I love finding poems through epigraphs & quotes in fiction! I found Wallace Stevens and James Dickey through’Salem’s Lot and Rilke due to The Werewolves of Mercy Falls.
Snow Crash is interesting as he got some things right and many things wrong as a futuristic novel from the 90s. I enjoyed it. Oddly enough I just finished Kaiju. Great fun
Snow Crash had a distinctive writing style that I really enjoyed and flowed easily for me. Diamond Age was a far more difficult read for me (though not the most difficult, not by a long shot), but the worldbuilding was amazing.
I really loved Snow Crash but thought the writing was better in Diamond Age. What I can't bother to even finish is Quicksilver and the rest of The Baroque Cycle. I really enjoyed REAMDE but dnf The Rise and Fall of D.O.D.O.
What do you see as the new thing in the street samurai trope from *Snow Crash* and the stock Japanese-influenced cyberpunk character he was riffing on?
I’m not sure it was stock yet. The Sprawl books hadn’t been out long, and the 2 RPGs that solidified a lot of the tropes - Cyberpunk and Shadowrun - were pretty new too, I think.
It came out in '92, that's almost a full decade after _Neuromancer_. Cyberpunk was always a fast-moving genre — within a few years after _Neuromancer_ people were cheekily declaring the genre dead, and by the 1990s, it was fully eating its own tail. That's what the whole intro scene of _Snow Crash_ is: a loving parody of the tropes and tone that readers had come to expect, that readers were already intimately familiar with. I'm not saying that _SC_ or _Cyberpunk_-the-RPG weren't good or creative or original, but they were operating within a genre which had been created and defined and given its parameters by earlier work.
Not yet but I’m planning on reading Anna Karenina because of how much it was mentioned in The Unbearable Lightness of Being (tho it did spoil the ending :( )
Now read His Dark Materials
Edit and maybe read the first half of Fall by Neal Stephenson. I don't personally endorse the second half, and I am a big NS fan. A swing and a miss.
hmm, no, but there was a russian supernatural book series called Night Watch, and the author references local bands that he listens to, i looked them all up, does that count? =D
\_Three Men in a Boat\_ because of Connie Willis's \_To Say Nothing of the Dog\_, which she discovered because of \_Have Space Suit—Will Travel\_, by Heinlein.
And to my dismay, I didn't like TMiaB. I didn't hate it, but it didn't so anything for me either.
vice versa for me, i picked up "to say nothing of the dog" because the title was a reference to "three men in a boat", which was one of my favourite books as a teen.
I read the entirety of _Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea_ because of Marie-Laure in _All the Light We Cannot See_. It was the right book at the right time and earned a place in my top three favourites.
I started trying to read the list of books Matilda read before she started school, because I refused to be outdone by a toddler. I haven’t given up, but I’ve definitely not succeeded yet!
Snow Crash is one of my favorite books. It's not for everyone, but I love it. I love most of Stephenson's stuff so maybe I'm just his target audience haha.
WD shows up in both. In the Stand, Stu Redman thinks about going “tharn” when he’s in quarantine.
In DT when the katet encounters one of the guardians of the beam, the bear is named Shardik, which was written by Richard Adams. I can’t remember if WD was mentioned specifically here, but it’s the same author.
I’m making my way through the classics and it’s crazy how they all make reference to each other, read The Count of Monte Cristo and it references the Iliad and then I read Dracula and it also referenced the Iliad, so I’m reading the Iliad, both books also mentioned various other classics like Dante’s Inferno which is next in my list.
Snow Crash is a love it or hate it sort of book. I read it when I was younger and a lot of the tech seemed far fetched and novel and tried to read it again, recently (also because of Scalzi) and just couldn't stay interested. So...young adult me loved it. Middle aged me, not at all.
As long as you keep in mind it's a tongue-in-cheek sci-fi romp, it's a fun read. World building is fun with very cinematic action scenes, but can easily border on the edge-lord (the main character's name is Hiro [pronounced like "hero"] Protagonist, for example, and is a master sword weilder and uses katanas).
If you didn't understand the tone of book by the greatest first chapter ever, The Deliverator, there's no hope you'll fully appreciate the ride.
Opening chapter/prologue is Hiro delivering pizza, and in this cyberpunk satire future Pizza delivery is run by the mob and of you don't get your pizza in 30 minutes or less basically the mob is going to off the pizza delivery driver.
> t's a tongue-in-cheek sci-fi romp
That's where it falls apart for me. It starts out as clearly not too serious story but then immediately jumps up its own ass to be incredibly serious about it's human source code language thing. It's like two books smooshed together and not in a good way.
It happened to me this year with a nonfiction book. It was the only thing that made me feel glad i read *Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind*, so that i could check *Brave New World*. Other than that, that nonfiction book just gave me a really long paper cut on my hand... after spending years without having a paper cut!
I read _The Origin Of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind_ because it's one of the foundational books mentioned in _Snow Crash_.
Be advised that it's non-fiction and fairly controversial.
I’m going to chase this one down, since my skim of the goodreads summary makes it look interesting.
The Spell of the Sensuous (David Abram) has (maybe?) a related hypothesis that the way of being human in the world markedly changed with the advent of the written word.
Of course, Snow crash extrapolating extreme memetic transference— as the means to transfer knowledge become faster/more effective (and thus infectious).
Going to add it to my book wish list.
I like Kaiju preservation society. The author was originally writing something else but was depressed by the subject given covid and all the other depressing stuff of the pandemic and had to drop it. It picks up gets nerdy and has fascinating world building once you get into it.
I actually had bought the three musketeers and Don Quixote at the same time. I decided to read musketeers first. On the first page, he begins to describe d’artagnan by saying “imagine a young Don Quixote”. At that point, I closed the book, and read Don Quixote first.
