The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov. This one was brought to my attention by @mrzool on this thread. Mrzool would have done a better job of explaining the book in that thread. And yes it is weird, so far.
And I am also reading/listening the first Wheel of Time book.
I'm reading 'Icehenge' by Kim Stanley Robinson. I've read quite a bit of his work, and have yet to be disappointed by any of it. This one seems a bit different from his typical approach, however. It's written in first perspective which is not typical for him, but he does it in his typical way of following different characters throughout, so its written from the first perspective of different characters.
I wasn't sure at first how I felt about it, but now that I'm halfway through I've hit the point where I can't put it down. I think my initial uncertainty stems from when the first character decides not to pursue a plot line that I really wanted to see followed, and instead goes and does something else. Like the interesting story was purposefully missed to pursue a less interesting story, but boy howdy was I wrong.
I still hope he circles back around to that missed opportunity before the end of it, but even if he doesn't, this book definitely holds up to the superb quality of the rest of his works. And I can still say with certainty that I would recommend any and all of his work to people who enjoy sifi. He is truly a master of his craft.
After reading a couple ARCs for book reviews I was working on, I read through Fight Club for the first time in several years for a book club. It's been a while since I've even seen the movie, but I find that's a book that's really hard to read without recalling the images from the movie.
Anyway: Fight Club is interesting to me because it's undoubtedly a critique of capitalism and consumerism, and Tyler's arguments (at least initially) seem compelling and you can understand why so many of the members of Project Mayhem fall headfirst into his rhetoric, but by the third act it's clear that Tyler doesn't actually give a shit about what he's professing and just wants to cause chaos. I don't know that it undoes all of the rather valid criticisms of consumerism elsewhere in the novel, but I did take a lot of time to step back and wonder how the twist affects the political/social arguments that are made. Is it critical of all attempts at opposing capitalism or just Tyler's thinly-veiled fascist ones?
Somewhat unrelated, but I'm sort of fascinated by Pahlaniuk's suggestion that Fight Club is a modernized Great Gatsby. I don't know that I entirely agree with that claim, but when you reduce it to is basest parts, the ingredients are there: "It was 'apostolic' fiction," he says in the afterword in my edition. "[W]here a surviving apostle tells the story of his hero. There are two men and a woman. And one man, the hero, is shot to death."
I don't particularly like Pahlaniuk's writing outside of Fight Club. I think he works too hard to be transgressive for the sake of being transgressive rather than just telling a good story. Survivor was one of the most bizarrely frustrating books I've read in the last 15 years. But Fight Club is always worth coming back to, at least.
Back to those ARCs. I read and reviewed Nick Fuller Googins's The Great Transition which came out last week and I really want everyone I know to pick up a copy ASAP. It's one of the most captivating debuts I've read in a really long time.
Lady Death a memoir by Pavlichenko, Women Don't Ask :Negotiation and the Gender Divide, Maestro by Peter Goldsworthy which is set in Darwin Australia and is a beautifully written coming of age novel about a young music student and his teacher a refugee from Vienna after WWII. The first book of the Founding of Valdemar by Mercedes Lackey.
A memoir by John Romero about this life and how got into programming Computer Games. It's pretty interesting so far, though I've only read about 5 chapters now, I'm very much enjoying it. Romero had a pretty intense childhood--poverty, drugs, murder, domestic abuse--which is kind of crazy, but he seems to be totally humble and at peace with it. I'm a sucker for anything related to Doom or early id software and having read Masters of Doom several times already (can't believe that book is over 20 years old!), it's interesting to have a more in depth peek and a first hand account from one of those creators.
Just finished "Deus Ex: Black Light" by James Swallow. Really good bridge between Human Revolution and Mankind Divided. Something scratched the itch recently and now I desperately want more of that universe, because it is insane.
Before that it was "The Ballad of Black Tom" by Victor LaValle. Fantastic story that I believe was a Lovecraft novel first? This one is apparently a retelling but based on the view point of a Black-American man. Phenomenal bit of work that one.
