it's set in Virginia in the early 2000s, but everybody acts like they're in Texas in the 1990s). The story is muddled, and the characters don't really go anywhere. The main character doesn't really give you a grasp on the concept of popularity, and I care little about her "I'm such a tomboy!" act.

Frankly, I was just glad when it was over.

Sophomore Switch. Two college girls, one from Oxford and the other from a random LA film school, switch schools for a semester.

The girl, Natasha, who goes to Oxford is amazingly fleshed out, and as much as I want to dislike the hand-wringing "feminism!!" plot I thought it was well set out and compelling. The characters were well drawn out and I liked the progression. I also liked the fact that not every one of her relationships works out in the end.

The English girl who goes to California, Emily, has a more predictable plot. She needs to learn to have fun, embrace her love for film school over law, dress more like a California girl (which, I won't lie, doesn't make her come off well) and choose the boy her kind-of-mean new friend likes. It was very expected and almost dull.

I wish the book had taken the first story and run with it, but it was overall enjoyable enough anyways.

Funny thing is that this was written by an author whose books I've read before, but the other book by her I've read, Dangerous Boys, was written under a pseudonym for some reason. Usually, authors will use pseudonyms when changing genres, but both books were YA, so I have no idea what that's about.

lrdgck · 2024-04-13 19:26:17

Been watching some Three Body Problem episodes. I haven't read the books, but I've checked what is it about, and it seems it owed at least some of its popularity to the fact it's very Chinese. As in, it's not just hard SF, it's hard SF written with, shall we say, a different set of assumptions and the Anglophones found it appealingly exotic.

Which got me back to what I've been already thinking: that there is a set of basic plot setups which together form like the bulk of Polish sci-fi. Here they are:

humankind is oppressed by little green men, but the green are really the Reds;
the protagonist, a meat-eating heterosexual manly man (who is IN NO WAY or SHAPE the author's self-insert wish fulfillment TOTALLY I SWEAR), is opressed by teh ebul librulz/feminists who want him not to eat meat/take a vaccine/accept that black people are people;
it's post-apo and/or alternate history, and Poland stronk;
Catholic clergyman meets robots and/or aliens.

It's a bit tongue-in-cheek and the newcoming authors tend to be more closely aligned with global/Anglophonic sci-fi, but I've got a feeling you grab anything written between ca. 1975-2015 and chances are it's gonna be at least one of these.

Yeah, I brought that stuff a few times, but the comparison to Chinese made me think about formulating it in a coherent way, also that there are regional sci-fi scenes with their own specifics. I'm wondering if you guys ever thought about sci-fi in terms of regional scenes and if so, if you can give me examples. I think Japan is routinely singled out for its own quirks since, you know, anime (and also Japan), but apart from that, there's little talk I've seen on it.

glennmagusharvey · 2024-04-14 04:22:14

This makes me wonder, what if Poles made anime.

lrdgck · 2024-04-15 17:51:50

@glennmagusharvey: I've been thinking what kind of serious answer can I give to this question. I guess it's that there's nothing about anime that makes it a separate medium (or genre). It's an art style, sure, and a set of conventions that accrued over the years, but it's really more of a very big regional scene that became internationally recognized as its own thing.

So for Poles to make anime, it would need Poland being comparable in cultural and economic influence to Japan, else it's just "animation made in Poland" much like for a while anime was just "animation made in Japan" before the treadmill got going.

But if you meant, specifically, what would this hypothetical genre look like, it'd probably have a lot in common with Franco-Belgian comics. As far as I can tell, not really being a comicbook fan, those were the stuff most Polish comicbook artists cut their teeth on (directly or indirectly), so that'd probably also be what "Polish anime" would draw upon for visual inspiration. Apart from that, hard for me to say.

fourteenwings · 2024-04-16 05:43:40

Polish anime would be Tintin, essentially (hopefully with Vox article inspiring blackface).

As for Three Body, it's a series I personally wouldn't have read if not for how heavily recommended it was (especially back in my conservacore days by hard-right centrists).

I found the series somewhat implausible and the final book extremely depressing. It was like reading Mahou Shoujo Ikusei Keikaku

I guess I've never been a hard sci-fi person and it didn't improve my opinion on the genre.

I heard the TV show changed the setting from China to the UK for unknown reasons, and that Hideo Kojima prefers the Tencent version to this recent Netflkx adaptation, but frankly I was pretty much done with the series once I finished the final book so I don't have much of an opinion (plus I don't watch much TV anymore, especially anything recent).

Stormtroper · 2024-04-18 00:07:51

I figure the easy "Polish anime" workaround would be a Polish publisher funding a Japanese studio to do whatever.
Near home there was the Colombian Simón Bolívar anime ages ago and more recently the Uruguayan Daydreams, both were... lackluster. Since a couple years ago there's the upcoming Daren & Cielo which promotes itself as the first "Venezuelan anime" but it looks more like someone's hobby project. That said there's V411 HALL-A if Venezuelan "anime games" count.

glennmagusharvey · 2024-04-18 02:05:22

I didn't know that VA-11 HALL-A was made by a Venezuelan dev. That's neat.

lrdgck · 2024-04-18 18:34:21

I figure the easy "Polish anime" workaround would be a Polish publisher funding a Japanese studio to do whatever.

You got it pretty well, since that's what the Cyberpunk 2077 tie-in animation seems to be already, but I felt like Glenn would be disappointed if I gave too easy an answer.

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