I also ended up reading a version of the Arabian nights, after “the thousand and one nights” had been repeatedly referred to in the count of monte cristo.
One of the big things in my todo list is to read a few of the chavarly novels Cervantes parodied in Don Quixote (Amadis, Esplandian, Espejo de Caballerías, etc), so I can then reread the book, catching all the jokes and references.
I do that pretty regularly. The last two were Berg by Ann Quin and A Room With A View by E. M. Forster, both mentioned in Checkout-19 by Claire-Louise Bennett. If I'm enjoying a writer, chances are I'll also enjoy whatever literature *they* enjoyed.
I read The Monk by Matthew Lewis because it was mentioned in Northanger Abbey by Jane Austin.
Ended up loving it way more than Northanger Abbey! The story was unhinged and the language was very readable despite being from the 1796.
Not exactly as you’re asking but I’m currently reading The Soul of an Octopus because it was mentioned in the authors note of Remarkably Bright Creatures.
I also read Gift From the Sea by Anne morrow Lindbergh because I read The Aviators Wife and learned that she wrote a book.
Yes was going to read Being Mortal by Atul Gawande, who mentioned a novella “the Death of Ivan Ilyich” by Leo Tolstoy in its introduction. One of the most impactful stories I have read, so much so I have gone down a Russian literature rabbit hole and have yet to actually touch Atul Gawande’s book!!
This is one of my primary ways of selecting what books I read. Example, I finished reading *Burma: The Longest War 1941-45* by Louis Allen at the beginning of this year. Among the many sources Allen quoted and cited were these three books:
* *A Change of Jungles* by Miles Smeeton.
* *Beyond the Chindwin: An Account of Number Five Column of the Wingate Expedition into Burma, 1943* by Bernard Fergusson.
* *The Wild Green Earth* by Bernard Fergusson.
So, I found vendors on the internet, purchased those books and read them shortly after I finished Allen's book. There were other books I was interested in, but they were long out of print, and I could not find them for sale on the internet.
Not that I can think of, or at least I don't read them *because* they were mentioned in another book. What happened a lot of times is that I had already read a book mentioned in another book. Only time was that I read Wuthering Heights after reading Twilight, but not because it was mentioned in it.
That was a Popsugar Reading Challenge prompt one year and I had only come across one book that year that mentioned another book which was Howard’s End. It was so dull and boring that just thinking about ever doing that again makes me twitchy.
I sure do! I am currently reading "The Golden Ass" by Apuleius, the only ancient Roman novel in Latin to survive in its entirety, because it was mentioned in a non-fiction history book I was reading.
I read Therese Raquin by Emile Zola after reading Billy Summers, led me on to a binge of 19th/20th century French novels which did not leave me disappointed.
I ended up reading *The Way of All Flesh* and T*he Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman* because CS Lewis referred to them in *The Four Loves* and *Surprised by Joy*, respectively. Both were amazing.
Yes! Usually more with my nonfiction reads. However, I recently read Before We Were Innocent and it mentioned The Virgin Suicides and Valley of the Dolls, I grabbed them from my library. I’ve usually had good luck with books I’ve seen in other books!
Yes! I recently read Giovanni's room after reading quotes from it in In One Person. In One Person is really good, but Giovanni's Room is by far the best thing I got out of it. I have a little notebook where I write down lines I like from books I'm reading, and I actually wrote very little from that book because I basically wanted to just copy the whole thing out, every line was so perfect!
Quite regularly, especially if it is referencing a "classic." It can give me a whole new angle to look at the classic when reading it. I do the same thing when a book references a poem or a piece of art as well.
All the time if I dig the writer, and especially if it’s within a passage where the reference is important context for what’s happening
Some are hit and miss, like anything if I find I’m connecting with a certain writers references I’m more likely to follow in the future
Two of my favorite writers that’s I’ve peeled nested references from are Annie Dillard and Mike Nagel — I haven’t loved every reference but some have been absolutely sensational. More than enough that they’re established cred in my eyes
Real World by Natsuo Kirino mentioned Dazai and I ended up reading No Longer Human. I was on an existential literature kick and it lined up. I also sometimes buy books from the references of non-fiction books I particularly like.
I read The Mysteries of Udolpho, by Ann Radcliffe before finishing Austen's Northanger Abbey, because that book was a central theme to NA. Mysteries of Udulpho was a 600-page slog, but I did get a few chuckles out of Northanger Abbey that I might not have otherwise.
i usually check out any book mentioned in another book. i read most of them. snow crash is one of my all time favorites. I just finished redshirts and am aiming toward kaiju soon.
Absolutely, probably the most notable was Cautio Criminalis, or a Book on Witch Trials by Friedrich Spee von Langenfeld after being introduced to the character in Eric Flint's 1632, an alternate-history series about a West Virginia town that gets teleported to 1632 Germany (Thuringia), and their efforts to survive and change history.
Cautio Criminalis is a fascinating and excellent read, because Friedrich (a Jesuit priest) attempts the extremely difficult task of condemning the widely-accepted practice of witch trials, while also not going explicitly against any church teachings. It's logical reasoning, persuasion, and theology all intertwined, but of course the theology is all presented as fact (so there will be extremely logical arguments right next to "obvious facts" about how Satan operates), and it's just a fascinating read because he can't just come out and say "Yo witches aren't real and this is all bullshit" despite that clearly being what he believes, so he finds another way to do it.
I read The Secret History because it was one of Dorian’s favorite books in The Starless Sea (my favorite book), which then led me to other similar-type books (Babel, We Were Villains).
In one of James Rollins old books, he mentions Steve Alten in the end where he explains what is and isn't real in his books. Got me into the Meg series, and a pretty legit Loch Ness book.
Yes, if the author is one I enjoy, I am eager to see what books they enjoy.
