I've been in a bit of a reading slump these past few days due to you know... gestures around broadly so I am still on my books I was before. I am still enjoying the Percy Jackson book, it feels like a nice escape from everything.
For whatever it's worth, I've both noticed and appreciated your efforts lately.
And just what I've seen of it via posts and announcements has already been enough to sort of vicariously exhaust me, so I can only imagine...
I'm trying my best to be optimistic but tbh if no real change occurs or solutions are actually proposed soon, I might have to shutdown for my own well being here as well. I'm really hopeful it won't come to that. I am attempting to sign up with Cloudflare's CSAM image scanning service as well as looking into ways to disable photo uploads since this instance really isn't even image focused either. If worse comes to worse, we could migrate to firefish I guess. I'm quietly waiting but very impatiently. I'm just rattled emotionally over what happened. I appreciate the support from the community a lot.
Finished John Dies at the End by David Wong. It was okay all in all - imaginative, but not very well-written.
Started Kafka on the Shore by Haruki Murakami. I've been working my way through Murakami in publishing order for the last few years, reading one every few months, and it's time for this one. I'm thoroughly enjoying it so far.
I liked John Dies at the End, and the movie adaptation was... different, but also fun!
I liked the book all in all - it just had a lot of flaws, and that made it kind of a slog.
Since this was not just a first novel but a first novel that started out as a webserial, I think it's safe to assume that his later books are better, so I'll undoubtedly go back to him some time.
For the rime being though, as a sort of palate cleanser, I was craving something that I could count on to be well-written if nothing else, and Murakami definitely fills that bill.
I'm reading Assassin's Apprentice by Robin Hobb for a book club, also reading The Jakarta Method by Vincent Bevins
I think I'm going to read a couple more books about neocolonialism and US intervention in the Global South this year, since I already read The Darker Nations by Vijay Prashad and How Europe Underdeveloped Africa by Walter Rodney
True fact, I made out with and fell half in love with Robin Hobb's daughter at a wedding once. She's actually more famous than her mom to a certain generation, but my lips are sealed as to her true identity.
A Fire Upon The Deep by Vernor Vinge
Kentucky by Panopticon
I am reading Frankenstein. It has really shocked me in the difference between the actual book and how Frankenstein is generally portrayed nowadays. The writing is eloquent and beautiful, lyrical. I will certainly read some more Shelley afterwards, any suggestions? I usually tend to read science fiction, so it has been very interesting to read the source of it all.
Started reading a cormac McCarthy book - All the pretty horses, will see how it goes as a previous one wasn’t quite too my taste
Last week I polished off the eleven books in the King's Watch series by Mark Hayden, as well as the cozy mystery spinoff by the author's sister with the excellent title Murder Within Tent, and the... what do you call the relationship between two spinoffs of the same show? Cousins? As well as the two modern UK procedurals in a cousin series (the Tom Morton books), and a couple of so-so novellas in yet another spinoff series featuring a minor set of characters from the King's Watch books by someone else entirely.
This week I banged through a few books in a really quite decent urban fantasy series, the Lost Fall books by Chris Underwood, a quick, fun, not especially complex action thriller set in a Mexican border town called Cryptid Slayer, and the latest Prof Croft urban fantasy book which is really a dollar store Dresden Files that I'm only still reading out of inertia, really. Today I read the first Rev Parata Occult Mysteries book, a fun lovecraft-flavored noir set in 1984, and I'm about 75% through the second one which I'm not enjoying as much because the author made the decision to lampshade the solution to the mystery less than a quarter of the way through, and I'm not sure if he intended to turn the book into a howcatchem instead of a whodunit or he just thinks I'm a moron. I expect I'll finish that off before bed.
Kindle Unlimited is a real mixed bag in terms of quality, but it's one flat fee every month for a huge library and every now and then you find a gem amidst the mediocrity.
People here have such impressive reads! I’ve read some three pages over the last week, for no real reason other than “life can be busy”. With such a low bar, I hope to read more next week!
I randomly started Deathworlders, suggested by another user, and I’m enjoying it more than I expected. It’s a light read, and a bit disjoint (as you’d expect from a serialization), but fun and with some good solid scenes. I plan on reading a bit more of it before dropping out.
Some weeks you read more than others, and that's ok. I finished my Percy Jackson audiobook and am finally reading the pages of my physical book today :)
