Reading books that have been on my TBR for a LONG time - July 2024 in a Nuttshell

We are all fortunate of your commitment to these Nutshells. I wish you a quick(er) recovery.

Jimmy proving once again why he’s the gigachad of booktube!!!

I hope you are feeling better! 💜 I am so intrigued by Kushiel's Dart, even more so now!

I had a pretty intense cyberpunk phase back in the day, primarily driven by “I want more Neuromancer.” Glad you liked it. 🙂 Hope you’re back to normal soon!

Covid does NOT fuck around. It beat my ass as well at the beginning of the year for a while. I would not have been able to read let alone film so props to you.

Mad respect for continuing the show even when you're so sick, wishing you a speedy recovery! Hope you have been feeling better since filming! Very glad you got some great reads in last month, I love how you keep pushing old hidden gems onto my radar! Carlos and Yolanda also totally sold me on Pop, 1280, and your review here only made me more (morbidly) curious! Take it easy, Jimmy ☺

jacqueline carey's prose is essentially my gold standard in fantasy(along with Hobb) and she demonstrates how effective beautiful prose can be to overcome weaker story elements at times. I liken the Kushiel trilogy alot to Farseer as well, with both series having similar pacing issues but makes up for it with great prose and character work.

If you enjoyed Gibson's writing I HIGHLY recommend Burning Chrome, his short story anthology. It dips into different genres (most of it is not straight cyberpunk) and makes for great summer reading.

Thank you for powering up and making a video while sick. We appreciate you very much!

glad you are feeling a bit better and were able to make a video!

Oh I wouldn’t worry about your wrap up man! I mean, Allen puts out his monthly wrap ups out nine months after the month being featured and we all still watch them. Feel better! More Ishiguro! Yeah! Still not An Artist of the Floating World but maybe you’ll get there soon. Pretty positive month in July for me 😁 On July 1st I finished Say nothing by Patrick Keefe (the author of Empire of Pain). This is a nonfiction book about the IRA from the 70s through the end of the Troubles and the Good Friday Agreement. The events and people it discusses tie back into the notorious murder of a “disappeared” mother of ten named Jean Mcconville. The Price sisters, who helped organize the London car bombings, and Gerry Adams are also heavily featured. This book was fascinating and I would read it again. Some other nonfiction I read was Nothing to Envy and a book on Sekigahara with lots of big pictures. I also finished demon slayer! Whoooo Hoooo! One of my favorite fantasy series. Still have to finish the anime I usually like to see the fight scenes in the anime because I’m not familiar enough with manga to always be able to decipher them in black and white on the page. The Pleasure District Arc was my favorite and gave me a much needed laugh. If you are looking to get into manga this might be a good place to start. Three shorter novels I finished were Legends of the Galactic Heroes bk 4, The Samurai by Endo, and rereading In Cold Blood. LOGH bk 4 was ok. It wasn’t my favorite in the series. I kept hearing the Pitch Meeting Guy say “super easy, barely and inconvenience….oh really?” In my head. Ah well. On to the next installment. In Cold Blood remains fantastic. Read it. The samurai was really interesting because it is based on the mission of an actual samurai who travelled all across the world with a Catholic priest to help promote trade relations with the West. This author also wrote the book Silence which was adapted into the movie with Andrew Garfield. Both of these books deal with Japan’s relationship with Christianity during the Tokugawa Shogunate in the 1600s. I liked it a lot, but if religion doesn’t interest you, I don’t know if I would recommend. Or maybe I will recommend anyway. And I have two book of the year candidates FINALLY. These would be Fire and Blood and Lord of Emperors. These were fantastic. I haven’t yet finished the main series of ASOIAF. It’s weird I have picked up Storm of Swords a few times but just end of flicking through it without feeling attached to the characters. I still don’t know why. It troubles me. I found myself so invested in the people covered it this book. Maybe because I read mostly history so I’m used to it. The Aegon I chapters were my favorites I think. Lord of Emperors is my second favorite GGK novel so far. Under Heaven is still my favorite but sometimes your first is your sweetest. But what a duology. Happy reading 🤗

I read Neuromancer earlier this year for the first time and the thing that impressed me the most was just Gibson’s style of writing and how he really just punches you into the world off of the first page. I don’t think I’ve read an author recently that has his ability to just set you immediately in a world and really set the tone of the place as concisely and as quickly as him. Chiba City Blues is such a strong first section of a novel.

Poisoned by your enemies. Sending you my energy like a DBZ spirit bomb.

I'm about 80% through my reread of Kushiel's Dart, it definitely has it's slow moments, but at it's best, it stands toe to toe with just about any fantasy that is not ASOIAF in terms of political intrigue. I am going to need shorter leaner novel after I finish. I might as well do a reread of Neuromancer. I read it when I was sixteen and do not remember much other than that I thought it was so good that I went to the bookstore and purchased 3 more William Gibson books right after. Thanks for doing the upload even though you are feeling under the weather; that mma training you did has got you tough man

Sorry to hear you've been sick, hope you feel better soon! Kushiel's Dart sounds really interesting! This video also made me think I should more deliberately pick up books that have been on my TBR for a long time, so they might actually get read sometime :D

Pattern Recognition is another excellent Gibson that still lingers in my thoughts after many years. Hope you feel better!

Get better soon, and keep letting us know about things that are a bit off the beaten path from most of this corner of booktube!

Been reading to read Neuromancer for years. Thanks for touching it out. Feel better.

hope you recover soon! covid kicked my ass when I had it so I'm impressed you powered through to get us this video, thank you so much but take time to rest!

YES!! Use of Weapons is one of my favourite books ever. Very tempting to bump something to reread it.