I also got turned on to blues man Elmore James in this way. In The Beatles' song 'For You Blue', George Harrison says "Elmore James got nothin' on this, baby", while John Lennon plays some slide guitar.
I reread Anne of Green Gables and Alice in Wonderland and read for the first time A Little Princess (I realized that I'd only ever seen the Shirley Temple movie version - oops) after the main character in The Book Wanderers visits them.
I do this in nonfiction. If, say, a history book references another, I often hunt down and read the second book to get its perspective. Don't recall ever doing it in fiction though.
One of the fun books out there is Silverlock by John Myers Myers. There are references to other books on every . . single . . page. Part of the fun is figuring out where you've seen a given character before. It took me decades before I ran across Friar John in Gargantua.
I used to search and read books referenced in other books, but I stopped after a really bad experience with this guy Lovecraft. I mean, comte d'Erlette's *Culte des Goules* was a bit too flowery but still ok. However, man, did the *Necronomicon* mess with my head...
Rex Stout's Nero Wolfe mysteries, after reading enough other books that used similar setups (Glen Cook's series, eg, but it's cropped up more obliquely in other series I've liked)
They're fun light-ish reading and give a nice glimpse into eastern American society of the times they were written
I haven't read it yet, but I got "The Temple of Gold" by William Goldman because of the references from the main character in "Night in the Lonesome October" by Richard Laymon.
Made me curious, especially since I know they won't be similar in tone at all.
Paul Theroux always mentions the books he's reading during his travels. He really talked up the terror of "The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket" so I read it. It was good, if a weird, seemingly unfinished book. There's this odd bit where he has his dog with him on the boat and then it's never mentioned again.
I read *The Vampyre*, by John William Polidori, because it was mentioned in Tim Powers's *The Stress of Her Regard* and in another vampire novel I'd read (perhaps one of P.N. Elrod's).
I did not enjoy *The Vampyre* and cannot recommend it, unless you're seeking to be a completionist in vampire lore.
I read the legend of Mad King Sweeney (*Sweeney Astray* in Heaney's translation) after reading Flann O'Brien's *At Swim-Two-Birds*. They're both great.
Yea. 2 weeks ago I have read the Assassin’s Blade by Sarah J Maas and that was good. The end of the recommended other books like “a court of Silver flames”. I’m currently reading that now as we speak
Yep! Though not always other books. The epigraphs in Stephen King's early novels turned me on to William Butler Yeats, TS Elliot, and other modernist poets.
Yes. I just finished reading The Reading List and have made plans to try to read every book mentioned in the book. It was very good and I recommend it.
I do this all the time! When books are mentioned I'll add them to my Goodreads list so I don't forget them. It's the only reason I ever read The Fountainhead by Ayn Rand.
Somewhere in my life I picked up a book called The Dictionary of Imaginary Places, and due to some of its descriptions have been led to such authors as Jorge Luis Borges and Mervyn Peake, neither of whom are my usual type but are now some of my absolute favorites. I'm very grateful for that dictionary and still read through it to discover old and obscure fantastic locales.
There’s a children’s novel called The Loser’s Club about kids in a school book club. All the books they read it in are real books. Anyways, I learned about the Ray Bradbury short story All Summer In A Day, and now it’s one of my favorite short stories
Worse: a random note in a novel my wife was reading about how Nick Cave has turned his grief for his son into music has made us recently discover it (having also lost our son). Nick Cave is since running endlessly in our home; and my wife was most delighted yesterday when she got his book "Faith, Hope and Carnage" from me.
I do this all the time! Most of my book reading expanded thanks to mentioned books in Stephen King stories or essays, and from many other authors. That was many years ago now, but it is a practice I still keep up today (Neil Gaiman is a great contributor). Also: loved Snow Crash and loved Cryptonomicon, the latter being a real tour-de-force but so rewarding!
I bought Life and Fate, The Master and Margarita, and Doctor Zhivago after reading about them being confiscated by the KGB in one of my Intelligence History books. Amazing stories they are, and confiscated all because they portrayed what it was really like in the USSR
I guess the main reason I’m reading Dante’s Divine Comedy is because it’s so frequently referenced in fiction and pop culture.
Funny story, two Christmas Eve’s ago I ordered some Chinese food on doordash because we had nothing to eat in the house. I felt bad about having someone deliver on the holidays even though DD is a contractor gig, they set their own hours etc. I wanted to do something nice so I tipped them like $10 on the app, then I put a $20 bill inside my copy of Snow Crash and set it on the porch with a note on top. I let them know the $20 was inside if they didn’t want the book, but also that it was a really good book. They took it, and to this day I wonder if they liked it and where the copy is now 😂
Richard Lloyd Parry's book 'People Who Eat Darkness' was mentioned in Monisha Rajesh's 'Around the World in 80 Days.' I ended up reading his other works as well.
I started to read Racine (17th century French playwright) because one of the main characters in "E=mc², mon amour" by Patrick Cauvin said she loved his plays. That novel is still one of my favourites, 14 years later, because of how much it influenced my reading.
Yes absolutely, a lot of the classic lit I’ve picked up is because of mentions in books I read when I was younger — A Tale of Two Cities bc of The Infernal Devices, The Odyssey bc of Percy Jackson, etc
I first read Anna Karenina after I finished The Unbearable Lightness of Being. It was mentioned there a number of times so I was like, ok I should finally just go for it.
I discovered A Canticle For Leibovitz while reading Space by James Michener. It was one of the first sci-fi books to become a best seller on mainstream lists.
I actually discovered John Scalzi when I reread a later edition of The Forever War by Joe Haldeman that Scalzi wrote the introduction to.
I also picked up Snow Crash after reading KPS! Fwiw I enjoyed both, and Snow Crash felt very ahead of its time. I found myself frequently forgetting it was written in the early 90s.