Reading The Croning by Laird Barron and "Unpopular Essays" by Bertrand Russell at the mo. Enjoying the juxtaposition of those two!
"The King in Yellow" by Robert W. Chambers. It's a collection of short stories that form a neat bridge between victorian ghost horror of the 1800s to more contemporary supernatural horror, and I learned that it inspired some of Lovecraft's work.
It's not an easy read due to everyone talking like civil war generals, but the ideas behind the stories are cool. They are unsettling, but usually scaled small and rely more on thriller-style creepiness than gore or monsters. They're intriguing while being wholly different than stories that you would see in Barker's Books of Blood collections. They have a huge gothic streak, dealing with melancholy and mental illness like older works, but also more tangible fears like violent death at the hands of a knife-wielding maniac, or the titular play that drives even the most sane people mad. The supernatural forces in the book aren't just pale ladies and whispers in a mansion, it's real and omnipresent and dangerous and hunts various protagonists in whatever form it emerges as. Characters dream of a place from the play that calls to them, and it might be imaginary or it might be an impossible, terrifying dimension, and you can see how Lovecraft took inspiration from these novel ideas in his own work.
Highly recommend checking it out if you want to see a key evolution in horror writing and want to appreciate the precursors to landmark spooky writing in the future. I can't say it's quite entertaining enough or paced well, or readable enough to enjoy in its own regard, I don't think I'd enjoy it without consideration of the historical context.
A Memory Called Empire by Arkady Martine. It's a real page turner. I just started it last night and stayed up way too late reading. Already halfway through. The world building of the Teixcalaanli Empire is exquisite. Excited to get to the next book in the series.
Double or Nothing by Kim Sherwood. It's the 2nd most recent "James Bond" novel coming out late 2022 (the most recent being On His Majesty's Secret Service released during King Charles coronation this year which is next on my to read list).
I put James Bond in quotes because it's a novel set in the James Bond universe but doesn't actually involve Bond (he's present in flashbacks) but instead involves 003, 004 and 009. The novel involves the agents investigating a Private Military Corporation with shady links to a British billionaire industrialist who's promising to stop the climate crisis.
It's alright so far, I'm about halfway through. I think it got a bit of push back from huge Bond fans at the time for being "woke" but I don't really care about that, it's a Bond novel set in the modern day, god forbid one of the 00 agents is black and gay. My issue is with the dialogue, it's a little stilted at times and Bond himself, when he's in flashbacks, is a completely different character than he's normally portrayed in the books or films which is odd when Sherwood ties in a ton of the previous novels referencing characters, villains and missions.
I am enjoying the plot so far though and the 00 agents themselves are cool and interesting. The hardcover I've got is beautiful with the slipcover off as well.
Lately I've been stressed and busy and haven't had time or energy to read anything heavy, but I still wanted something other than my phone to read when I have a few free minutes. I've discovered and fallen in love with books of comedic short stories.
I highly recommend "New Teeth" and "Hits and Misses" by Simon Rich. A variety of very clever and funny stories that each take only 5-10 minutes to read.
I've finished reading the Seasonal Quartet by Ali Smith. Some say that it is better to read the series with the seasons, but I'm far too impatient for that, so I binge-read it all (spending hours travelling on trains helps).
The books intertwine with each other – just like the seasons – with overlapping characters and concepts (mainly contemporary issues in the United Kingdom: e.g. Brexit, immigration, and national identities). I think the primary purpose of the series is to expose connections between people, between history and the present, and between political concepts*. If this seems hazy, that’s because it is. I find that Smith’s writing can verge on ham-fisted. Chapters segue from as disparate as a family conversation through to immigration detention centres – it’s easy to get whiplash.
Smith’s Seasonal Quartet was written to be topical. In fact, Smith employed a strategy of delaying finalising the manuscript to as close as the publication date as possible, so to keep the books close to the throb of British political happenings. This is both a blessing and a curse: the books do feel contemporary, but they mainly litigate Brexit-related political issues, rather than other salient UK issues (public services, the constitution, health outcomes etc.) due to it really being the zeitgeist of the 2016-2020 period the quartet was written and published in. Furthermore, Smith’s characters are largely middle-class; most are or seemingly will be educated to at least an undergraduate degree standard; it really feels like literature geared towards the pro-European liberals of southern England. This undermines the undertone of the books: that we are all connected to each other, both on these islands and further afield.
