The FBG Top 300 Books of All Time (fiction edition) | #2 The Stand by Stephen King | #1 The Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien ... it's a wrap (5 Viewers)

[Don Quixote]

BTW, the Top 70 Books Google sheet is available. If you'd like to have access, shoot me a PM (cc: shuke) and I'll send you the link.

If, for some reason, you'd like your individual tab to be hidden from the masses, let me know. However, if you do opt to hide your rankings, in the interest of fairness, you will not be provided access to the sheet.

Did anyone get a link to the Google sheet? I sent @kupcho1 a pm but didn't hear back, and it looks like he hasn't posted for a couple of weeks now.

Did he get a ban for something?

I do not have it. It looks like he was posting in the Israel-Iran thread around the time disappeared — so, maybe? I just checked the alt Discord, but I don’t see him on the member list there.

 

[Don Quixote]

BTW, the Top 70 Books Google sheet is available. If you'd like to have access, shoot me a PM (cc: shuke) and I'll send you the link.

If, for some reason, you'd like your individual tab to be hidden from the masses, let me know. However, if you do opt to hide your rankings, in the interest of fairness, you will not be provided access to the sheet.

Did anyone get a link to the Google sheet? I sent @kupcho1 a pm but didn't hear back, and it looks like he hasn't posted for a couple of weeks now.

Did he get a ban for something?

Dr. O posted in the MAD thread that Kupcho indicated he was taking a social media break, including FBGs. So, sounding like no ban and just a planned break.

 

[Don Quixote]

Behind a paywall for me, but NYT apparently has an article about men not reading novels anymore. Need to send the authors this thread.

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/06/25/style/fiction-books-men-reading.html

 

[Chaz McNulty]

If anyone wants to read some historical fiction I can't recommend The Warlord Chronicles (King Arthur) by Bernard Cornwell, the Conqueror Series (Genghis Khan) by Conn Iggulden, and the Emperor Series (Julius Caesar) by Conn Iggulden high enough

These are all just amazing and were on my list.

Along the same vein, The Song of Achilles and Circe were good reads.

 

[Don Quixote]

If anyone wants to read some historical fiction I can't recommend The Warlord Chronicles (King Arthur) by Bernard Cornwell, the Conqueror Series (Genghis Khan) by Conn Iggulden, and the Emperor Series (Julius Caesar) by Conn Iggulden high enough

These are all just amazing and were on my list.

Along the same vein, The Song of Achilles and Circe were good reads.

Both are great and made my list. Had Circe at #8 and Song of Achilles at #48.

 

[Psychopav]

@Village Idiot

BTW, the Top 70 Books Google sheet is available. If you'd like to have access, shoot me a PM (cc: shuke) and I'll send you the link.

If, for some reason, you'd like your individual tab to be hidden from the masses, let me know. However, if you do opt to hide your rankings, in the interest of fairness, you will not be provided access to the sheet.

Did anyone get a link to the Google sheet? I sent @kupcho1 a pm but didn't hear back, and it looks like he hasn't posted for a couple of weeks now.

Did he get a ban for something?

Dr. O posted in the MAD thread that Kupcho indicated he was taking a social media break, including FBGs. So, sounding like no ban and just a planned break.

Did he share the google sheet with anyone before taking off?

 

[rockaction]

Behind a paywall for me, but NYT apparently has an article about men not reading novels anymore. Need to send the authors this thread.

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/06/25/style/fiction-books-men-reading.html

I archived it and read it (I'm sorry, NYT). I think the answer to the question "Why did men stop reading fiction?" is a complex one, one that the article rightly points out is a question of time and competition from other pursuits that seek to take up that time (video games, internet, gambling) in either activity or research. The author also briefly touches upon two things that I think are huge ones for those of us that read: the suspicion and problems with which someone like David Foster Wallace readers get associated with, and that most contemporary novels are written either by or for women.

I think those three things are a very big start. Like, away you go and there's no need for me to espouse any identity arguments or gripes any further. I was going to go further with an observation that I used to make about novels that women are going to dominate the form someday and that the very form lends itself to a sex-differentiated response, but I have no really good penetrating insights that one should prove that with other than, "I just have a feeling based on behavior, temperament, and what I believe to be sex differences," so I won't go any further. The article does a bunch of paragraphs that deal with socialization and how popular novels were once dominated by women in the mid-19th century, but there is nothing about innate sex differences (smart author!) to report.

 

[Eephus]

Dr. O posted in the MAD thread that Kupcho indicated he was taking a social media break, including FBGs. So, sounding like no ban and just a planned break.

He'll return with forty or fifty book reports