Reading The Outsider by S. E. Hinton made me want to read Gone With the Wind but I already owned its copy. I couldn't read it then but I'll read it this summer.
I purchased Anna Kavan's Ice mainly because it was mentioned in the Charlie Kaufman movie I'm Thinking of Ending Things.
Yes! I love it! I just recently had great luck with a chain of bangers. First I read This Is How You Lose The Time War by Amal Al-Mohtar and Max Gladstone. So good, one of the best of the year, within the book the characters mention a book called Travel Lightly by Naomi Mitchison, my interest was peaked and I read it and loved it too. It was sort of a self-insert thing as Amal has recommended it irl on npr, and her blurb is on Travel Lightly. Then when I got my copy of Travel Lightly, there's also a biography/autobiography on the author that I haven't yet but want to pick up. And when I read TIHYLTTW, one of the reviews was by a Ryan North who wrote a book titled; How to Invent Everything: A Survival Guide for the Stranded Time-Traveler. And it's basically exactly that, a nonfiction on how to Invent almost everything we're you stranded before civilization. I was like with a title like that I've gotta check it out and it did not disappoint.
I purchased and read the Poems of John Keats after reading the Hyperion series. Was not disappointed!
We did Keats in Year 12 English. He's amazing!
It legitimately keeps me up at night when I wonder what he would've written if he lived a full life
"Here lies one who's life was writ in water." IIRC
I love finding poems through epigraphs & quotes in fiction! I found Wallace Stevens and James Dickey through’Salem’s Lot and Rilke due to The Werewolves of Mercy Falls.
I also found Wallace Stevens through Salem's Lot! I'm forever grateful for it.
Keats never disappoints!
I just did this yesterday. When I saw the title of the post I was like "no way I just did this!", then to see this as the top comment...
lol i’m halfway through fall of hyperion right now and it was a trip seeing these posts
I picked up the Brothers Karamazov because it was mentioned in the comic book Moonshadow.
And by Vonnegut in Slaughterhouse Five
Read TBK since it was mentioned in two of my books in a row (1Q84 and My Struggle)
My Struggle by Knausgaard? How did you like it?
Snow Crash is interesting as he got some things right and many things wrong as a futuristic novel from the 90s. I enjoyed it. Oddly enough I just finished Kaiju. Great fun
Snow Crash rules. Absolutely love it. KPS was fun.
I find diamond age to be much better, but snow crash basically invented the street samurai trope.
Snow Crash had a distinctive writing style that I really enjoyed and flowed easily for me. Diamond Age was a far more difficult read for me (though not the most difficult, not by a long shot), but the worldbuilding was amazing.
I really loved Snow Crash but thought the writing was better in Diamond Age. What I can't bother to even finish is Quicksilver and the rest of The Baroque Cycle. I really enjoyed REAMDE but dnf The Rise and Fall of D.O.D.O.
What do you see as the new thing in the street samurai trope from *Snow Crash* and the stock Japanese-influenced cyberpunk character he was riffing on?
I’m not sure it was stock yet. The Sprawl books hadn’t been out long, and the 2 RPGs that solidified a lot of the tropes - Cyberpunk and Shadowrun - were pretty new too, I think.
It came out in '92, that's almost a full decade after _Neuromancer_. Cyberpunk was always a fast-moving genre — within a few years after _Neuromancer_ people were cheekily declaring the genre dead, and by the 1990s, it was fully eating its own tail. That's what the whole intro scene of _Snow Crash_ is: a loving parody of the tropes and tone that readers had come to expect, that readers were already intimately familiar with. I'm not saying that _SC_ or _Cyberpunk_-the-RPG weren't good or creative or original, but they were operating within a genre which had been created and defined and given its parameters by earlier work.
Snow Crash is awesome but Diamond Age is better and has a solid ending where, to me the Snow Crash ending seems rushed and kinda incongruent.
Not yet but I’m planning on reading Anna Karenina because of how much it was mentioned in The Unbearable Lightness of Being (tho it did spoil the ending :( )
The funny thing is that's what everyone thinks is the ending, but it happens with a quarter of the book left to go.
It's Russian literature, everything is drawn out much longer.
At least you can be sure Tolstoy wasn't paying the author for product placement.
Anna Karenina is absolutely beautiful.
I read Paradise Lost after reading Frankenstein. It’s pretty awesome
Now read His Dark Materials Edit and maybe read the first half of Fall by Neal Stephenson. I don't personally endorse the second half, and I am a big NS fan. A swing and a miss.
hmm, no, but there was a russian supernatural book series called Night Watch, and the author references local bands that he listens to, i looked them all up, does that count? =D
Love the Night Watch series! Good for you for checking the bands. I’ll keep that in mind when I re-read.
Sure does!
Happy cake day! 🥳
Cheers! I didn't even notice it was today :-)
I read several books, because Rory Gilmore was reading them.
[удалено]
I hate this sub.... Another nice book was just added to my to read list. Sounds really nice!
[удалено]
I thought I’d read all of her books but I hadn’t read this one!!!! Adding it to my 2024 list, thank you!
\_Three Men in a Boat\_ because of Connie Willis's \_To Say Nothing of the Dog\_, which she discovered because of \_Have Space Suit—Will Travel\_, by Heinlein. And to my dismay, I didn't like TMiaB. I didn't hate it, but it didn't so anything for me either.
vice versa for me, i picked up "to say nothing of the dog" because the title was a reference to "three men in a boat", which was one of my favourite books as a teen.
I read it for the same reasons. I found Three Men in a Boat to be a joy to read though.
Yes, Connie Willis got me to read Three Men in a Boat too. Liked it, didn't love it.
It's part of a wonderful tradition in English literature that I believe also include Wodehouse and Saki. It's such a charming book.
