Posts from What are you reading right now? Auto-translated

I finished reading the latest Pelevin.
iPhuck 10.

For twenty years, he has been writing the same book with different words, usually in the fall.
Even Leo Tolstoy would quickly get bored with this, but our Victor Olegovich is not Leo.

True, the book (well, this one, the one he's been writing for twenty years) is generally good...
But reading for the hundredth time how one illusion explains to another, over five pages, that it doesn't exist, and even "doesn't exist" also doesn't exist, and "also doesn't exist" also doesn't exist, and that you need to get rid of karma and escape samsara, but karma and samsara also don't exist, and that's precisely the whole point, which also doesn't exist...

Well, let's just say that it's not as impressive as it was the first to ninety-ninth time.

The author even rants about this for two pages (apparently, he thinks he's joking) – that he's writing at least one book his whole life, while you're not writing any, so you should be quiet and keep your hands at your sides.

But we, Victor Olegovich, we are quiet.
We forgive you for "The Prince of the Gosplan," "Life of Insects," "Chapayev," and your early stories, and we will continue to forgive you, although it's getting harder every year.

You'll have to explain all this later to your Avalokiteshvara in your Bardo, and that will be interesting.

There's also some topical political satire, which will become outdated in about a year, when your next book comes out.

And yes, Sorokin's "Telluria" did it better – both with the Eurocaliphate, and with the three bald kings, and with everything else, including Victor Olegovich himself, devouring his own tail with Chinese sauce.
In a white wreath of roses, ahead is the ouroboros (quote).

So, Sorokin can remain silent and work (or whatever he does) for years, while our unknown father of Russian postmodernism is now doomed to continuously write one novel/collection of stories and novellas per year for the rest of eternity.

That's what real samsara is, no bardo is needed.

Life is tough. But yes. (also a quote)

"Lord of the Flies" by William Golding.
Realism at its finest. It's sad. I liked the book; it's quite psychological. Even though the characters are children, the idea becomes even clearer.

Kir Bulychev - "The Great Gusli Player" (collection of short stories + a short novel)

Not bad, a light Soviet science fiction. Moderately funny, moderately satirical, moderately moralizing, overall very kind and pleasant, like fairy tales for adults. I remember reading this as a child, but I didn't understand it then and didn't grasp the point; now, knowing something about that era and having gained some life experience, I read it with pleasure. Although, it's not mind-blowing. 9/10

Isaac Asimov - "The Bicentennial Man"

Simple and tasteful, a sweet story about a robot. Nothing special, but very pleasant and engaging. The author clearly loves robots more than people, and this shines through in his works. The story is short, I read it quickly. It seems like it's enough, but it feels a bit short. 8/10

Isaac Asimov - "The Stars, Like Dust"

Typical Asimov, lots of delicious futurism, a plot with a HUGE TWIST, nervous and incredibly annoying characters. In some moments, it seemed to me that it overlaps a lot with "Foundation"; overall, it feels somewhat derivative, although maybe I've just read too much Asimov. But I like it, I love this author - for the delicious futurism and the HUGE TWIST plot, of course, his characters are mostly either just indifferent to me or frankly annoying. I laughed at the final scene of the book. 9/10

Margaret Atwood - "The Handmaid's Tale"

Blah blah blah bestseller, blah blah blah every woman should read it, blah blah blah dystopia, blah blah blah how scary it is to live. Well. I decided to give it a try, as the book isn't very long. As a representative of the female gender, I appreciated this book, but as a hardcore gamer who loves cool plot twists, I didn't. Like any decent dystopia, the book is creepy, tickles the nerves, stimulates the imagination, and is generally interesting because the issues are relevant. But I found it a bit boring to follow the plot; everything revolves around relationships, sex, and fertility (in the plot, the country is suddenly infertile, and under the guise of this, fun begins with the oppression of women). The main character is such an ordinary woman that I understood why this is a bestseller. I didn't quite understand her experiences; as I said, I'm a hardcore gamer, and I would be more interested in reading about the social structure, methods of propaganda, all sorts of cool things with the underground, and other action, rather than how she, poor thing, suffers without hand cream and fashion magazines. And in general, I have a slightly different view of gender issues. While reading, I kept remembering 1984, but it was much more fun there. However, there is food for thought, and it's also good for general development. Most likely, guys, even fans of dystopias, will be bored, because it seemed to me that it's more about relationships. 5/10

Nerd.

