[book post] Unsong by Scott Alexander

“Wow, Lua, I thought you said literally one post ago that you don’t do serial webfiction—” DID I MENTION HOW WEIRD THIS MONTH HAS BEEN. IT HAS BEEN SO WEIRD.

Prior to diving in, I only vaguely knew this as “the webnovel that the SSC dude wrote with tons of kabbalah lore,” and I only vaguely knew kabbalah as “that thing that Final Fantasy 7 stole the name Sepiroth from.” I’m still not sure I know kabbalah, actually?—I mean, I now know a ton about the author’s super trippy fun sci-fi take on kabbalah, but who knows how much that corresponds to the actual mystical tradition :P

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[book post] The Queen's Gambit by Walter Tevis

I read this soon after watching the Netflix miniseries. On a plot level, and on a dialogue level, the book is almost identical to the show—entire scenes & chapters & swathes of dialogue are lifted completely unaltered. (I made a record of all the differences I noticed; there aren’t very many!)

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