The Death of Ivan Ilyich by Leo Tolstoy. It's short, only a little over 100 pages, and mundane in its story (spoiler alert it's about a guy who dies) but very interesting. If you're like me and think too much about death, I recommend it. Very sobering and honest examination of the subject.
Next is spoilered because it's about a weird fanfic and not everyone here is about about weird fanfics.
Fallout: Equestria by Kkat. A crossover fic of MLP and Fallout. I read it on a whim as I've never been involved with the brony fandom or fanfics in general. My journey with FoE began as a bored hunt for cringe but evolved into an appreciation for just how much effort went into this story. It's extraordinarily well written and BIG, about 620k words. That makes it one of the longest works of derived fiction ever published, slightly longer than the Old Testament.
Quick synopsis. Fo:E is primarily an MLP fic set in a Fallout inspired universe. 200 years after a brutal war between ponies and zebras culminated in global devastation, LittlePip the humble and diminutive PipBuck repairpony must venture beyond the safety of her stable and brave the wastes of post-apocalyptic Equestria. What will she find? Some real fucked up shit.
My thoughts. As I said before, it's a well written story. The pacing fits the length of the narrative. Characters are continually developed. LittlePip is a fun ride so far as main characters go. Her flaws and realizations and strokes of genius are all entertaining. The low points of the story hit hard without being so depressing that you put the book down. Heavy subjects like addiction and the various moral dilemmas that come with any good Fallout thing are handled with dignity and richness that's almost alarming. There is cringe, either weird out of place dialogue that I'm pretty sure is a reference to the cartoon or the semi-frequent horniness of the protag. That's not too rampant but part of the territory, if you can't laugh along at the absurdity then why tf you reading MLP fanfics for my watermelon addicted friend? Anyway it's still an enjoyable read for the casual non-brony provided you're set for a long ride
I'm not sure why exactly Kkat decided to distill their genius into a fucking 620k word MLP fanfic, but y'know what? I'm glad they did.

I am reading "catcher in the rye" and it doesn't feel like a book thats controversial, Just a little tale of a retard that fluncked school and figured "fuck it, i'm gonna take a walk" and the madman actually does it. I'm halfway through it, I'm biased because i feel i'm as retarded as the main character so i can't exactly blame him for dicking off instead of being responcible for his own actions, The dialoge and story is pretty fun. I figured he wouldn't do anything with the whore because he's a dumb kid and i doub't he'll end up killing someone or himself, dispite being edgy at times it seems like he has a good heart.
I can only imagine how cool it would be to actually explore a city back in the day, might have been fun.
>>1780
How do you have the brain cells to read long retarded shit? Is it humor and peoples mental retardation that keeps you going?

>>1817
Finished the book, It makes me wonder if holden will go through the same cycle or if he'll learn from his mistakes.

>>1817
>How do you have the brain cells to read long retarded shit?
That's the secret, I am retarded. In case you don't believe me, I just finished reading Project Horizons by Somber. That's a spinoff of Fallout: Equestria standing at about 1.8 million words. Lots for me to think about and it's late so I won't write an in depth review right now. I was never even a brony and still know virtually nothing about the show so I'm really not sure how this happened, but never let my autism be questioned.

>>2068
I wonder how he can write so much.