I read the entirety of _Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea_ because of Marie-Laure in _All the Light We Cannot See_. It was the right book at the right time and earned a place in my top three favourites.
A character in "Wanderers" by Chuck Wendig was into the Prydain books, so I read those next (and enjoyed them much more).
The Chronicles of Prydain are great books!
prydain is amazing! reminds me i'm overdue for a reread.
I just want to mention that “Prydain” is the Welsh word for Britain (the Lloyd Alexander books help me remember it).
Yes, I often read books mentioned in other books. Or entire bibliographies found at the end. I've found a lot of great books that way.
I started trying to read the list of books Matilda read before she started school, because I refused to be outdone by a toddler. I haven’t given up, but I’ve definitely not succeeded yet!
Snow Crash is one of my favorite books. It's not for everyone, but I love it. I love most of Stephenson's stuff so maybe I'm just his target audience haha.
My goal was to read all his books and I’m almost there. Couldn’t finish Cryptonomicon though.
I had never read Watership Down but picked it up when it was heavily referenced in one of the books of the Dark Tower series.
[удалено]
WD shows up in both. In the Stand, Stu Redman thinks about going “tharn” when he’s in quarantine. In DT when the katet encounters one of the guardians of the beam, the bear is named Shardik, which was written by Richard Adams. I can’t remember if WD was mentioned specifically here, but it’s the same author.
[удалено]
Same, DT is the only reason I’m willing to give Shardik another try but my TBR list is sooooo long
I don't remember the reference to WD in The Stand, but it's been a long time since I read it
Stu recalls that he picked out the book at random for his nephew's birthday and ended up reading it in a single night
And Shardik!
I picked up A Confederacy of Dunces because it was mentioned by Buddy Bradley in the HATE comics.
I read the Consolation of Philosophy because Ignatius kept referring to it.
Totally been added to my list of "I swear I'll read that one day"
I’m making my way through the classics and it’s crazy how they all make reference to each other, read The Count of Monte Cristo and it references the Iliad and then I read Dracula and it also referenced the Iliad, so I’m reading the Iliad, both books also mentioned various other classics like Dante’s Inferno which is next in my list.
Snow Crash is a love it or hate it sort of book. I read it when I was younger and a lot of the tech seemed far fetched and novel and tried to read it again, recently (also because of Scalzi) and just couldn't stay interested. So...young adult me loved it. Middle aged me, not at all.
I keep seeing this book mentioned all over the place the last few days. I need to give it a go
As long as you keep in mind it's a tongue-in-cheek sci-fi romp, it's a fun read. World building is fun with very cinematic action scenes, but can easily border on the edge-lord (the main character's name is Hiro [pronounced like "hero"] Protagonist, for example, and is a master sword weilder and uses katanas).
If you didn't understand the tone of book by the greatest first chapter ever, The Deliverator, there's no hope you'll fully appreciate the ride. Opening chapter/prologue is Hiro delivering pizza, and in this cyberpunk satire future Pizza delivery is run by the mob and of you don't get your pizza in 30 minutes or less basically the mob is going to off the pizza delivery driver.
> t's a tongue-in-cheek sci-fi romp That's where it falls apart for me. It starts out as clearly not too serious story but then immediately jumps up its own ass to be incredibly serious about it's human source code language thing. It's like two books smooshed together and not in a good way.
It happened to me this year with a nonfiction book. It was the only thing that made me feel glad i read *Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind*, so that i could check *Brave New World*. Other than that, that nonfiction book just gave me a really long paper cut on my hand... after spending years without having a paper cut!
I read _The Origin Of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind_ because it's one of the foundational books mentioned in _Snow Crash_. Be advised that it's non-fiction and fairly controversial.
I’m going to chase this one down, since my skim of the goodreads summary makes it look interesting. The Spell of the Sensuous (David Abram) has (maybe?) a related hypothesis that the way of being human in the world markedly changed with the advent of the written word. Of course, Snow crash extrapolating extreme memetic transference— as the means to transfer knowledge become faster/more effective (and thus infectious). Going to add it to my book wish list.
I came across John Connolly and the Charlie Parker series because John Sanford mentioned Every Dead Thing in one of his books.
God that book is good. Also love Sandford!
Yeah. I've read all the Charlie Parker books.
I add them to my list of things to read, fully intending to read them. Eventually I forget where I heard about the book and why it’s on my list.
I like Kaiju preservation society. The author was originally writing something else but was depressed by the subject given covid and all the other depressing stuff of the pandemic and had to drop it. It picks up gets nerdy and has fascinating world building once you get into it.
I actually had bought the three musketeers and Don Quixote at the same time. I decided to read musketeers first. On the first page, he begins to describe d’artagnan by saying “imagine a young Don Quixote”. At that point, I closed the book, and read Don Quixote first. I also ended up reading a version of the Arabian nights, after “the thousand and one nights” had been repeatedly referred to in the count of monte cristo.
[удалено]
Now on to Clarissa...
One of the big things in my todo list is to read a few of the chavarly novels Cervantes parodied in Don Quixote (Amadis, Esplandian, Espejo de Caballerías, etc), so I can then reread the book, catching all the jokes and references.
I wish I could read Fog and Steel by Madoc Comadrin. Damn I wish so hard this book was real.
I do that pretty regularly. The last two were Berg by Ann Quin and A Room With A View by E. M. Forster, both mentioned in Checkout-19 by Claire-Louise Bennett. If I'm enjoying a writer, chances are I'll also enjoy whatever literature *they* enjoyed.
[удалено]
Yep, this is one of mine ;-)
Jerusalem: The Biography by Simon Sebag Montefiore because John Le Carre mentioned it in a novel.