My favourite book of the four was the first one, Autumn. The final instalment, Summer, was a close second. My least favourite by far was Spring, the penultimate novel; it felt sanctimonious and forced to me. All told though, I’m glad that I read the Seasonal Quartet.
* (I don't know how to make spoiler tags on Tildes, so this will have to do...)E.g. comparing the ‘othering’ of migrants - particularly irregular migrants - in the UK, to internment of German-origin Britons during WWII while pointing out that the British people ‘rose up’ to their decency and ended internment in 1941... as compared to the treatment of refugees in the modern day.
I came across this book at my local library as it was highlighted as a new non-fiction book. I didn't even know it existed, and it's the exact kind of book for me. Reading this is so motivating as a programmer. Nothing better than learning about an admirable person in your field.
Just finished John Romero's "DOOM Guy" autobiography. Before that was Jordan Mechner's "Karateka Diaries", and now I'm onto his Prince of Persia Diaries. And Make Something Wonderful the free book from the Steve Jobs Archive.
I picked up Seneca's "Letters from a Stoic," and "Meditations" by Marcus Auerlius. I've read a lot of articles on mental health recently that reference stoicism; I find them interesting, gives me things to think about and apply to my own life. I figure I might as well go straight to the source, and do the reading myself.
Wrapped up The Time Traveler's Wife. Interesting concept that kept me going but it leaned a little more on the romance vs. Sci fi side for me. Also, I felt like non-white supporting characters were written uncomfortably stereotypically.
Also finished roadside picnic recently after a long library wait. I tried to get a second read-through in before the due date as I missed a bit of the end (listening to the audiobook too tired) but ran out of time. May pick it up again in the future I found it really interesting.
I’m currently reading The Hobbit and Jade City. I also have on my list, the Tombs of Atuan the second earthsea book, Sojourn the third Drizzt book, and then my friends and I are doing a book club and we are reading Salvatore’s Cleric Quintet for that.
Just finished listening to The Interdependency trilogy by John Scalzi. Been a fan of Scalzi for awhile, but haven't ever read this series. Thought it was really good. Wil Wheaton did the narration and he was okay. Not a huge fan of his Audible work.
A Day of Fallen Night by Samantha Shannon. I'm on page 600-something so I'm going to be done with it soon! It's a lovely little giant book, highly recommend it for fans of fantasy, feminism, and queerness!
Reading Cage of Souls by Adrian Tchaikovsky right now. I lived children of time, and then children of memory, but I'm not ready for the labor of getting through the third one just yet.
In the past, I enjoyed the Silo series by hugh howey as well. Great story
I recently finished Walkaway, by Cory Doctorow I've been on a climate change sci-fi kick (Ministry for the Future; The Water Knife; A Half-Built Garden; Termination Shock) and this was an impressive and unique take on things. It is utopian rather than dystopian, although it takes a while to get there. As described in the NPR review linked above "[I]t is the story of precisely this — what comes after the slow-burn apocalypse we all secretly fear is coming, how it will work, how it will all go wrong and how it will get made right again with drones, wet printers and elbow grease."
I was quite surprised to find out how long Doctorow has been around and writing without having come across him before. I've since started following his blog, podcast and am looking forward to his soon to be released non-fiction novel The Internet Con: How to Seize the Means of Computation.
I've written about this before here but something just dawned on me the other day and it's kinda dumb and hilarious to me...
So I wanted to read the books behind the show The Expanse after really enjoying it so I just googled "The Expanse book" and found this series because book 7 is called "The Expanse." I'm almost done with book 5. It's good. I'm not so well versed in sci-fy so I'm a bit hesitant about the quality but I'm on book 5 so it must be entertaining. It has a focus on military tactics and battles (which really isn't my thing) that become more apparent throughout but the overall story and characters are somewhat interesting. I'm listening to these books and the narrator (Jeffrey Kafer) while a bit dramatic makes it work well and is now part of why I've kept listening.
