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We have a game topic...I'm sure some of us read when we're not gaming.

I actually have a Scribd subscription...recently they changed their business model from being able to read unlimited books to being able to read 3 a month, plus any number of "Select" books that the site curates every month...usually around 50 books. I'm not really a fan of this change, but I have to admit that focusing on the select library, I'm finding books that I wouldn't have otherwise just because the selection is otherwise so overwhelming.

For example, I've just finished Sugar Crush: How to Reduce Inflammation, Reverse Nerve Damage, and Reclaim Good Health. Recently I've been reading and watching a lot about sugar and its toxic effects on the human body which the sugar industry has been covering up since the 60s, and the author of this particular book is an actual podiatrist with patience, so that gave his book an unique perspective.

In the book, he postulates that sugar causes inflammation in the body through various means that results in a number of conditions, particularly in the way the inflammation causes nerves to swell and become constricted...most obvious for conditions like carpal tunnel syndrome, but he also believes sugar may have a role in everything from cancer to Alzheimer's, and his reasoning was very compelling. In the second half the book, he recommends a ketogenic diet (high fat, low or no carb)...it was originally designed to treat epilepsy, but he suggests that it's useful for all sorts of things, especially in that it prevents carbs from breaking down into forms of sugar. He also offers a 'plan-B' diet for those that won't adhere to such a strict diet, focusing on foods with a low glycemic load.

While I agree that sugar is a problem in modern society and we need to do away with added sugar in foods (and better educate people on just how bad junk food is), this goes a little too far for my liking. I think people, including myself, would be healthier overall if they were just a little more careful about what they ate. I don't think a diet is really necessary, especially not one as strict as this. Still, it was very interesting material that had more of a medical perspective than the stuff I'd seen so far, so it was a good read.

Keto diet is horseshit (and can even be dangerous in the long term), and honestly so are almost all "diets".

Nutrition science is one of these sciences that really aren't as developed as people think. Findings are often contradictory and/or inconclusive. Sure, there are things we do know, like a diet high in LDL is bad for you, but our bodies are extremely complicated pieces of organic machinery and I fear we've only scratched the surface.

I don't like giving myself headaches. I don't have the absolute best diet but I don't think buying myself a few years at best is worth becoming neurotic over food. I drink water and I eat berries and fruit for dessert. I don't eat much red meat and instead opt for fish and chicken. For sides, instead of fries I'll take mashed potatoes, wax beans and carrots. I like to eat eggs. When I eat sandwiches I use spinach instead of lettuce.

We're omnivores. We can digest pretty much anything. Folk wisdom would conclude that we need a little of everything as well. Of course, too much of anything is a bad bet. You're probably not meant to gulp Pixy Stix as tall as you are every day. You're probably not meant to eat cups and cups of sugar either (which is what soda is like).

I don't get it. Why is a doctor specialized in checking out feet writing about diet issues?

Well, the doctor starts the book by explaining how he gets a lot of patients with diabetic neuropathy, which damages the nerves in their feet along with other areas of their bodies. Apparently at some point it was discovered that this is because the nerves become swollen and constrained in certain areas, and the doctor postulates that sugar has a lot to do with this...he describes several ways that sugar can cause inflammation and cause the nerves to swell, and then discusses how his patients that cut sugar start doing better and even reversing their symptoms.

Again, I found his reasoning compelling, but I feel it's sufficient to cut added sugar, especially from junk food...the idea of trying to cut all sugar, even from the processing of carbs, is a bit extreme for me.

Last night I finished reading John Adams by David McCullough...a biography of the second President of the United States.

It was a colossal read, but well worth it...it made me realize how extraordinary those times must have been, and how thoughtful and wise many of our founding fathers were, including John Adams...a figure that is overlooked compared to some others in that period, but no less important. In addition to being the second president, he also served on the Continental Congress,was a signer of the Treaty of Paris which ended the Revolutionary War, was the United States' first ambassador to Britain, and the first Vice President of the United States, serving under George Washington, and more. His thoughts and opinions carried a lot of weight in those events, and because he was such a prolific writer through his many letters and his diary, many of his candid thoughts and opinions are available to put in such a biography.

