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---kdl
title "Books"
tags "Offline"
description "Books I'd have read."
---
I have read a lot of books, and I don't aim to write them all down here.
But when I have thoughts about a book, I'll try to write about it here.
# Fantasy
I enjoy speculative fiction a lot, in general, but fantasy more than science fiction.
- John R. R. Tolkien, *The Hobbit*, *The Lord of the Rings*, and much else. These novels are not, as some say, the first fantasy novels, but they - or, rather, a misremembered shadow of them - are the foundation of the genre.
The prose is of a kind I don't think I've seen elsewhere, and as I was read these novels in full twice as a child, I think it has influenced both my own prose and my everyday speech.
Tolkien's racial politics are bad, but rather than a reason to avoid these stories, I think anyone who wants to write fantasy (including running tabletop RPGs!) should be very familiar with the language and philosophy expressed within, if only to understand exactly why, for instance, even the most unproblematic portrayal of "orcs" may raise the hackles of anyone who has been subject to real-world racism.
- Lev Grossman, *The Magicians*, *The Magician King*, and *The Magician's Land*. I read these after first watching Laura Crone's excellent double-feature-length (and spoiler-filled) video "The Harry Potter for Grown-Ups Industrial Complex" ([YouTube](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8BOF8crF7ls)), which I think helped give me a framework to understand these novels and enjoy them much better.