Then the other day I was browsing the r/books subreddit and someone casually mentioned the real books behind the show...as it turns out I just made it through 5 books that have nothing to do with the show without noticing anything. The weird thing is that I could see the plot of the TV show developing through these books and was looking forward to get to the part where the show started. Talk about confirmation bias haha...
Just finished The Gunslinger by Stephen King. Dark Tower has always interested me, but didn't want to commit to a 8 book series, particularly because I know it geta weird and meta. Gunslinger simple so far, at least.
Just finished "Qualityland: Visit Tomorrow, Today!" by Marc-Uwe Kling and now into "Qualityland v2.0" (not sure if already available in English yet). I highly recommend that. A very fresh, unique and funny story about the future and how things are about to go (probably).
Recently finished Under the Whispering Door by TJ Klune and Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers by Mary Roach and thoroughly enjoyed both.
I don't often go for books with a strong focus on love/relationships, but so far Klune's books have charmed the hell out of me and Whisper Door was no exception. Lots of (mostly) happy tears.
Stiff has been on my want-to-read list for ages. Roach took a grim topic and made it interesting and funny (but never disrespectful-quite the opposite). The honest, blunt descriptions might make it difficult for the squeamish, but I found it informative and thought provoking. My copy is newer and I appreciate the epilogue she added in 2021.
I just started The Mothman Prophecies by John Keel. Mothman is an ongoing joke in my friend group and I feel compelled to read it.
Do comics count here? I just happen upon the Marvel Grand Design series at the library, and it's super fun! They are condensed retellings of classic superhero comics-- so far I've enjoyed X-Men and Fantastic Four, and there are several other series I'm hoping to get through the library. The art is really well done, its by alternative comics artists (Ed Piskor did the X-Men one, most known for the Hip Hop Family tree). I've never been a diehard comics reader, so it's a fun way to see some of the well known characters in a new light.
I finished The Book That Wouldn't Burn by Mark Lawrence. What a good story. Imaginative world, strong anti-war message, tightly written plot and a sense of humor.
I just finished Children of Memory by Adrian Tchaikovsky. I loved the first book in the series, enjoyed the second one, and this one was... okay. More enjoyable in some parts than others, but I felt like it could've shaved off at least a third of the length and not actually lost anything. I do enjoy the world building and the characters, though. Also the narrator for the audiobooks is amazing.
With that done, I just started Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir, which had been on my list for a while. Only about half an hour into that audiobook, but enjoying it so far and the narrator is making it even better.
I don't make enough time to sit down and read a physical book as I should, but one of these days I'll get back to reading Crooked Kingdom because I do really enjoy Leigh Bardugo and the Grishaverse world.
Been reading tons and tons of translated Chinese and Korean light novels for the past few years now, mostly in the wuxia and xianxia genres. I could ramble on about these for paragraphs, but if you have any interest I would actually just recommend googling the terms and reading up on them; you'll find much better explanations that way than I can give directly off the cuff.
What I really like about these, besides the fact that they're very fresh genres compared to the types of fiction that I've read for decades in my native English, is the storylines and references that go deep into Asian history, mythology, culture, religion, etc. It's a fascinating way to learn about so many things a typical American would never come into contact with, and the writing styles are so different than what I've read most of my life. Because of that, it was honestly kind of rough to get into the first one I read years ago, but I'm so happy I stuck with it.
I just read The Fourth Wing which was enjoyable if not unpredictable and I appreciated its disability representation.
I'm rereading the Ancillary trilogy by Arkady Martine as the most recent book made me want to go back and refresh myself on the Presger and their relationship to other aliens and the Radch as a whole.
The Newest October Daye book came out today so it's next!
The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov. This one was brought to my attention by @mrzool on this thread. Mrzool would have done a better job of explaining the book in that thread. And yes it is weird, so far.
And I am also reading/listening the first Wheel of Time book.
