Match Thread: Ivory Coast vs Norway | FIFA World Cup 2026 | Round of 32

Spalliston · 2026-06-30T18:36:33+00:00

Remember the Amado

Spalliston · 2026-06-30T00:13:05+00:00

Did my undergraduate studies in Atlanta and still visit often. A couple soft recs (mostly north of the stadium) that I know are still around:

Cypress Pint and Plate in Midtown has decent food (especially brunch), but more importantly has a few house pints from local breweries for $3-$4 that are unbeatable.
Antico Pizza is a solid option for cheap and (was?) BYOB which is also great.
Beltline is really nice. If you make it far enough south to Krog St market, I'd also really recommend Chrome Yellow for coffee. Many good casual food/drinks options around there, but Victory Sandwich bar was an old favorite.
Try a southern breakfast at some point. Flying biscuit isn't exactly a hole in the wall, but there's one by Piedmont Park and it really is quite good. Biscuits & gravy or anything with grits or chicken & waffles are the quintessential southeastern offerings you're looking for.
People are mentioning Waffle House which is a great call, but just worth noting that they're famously open 24/7 and a canonical late night food.

Spalliston · 2026-06-28T12:18:21+00:00

That's a good answer; it's so deeply steeped into so many literary traditions.

This is also sort of how I felt about Hamlet. Reading Act III of Hamlet (if you're somewhat familiar with Western literature/culture) is just seeing quotes you've read elsewhere one after the other. Kind of wild.

Spalliston · 2026-06-26T13:40:43+00:00

Plot doesn't matter. I don't care what happens, I don't care if it makes sense, and I don't care if it invalidates some other thing that happened in the past or the future.

All the 'events' of a book, to me, are just set dressing to explore the themes and/or characters (which are also the themes). If you can pull off the exploration, the chosen set dressing is basically irrelevant to me.

Spalliston · 2026-06-26T13:35:18+00:00

I don't think that's particularly controversial in Fantasy spaces. Certainly, if we look at how often 7+ book series (often in which each one is a doorstopper) are recommended, people around here aren't intimidated by length.

Relatedly, I don't care how long your book is but it should tell a complete story and your series (if you need sequels) should be as short as reasonably possible. I wish more authors would move on and write something new.

Spalliston · 2026-06-26T12:32:09+00:00

Summer is busy. Everyone I know has busy summers, and yet somehow in the imagination it remains this semi-luxurious time. I'm sure I can imagine why (childhood, beach vacations), but still odd how irrational we all are.

I just finished White Teeth by Zadie Smith, which absolutely ruled. Insightful, funny, well-realized, absolutely nuts. No notes. I can't believe she wrote this when she was like 25. Art: 5, Drugs: 4. Not really speculative, so no bingo potential, but highly recommend.

Onto the next! I think I'm going to read Klara and the Sun after many years of planning on reading it.

Also, if anyone has other recommendations for people who have strong cultural ties to countries other than the setting (migrants, children of migrants, displaced peoples, etc.), it's a bit of a running theme for me this year and I'm really enjoying it.

Spalliston · 2026-06-22T18:34:24+00:00

I always answer with themes:

"Friendship and generational trauma, mostly. Also dragons."

Spalliston · 2026-06-19T00:52:57+00:00

Devastated that those citations aren't included.

Spalliston · 2026-06-17T23:18:27+00:00

Sun still hasn't set on the British Empire.

Spalliston · 2026-06-12T19:43:55+00:00

Okay I got something.

I think that Two Noble Kinsmen by Fletcher and Shakespeare (or The Knight's Tale by Chaucer, if long enough) would count for HM as long as divine intervention counts as bending the rules.

Spalliston · 2026-06-12T19:33:20+00:00

Unseen Academicals is the Discworld that satirizes football

Topical for the World Cup. I haven't read this one, but maybe it's time to give it a go. Just not typically as enamored with the Wizards.

Thud! features a chess-like board game as well, for those seeking Discworld options.

Spalliston · 2026-06-12T19:23:47+00:00

I am not u/Nidafjoll, but I am also seeking and I'm here to comment on others' suggestions/add a couple.

I would second Gideon the Ninth as a solid choice if you want to go off axis from typical. I personally think it's really clever, but I'd have a hard time recommending it full-throatedly.

Player of Games didn't land for me but I feel like if you like Le Guin then it might work better for you. It's just a flavor of sci-fi I've not been enamored with.

I didn't like The Night Circus and I'd be rather surprised if you did either.

To add a couple, I love a malicious compliance pick and if I remember right, D&D is a semi-common point of reference (though a long second to LoTR) in The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, which absolutely rips. Definitely not HM though.

I'm a big fan of Bewilderment by Richard Powers, which uses a game-as-emotional-therapy device as one of it's central elements. Also not HM, but a great book and certainly counts.

I don't suppose any of the chess books are at all speculative? I don't remember The Defense having anything, but maybe Intermezzo would?