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>>2068
Here's my big ol' review for one of my deepest dives. Project Horizons by Somber. A Fallout Equestria story.
I like to hunt around creative efforts on the internet. It's an appetite for cringe and a desire to see something new and free from curation. I won't use words like "cringe" when discussing something like Project Horizons. If I called it genius, it would be genius. If I called it a perverted waste of time and effort, so it would be.
Project Horizons follows the adventures of Blackjack, daughter of the Head of Security in Stable 99. Stable 99 is an unfortunate place. Its life support systems were damaged some time in the past and remain fragile, requiring careful maintenance and population control to assure continued pony survival. It's a claustrophobic horror where each mare must inherit the job of her mother and each male exists as a nameless second class citizen, nothing but a piece of breeding equipment consigned to ignominious execution upon reaching a certain age. All waste, including corpses of the dead, are recycled to feed the population. The mantra of Stable 99 is "just don't think about it." Blackjack is made aware of a plan by the paranoid Overmare to unseal the stable and bargain with dangerous raiders, giving them a mysterious program called EC1101 in exchange for their help in ending a perceived uprising. Blackjack runs into the wasteland with EC1101 on her pipbuck and the raider horde on her heels, sparing her stable from the slaughter. Accompanying her is P-21, a stallion due for "retirement" who yearns for liberty. In the Wasteland Blackjack finds new friends, makes new enemies, toils to uncover the mystery of EC1101, drinks a lot of booze, and so on.
There's an interview with Somber on the site Equestria Daily in which he was asked how he would introduce Project Horizons to someone with no prior exposure. The answer: "Project Horizons is the Silmarillion to Fallout Equestria's Lord of the Rings. It explores things happening behind the scenes and the gritty action that occurred out of view of the main story. It also tries to explain certain aspects of the main story that were unresolved." PH is more about deep lore than FoE. That comes with some difference in tone. In FoE, bad things happen due to well meaning ponies getting caught up in war and fear and good intents. Very few characters are fully depraved or simply doing evil for evil's sake. The tone is remarkably in line with Fallout, which is why I liked it so much. The end of the world wasn't the fault of any individual, or even the sole responsibility of a single group. It was a tragedy, and it persists as a tragedy, and it will continue to be a tragedy unless mankind or ponykind or whatever can learn from past mistakes. In PH, there's all of that, but it's also all a big old conspiracy. The things that happened 200 years ago were mostly arranged by this puppetmaster, and he was being influenced by this other puppetmaster, but also they were puppeting one another, but also cosmic beings from the stars were puppeting them. Don't fear: not everything is just laid out there. Rest assured there is still plenty of room for speculation, but it's fundamentally a different sort of story. To its credit, PH does use this tone to ask some very interesting questions regarding free will, agency, and the nature of individuality. These themes are fully baked, not just done simply because it's edgy and cool to have your protagonist give up their soul in a fight against fate and cosmic evil.
The other thing is that Project Horizons is a lot more anime, if that makes sense. Movements are represented less by factions and more by the actions of a few powerfully combat-adept individuals. More one-on-one showdowns, fewer skirmishes. Higher powerlevels. All this in comparison to FoE of course.
Project Horizons is bloated. It didn't have to end up as long as it is. Somber claimed in the aforementioned interview that perhaps one third of the final product could be trimmed. The story didn't begin with the end in mind. FoE wasn't even finished before work on PH began. Somber clearly had an idea where things were going, but it seems like he just threw in any shiny idea popped into his head that he thought would be cool. He's a very gifted and thoughtful writer, but when writing you have to know when to cut an idea. It's made worse by the lengths of the chapters. There are 77 chapters in the fic. Their lengths are pretty consistent when compared to the erratic sizes of Kkat's chapters. Only, they get longer as the fic goes on. Early chapters are consistently 12k-15k words, which is fine, but then around chapter 17 they spike to 22k-25k words or even more. There's a small handful that exceed 30k. It'd be significantly easier to read 150 shorter chapters. Then again, I'm one of those fellas what can't just slap a bookmark down in the middle of a chapter, so maybe it's partly my fault that I had to eat this elephant in feature length chunks.
There are weird scenes that are lifted straight from other stuff. There's a bit in chapter 61 that's just line for line that one part from A New Hope with Han Solo and the intercom (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3bjEpLoL0ls [Play]) There's also a lengthy chunk of chapter 52 that's a near shot-for-shot match for the 1995 Ghost in the Shell tank scene (https://youtu.be/SvC4chsgx0c?t=245 [Play]) There are probably others I couldn't recognize. It's really fucking weird and I don't know why it was done. Is it plagiarism? Is it an homage?
Anyway, back to Somber being a good writer. There's some really fantastic foreshadowing in Horizons. There were many times in later chapters that something would be revealed and I'd remember "oh yeah, that explains that weird thing that happened near the beginning or middle." Only, when it happened in the earlier chapter, it wasn't super obvious or overly weird. Very good intrigue. The characters are absolutely fantastic. Developing a character and keeping them consistent across millions of words is not an easy thing. Somber is a clever guy. Mysteries are built up and their payoff is usually quite cathartic. It's involving. Blackjack is a lot of fun. Littlepip starts out as a mostly blank slate, filling in as the story goes on. She's like a player character from Fallout or similar roleplaying games. Blackjack comes out the gate with a bombastic personality. She's impulsive and courageous, but simultaneously conflicted and compassionate. Her self destructive streak runs a mile wide and a mile deep. Blackjack is an alcoholic and a lech. She is deeply flawed. She's an idiot, and I was struck several times by how well Somber wrote an unintelligent character. Maintaining dramatic irony, revealing stuff to the audience but not the character in a first person narrative and all that. Blackjack is a result of her upbringing and her own ideals, and it's fun seeing her and the people around her adapt to that.
For action scenes and such, Littlepip is a light armored lockpicking stealth sniper build and Blackjack is a tanky melee/shotgun build.
Emotional moments hit hard. Many folks, when discussing Project Horizons, will rush to say it's ZOMG SO DARK AND EDGY!!!!!1 and they're right. It is much darker. But it isn't misery porn. Project Horizons is a story about optimism. Often when enjoying a quote-unquote "dark" work I end up not caring about the characters. Not the case here. That speaks volumes. There's hope.
In conclusion, I probably prefer the tone of Fallout Equestria. It's closer to what Fallout's all about. FoE held to the video game tone, PH let that go a bit slack and took an anime tone. The things I liked about FoE aren't as present in PH. Still, I won't deny the skill behind Project Horizons. There were new things for me to like. It really showed me some new *ahem* HORIZONS for what can be accomplished in a fan work. I respect and admire it and its creators more than words can say, and I don't regret reading it. I'd recommend this fic wholeheartedly if it weren't for the length.
Also, still can't get comfortable with the whole pony thing. Sometimes the story will describe a horse as sexy and I'm just left scratching my head wondering what the actual hell that means. Also still can't visualize a horse using a gun. Also also its so fucking cringy. I know I said I wouldn't use that word but it's inescapable.
>>2075
He had a lot of help. A whole team of devoted editors, plus experience as a writer and english teacher. That's right, he works/worked with kids.