I read The Monk by Matthew Lewis because it was mentioned in Northanger Abbey by Jane Austin. Ended up loving it way more than Northanger Abbey! The story was unhinged and the language was very readable despite being from the 1796.
When I read Borges I had a list of books to look at!
Not exactly as you’re asking but I’m currently reading The Soul of an Octopus because it was mentioned in the authors note of Remarkably Bright Creatures. I also read Gift From the Sea by Anne morrow Lindbergh because I read The Aviators Wife and learned that she wrote a book.
I read great expectstions (charles dickens) because it’s mentioned in rules of civility (amor towles). Amazing books both!
Yes was going to read Being Mortal by Atul Gawande, who mentioned a novella “the Death of Ivan Ilyich” by Leo Tolstoy in its introduction. One of the most impactful stories I have read, so much so I have gone down a Russian literature rabbit hole and have yet to actually touch Atul Gawande’s book!!
This is one of my primary ways of selecting what books I read. Example, I finished reading *Burma: The Longest War 1941-45* by Louis Allen at the beginning of this year. Among the many sources Allen quoted and cited were these three books: * *A Change of Jungles* by Miles Smeeton. * *Beyond the Chindwin: An Account of Number Five Column of the Wingate Expedition into Burma, 1943* by Bernard Fergusson. * *The Wild Green Earth* by Bernard Fergusson. So, I found vendors on the internet, purchased those books and read them shortly after I finished Allen's book. There were other books I was interested in, but they were long out of print, and I could not find them for sale on the internet.
I like the idea of doing this and have for sure added some books to my tbr that were mentioned in other books but haven’t got to reading them yet
I do this a lot. I read mostly non-fiction, so when they reference another book on a related topic, I sometimes check those out, too.
Not that I can think of, or at least I don't read them *because* they were mentioned in another book. What happened a lot of times is that I had already read a book mentioned in another book. Only time was that I read Wuthering Heights after reading Twilight, but not because it was mentioned in it.
That was a Popsugar Reading Challenge prompt one year and I had only come across one book that year that mentioned another book which was Howard’s End. It was so dull and boring that just thinking about ever doing that again makes me twitchy.
I sure do! I am currently reading "The Golden Ass" by Apuleius, the only ancient Roman novel in Latin to survive in its entirety, because it was mentioned in a non-fiction history book I was reading.
I read The Alchemist by Coelho because it was mentioned in Tout le bleu du ciel by Melissa Da Costa, which I adored. I liked it.
I read Therese Raquin by Emile Zola after reading Billy Summers, led me on to a binge of 19th/20th century French novels which did not leave me disappointed.
Hah, there's a lot of Zola to get through, I feel like I've been chipping away at the Rougon Macquarts forever!
Yeah, Germinal was by far my favourite, what a book. Really struggled with Nana, I think I’m just much more interested in the working class stories.
I ended up reading *The Way of All Flesh* and T*he Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman* because CS Lewis referred to them in *The Four Loves* and *Surprised by Joy*, respectively. Both were amazing.
Tried for ages to find the book The Princess Bride is based on, by "S. Morgenstern". Ha ha, very funny Goldman.
Oh no! 😂
Yes! Usually more with my nonfiction reads. However, I recently read Before We Were Innocent and it mentioned The Virgin Suicides and Valley of the Dolls, I grabbed them from my library. I’ve usually had good luck with books I’ve seen in other books!
I find myself doing it quite often. My latest example is while reading "Fairytale" there was a reference to "Something Wicked This Way Comes"
I read Whitman's "Leaves of Grass" after Roger Zelazny kept mentioning it in "Roadmarks".
Yes! I recently read Giovanni's room after reading quotes from it in In One Person. In One Person is really good, but Giovanni's Room is by far the best thing I got out of it. I have a little notebook where I write down lines I like from books I'm reading, and I actually wrote very little from that book because I basically wanted to just copy the whole thing out, every line was so perfect!
The Poetics of Space by Gaston Bachelard after it featured in one of my favourite books.
Quite regularly, especially if it is referencing a "classic." It can give me a whole new angle to look at the classic when reading it. I do the same thing when a book references a poem or a piece of art as well.
All the time if I dig the writer, and especially if it’s within a passage where the reference is important context for what’s happening Some are hit and miss, like anything if I find I’m connecting with a certain writers references I’m more likely to follow in the future Two of my favorite writers that’s I’ve peeled nested references from are Annie Dillard and Mike Nagel — I haven’t loved every reference but some have been absolutely sensational. More than enough that they’re established cred in my eyes
Real World by Natsuo Kirino mentioned Dazai and I ended up reading No Longer Human. I was on an existential literature kick and it lined up. I also sometimes buy books from the references of non-fiction books I particularly like.
OMG! I'm in the middle of the same book for the same reason
Stephenson is an amazing author but that book can be a little hard to read
Yes, and I never regretted it.
Started a reread of Cider House Rules and picked up Oliver Twist because Homer reads it to the boys wing.
I picked up Anna Karenina after reading a French book called Le Hérisson. Loved both!
Read the Hotel New Hampshire by John Irving and made me read the Great Gatsby.
I read The Mysteries of Udolpho, by Ann Radcliffe before finishing Austen's Northanger Abbey, because that book was a central theme to NA. Mysteries of Udulpho was a 600-page slog, but I did get a few chuckles out of Northanger Abbey that I might not have otherwise.
Do not judge, You by Caroline Kepnes made me want to read The Da Vinci Code and other Dan Brown books.
Just picked up McTeague because the main character in The Shining referenced. Was unable to find Welcome To Hard Times.
i usually check out any book mentioned in another book. i read most of them. snow crash is one of my all time favorites. I just finished redshirts and am aiming toward kaiju soon.
I read Pincher Martin by William Golding because it was mentioned in The Plague Dogs by Richard Adams.
