■ 🕑 1. Giko Book Club │ Read a book? Post your thoughts on it! │ Someone read a book you read? Answer them! │ │ > Find books: │ https://fmhy.net/readingpiracyguide │ > Windows ereading: │ https://www.sumatrapdfreader.org │ > Android ereading: │ https://readera.org/ │ │ < We suggest epub / mobi over PDF when possible │ < As this thread grows, "tree" mode may be more useful than "thread" │ ├─■ 🕑 2. Dune │ Earlier this month, I read Dune 1-4. │ I appreciate how each book goes in a different direction yet the │ world of Dune still remains largely consistent with itself. │ │ Dune #1 was probably the best but the sequels all take the concept │ in interesting directions. I think the writing has aged pretty well. │ But 3 return visits to Arrakis were enough for me. │ ├─■ 🕑 3. Witcher │ Book order: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Witcher#Overview │ │ I read books 1-3 and I'm working on 4 now. The world is pretty │ interesting and the focus on character relations is done pretty well. │ │ After I finish 4 I'm going to watch the Netflix series and start playing │ Witcher 3 while I continue reading through the rest of the series. │ These books feel like they could work really well as an anime or game │ series as I read through them. It's not world-changing literature but │ the entertainment level is pretty solid. I liked the references to │ fairy tales in the first 2 books of short stories. │ │ I don't think Witcher is as good as Lord of the Rings but it's better │ than Game of Thrones. Fans of Dungeons and Dragons and classic RPG games │ could probably really appreciate Witcher, and fans of fairy tales and │ myth as well. │ ├─■ 🕑 4. Remembrance of Earth's Past │ │ Recently finished Liu Cixin's "Remembrance of Earth's Past" trilogy │ │ ( 3 body problem / dark forest / death's end) │ │ at a reading pace of 1 book per day. (~500 pages per book) │ │ │ │ Read it blind! Good mysteries and world building! │ │ Hard science fiction so not a lot of fantasy. │ │ │ │ Characters are a bit shallow and it could have been cut a few hundred │ │ pages shorter at no great loss. │ │ But it's a fun and easy read, if depressing. │ │ │ │ 8.6 │ │ │ └─■ 🕑 6. │ My biggest frustration with this series is that dimensional warping │ wasn't further explored despite its heavy exploitation by │ the enemies of earth in the FIRST BOOK and hints about it were │ teased in the second book , and it was ultimately the end of earth │ in the third book ... the in-universe explanation is probably that │ humans weren't given enough time to master the technology and it │ could be that exploring it further could have written the author into │ a corner, but as far as "what ifs" go, if humans were able to master │ dimensional warping it would have totally given them an out from │ the end assigned unto them. As soon as it was mentioned in the first book │ I was waiting for it to be a force the author gave to humans and not │ seeing them being able to realize it left me a bit underwhelmed at the end. │ └─■ 🕑 5. The Long Ships by Frans G. Bengtsson awesome historical fiction, really gets you into the mindset of 10th century europe, main characters are a group of vikings raping and pillaging all over the damned place, getting captured by muslim slavers and having to row, etcetc. these people saw it as normal and you think "yeah if I lived back then all this would be normal to me too!" about halfway through, the damned christians come on the scene and slowly convert everyone to more modern/familiar ways of thinking (which seem alien to the main characters and to the reader as well after getting into their mindset lol). harald bluetooth is a major character for a few chapters. they steal a big bell from some jihadis.