I'm reading 'Icehenge' by Kim Stanley Robinson. I've read quite a bit of his work, and have yet to be disappointed by any of it. This one seems a bit different from his typical approach, however. It's written in first perspective which is not typical for him, but he does it in his typical way of following different characters throughout, so its written from the first perspective of different characters.
I wasn't sure at first how I felt about it, but now that I'm halfway through I've hit the point where I can't put it down. I think my initial uncertainty stems from when the first character decides not to pursue a plot line that I really wanted to see followed, and instead goes and does something else. Like the interesting story was purposefully missed to pursue a less interesting story, but boy howdy was I wrong.
I still hope he circles back around to that missed opportunity before the end of it, but even if he doesn't, this book definitely holds up to the superb quality of the rest of his works. And I can still say with certainty that I would recommend any and all of his work to people who enjoy sifi. He is truly a master of his craft.
After reading a couple ARCs for book reviews I was working on, I read through Fight Club for the first time in several years for a book club. It's been a while since I've even seen the movie, but I find that's a book that's really hard to read without recalling the images from the movie.
Anyway: Fight Club is interesting to me because it's undoubtedly a critique of capitalism and consumerism, and Tyler's arguments (at least initially) seem compelling and you can understand why so many of the members of Project Mayhem fall headfirst into his rhetoric, but by the third act it's clear that Tyler doesn't actually give a shit about what he's professing and just wants to cause chaos. I don't know that it undoes all of the rather valid criticisms of consumerism elsewhere in the novel, but I did take a lot of time to step back and wonder how the twist affects the political/social arguments that are made. Is it critical of all attempts at opposing capitalism or just Tyler's thinly-veiled fascist ones?
Somewhat unrelated, but I'm sort of fascinated by Pahlaniuk's suggestion that Fight Club is a modernized Great Gatsby. I don't know that I entirely agree with that claim, but when you reduce it to is basest parts, the ingredients are there: "It was 'apostolic' fiction," he says in the afterword in my edition. "[W]here a surviving apostle tells the story of his hero. There are two men and a woman. And one man, the hero, is shot to death."
I don't particularly like Pahlaniuk's writing outside of Fight Club. I think he works too hard to be transgressive for the sake of being transgressive rather than just telling a good story. Survivor was one of the most bizarrely frustrating books I've read in the last 15 years. But Fight Club is always worth coming back to, at least.
Back to those ARCs. I read and reviewed Nick Fuller Googins's The Great Transition which came out last week and I really want everyone I know to pick up a copy ASAP. It's one of the most captivating debuts I've read in a really long time.
Lady Death a memoir by Pavlichenko, Women Don't Ask :Negotiation and the Gender Divide, Maestro by Peter Goldsworthy which is set in Darwin Australia and is a beautifully written coming of age novel about a young music student and his teacher a refugee from Vienna after WWII. The first book of the Founding of Valdemar by Mercedes Lackey.
Doom Guy: Life in First Person by John Romero
A memoir by John Romero about this life and how got into programming Computer Games. It's pretty interesting so far, though I've only read about 5 chapters now, I'm very much enjoying it. Romero had a pretty intense childhood--poverty, drugs, murder, domestic abuse--which is kind of crazy, but he seems to be totally humble and at peace with it. I'm a sucker for anything related to Doom or early id software and having read Masters of Doom several times already (can't believe that book is over 20 years old!), it's interesting to have a more in depth peek and a first hand account from one of those creators.
Just finished "Deus Ex: Black Light" by James Swallow. Really good bridge between Human Revolution and Mankind Divided. Something scratched the itch recently and now I desperately want more of that universe, because it is insane.
Before that it was "The Ballad of Black Tom" by Victor LaValle. Fantastic story that I believe was a Lovecraft novel first? This one is apparently a retelling but based on the view point of a Black-American man. Phenomenal bit of work that one.
Reading The Croning by Laird Barron and "Unpopular Essays" by Bertrand Russell at the mo. Enjoying the juxtaposition of those two!