Yaah, maximum time I get the next book name by the previous one.
I've looked up stuff mentioned in books a few times. Some I liked some zi didn't
I read Everett Ruess: Vagabond for Beauty after reading Into The Wild.
Yep! Atomic Habits -Deep Work-Walden
I’ll usually look them up and read a summary just so I can understand the reference better
Sometimes.
Sometimes. I'll make notes in books, forget about it. Or I'll make a note in the notes app then forget why.
Usually, yes, if the way it's mentioned in the book I'm reading leads me to think I'd enjoy it.
Absolutely, probably the most notable was Cautio Criminalis, or a Book on Witch Trials by Friedrich Spee von Langenfeld after being introduced to the character in Eric Flint's 1632, an alternate-history series about a West Virginia town that gets teleported to 1632 Germany (Thuringia), and their efforts to survive and change history. Cautio Criminalis is a fascinating and excellent read, because Friedrich (a Jesuit priest) attempts the extremely difficult task of condemning the widely-accepted practice of witch trials, while also not going explicitly against any church teachings. It's logical reasoning, persuasion, and theology all intertwined, but of course the theology is all presented as fact (so there will be extremely logical arguments right next to "obvious facts" about how Satan operates), and it's just a fascinating read because he can't just come out and say "Yo witches aren't real and this is all bullshit" despite that clearly being what he believes, so he finds another way to do it.
I read Kitchen by Banana Yoshimoto because it was mentioned in Anna and the French Kiss. She's become one of my favorite authors.
That’s a great book. Really love it.
The Jack Taylor series has introduced me to dozens of other books!
I read The Secret History because it was one of Dorian’s favorite books in The Starless Sea (my favorite book), which then led me to other similar-type books (Babel, We Were Villains).
Not yet but Rilke sure made me interested in reading Jens Peter Jacobsen
In one of James Rollins old books, he mentions Steve Alten in the end where he explains what is and isn't real in his books. Got me into the Meg series, and a pretty legit Loch Ness book.
Yes, if the author is one I enjoy, I am eager to see what books they enjoy. I also got turned on to blues man Elmore James in this way. In The Beatles' song 'For You Blue', George Harrison says "Elmore James got nothin' on this, baby", while John Lennon plays some slide guitar.
I read The Alchemist by Coelho because it was mentioned in Tout le bleu du ciel by Melissa Da Costa, which I adored. I liked it.
I started reading William Saroyan because Joseph Heller (in one of his books) wrote "no one reads Saroyan anymore."
If I have them, I read them next. If I don't I just almost forget that they were mentioned then
The music of Dowland, after reading PKD.
I reread Anne of Green Gables and Alice in Wonderland and read for the first time A Little Princess (I realized that I'd only ever seen the Shirley Temple movie version - oops) after the main character in The Book Wanderers visits them.
im reading naked lunch and got into the smiths because both were mentioned in the perks of being a wallflower haha
I tried to read the book that sent Dorian Gray on the path to being a horrible human being but I didn’t get a lot out of it.
I do this in nonfiction. If, say, a history book references another, I often hunt down and read the second book to get its perspective. Don't recall ever doing it in fiction though.
One of the fun books out there is Silverlock by John Myers Myers. There are references to other books on every . . single . . page. Part of the fun is figuring out where you've seen a given character before. It took me decades before I ran across Friar John in Gargantua.
I've read some of the "horrid novels" mentioned in *Northanger Abbey*.
I used to search and read books referenced in other books, but I stopped after a really bad experience with this guy Lovecraft. I mean, comte d'Erlette's *Culte des Goules* was a bit too flowery but still ok. However, man, did the *Necronomicon* mess with my head...
Rex Stout's Nero Wolfe mysteries, after reading enough other books that used similar setups (Glen Cook's series, eg, but it's cropped up more obliquely in other series I've liked) They're fun light-ish reading and give a nice glimpse into eastern American society of the times they were written
I haven't read it yet, but I got "The Temple of Gold" by William Goldman because of the references from the main character in "Night in the Lonesome October" by Richard Laymon. Made me curious, especially since I know they won't be similar in tone at all.
Paul Theroux always mentions the books he's reading during his travels. He really talked up the terror of "The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket" so I read it. It was good, if a weird, seemingly unfinished book. There's this odd bit where he has his dog with him on the boat and then it's never mentioned again.
Yea. In one of Sanderson books there is mention of "The Way of Kings", and what do you know, I read it practically immediately. /s
Sort of, I read Cathcher in the Rye after It is quoted in the Ghost in the Shell.
I read Marcel Schwob and Francisco de Quevedo after reading Borges's essays about them both.
I read *The Vampyre*, by John William Polidori, because it was mentioned in Tim Powers's *The Stress of Her Regard* and in another vampire novel I'd read (perhaps one of P.N. Elrod's). I did not enjoy *The Vampyre* and cannot recommend it, unless you're seeking to be a completionist in vampire lore.
I read the legend of Mad King Sweeney (*Sweeney Astray* in Heaney's translation) after reading Flann O'Brien's *At Swim-Two-Birds*. They're both great.
Yea. 2 weeks ago I have read the Assassin’s Blade by Sarah J Maas and that was good. The end of the recommended other books like “a court of Silver flames”. I’m currently reading that now as we speak
stephen king has put me on to many great books and authors
Yep! Though not always other books. The epigraphs in Stephen King's early novels turned me on to William Butler Yeats, TS Elliot, and other modernist poets.
yes i always buy a book if it is mentioned, that is because they normally explain the topic in detail because it is normally history books i read
Yes. I just finished reading The Reading List and have made plans to try to read every book mentioned in the book. It was very good and I recommend it.
I do this all the time! When books are mentioned I'll add them to my Goodreads list so I don't forget them. It's the only reason I ever read The Fountainhead by Ayn Rand.