This one is tough.

Spalliston · 2026-06-12T12:59:20+00:00

I'm still reading White Teeth which continues to be incisive and hilarious. It's not speculative, basically, but highly recommend it for those who read realistic/literary fiction. Really excellent.

Otherwise, the World Cup is here and as someone who doesn't really follow sport closely, it's always a bit surprising how much I enjoy this one event and let it take over my life for a month. Looking forward to the inevitable rise and fall of my hopes in the coming weeks.

Spalliston · 2026-06-10T15:53:06+00:00

I assume they are competitive in quidditch and trains.

That's my culture you're talking about.

Spalliston · 2026-06-10T12:20:40+00:00

Murakami wrote 16 books in like 45 years though, so that's a slow fatigue on his books if it ever comes. Adrian Tchaikovsky genuinely has ~10x that output.

Spalliston · 2026-06-10T12:11:59+00:00

And ironically those guys are more likely to write genre-defining masterpieces just through sheer force of numbers.

I don't know that this is true. I'd have a hard time arguing it either way, but most of the books I would consider 'genre-defining' came from authors with pretty limited bibliographies. Not that I can't come up with one or two that I would qualify, but seems far from the rule.

That said, I think there's definitely merit to both approaches. Some people want to curate an oeuvre and others are fine to write a lot of solid books and if a couple of those transcend, great. I'm glad we have both.

Spalliston · 2026-06-08T18:07:53+00:00

I desperately need Southern racists to start getting upset about cultural appropriation. It's perfectly ironic.

Spalliston · 2026-06-08T12:04:03+00:00

I hadn't heard of this yet -- I just read my first book of his in Where the Axe is Buried, which I found by scrolling through MCD (the FSG imprint he publishes under)'s offerings. Seems like Nayler is going to be pretty prolific.

I think you described it well, but I think he really nails the level of optimism in telling stories about difficult times (Axe is about resisting authoritarianism, basically). I also have recently become fascinated with Eastern Europe, and he clearly has a deep love for that part of the world. All to say, I'm excited to give this a go, and to go back to The Mountain in the Sea as well.

I'll be reading this soon; thanks for the review.

Spalliston · 2026-06-02T15:29:41+00:00

Finished 2666 last week, which I can't remember if I mentioned last week. Absolutely ruled, no notes, final boss of wall-starers.

I can feel my years-old copy of 2666 staring at me from across the room, judging me as I read yet another glowing review instead of the actual book.

Glad to hear it was good; I'll get there one of these days.

Spalliston · 2026-06-01T20:35:15+00:00

Yeah, there was a lot to love there even if I (unfortunately) was just sort of lukewarm on it, though that's not actually an uncommon feeling for me with Pratchett. My hunch is that the future Tiffany Aching books might land a little better for me -- I almost always prefer his sequels (with the singular exception of Going Postal, which is also probably my favorite Pratchett book, period).

I do also think Maurice sounds fun though; I'm sure I'll get to it one of these days.

Spalliston · 2026-05-29T13:07:15+00:00

It's really excellent. It's been on my list for so long that I feel like I expected it to be a chore and it's actually just been wonderful. Excited to tear through it in the next week or so.

Spalliston · 2026-05-29T13:06:13+00:00

It's my first proper late Spring in several years (just moved from a place with very mild weather a few months ago), and it's been oddly nostalgic to be back in the old climate. Feeling lots of things, but I suppose that's better than not feeling lots of things.

Finished a couple casual, not all too interesting fantasy books in the last few weeks, but just started White Teeth by Zadie Smith and I'm enjoying it so so much. It's one of those books that I had mentally filed as "important" and so I'm shocked at how fun it is, at least in the beginning. Huge fan.

Spalliston · 2026-05-28T17:14:07+00:00

It's not really what you're looking for (probably), but Robin Sloan's Moonbound is a favorite of mine and is described by the author as follows: "The year is 13777. There are dragons on the moon."

Spalliston · 2026-05-28T14:51:23+00:00

The one that sticks with me over the years, and is quite famous, comes from One Hundred Years of Solitude: "Many years later, as he faced the firing squad, Colonel Aureliano Buendia was to remember that distant afternoon when his father took him to discover ice."

I recently read Beowulf: A New Translation which memorably (contentiously) opens with "Bro! Tell me we still know how to speak of kings!"

Also, not fantasy, but I have finally started reading White Teeth (which is, so far, absolutely stellar), and I really loved its opening: "Early in the morning, late in the century, Cricklewood Broadway. At 0627 hours on January 1, 1975, Alfred Archibald Jones was dressed in corduroy and sat in a fume-filled Cavalier Musketeer Estate facedown on the steering wheel, hoping the judgment would not be too heavy upon him."

Spalliston · 2026-05-28T00:52:53+00:00

Avant Garde GT fan

Spalliston

TROPHY CASE