"The King in Yellow" by Robert W. Chambers. It's a collection of short stories that form a neat bridge between victorian ghost horror of the 1800s to more contemporary supernatural horror, and I learned that it inspired some of Lovecraft's work.
It's not an easy read due to everyone talking like civil war generals, but the ideas behind the stories are cool. They are unsettling, but usually scaled small and rely more on thriller-style creepiness than gore or monsters. They're intriguing while being wholly different than stories that you would see in Barker's Books of Blood collections. They have a huge gothic streak, dealing with melancholy and mental illness like older works, but also more tangible fears like violent death at the hands of a knife-wielding maniac, or the titular play that drives even the most sane people mad. The supernatural forces in the book aren't just pale ladies and whispers in a mansion, it's real and omnipresent and dangerous and hunts various protagonists in whatever form it emerges as. Characters dream of a place from the play that calls to them, and it might be imaginary or it might be an impossible, terrifying dimension, and you can see how Lovecraft took inspiration from these novel ideas in his own work.
Highly recommend checking it out if you want to see a key evolution in horror writing and want to appreciate the precursors to landmark spooky writing in the future. I can't say it's quite entertaining enough or paced well, or readable enough to enjoy in its own regard, I don't think I'd enjoy it without consideration of the historical context.
A Memory Called Empire by Arkady Martine. It's a real page turner. I just started it last night and stayed up way too late reading. Already halfway through. The world building of the Teixcalaanli Empire is exquisite. Excited to get to the next book in the series.
Double or Nothing by Kim Sherwood. It's the 2nd most recent "James Bond" novel coming out late 2022 (the most recent being On His Majesty's Secret Service released during King Charles coronation this year which is next on my to read list).
I put James Bond in quotes because it's a novel set in the James Bond universe but doesn't actually involve Bond (he's present in flashbacks) but instead involves 003, 004 and 009. The novel involves the agents investigating a Private Military Corporation with shady links to a British billionaire industrialist who's promising to stop the climate crisis.
It's alright so far, I'm about halfway through. I think it got a bit of push back from huge Bond fans at the time for being "woke" but I don't really care about that, it's a Bond novel set in the modern day, god forbid one of the 00 agents is black and gay. My issue is with the dialogue, it's a little stilted at times and Bond himself, when he's in flashbacks, is a completely different character than he's normally portrayed in the books or films which is odd when Sherwood ties in a ton of the previous novels referencing characters, villains and missions.
I am enjoying the plot so far though and the 00 agents themselves are cool and interesting. The hardcover I've got is beautiful with the slipcover off as well.
Lately I've been stressed and busy and haven't had time or energy to read anything heavy, but I still wanted something other than my phone to read when I have a few free minutes. I've discovered and fallen in love with books of comedic short stories.
I highly recommend "New Teeth" and "Hits and Misses" by Simon Rich. A variety of very clever and funny stories that each take only 5-10 minutes to read.
I've finished reading the Seasonal Quartet by Ali Smith. Some say that it is better to read the series with the seasons, but I'm far too impatient for that, so I binge-read it all (spending hours travelling on trains helps).
The books intertwine with each other – just like the seasons – with overlapping characters and concepts (mainly contemporary issues in the United Kingdom: e.g. Brexit, immigration, and national identities). I think the primary purpose of the series is to expose connections between people, between history and the present, and between political concepts*. If this seems hazy, that’s because it is. I find that Smith’s writing can verge on ham-fisted. Chapters segue from as disparate as a family conversation through to immigration detention centres – it’s easy to get whiplash.
Smith’s Seasonal Quartet was written to be topical. In fact, Smith employed a strategy of delaying finalising the manuscript to as close as the publication date as possible, so to keep the books close to the throb of British political happenings. This is both a blessing and a curse: the books do feel contemporary, but they mainly litigate Brexit-related political issues, rather than other salient UK issues (public services, the constitution, health outcomes etc.) due to it really being the zeitgeist of the 2016-2020 period the quartet was written and published in. Furthermore, Smith’s characters are largely middle-class; most are or seemingly will be educated to at least an undergraduate degree standard; it really feels like literature geared towards the pro-European liberals of southern England. This undermines the undertone of the books: that we are all connected to each other, both on these islands and further afield.