https://pvto.weebly.com/uploads/9/1/5/0/91508780/eight_o%E2%80%99clock_in_the_morning-nelson.pdf
This is the short story that inspired "They Live"
Damn near three pages long but a solid read. I like how the story made it unsure if the main character was actually off his rocker and if it was all in his head.

i dont know why i'm a fucking idiot, i didn't realise paul was supposed to be an anti-hero and i got pissy when he got a reduced role in the other book but i have been re-reading dune recently and its pretty obvious that with time paul isn't some hero and the deal is that the books theme is that heroes aren't to be trusted. there was a blurb in one of the chapters where paul skinned his enemies and turned them into battle drums and when he was asked about all the horrors he caused, his responce was basically "i'm pretty much jesus, dont question me. now fuck off."
speaking of jesus, i read the appendix before hand and another thing i missed is the usage of religion. hell at times paul qouted gospels and jesus. he also qouted shit from other religions, The thing with the witches and the OC bible is VERY interesting.
i'm 200 pages in and dune pretty much holds up so far.

gurney discribed vladimir harkonnen as revelation 13,
>"Then I saw a beast coming up out of the sea"
had a minor chuckle at that, even though leto dies around that moment. i'm kind of annoyed that they kinda removed the religious aspect from the 2021 movie, they even replaced "jehad" with "crusade". i'm actually thinking of rewatching the the movie to see if they ever mentioned the bene gesserit fucking with religions and teaching the fremen the fake mashed up religion as a means of controlling them. (since i kinda forgot)

one of my favorite parts of the book is when everyone is sitting at the table with the water mongerers and such and its this intresting infusion of worldbuilding and politics and this cat and mouse game to politely interrogate people for information.

