My last 5 books: Sci-fi and classics

1. The Long Earth, by Terry Pratchett & Stephen Baxter. This was a book selected for our bookclub in my gaming guild. I thoroughly enjoyed the book up until the point where the "threat" was introduced. Probably what they will be fighting against for the next few books, which completely killed my interest in reading further books. This threat or monster is a being, completely unique in itself and it accidentally keeps devouring anything that comes too close, but it never means any harm. So basically this is a thing that just wants a hug but kills anything it touches. This monster seems very Douglas Adams-esque imho. But yes, apart from the monster that showed up towards the end I thoroughly enjoyed the whole concept of The Long Earth, multiple earths from different accidental evolutionary viewpoints. It made me giggle how the British weren't all that interested because everywhere they stepped from Britain they ended up in thick woods on other earths. That was hilarious. But yes, apart from the monster that completely killed the vibe for me I really liked this book!

2. The Walking Dead, vol. 2: Miles Behind Us, by Robert Kirkman. Much, much better than volume one! I don't even remember the things in this volume - were these events even in the TV show? Regardless this volume was really good and now I'm actually looking forward to reading the other volumes!

3. The War of the Worlds, by H.G. Wells. The original alien invasion story. Throughout reading this I couldn't stop thinking about the fact that this story is about 150 years old. This story was written when the revolver and the train were new inventions. It was written before both world wars. And the aliens have ray guns!!! It just completely blew my mind. Other than that the story was good, albeit a little slow-paced at times and at one point it seemed as if Wells had lost the story before it picked back up again. I remember being annoyed at the ending when seeing the movie because it was so anti-climactic, and it still was in book form. Although a little bit less so, because the pace of the written story was more slow-paced than the movie. It still annoyed me however that the enemy just fell down dead without any kind of victory and then life went back to normal way too quickly.

4. The Once and Future King, by T.H. White. This book killed my pace. After just 20 pages it annoyed me how much the author broke the fourth wall and thus my immersion. I decided to at least read the first part (211 pages) before giving up. Maybe the story would feature less idiotically stupid adult stereotypes and less fourth-wall-breaking when Arthur wasn't a child anymore. 211 pages is usually something I can do in an evening, but for this book just 5 pages took me forever because the immersion breaking the author insisted on doing completely screwed up my pace. I got to 160 pages before I decided to give up. I just couldn't do it anymore. At 160 pages I had been reading this book for over a month and making barely any progress. I love the legends of King Arthur, which is why this book was originally given to me, but this book was just bad.

5. The Picture of Dorian Gray, by Oscar Wilde. One of my favourites! I've read it before when I was much younger but I liked it even then. This was a new edition that I bought purely because I loved the cover. I'm not sure why this books speaks to me the way it does. Maybe it's people's desire to always be young and live forever, rather than do what you can with the time you're given. Maybe it's that people are never content with what they have and always have to yearn for more. Why can't we appreciate what we already have? I am not going to go into a lengthy monologue about this book. Just know that I love it.