Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?
This is your opportunity to ask questions. No question too simple or too silly.
Culture war topics are accepted, and proposals for a better intro post are appreciated.
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
Notes -
So, what are you reading?
I'm picking up Delany's Babel-17. In an old SF mood. Something about language.
For a less traditional kind of reading material, I've been reading the visual novel The Sekimeiya: Spun Glass, a mystery story released in 2021 by Trinitite Team.
The novel takes place in an office building, where an unique gem called the Sekimeiya is exhibited to the public. Suddenly, unknown assailants release knockout gas in the building. Several visitors lose consciousness, and wake up to find themselves trapped: all the exit doors are sealed shut by the tower's impregnable security system. It's a fairly typical setup for a "closed circle" mystery story. However, about a quarter of the way through Chapter 1,it is revealed that the Sekimeiya is a time travel device.
This becomes the foundation of a mind-bendingly convoluted mystery, withdead bodies appearing and disappearing, people appearing in two places at once, and timelines twisting and turning in zigzags , and these aren't even the strangest things happening in the novel.
The developers really want you to try and solve the mystery on your own, and provide several unusual tools to do so: there's a complete transcript of every single line said in the game (which you can search by keyword or speaker), a detailed recap of every notable event, dedicated note-taking sections for each scene, and a detailed map that precisely tracks the protagonist's location at any given moment. Just reading the entire thing can easily consume over 30 hours, but re-reading it to unravel every mystery on your own is a quest is likely going to take... well, I'm maybe 5 hours into that endeavor, and I've barely started figuring things out.
Here I'll admit that, while I've read a lot of mystery stories in the past, I've never approached them "properly"; I never tried to find the answer on my own before the detective's summation -- I was perfectly content to simply read the answer and revel in the surprise of the plot twist. Sekimeiya is only my second attempt to solve a mystery properly... which is honestly an audacious choice, given its extreme complication. However, the writing is good enough that I do not mind re-reading it, and the music is high-quality as well.
More options
Context Copy link
I have recently begun reading Graham Robb's The Discovery of France, after reading a glowing review by Gwern. The book unveils a fascinating record of France around the time of the Revolution -- beyond Paris it was mostly empty tracts of countryside wilderness, punctuated with occasional microscopic hamlets. The isolated villagers rarely encountered the French government, and for the most part were happy to govern themselves, forming a hundred distinct cultures. Astonishingly, there was such a proliferation of dialects across the nation, that villagers living on opposite shores of a river could be unable to understand each other.
In fact, France would be a great setting for one of those "isolated village with secret dark local rituals" stories -- especially if you're thinking of the Alpine villages, so isolated in winter that they stored their dead on ice, on the rooftops, until the snows melted and a priest could reach the village for the funeral rites. I won't be surprised if you tell me such novels have been published in France.
Another part that particularly struck me: the description of cagots, a discriminated minority (not allowed to sit with others in the church, barred from most jobs, etcetera), who were hated for their-- well, that's the thing. They didn't fit any of the usual justifications for discrimination, didn't trigger any primal fears: they didn't belong to a specific ethnic minority, religious sect, or suffer from any particular illness. As far as anyone can tell, they were just... a completely arbitrary subset of families, a hereditary caste, hated and discriminated against for no other reason than "everyone else's doing it".
That's just a small part of the myriad of fascinating stories and trivia from the book, and I'm not even a quarter of the way through.
More options
Context Copy link
I fell prey to a viral meme recently extolling everyone to drop what they were doing and reas This Is How You Lose The Time War without doing any research into it.
Got in early too, couldn't have had more than a few hundred likes on it, and I was quite bored.
I've read like 10% of it, and it's.. ok? so far.
Stretches the imagination that the two primary protagonists have some weird weaboo-esque obsession with the timeline of Our Earth™, to the point they act like quirky Valley Girls instead of hardened assassins, but it's good enough I'll give it the benefit of doubt till I dig in further.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link