so far the discriptions of 'thopters interest me, they have two jets on the back, and feet like a chopper, but with wings of a bird. a fremen even discribed one as a "hawk plane". the wings also fold up like one of those old folding wing jets. although at one point early on it was discribed as humming like an insect, it for the most part is equated with birds. (i think in heretics of dune it was also discribed as a small insect)
in my personal opinion i would say i would imagine it not being feathered per-se, but like if someone took bird wings, and made it robotic where it had the framework of a bird, but maybe with a membrane (think of bats) of sorts on the wing and covered with armor that has has the vague appearance of feathers to protect the membrane. an exit was also on both sides, below the wings instead of in the cockpit.
also i forgot but the wings also condense, or shorten to stubs for jet boosted take off. (unless i missread something)

I think it's cute that Paul is still loyal to Chani dispite his situation, being married to Irulan for political gain. Paul is more sympathetic in dune messiah since he's still worried for what the future will bring and his hand in the jehad.

>>2492
I think his powers are blinded by his emotions and the religious aspect of everything, If things where diffrent then perhaps he would have found a way to have everything work out but it seems it's too late for that. Dune messiah is not bad. It's a change of formula but overall still a damn good read so far.

>>2493
Dune messiah if a movie, Is a Conspiracy Thriller. There is no action, But philosophy. No explosions or fights but emotions. Can Original Dune be treated as an ending? Sure. It would end with paul being emperor, The harkonens slained, and the fremen dubiously liberated. Does heretics work as a sequal? Sure. At least in my opinion. It is the end of paul in a sense and the birth of his children, To continue on where their father did not. to finally walk down the golden path.
I feel like this book must not be for everyone but i enjoyed it and i'm looking forward to the third book in the series. I don't know how the fuck they can adapt this book into a movie lol.

Children of dune was pretty damn good, Even though most of the characters go through major changes they still hold up and it was interesting to note this was actually a fucking build up to ANOTHER DUNE BOOK god emperor of dune which, so far is fucking insane. It is another major change to the formula but a decent one. (sofar)

http://strangehorizons.com/fiction/jimmys-roadside-cafe/
Something i'm a fan of is stories from the internet. Especially if it's some one-off thing from someone who is pretty much unknown, and especially on some forum no one gives a shit about WAY back in the day.
I like this story, I think it's cute and i also enjoy apocalyptic stories as well.
It's hard as fuck at least to me when i search for stuff like this but i'll still come across stories and such and it's also neat when other people point 'em out, Like the comic thing called "all tomorrows" that an anon linked to on the old site i think.

https://xpressenglish.com/boy-and-dog/
been tracking down books that was used in thd development of fallout

sure it's edgy but i enjoyed it, riveting and a hell of a ride. decent writing overall and the story knew when to end. i guess there's more parts to the story but i haven't seen em online. i found a canticle for lebowitz, lucifers hammer, i am legend, and the postman so i have a ton of books on my plate.

Read the first three stories in gli amori dificili, enjoyed them, attempted to read the original Italian and decided that even if I theoretically could I wouldn't do anything with the skill.

i dont know what the actual fuck im reading
>The island was square. Or, rather, it was made of squares. Everything: sand, dirt, rocks, even those things I first thought were trees. Everything was a combination of cubes. “Okay,” I said, refusing to believe what I was seeing. “Just need a minute is all, just a minute.” Standing in waist-high water, breathing, blinking, I waited for my eyes to clear. I was sure that any minute, all those harsh right angles would return to soft, curvy normalness. They didn’t. “Gotta be that head wound,” I said, wading ashore. “No problem. Just make sure you’re not bleeding too bad and—” Instinctively, my hand went up to find the supposed injury, and as it came up in front of my face, I gasped. “Wha…?” There was a fleshy cube at the end of my rectangular arm, a cube that wouldn’t open no matter how hard I tried. “Where’s my hand!?” I shouted, my voice rising in panic. Head swimming, throat closing, I looked nervously down at the rest of me. Brick-shaped feet, rectangular legs, a shoebox-shaped torso, all covered in painted-on clothes. “What’s wrong with me!?” I hollered to the empty beach. “This isn’t real!” I screamed, running back and forth, trying to tear the painted clothes off my body.
the minecraft book by max brooks is an acid trip, i'm reminded of this https://youtube.com/watch?v=ncin995MKDY [Play]
and it actually happens, steve has a mental breakdown because he was so hungry and he couldnt pick up grass and eat a dirt block, lol. i dont know how this shit will end but so far its good.