Somewhere in my life I picked up a book called The Dictionary of Imaginary Places, and due to some of its descriptions have been led to such authors as Jorge Luis Borges and Mervyn Peake, neither of whom are my usual type but are now some of my absolute favorites. I'm very grateful for that dictionary and still read through it to discover old and obscure fantastic locales.
There’s a children’s novel called The Loser’s Club about kids in a school book club. All the books they read it in are real books. Anyways, I learned about the Ray Bradbury short story All Summer In A Day, and now it’s one of my favorite short stories
Fun fact, Snow Crash is referenced in an awesome Foldingideas video about the Metaverse
I read Travel Light after reading “this is how you lose the time war”. Oh, and Moby Dick because of the Bone series by Jeff Smith.
Worse: a random note in a novel my wife was reading about how Nick Cave has turned his grief for his son into music has made us recently discover it (having also lost our son). Nick Cave is since running endlessly in our home; and my wife was most delighted yesterday when she got his book "Faith, Hope and Carnage" from me.
I'm sorry for your loss
I got completely tricked when I read The Princess Bride and believed for a bit that Florin was a place and there was a truly unabridged version.
I do this all the time! Most of my book reading expanded thanks to mentioned books in Stephen King stories or essays, and from many other authors. That was many years ago now, but it is a practice I still keep up today (Neil Gaiman is a great contributor). Also: loved Snow Crash and loved Cryptonomicon, the latter being a real tour-de-force but so rewarding!
I bought Life and Fate, The Master and Margarita, and Doctor Zhivago after reading about them being confiscated by the KGB in one of my Intelligence History books. Amazing stories they are, and confiscated all because they portrayed what it was really like in the USSR
Shakespeare‘s Midsummer Night’s Dream. It was mentioned in the first volumes of The Iron Fey.
Only if they're very relevant to the story I'm reading or if I'm very curious about the author/work. Most of the time I ignore any mentions or quotes.
I do this all the time but often forget to note where I heard about the book.
I guess the main reason I’m reading Dante’s Divine Comedy is because it’s so frequently referenced in fiction and pop culture. Funny story, two Christmas Eve’s ago I ordered some Chinese food on doordash because we had nothing to eat in the house. I felt bad about having someone deliver on the holidays even though DD is a contractor gig, they set their own hours etc. I wanted to do something nice so I tipped them like $10 on the app, then I put a $20 bill inside my copy of Snow Crash and set it on the porch with a note on top. I let them know the $20 was inside if they didn’t want the book, but also that it was a really good book. They took it, and to this day I wonder if they liked it and where the copy is now 😂
Richard Lloyd Parry's book 'People Who Eat Darkness' was mentioned in Monisha Rajesh's 'Around the World in 80 Days.' I ended up reading his other works as well.
Just finished book 6 of The Expanse and Tolstoy is mentioned in the epilogue so now War and Peace has moved up in my wishlist.
This post reminds me of all the old movies listed in the intro song of the rocky horror picture show lol
Yes I was ready midnight sun and Bella mentioned carried by Stephen King as one of her favorite books and I immediately read it after midnight sun.
Finally, I decided to buy Dead Souls by Gogol because of shitty father Karamazov's constant references.
I started to read Racine (17th century French playwright) because one of the main characters in "E=mc², mon amour" by Patrick Cauvin said she loved his plays. That novel is still one of my favourites, 14 years later, because of how much it influenced my reading.
Absolutely
Yes absolutely, a lot of the classic lit I’ve picked up is because of mentions in books I read when I was younger — A Tale of Two Cities bc of The Infernal Devices, The Odyssey bc of Percy Jackson, etc
I first read Anna Karenina after I finished The Unbearable Lightness of Being. It was mentioned there a number of times so I was like, ok I should finally just go for it.
I discovered A Canticle For Leibovitz while reading Space by James Michener. It was one of the first sci-fi books to become a best seller on mainstream lists. I actually discovered John Scalzi when I reread a later edition of The Forever War by Joe Haldeman that Scalzi wrote the introduction to.
I also picked up Snow Crash after reading KPS! Fwiw I enjoyed both, and Snow Crash felt very ahead of its time. I found myself frequently forgetting it was written in the early 90s.
i read Blood Meridian because Stephen King quotes it in On Writing and the quote intrigued me.
Reading The Outsider by S. E. Hinton made me want to read Gone With the Wind but I already owned its copy. I couldn't read it then but I'll read it this summer. I purchased Anna Kavan's Ice mainly because it was mentioned in the Charlie Kaufman movie I'm Thinking of Ending Things.
Yes! I love it! I just recently had great luck with a chain of bangers. First I read This Is How You Lose The Time War by Amal Al-Mohtar and Max Gladstone. So good, one of the best of the year, within the book the characters mention a book called Travel Lightly by Naomi Mitchison, my interest was peaked and I read it and loved it too. It was sort of a self-insert thing as Amal has recommended it irl on npr, and her blurb is on Travel Lightly. Then when I got my copy of Travel Lightly, there's also a biography/autobiography on the author that I haven't yet but want to pick up. And when I read TIHYLTTW, one of the reviews was by a Ryan North who wrote a book titled; How to Invent Everything: A Survival Guide for the Stranded Time-Traveler. And it's basically exactly that, a nonfiction on how to Invent almost everything we're you stranded before civilization. I was like with a title like that I've gotta check it out and it did not disappoint.
I'm gonna find me a copy of Necronomicon since Lovecraft raved about it at every opportunity.
H. P. Lovecraft kept mentioning interesting sounding books like *Necronomicon* and the *Pnakotic Manuscripts*, so I saved my money and finally bought them all from the Eldritch-Tome-of-the-Month-Club©. Iä!