Had a pretty busy week and didn’t get to read anything.
What about all of you? What have you all been reading or listening to lately?
Check Official Bingo Challenge Post and the accompanying Recommendations Post for our Bingo for 2026!
Almost finished Carl’s Doomsday Scenario by Matt Dinniman. I’m intentionally dragging out the last few chapters because it’s so good.
Also, still working my way through Want Submitted by Anonymous Edited by Gillian Anderson. Fantastic book!
I am currently obsessed with DCC as well. It is impossible to put it down!
I’m about to finish the book, actually I did just have the bonus material to reads
It’s so good! But I want to savor its deliciousness.
Ooohh what bonus material? Is this outside the books? Or do you mean the epilogue?
I’ve been out of work sick, so it has been difficult to contain myself and not read all day.
It’s outside of the Epilogue. The versions of the first 2 books I read have parts of a bonus story called “Backstage at the Pineapple Cabaret”.
I totally get you! If I was sick, I’d probably do the same lol
Oh cool! What version of the book do you have? I have to looks for those.
I picked it up at Barnes and Noble. ISBN is 978-0-593-82026-1
The story is Backstage at the Pineapple Cabaret, maybe it’s online somewhere too.
Thanks!
I’m partway through the mainstream published version of There Is No Antimemetics Division by qntm. The original was one of my favorite reads from 2024 bingo, so this kinda-reread is really comfy. I can’t say I’ve noticed any big changes, outside of removing all mentions of SCP and reordering some chapters, but I also don’t usually remember stuff in detail, so it’s hard to say. I did flip back and forth between the two versions briefly at the start, and the part I was reading had definitely been rewritten, but it seemed to be mostly superficial differences rather than content.
(If your interest has been piqued by seeing other people in here read it, the original is still available here for free; just read the qntm-authored stories in order, including all of Five Five Five Five Five.)
I read the first series from that on the wiki a while ago, and recently went back and read Five Five Five Five Five. I absolutely love the ideas behind antimemetics, this kind of eldritch horror and how to deal with it. I was slightly disappointed towards the end,
ending spoiler
the SCP seems to be portrayed as existing in conceptual space, an antimeme that prevents information about it existing while somehow being a self-sustaining idea? It’s referred to as a “meme complex” on the 3125 page. But at the end it’s portrayed more like a god acting in mysterious way, talking to the protagonist, existing in a way where it can be harmed with a gun. Not killed, but actually permanently injured?
Still a great story either way, and a good read for free, I had no idea it was published independently, have look into it!
I headcannoned that
spoiler
humanity wasn’t learning about it, they were creating it as an entity with their exhaustive research and memory enhancing drugs. It’s the old “Don’t think about the pink elephant” trick gone rouge because the habitual abuse of these memory enhancing drugs will create a concept so detailed that it takes on a life independent of your own, and in this case their imaginary worst case ‘what if’ is literally an idea that sprang to life and ate them like a manifest collective anxiety attack with real force behind it. Hitting it with a human memory glue bomb effectively crystalized it into being an entity in the past rather than an entity still moving through our present.
Just finished the new edition, and had a flip through the original to compare that section.
spoiler
Since 3125 is just a collection of ideas, it’s possible that as it corrupted humanity, human ideas also became part of its memeplex, fundamentally altering it to include a sense of self-preservation and understanding of communication. (The rewrite goes into more detail about ideatic space and how everyone and everything exists in it as concepts, grouped together in various ways.) Alternatively, Red voluntarily embracing 3125 pre-“Ojai” could have been the only thing that instilled human-like qualities into it. Hard to say.
Regardless, Red certainly seemed like a unique part of 3125, especially since he’s described as “the piece of SCP-3125 which was capable of communication”, and killing him removed that part of 3125. Maybe joining voluntarily was the difference, or maybe he had some sort of antimemetic-blocking property like Adam did, idk. He also seemed to retain more autonomy than other corrupted humans, but maybe 3125’s concepts just filtered through him into something that sounded human (holding a grudge against Marion for shooting him at the lake, talking about “Us” and “Them”, etc). Either way, I don’t think Adam killing Red harmed 3125, per se, just changed the composition of the memeplex slightly.
(Does any of that make sense? My brain hurts now.)
Also, the gun Adam shoots Red with is changed in the rewrite to be SCP-7381, the ray gun that deletes matter, if that helps. Can’t shake off a bullet to the head if you no longer have a mind to conceptualize away the harm (or whatever was keeping him alive after the lake).
Edit: Maybe the unique quality Red brought was the idea of using communication to spread 3125; maybe 3125 included the concept of “communication”, but not “communicate 3125 to other things”.
Thanks for sharing the OG version, that’s really cool. Looking forward to reading it based on all the recommendations here!
I strongly suggest the other books by him, especially Ra is quite a trip (in a good way), very weird but enjoyable :)
Thanks, already on my list! :)
I’m slowly getting through Anna Karenina by Tolstoy, having taken a short break to read something else for my book club last week. I’m really enjoying it but the pacing can be slow at points and it requires a certain level of concentration. I think it’s one of those books where, once I’m finished, it’ll leave a bit of a gap in my life!