>>2834
even though i called him "steve" thd main character is nameless and the way the book starts is him waking up underwater and damn near drowning. so yeah i appreciate the book opens up vague instead of doing https://youtube.com/watch?v=jzI-xmeitJc [Play] or like meta jokes of how he's in a game or some bullshit like that. everything is like, realistic and everything is explained away like there's no HUD and he has a cloth "backpack" of sorts to store items and pretty much everything is like in game and uses in game logic like trees floating when you mine a lower block and whatever. although, the cloth backpack is new and he also has the ability to smell, an feel pain, and breath. and even though he couldnt taste the apple he could eat it and lusted after more food even though he couldnt eat anymore (even though it wasnt explained, his hunger bar was full) also like when he wanted to build something on a crafting table it had a holographic display showing the options and he could use to craft shit. and yeah i forgot to mention it but it also reminds me of fucking the metamorphosis by franz kafka

>>2835
It makes me happy that Minecraft Steve feels pain. Never knew the lore ran that deep.

>I noticed the birds were waddling away. Why had they suddenly lost interest? “Hey, where ya goin’?” I asked. “Something I said?” I looked away from the birds just in time to see the silent creature gliding between us. It was armless and legless, with a green mottled trunk and short stubby feet. It all happened so fast. The crackling hiss, the smell of fireworks, the flashing vibrations as the creeping monster swelled like a balloon. The explosion knocked me backward, lifting me off my feet. Eyes burning, ears ringing, I flew through the air, splashing into the waist-deep water of the lagoon. Waves of pain crashed over me: seared skin, cracked bones, pulled muscles torn from mangled joints. I tried to scream, but collapsed into hacking coughs as one lung fought to overcome its punctured partner. I struggled to breathe, to move. I could feel the lagoon’s waters pulling me forward, carrying me down. I blinked hard, clearing my vision, and stared at the blast crater I’d been washed into along with loose chunks of sand and earth. Something else swirled in the water around me: the gruesome evidence of death. A scrap of cowhide, a red slab of beef, two bright pink bird bodies, and a single white feather were all that was left of three poor animals. As the wretched scraps flew into my pack, I clambered dizzily out of the crater. Dazed with shock, I stumbled back to the hill. Knees wobbled, thighs burned. I staggered over waves of pulsing pain. How could I outrun more of those creeping bombs? I glanced behind me, tripped, and crashed into the hard, bruising mass of a tree. The impact sent shock waves radiating through my injuries. Cracked lips opened for another scream, and this time they succeeded.
https://youtube.com/watch?v=XijMMhs55oc [Play]
never realised how tramatic getting your ass blown up by a creeper is

>>2842
Can't wait to see him turn the tables by building a creeper farm and leveling the forest with tnt

>>2843
i dont know about that lol it took him 16 chapters for him to realise how to build a wooden sword

>>2844
Jesus, killing the Ender Dragon is gonna take longer than that fallout pony shit

>>2845
his problem is that he has no goddamn clue what he was doing, he had no recipie. its like the old days on the pc version where you had to place blocks down to make something without too much as of a clue how to make things. he also (in his madness) made friends with the local animals so he swore he wouldnt kill them and in one point he had the retarded idea to fuckin fill his hunger bar by eating zombie meat and drinking milk to kill the status affect) as an example he found gunpowder after killing a creeper and thought huh! i can make a gun with this! and after dicking around half a day he accidentally made a shield, he also brilliantly thought that "water is food for seeds" and drowned his crop with a water bucket which wasted days worth of planning and he had a little mental breakdown after that when he could have dug a little ditch and THEN dumped the water in, next to hix crop.
he didnt kill the ender dragon although he did go and kill a creeper with TNT (he figured it out after finding a manual in a mineshaft) and destroyed a fuck ton of spawn cubes by the end of the 300 page book.he decided to go and leave his little island to explore the rest of the world and figure out what is really going on and who he really is. there are three books in the series so maybe by the third book he kills the dragon. it was surprisingly a good read.

old possums book of practical cat is a must read and dont even call yourself a 22channer unless you read it.