But more personally, I have to admit that what really interested me was the parallels that I saw with myself, particularly in my time here on NationStates. He was a person of principle who believed in duty and fiercely believed in the new country, envisioning that it would become the powerful nation that it eventually did. However, because his principles made him fiercly independent, he would almost never be popular and would be often ridiculed, even when at the same time his services would be requested once again. As examples, in serving as a lawyer to the British soldiers involved in the "Boston Massacre", people would claim he had sympathies to Britain and would be outraged when he won the case. As a commissioner to France during the Revolutionary War, his blunt diplomacy and refusal to defer to France incensed them to the point that they attempted to have the Continental Congress recall him. He is best known as the President who signed the Alien and Sedition Acts, something he's looked down on for to this day, but left out is the fact that he felt that slanderous party-affiliated newspapers needed to be curtailed to preserve the Union and prevent civil war. Speaking of parties, his refusal to fall in with one made him the target of both the Democratic-Republicans under Thomas Jefferson, his own Vice-President and former (and future) friend, and the Federalists aligned with Alexander Hamilton. With no evidence, he was accused at various times of being a monarchist, of having British sympathies, of planning to overthrow the government and place himself as King, of being a coward or having French sympathies for resisting war with France, and of just outright being senile, among many other things.

Nonetheless, he persevered through these trials, with the support of his wife and many close friends, and eventually retired to his farm, where he would keep busy for the next thirty years until his death...it's novel that a politician would keep a farm, but being descended from Puritan settlers he believed that the simple life was the best life, and he truly enjoyed farming and maintaining the homestead descended through his family in spite of his prominent position and years spent in fancier settings such as Paris and London. Even when he lived there as a diplomat, his accommodations would be comparatively simple...another thing he was ridiculed for, since at the time a diplomat's accommodations were an indicator of his standing.

In the end, it was a worthy read which has added to my understanding of the period that he lived, which happens to be one of my favourite in history. If it were up to me, biographies such as this would be required reading for high school history, just for the depth and personalization they bring to the events of history.

Potatoes are the only thing that’s needed in this world! (a Chinese light novel, translation in progress)

@Eldarion I leave it to Your Eminence to decide whether this is Truth or Heresy.

This is the writings of a prophet! Praise be to these formerly unfound writings! Praaaaise!

Books I've read(/listened to) over the past year or so:

1984, George Orwell: 5/5
The Martian, Andy Weir: 5/5
The Eyes of the Dragon, Stephen King: 4/5
A Life in Parts, Bryan Cranston (narrated by the author): 5/5
The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, Douglas Adams (narrated by Stephen Fry): 4/5

For anyone going to watch/have watched Rogue One, I strongly recommend Catalyst, a tie-in/prequel to the film. It's written by James Luceno, author of Star Wars masterpieces such as Darth Plagueis (arguably the best Star Wars book of all time). The novel centers around Galen Erso (the film's protagonist's father) and his "friendship" with Imperial chief engineer Orson Krennic as the Death Star program takes shape. It's not Luceno's best (that bar is set too high with his other novels), but it's still a good, enjoyable read that stands on its own.

Further thoughts here: https://www.reddit.com/r/StarWarsEU/comments/5ecbr2/thoughts_on_catalyst/

So, does anyone have a recommendation if I'm a fan of Neil Gaiman and Clive Barker?

Last week, I read the new Star Wars novel Thrawn.

TIMOTHY ZAHN IS BACK AND HE'S BETTER THAN EVER!

The book starts off with a rewrite of the old short story "Mist Encounter", about how the Empire found Thrawn (IMO, really interesting to compare this old version to the new one). It then proceeds to describe Thrawn's rise through the ranks, along with his Watson, Eli Vanto. As a parallel story, the novel also covers Rebels villain Arihnda Pryce's rise to power.

We can again see Thrawn's awesome tactical genius, and it is wonderful as usual to figure out as a reader. It seems like, after the amazing Thrawn trilogy and duology and Outbound Flight, Zahn has finally figured out how he really wants Thrawn to be, with a new consistency to his character.

As for the second storyline, Zahn successfully humanizes Governor Pryce, while simultaneously making me hate her by the end of the story. Really good job developing that character there.

Ultimately, very good book, certainly lives up to the hype and to my expectations. Would definitely reread and recommend.

I just finished reading The Simple Faith of Mister Rogers. I'm not exactly a religious person, but I have always admired Mister Rogers, and this book was a good read about how many of the principles he advocated on his program and in life have foundations in religion (he was an ordained minister, yet never directly mentioned religion on his show).

