Hello Everyone!
What are you all reading?
I am currently going through a re-read of Dresden Files by Jim Butcher. Currently on 2nd book, Fool Moon.
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I just finished Project Hail Mary. A wonderful and fun read. Highly recommend if you like science fiction.
I found it to be one of the most engrossing and wholesome books that I’ve read in years!
I just got it during my latest book shopping! Going to read it soon.
As you should. It was very interesting.
The Wheel of Time
What do you think of it? It’s on my list to try and read before the end of the year.
I watched the first 5 or so episodes of the Prime show a while ago and was interested but it didn’t keep me hooked.
I watched s1 and thought it was ok. A little too teen angsty for me, but the introduction to the universe was enough to get me to start the 1st book. A year and a half later, and 14 books in ( I’m halfway through the very last one) and I’m absolutely floored.
The whole series is nothing short of epic; the world building, magic system, character arcs, the story. One of my favorite reads so far, and certainly my most favorite in the fantasy genre.
It’s a great series, but like many such stories, some of the books in the middle are a bit of a slog, but still a great series overall.
It’s one of my favourite series, and probably one of my most re-read one. Maybe because it was one of the first epic fantasy of such huge proportions that I ever read.
It has been a long time since I read it last. Just not sure I have the time to start 14-book series these days. Maybe some day…
Just read an erotic romance, Heart of the Mountain by Snek Guy. It is about a mercenary going up a mountain to slay a dragon and take her hoard of gold. Things don’t go quite as he planned. It was well written, but a bit too much smut for my taste. I wrote a bit more here.
Just started the My Best Friend is an Eldritch Horror series.
Is “My Best Friend is an Eldritch Horror” available as a web novel somewhere?
It was originally published on Royal Road, but has since been moved to Amazon.
Ah, okay. Thanks for the info!
Bit late to the party, but I just started reading the Final Empire, Mistborn series #1. Only a few chapters in, but I’m enjoying it so far!
I’m almost done with Mistborn! Hope you enjoy
Ah, great series. Have you read any other of Brandon Sanderson’s work? Or is this your first?
My first. I have Way of Kings on hold at my library, so certainly not my last haha.
Welcome to the club!
I’ve read maybe 3 books all the way through in my entire life. My girlfriend has been trying to get me to read before bed and on the recommendation of some discord friends I purchased Infinite Jest and am a quarter of the way through it. It’s been a jarring book with the tonal shifts and the way it rapid fires between characters and settings, but I’ve absolutely loved some of the perspectives and dialog that DFW creates. If anyone else is a fan, I’d love more recommendations in the same vein, specifically the type of warped humor and how it stems from the human condition.
I haven’t read Infinite Jest, so can’t recommend anything like that, but keep visiting these posts, I am sure you’ll be able to find something you like.
Or you can create a separate post, asking for recommendations, it should get you more visibility.
I consider those books light reading. Very good for listening to in the car. You should try his other book The Aeronaut’s Windlass. He said he was going to switch between the two series and honestly I haven’t checked if he’s added to them. I really should, it was a ton of fun.
Yeah, they are pretty light and quick. Like that about them, not every book need to be dense.
As for The Aeronaut’s Windlass, I try not to start unfinished series now (with some exceptions). He started Cinder Spire series about 8 years ago, and the second book is releasing in November of this year. I have read his Codex Alera series, and will read this when he finishes it.
He used to be a very consistent writer, releasing a book pretty much every year, let’s hope he gets back into the groove.
re-reading the Malazan, Book of the Fallen. Currently on Toll the Hounds. I’m enjoying the re-read.
One of these days, I need to finally start reading Malazan series. Maybe time to start collecting the whole series.
Have you also read all the novellas, prequels, sequels, and malazan empire series?
I just started City of Refuge by Tom Piazza. It’s a fictional account of two families in New Orleans during hurricane Katrina. I’m only 12% in but so far I’m impressed by how real I feel like the pov characters are.
Also reading Lichtenbergianism by Dale Lyles. It’s about using procrastination as a creative strategy. 30% in, and juries out on whether I’ll find anything helpful in it.
procrastination as a creative strategy
I want this. I like procrastinating! Share your opinions about finishing it.
City of Refuge looks like an interesting book. Going to check it out.