The name that no human research can discover— But THE CAT HIMSELF KNOWS, and will never confess. When you notice a cat in profound meditation, The reason, I tell you, is always the same: His mind is engaged in a rapt contemplation Of the thought, of the thought, of the thought of his name: His ineffable effable Effanineffable Deep and inscrutable singular Name.

i feel like the mad arab abdul alhazred, truily i will never be the same.

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>>3016
Then GILBERT gave the signal to his fierce Mongolian horde; With a frightful burst of fireworks the Chinks they swarmed aboard. Abandoning their sampans, and their pullaways and junks, They battened down the hatches on the crew within their bunks.
at first i was confused by this passage but then i realise that the chink cat was a siamese, if you please.
https://youtube.com/watch?v=RG5mOd8Ubsk [Play]

I book i suggest would be the three body problem series by liu cixin. its long as fuck but a quality read. the netflix show is of lesser substance then the book series.

i finished reading cats cradle. i had learned about the book from a visual novel called 9 hours 9 persons 9 doors.
i appreciate the short length, it's easy to knock out 300 pages in one sitting. the writing is also fun. i almost feel like it's an analogy of the cold war with the atom bomb being ice nine and hoenikker's children being the world super powers.
i think also a state invented religion to control the masses was an interesting concept.

>>3630
there was also some interesting stories and qoutes like the story about shaking the jar which i'm sure jusn't apply to ants, and the bokon qoute about drug stores

On the day they dropped the bomb Frank had a tablespoon and a Mason jar. What he was doing was spooning different kinds of bugs into the jar and making them fight....I can remember other bug fights we staged later on...They won't fight unless you keep shaking the jar.

The hand that stocks the drug stores rules the world.

Let us start our Republic with a chain of drug stores, a chain of grocery stores, a chain of gas chambers, and a national game. After that we can write our Constitution.

I read the short story, "The man who laughs" by Salinger. Personally i liked it, i like how the laughing man serial changed with the mental state of the storyteller, I like how elements was borrowed by Victor Hugos "The man who laughs" (which i'm still reading lol)

i srarted reading notes from underground. i like it, it felt nice to hear bitching about the whole "trust the science" nonsense, like how human beings can be boiled down to a mathematical algorithm and thus controled, that nature is "good" and nature has a law like a beehive and ants and if we adapt the law as our own we'll fucking ascend like if that wouldn't be boring as fuck, anyhow that shit doesn't make sense because shit like "morality" and "evil" are terms that we invented and if we die, they won't exist and animals and nature will do the same shit they always do.
it goes on and on atleast before the transition to where the underground man recounts some stupid shit he did in his '20s, which reminds me of elliot rogers manifesto for some reason (if you know you know)
i find this quite enjoyable but i was fortunate to do some historical and background research beforehand, and while i'm reading. it has context that isn't given (atleast with the translation i was reading) thats actually kind of important to understand otherwise most of the stuff mentioned or discussed would just fly over ones head. i feel like i should have read "what is to be done?" before this, since notes from underground was written as a direct responce and contains many jokes and references to it, but whatever i'll just do that later.

I was listening to the audiobook version of dead space: martyr.
the writing is campy and reminds me of something like jurassic park but sometimes it actually sucks hardcore like the author forgot about the timeline and somehow tech in deadspace exists in the modern era, (holopads and such) stilted dialoge and conversations and stupid shit like altman making jokes like "i'm totally not going to die" (insert snaredrum noise here) and a sequence that was fucking ripped from regular ass deadspace, literally issac with a ripper defending himself against the regenerator but get this, it was a bad dream that altman had and its written so fucking bad. honestly the chapter that was the fucking best hands down, the reason anyone should check this book out is that, a military man and a scientist enters a bathysphere to investigate a signal deep underwater and all hell brakes loose, the writing is fucking incredible in that chapter alone. also i thought it was cool in my opinion that the story takes place on earth, it uses mythology, and it also did something cool where the marker fucked with reality where it re-wrote a cultures religion and history where chicxulub translates to "tail of the devil" instead of "the devil's flea" and only a few people remembered the original translation.