More important to me, it extolled many of those principles through the many letters he wrote to the book's author over the course of a decade: being your honest self, expressing your feelings in a healthy manner, and finding the good in and building up your neighbors (the people around you) as well as doing so for yourself. It included this quote that really impacted me:

Know this: You should judge every person by his merits. Even someone who seems completely wicked, you must search and find that little speck of good, for in that place, he is not wicked. By this you will raise him up, and help him return to God. And you must also do this for yourself, finding your own good points, one after the other, and raising yourself up. These are how melodies are made, note after note. -Rebbe Nachman of Breslov

Again, I'm not religious, but it struck me how it aligned with my personal philosophy (even if I've also realized I haven't been perfect in following it), and is a core ideal of this region under which we accepted people that would have been spurned in other communities. Another quote:

If the world could know that we don't have to put people in concentration camps and annihilate people just because we're angry with them. And the anger probably goes back for centuries. If we could just know that. Well, you know, I'm passionate about that. I just feel that we need to help children from the earliest time to realize that there are ways that they can express how they feel, ways that aren't hurtful." -Fred Rogers

And not just children...especially in this day and age where society seems to be evermore bitterly divided, angry, and hateful towards people who are different or have different opinions, it's the adults that could stand to learn these lessons as well.

Overall, it was a very good read that enabled a good bit of personal introspection as I was reading it.

Not a novel, but I recommend Rejected Princesses. It is about many of the women you don't get to hear about in the history books that usually focus on white men. Better, it doesn't focus on straight white christian women as one similar book unfortunately does. If anyone else is interested in gender equality/feminism or at least in historical people you probably have never heard of, I recommend this book of short stories.

Though she's one of the least historically important in the book, I'll summarize one of the most entertaining stories, that of Julie "La Maupin" d'Aubigny of France over 3 centuries ago, a bisexual woman with an inspiring life story.
Her father being in charge of training pages under Louis XIV, he had two major contributions to her life, training her in fencing, and threatening to duel any man who came near her.
La Maupin found a loophole though, and started getting it on with her father's boss, the one guy her father couldn't challenge to a duel.
But she was too much for him, and he tried to arrange to have her settle down with some clerk. Having none of that, she ran off with a wandering swordsman.
Making a living singing, and doing dueling demonstrations, during which she quickly surpassed her new lover, while dressed as a man, one heckler yelled that she had to actually be a man. She responded by ripping her shirt open in front of everyone, removing any doubt.
Getting bored of the wandering swordsman, and of men in general, she seduced a merchant's daughter. The merchant didn't like that, and sent his daughter to a convent. La Maupin once again found a loophole, and joined the convent herself, so they could continue their passion in the house of god, before burning the place down and running off in the confusion. But she once again got bored, left her, and returned home.
Sentenced to death for these shenanigans, she used her influence with her first lover, her dad's boss, to get the king to pardon her. After which, she promptly ran off to join the opera.
Then she turned 20.
Her career grew alternately from fighting and f... passioning her way to the top.
Highlights include challenging a guy to a duel who was insulting female opera singers. When he declined in a cowardly way, she beat him up with a cane and took his stuff. When he later complained of being assaulted by a gang of thieves, she found out, called him out on it, and threw his stuff back in his face, declaring in front of everyone that she acted alone.
Another time, a 17th century MRA tried to hit on her with an old timey version of "Does the carpet match the drapes". She got into a fight with him and two of his friends, beat all of them, and stabbed him in the shoulder. Then she hooked up with him anyway just because she could.
Then another time, she attended a royal ball dressed as a man, and courted a young woman who was already being courted by three male suitors. Kissing her in front of everyone, they felt provoked and challenged her a duel. She won.
The dueling laws getting increasing harsh at the time, La Maupin didn't get off completely clean with that one, getting a second pardon from Louis XIV just because he was so entertained by what happened that he used the flimsy excuse that the dueling laws as written didn't say anything about women, only men.
She would die at the age of 37, when at the time most stories about her either described her about the way one might talk about the bride of Satan, or described completely fictional endings about her (re)joining a convent for life as a lesson in repentance, even though the truth is that La Maupin, the woman who did whatever, and whoever, she pleased, finally settled down with her husband, supposedly long after remembering that she was technically married through most of this.

I don't want this truly amazing story, or any of the others, to be forgotten, so please check out Rejected Princesses if you have the chance.

The name looked familiar... then I remembered that Tom Scott's Citation Needed panel show did an episode on her!

Unrelated recommendation, but it's also a fun watch.

WORM 2 IS STARTING GET HYPE

Shit, man, I didn't know you guys were into Worm. I got up to chapter 15, but had to quit because I was reading it and not doing important stuff. I have it bookmarked; I'll get back to it someday!