I got more inspiration from the Lichtenbergian book than new information. Among other things, it made me start a kanban for my personal projects and now I have less anxiety over how much I need to do and in what order. If you’d like, I’m happy to mail you my copy, since I’m unlikely to read it again.
Metro 2033
Great book. I’ve started to read it after finishing the PC game:)
I started the games a while back and somehow screwed up and started on the second one lol. Once I found that out I dropped it… Just currently working through the audio books right now. I’ll replay them in the winter. In order this time :)
Is there any similar book but in Cyberpunk 2077 world?
Trying to read Into Thin Air, but I am getting bored by the background stories.
I was thinking about reading it some day. What are the background stories about? And are there too many of them?
Stories about Everest itself, the first hikers, the first summit, a few background paragraphs about the hikers/acquaintances, what they do, what are their achievements, Krakauer’s magazine backstory and such, I left it on Chapter 5 few days ago and I think we are barely arriving to Base Camp.
It’s not bad per se, I mean it works as an introductory bit, but I was kind of expecting the book to start at Base Camp. If I am guessing right, the climb will start on Chapter 6 (which is a a quarter of the book according to KOreader), will still try to keep on reading it.
I have a couple of overdue library books I should probably finish and return, but instead I’m reading a couple volumes of Combatants will be Dispatched because laughing is better than being a decent human being.
laughing is better than being a decent human being.
Heh, that made me chuckle.
How is “Combatants will be Dispatched”? I have read Chinese and Korean light/web novels, but am not acquainted with Japanese ones. Any recommendations?
Combatants will be Dispatched is hilarious. It might be the dumbest, most useless cast of characters I’ve ever read about. After a couple of volumes most of the main conflicts are problems they caused for themselves which is very satisfying.
I find I read a lot of web novels (or more commonly the graphic adaptations) to tweak certain tropes I crave now and then. It’s not often I find one that is actually just a satisfying read chapter to chapter. Light novels are often similar, but they’ve gone through some more editing and development so it’s more common for a volume to actually be some sort of satisfying chunk of story to read.
If you’re looking for genuinely good reads, I recommend Apothecary Diaries, Death’s Daughter and the Ebony Blade, or the Monogatari series. If you want some dumb fun there are so many options, but The World’s Finest Assassin Gets Reincarnated in Another World as an Aristocrat, Konosuba, and I’ve Been Killing Slimes for 300 Years and Maxed Out My Level are a few different but good ones.
Thanks, I’ll check them out!
I’m pretty capable of setting down a book for extended periods of time and remembering everything when I pick it back up, and have a habit of hopping between books; so the list that I’m “currently” reading is… large. That said, focusing on the most active ones:
I’m just gonna say Discworld, for reasons elsewhere expounded upon. Mostly working through the City Watch stuff at the moment, Jingo should be on my doorstep in the next couple days. Knocked out Mort while I was waiting for it, might do Reaper Man too if it takes much longer.
I’m also thumbing my way through The Selfish Gene; I’ve always been fascinated by the concept of memetics, and that’s its birthplace (while also being a pretty potent contextualization of evolutionary biology). Probably gonna pick up Extended Phenotype when I’m done.
Then there’s Tristram Shandy, which I’ve had for a while but only recently had a chance to start properly. It’s fun so far, takes a minute to get used to the writing style which is simultaneously archaic by modern standards and progressive for the time. I think “hobby-horsical” is gonna find a permanent home in my vocabulary.
Got about halfway through Gravity’s Rainbow on a cruise a few years back, I might pick that back up soon actually now that I think of it. That one’s pretty dense though, I might need to go back and skim what I read already to remember the character names.
Technically I’m listening to this one because he did read-throughs of a bunch of his books during COVID and I like the extra context he added, but Lon Milo DuQuette’s ‘Understanding Aleister Crowley’s Thoth Tarot’. If you’re into that sorta thing, I highly recommend DuQuette’s work, he’s both very knowledgeable and very accommodating to the casual reader.
There are a few other books living on my coffee table, but those are the most active right now.
Wow, that’s lots of books. I am terrible at multi-tasking, and if I start more than one book, I have trouble ending either of them.
Tristam Randy, is that Tristam Shandy? “The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman” or am I confusing it with something else?