My favourite book of the four was the first one, Autumn. The final instalment, Summer, was a close second. My least favourite by far was Spring, the penultimate novel; it felt sanctimonious and forced to me. All told though, I’m glad that I read the Seasonal Quartet.
* (I don't know how to make spoiler tags on Tildes, so this will have to do...)
E.g. comparing the ‘othering’ of migrants - particularly irregular migrants - in the UK, to internment of German-origin Britons during WWII while pointing out that the British people ‘rose up’ to their decency and ended internment in 1941... as compared to the treatment of refugees in the modern day.DOOM Guy: Life in First Person by John Romero
I came across this book at my local library as it was highlighted as a new non-fiction book. I didn't even know it existed, and it's the exact kind of book for me. Reading this is so motivating as a programmer. Nothing better than learning about an admirable person in your field.
Just finished John Romero's "DOOM Guy" autobiography. Before that was Jordan Mechner's "Karateka Diaries", and now I'm onto his Prince of Persia Diaries. And Make Something Wonderful the free book from the Steve Jobs Archive.
I picked up Seneca's "Letters from a Stoic," and "Meditations" by Marcus Auerlius. I've read a lot of articles on mental health recently that reference stoicism; I find them interesting, gives me things to think about and apply to my own life. I figure I might as well go straight to the source, and do the reading myself.
Wrapped up The Time Traveler's Wife. Interesting concept that kept me going but it leaned a little more on the romance vs. Sci fi side for me. Also, I felt like non-white supporting characters were written uncomfortably stereotypically.
Also finished roadside picnic recently after a long library wait. I tried to get a second read-through in before the due date as I missed a bit of the end (listening to the audiobook too tired) but ran out of time. May pick it up again in the future I found it really interesting.
I’m currently reading The Hobbit and Jade City. I also have on my list, the Tombs of Atuan the second earthsea book, Sojourn the third Drizzt book, and then my friends and I are doing a book club and we are reading Salvatore’s Cleric Quintet for that.
Just finished listening to The Interdependency trilogy by John Scalzi. Been a fan of Scalzi for awhile, but haven't ever read this series. Thought it was really good. Wil Wheaton did the narration and he was okay. Not a huge fan of his Audible work.
Currently reading House of Leaves, after I finish this it'll be either more of Berserk or a book I found about China in the Second Sino-Japanese War.
Not far enough into House of Leaves to say too much about it, maybe a quarter in, but it's been very interesting so far
A Day of Fallen Night by Samantha Shannon. I'm on page 600-something so I'm going to be done with it soon! It's a lovely
littlegiant book, highly recommend it for fans of fantasy, feminism, and queerness!Reading Cage of Souls by Adrian Tchaikovsky right now. I lived children of time, and then children of memory, but I'm not ready for the labor of getting through the third one just yet.
In the past, I enjoyed the Silo series by hugh howey as well. Great story
I recently finished Walkaway, by Cory Doctorow I've been on a climate change sci-fi kick (Ministry for the Future; The Water Knife; A Half-Built Garden; Termination Shock) and this was an impressive and unique take on things. It is utopian rather than dystopian, although it takes a while to get there. As described in the NPR review linked above "[I]t is the story of precisely this — what comes after the slow-burn apocalypse we all secretly fear is coming, how it will work, how it will all go wrong and how it will get made right again with drones, wet printers and elbow grease."
I was quite surprised to find out how long Doctorow has been around and writing without having come across him before. I've since started following his blog, podcast and am looking forward to his soon to be released non-fiction novel The Internet Con: How to Seize the Means of Computation.
The Frontiers Saga by Ryk Brown.
I've written about this before here but something just dawned on me the other day and it's kinda dumb and hilarious to me...