I haven’t started them, and it might be a while before I do so, but I did just get used copies of Donald Knuth’s books on TeX and typesetting.
Knuth is an elderly computer science better known for his more-general algorithms work, but I’ve been interested in pen plotting recently. Most modern font formats define areas to fill in, whuch doesn’t map well to plotting. I recently discovered that MetaFont, TeX’s native font format, is based on pen strokes and defining a variable width on those strokes, which is more similar to pen plotting.
Kinda dry and older books, but I’ve been pretty fascinated by some of the pen plotter art on Reddit, and have been looking into what the current limitations are.
Currently mostly focusing on The First Socialist Schism by Wolfgang Eckhardt and although I’m still not quite halfway through I would highly recommend it. It’s a primarily sourced based book about the ideological differences and figures that led to the breakup of the First International as well as the development of ideology’s like Marxism, Anarchism and Social Democracy emerging form it.
Snow crash
First time? Enjoy!
I’ve been reading Ordinary Saints by Niamh Ní Mhaoileoin.
It’s about a young woman who’s lesbian who grew up in a very Catholic family and moves away to England to run from it all. It’s a story about revisiting her past and facing her family.
There are a lot of Irish sayings and Catholic references, but the author works it in to the book really well so you don’t have to stop the flow of reading to research any given topic to understand the context.
The most trouble I had was pronouncing some of the Irish names. Had my +1 to help me with that one, but that’s me wanting to learning what they sound like. It doesn’t take away from the book if you “pronounce” them in English.
Fantastic book. Would recommend.
The Complete Chronicles of Conan. I am re-reading it actually.
I highly recommend it
https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/828878.The_Complete_Chronicles_of_Conan
I have been meaning to start Conan for a long time, but never see it on any bookstore, and never bothered to look it up online and order. Should do something about it.
I haven’t read any of the Conan stories by other authors so I can’t say if they are any good. The Robert E. Howard stories are fantastic, though.
Yeah, that’s what I mainly care about. The original stories. Will check them out, thanks!
Currently reading The Godfather’s Revenge by Mark Winegardner
I read the first book when I was a teen and finally got my hands on the second one last week. Think I read the first one like 5 times at least lmao.
This one is proving to be quite good as well, really sucks you in that world and I think it does the Mario Puzo novel justice, definitely would recommend it to anyone who loves The Godfather book/movies.
I am reading how to ADHD by Jessica McCabe. Very insightful for me. Not all struggles I can relate to: I sleep like a baby, but most hit quite painfully home.
And still reading Path of Daggers by Robert Jordan. The aim is to finish this book before the end of the year. Problem is also that there are so much other books I want/have to read for my studies. It’s a good problem to have. Read on!
I finished Limitarianism by Ingrid Robeyns, which was a nice encapsulation of some ideas on how to make things more equal for all of us. Unfortunately unlikely to be implemented, but great thought experiments. Also continuing my Culture re-read. Look to Windward this week, and wow what a ride this one is. Loved it.
I am about half way through book 10 of He Who Fights With Monsters, still can’t stop listening to it!
I had a brief beak from it with “Radical Remission - Surviving Cancer Through All Odds” which was an interesting read to prepare me for what is going to come in the future.
Didn’t book 13 drop a day ago or something?
Yup, was released yesterday I believe.
to prepare me for what is going to come in the future.
Are you alright? 🥺
Thanks for asking. My wife beat cancer 15 years ago before we met but we have just found out the same cancer is back. I have no experience of anything like this so it is going to be a learning experience for me that I’d rather not have but there we go :)
Very sorry to hear about it. My wishes and prayers with you both. Hope she gets well soon.
Thanks. Unfortunately it is incurable so she will never be “well” again, hopefully she can just fight it as best as possible and we can get a long life for her regardless :)
I won’t give up that hope!
Good luck for the fight and a long life!
Oh my, I’m sorry to hear that :(, fuck cancer! Sounds like you’re quite the partner for her, I wish you and her well. May she punch it back into remission, thanks for sharing your stuff with this internet stranger, I hope you know you and her aren’t alone in this. ❤️🫂💪
Endless Blue Beneath - Shannon K. English
It was not good, unfortunately. Some cool mermaid vibes, but holy hell that ending. Imagine someone committing genocide telling someone who hadn’t done anything wrong to ‘be better.’ Not to mention, it’s mostly just miserable the entire time, the main character is insufferable and repeats her thoughts about her brother all the time, and then the love interest was a choice. For what little time was dedicated to her in the first place.
Not sure what I’ll read next.
I just finished Moss’d In Space by Rebecca Thorne. Picked because it had a happy cover and the ebook was available immediately while I waited for another TBR book to be available from my library.
The lightness of the cover carries through the book. There’s dangerous space travel, smugglers, conflicts between alien species, but overall the challenges never seem insurmountable (at least not for more than a couple sentences). It’s light without being pure bubblegum. Even the romance part is light with more of the focus on familial relationship and friendships. Sequel slated for next summer and I have added it to my TBR.
Fiction: Nova by Samuel R Delaney
Non: Lies my teacher told me, forget the author but it’s great
Recently finished: dungeon crawler carl series