I am thinking about doing these threads every week, or bi-weekly at most, so just sharing your active books is good enough. You can share the rest in next post.
Tristam Randy, is that Tristam Shandy?
Good catch, autocorrect. It’s an interesting one.
The Sword Defiant by Gareth Hanrahan. It’s enjoyable.
I really wish he’d describe scenes visually, but it’s character driven and he does a good job with their internal lives.
I used to skip all the visual descriptions, didn’t care much about them (also, didn’t understood half of the words used to explain the appearance of things or people). I have started to pay attention to them now, but I would probably still like a book that doesn’t worry about these too much.
Is it a series? Or a single book?
There’s definitely a balance to be struck with descriptions. Too little beats too much, IMO, but I appreciate a little food for my imagination.
It’s the first book in a series (I think). It’s epic fantasy, but it’s set in the Happily Ever After. The protagonist is part of the motley crew that defeated the big bad twenty years earlier.
His previous series (Black Iron Legacy) was a lot of fun. Of recommend them both.
Sounds interesting, going to check them out. Thanks!
I’m doing a reread of Human To Human by Rebecca Ore. It’s the third book in the trilogy.
It’s an old scifi series from the early ninties, but holds up well. I absolutely love how she designs her aliens.
The first book is Becoming Alien.
I was itching for a good alien show recently, didn’t find anyhting I liked (though with so many streaming services, couldn’t figure out where to watch half the stuff).
If not TV, I can atleast read a good aliens book. Will check it out.
It is pretty hard to find a good alien show on TV or in movies.
The downside of Star Trek is that aliens are often TOO human, and the downside of Star Wars is some of the aliens are TOO alien…
I find SFF literature does a much better job than visual media at really exploring alien psychology and and how communication might go with aliens who do not look human. Because it can base things in real scientific concepts without worrying overmuch about how much the CGI or prosthetics will cost, or if you’ll lose the casual non-nerd viewer.
I’ve a few quibbles about how Rebecca Ore looks at human behavior with a little too much “nature” over “nurture”, esp. re: gender dynamics, but the biology really is solid with the aliens. And you could argue she’s only looking at humans through the same lens she uses on her aliens.
She posits that intelligent life will sort of fill certain convergently evolved body plans, much like how in an ecosystem animals with very different ancestors can come to look like one another.
Like the mammal wolf and the marsupial tasmanian tiger (Thylacine) have converged to have even really similar skull shapes despite one being a placental mammal and the other a marsupial, or how sharks and dolphins have very similar body plans despite one being a fish and the other a mammal.
So in the series, there’s a few “buckets” that most sapient aliens evolved to fit in…ape-like ex-brachiators, bipedal ground-walking birds/aivan lizards, bear-type creatures, bat-like creatures. There’s cases where the main character runs into two “birds” but they’re not even from the same planet, they just both evolved a bird-like form and became intelligent separately.
The computer tech in her series is old–pre-internet sci-fi didn’t do the greatest job of predicting how fast or complex computer and information technology would become–and the main character is a not-too-bright everyman sort of character…
…but it still works pretty well, to allow us to deconstruct her world through his eyes.
Interestingly enough, my favorite characters aren’t the humans (they’re all very flawed), but instead the aliens, esp. the Rector and the Sub-Rector.
Yeah, I agree about alien shows and movies. There are still some fun shows, if you are willing to let go of few things, like Falling Skies.
Thanks for such a detailed response, it looks interesting. I am going to check it out.
I’m about two thirds of the way through Since We Fell by Dennis Lehane. And I finished The Stupidest Angel by Christopher Moore today.
I don’t think Lehane ever really misses. His plots aren’t usually all that dense but the characters are deep and compelling. And the writing is way better than it seems like it should be. Every once in a while you I read a line and think, “Where did that come from, and how did it get here?” He’s a really talented writer.
Moore is not that. But he’s fun and entertaining. This book was not his best effort. But it was fine. If you like Moore, you’ll like this one we’ll enough.
Moore is on my to-read list, will get some of his work one of these days.
Didn’t know about Lehane, just looked him up, he has written some good books. Well, at least the movies based on his books were pretty good 😀 Will check out his work.
BTW this is probably one of the only two (or maybe three) non fantasy/sci-fi book mentioned in this post. It’s interesting to see that majority of people here are speculative fiction fan.