So I wanted to read the books behind the show The Expanse after really enjoying it so I just googled "The Expanse book" and found this series because book 7 is called "The Expanse." I'm almost done with book 5. It's good. I'm not so well versed in sci-fy so I'm a bit hesitant about the quality but I'm on book 5 so it must be entertaining. It has a focus on military tactics and battles (which really isn't my thing) that become more apparent throughout but the overall story and characters are somewhat interesting. I'm listening to these books and the narrator (Jeffrey Kafer) while a bit dramatic makes it work well and is now part of why I've kept listening.
Then the other day I was browsing the r/books subreddit and someone casually mentioned the real books behind the show...as it turns out I just made it through 5 books that have nothing to do with the show without noticing anything. The weird thing is that I could see the plot of the TV show developing through these books and was looking forward to get to the part where the show started. Talk about confirmation bias haha...
Just finished The Gunslinger by Stephen King. Dark Tower has always interested me, but didn't want to commit to a 8 book series, particularly because I know it geta weird and meta. Gunslinger simple so far, at least.
Just finished "Qualityland: Visit Tomorrow, Today!" by Marc-Uwe Kling and now into "Qualityland v2.0" (not sure if already available in English yet). I highly recommend that. A very fresh, unique and funny story about the future and how things are about to go (probably).
Recently finished Under the Whispering Door by TJ Klune and Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers by Mary Roach and thoroughly enjoyed both.
I don't often go for books with a strong focus on love/relationships, but so far Klune's books have charmed the hell out of me and Whisper Door was no exception. Lots of (mostly) happy tears.
Stiff has been on my want-to-read list for ages. Roach took a grim topic and made it interesting and funny (but never disrespectful-quite the opposite). The honest, blunt descriptions might make it difficult for the squeamish, but I found it informative and thought provoking. My copy is newer and I appreciate the epilogue she added in 2021.
I just started The Mothman Prophecies by John Keel. Mothman is an ongoing joke in my friend group and I feel compelled to read it.
Do comics count here? I just happen upon the Marvel Grand Design series at the library, and it's super fun! They are condensed retellings of classic superhero comics-- so far I've enjoyed X-Men and Fantastic Four, and there are several other series I'm hoping to get through the library. The art is really well done, its by alternative comics artists (Ed Piskor did the X-Men one, most known for the Hip Hop Family tree). I've never been a diehard comics reader, so it's a fun way to see some of the well known characters in a new light.
I finished The Book That Wouldn't Burn by Mark Lawrence. What a good story. Imaginative world, strong anti-war message, tightly written plot and a sense of humor.
I just finished Children of Memory by Adrian Tchaikovsky. I loved the first book in the series, enjoyed the second one, and this one was... okay. More enjoyable in some parts than others, but I felt like it could've shaved off at least a third of the length and not actually lost anything. I do enjoy the world building and the characters, though. Also the narrator for the audiobooks is amazing.
With that done, I just started Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir, which had been on my list for a while. Only about half an hour into that audiobook, but enjoying it so far and the narrator is making it even better.
I don't make enough time to sit down and read a physical book as I should, but one of these days I'll get back to reading Crooked Kingdom because I do really enjoy Leigh Bardugo and the Grishaverse world.
Been reading tons and tons of translated Chinese and Korean light novels for the past few years now, mostly in the wuxia and xianxia genres. I could ramble on about these for paragraphs, but if you have any interest I would actually just recommend googling the terms and reading up on them; you'll find much better explanations that way than I can give directly off the cuff.
What I really like about these, besides the fact that they're very fresh genres compared to the types of fiction that I've read for decades in my native English, is the storylines and references that go deep into Asian history, mythology, culture, religion, etc. It's a fascinating way to learn about so many things a typical American would never come into contact with, and the writing styles are so different than what I've read most of my life. Because of that, it was honestly kind of rough to get into the first one I read years ago, but I'm so happy I stuck with it.
I just read The Fourth Wing which was enjoyable if not unpredictable and I appreciated its disability representation.
I'm rereading the Ancillary trilogy by Arkady Martine as the most recent book made me want to go back and refresh myself on the Presger and their relationship to other aliens and the Radch as a whole.
The Newest October Daye book came out today so it's next!