These sound really interesting- Unfortunately my skill with Irish is really low and so I'll have to keep an eye on those books until I figure out Irish/finish off German.

quran.com is a good place to start because it has multiple translations you can consult and a literal translation if you hover over the Arabic words. I want to note that a lot of the punctuation symbols you'll see in the Quran are only relevant if you want to work on tajweed, the "proper" way to read the Quran out loud.

Since the tajweed notation basically turns the Quran into a sort of musical sheet (for lack of a better term) it's better if you save that until you're on good footing with the language, if you want to learn it.

...I can already tell you're a nerd like me. Let's be friends.

I've not heard of either of those books- what're they about?

Hmm... Have you tried looking at the #bookz undernet IRC channel? They might have what you're looking for. I got the Fever Crumb trilogy as well as the second half of Predator Cities (plus the Traction Codex!) from there.

A fan of Valiant Comics, I take it?

Finished Oliver Twist a little while ago after reading it off and on for the last few months. I enjoyed the book, but found it very slow going for some reason.

I'm speaking from my own experience as someone who's read a fair few early 20th century books (To Kill a Mockingbird, A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court, The Parasite by Arthur Conan Doyle, and a few more), these books are kind of slow-going, probably because they were made for an audience with less entertainment options and thus more reason to stick around and read the books to the finish.

At the moment, I'm reading Dragon Teeth by Michael Crichton and trying to get myself started on Karen Armstrong's biography of the historical Buddha.

I like the name, Dragon's Teeth. What's it about? And what's the biography of the Buddha called?

I keep seeing A Song of Ice and Fire and the other Game of Thrones books around, but I've never bothered to pick one up because I'm tired of hearing about the show. Are the books anything like the show so far?

I've never read a James Michener book before (Gonna look him up in a bit), and On Killing certainly seems like a fascinating read- Media that meditates on human nature are quite interesting imo.

Dune, huh? I've wanted to read the series for quite a while since I'm particularly charmed by the Islam-inspired aspects of the world (I'm a Muslim myself), and I've never heard of Destination: Void before. I'll check it out when I can!

Update: Just finished it. It's certainly fascinating, not gonna lie. Wish there was more material on the Typo Game though, it sounds hilarious.

I like the fact that a football game takes up an entire state and thousands of players on both sides. It's like PUBG but with football.

I have no idea exactly what the hell I'm looking at, but I like it.

A user after my own heart. New as I am, I do look forward to chatting with you whenever we end up on the same thread!

As someone who knows next to scrap about acronyms- What's MLM as Gem said it actually stand for?

I haven't quite decided yet, but I am into writing, so I'm thinking this might be a good place to share any examples of my work I feel are worth sharing. That and generally interacting with the community.

Thanks for the warm welcome, I really appreciate it. Hubski already seems like a place I'd fit in- A cleaner version of Reddit's "style" (though a dark theme would be great) paired with a smaller community/more leisurely environment and the ability to revive old posts. Now all I gotta do is earn that promotion so I can become a more active part of the community!

I'm extremely new here- Less than five minutes as of this writing. I found Hubski through a post complaining about the Eternity and Century Club reddit communities, and I love the clean look and small community (Large communities completely terrify me, not gonna lie), though I took the tour and it was very... preliminary, I guess? It scratched the surface, not much more, so I'm really curious about how Hubski actually works.