On the contrary, I haven’t read anything recently. I still have a bunch of classic sci-fi authors and other stuff on my reading list.

The author clearly loves robots more than people, and this is evident in his works.

It's easy to love those who don't exist...

Why doesn't it exist?

Glory to the robots! Kill all the humans!

P.S. I changed the ratings; it's not right to put classics and cheesy stuff on the same level >_>

It's not right to put classics and mediocre works on the same level.

Wouldn't it be more logical/fair to be guided by your own level of satisfaction?

And that’s why I also adjusted the ratings.

Stanisław Lem - "Star Diaries"

It was worth reading, but my impressions are mixed. The style didn't quite appeal to me; in my opinion, there's too much chaos, surrealism, and obscure terminology. I understand that this isn't a bug, but a feature, and it works well for the atmosphere, it's just not quite my thing. On the plus side, there are some interesting moments, cool alien worlds, and absurd ideas that I enjoyed. But overall, it could have been better. 7/10

Sergei Lukyanenko - "Draft," "Clean Copy" (duology)

There was a lot of hype about the movie, so I decided to revisit this author I used to love. I remembered why he's no longer my favorite. If you read one Lukyanenko book, you've read them all; everything is sad, boring, and monotonous. Good setting ideas are mixed with monotonous plots, uninspired characters, and a general sense of chaos and inconsistency, giving the impression that you're reading the same book over and over, and you can no longer see the difference between the author's worlds. And there's this obsession with modern realities and dreary descriptions of what the protagonist ate and how he went to the bathroom. Plus, I've gotten used to more engaging literature. Overall, it's not very good, only for fans of the genre, but I can't say it's as bad as Metro-35, and I don't regret reading it, I would have been too curious. But I've decided that I probably won't return to this author. 4/10

From Lem, I highly recommend "Cyberiada". Mainly the trilogy "Altruizin" - "Blessed" - "Repetition", but everything else is good too. It's mostly about killing all the humans.

I'm not sure if I'll want to revisit this author. I have so many books planned that I won't be able to read them all before I retire. Even if I discard half of them after reading just three pages.

Tried to read "Brave New World" by Huxley. I must say, I liked how Huxley envisions the future in terms of realism. In many ways, he turned out to be closer to reality than Orwell in "1984" or Bradbury in "Fahrenheit 451." However, despite the good idea, this book is too difficult to read. Mostly, it's just unpleasant. So, I abandoned it somewhere in the middle.

I read "Foundation" by Asimov, to be more specific, this book. It was simply very good. The author brilliantly introduced the idea of history as an objective process, using beautiful and illustrative examples. It is extremely interesting to watch the development of such a history from the future; everything is intricately woven. I should continue reading the series, but for now, I've switched to something else.

"The Dark Materials" by Philip Pullman. The first book was great, recommended by Heroist, after watching the movie "The Golden Compass." In fact, it's better (in my opinion) than the movie, in which some moments were unsuccessfully distorted and logically spoiled. It looked like a wonderful fairy tale, and I was somewhat puzzled as to why Pullman's works have a bad reputation among the Catholic Church. But as I read the second book, everything became clear to me. A beautiful, somewhat unsettling, and sad, but still fairy-tale story gradually turned into some strange and illogical satire on the biblical plot, and the main characters found themselves in the middle of some kind of theater of the absurd, in which the actors seemed to be playing patients from a mental hospital. I still finished the second and then the third book, hoping until the very end that there would be a deeper meaning in all this story that would resolve all the emerging "What the heck?" questions, but that didn't happen.
In short, of all the books, I think it's worth reading the first one.

or Bradbury in "Fahrenheit 451"

Vaschet, the world described by Huxley is roughly 100 years after what Bradbury described. The fire chief's monologue confirms this. In this regard, the book seemed secondary to me – I had already read all these ideas before; Huxley only developed them slightly.
Well, Huxley also created a typical utopia, without the "anti-" prefix, but that's a different matter.