What book(s) are you currently reading or listening to? August 05

Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir

Great space fiction, if you liked the Martian you'll dig this.

I use my commute to alternate between audiobooks and podcasts. Just finished Death of Dulgath by Michael J. Sullivan. Catching back up on podcasts and then I'll jump into book 4 - The Disappearance of Winter's Daughter.

Gideon The Ninth by Tamsyn Muir

Not usually my type of book but every time I try and get a few pages in, I enjoy what I read.

About half way through Player of Games by Iain M. Banks.

Decided to re-read the entire series. Read it years ago and it’s as good the second time round.

Black AF History

Currently reading:

Richard Schwartz - No Bad Parts. It's an introduction to Internal Family Systems (IFS) therapy.

Michael Cisco - Antisocieties. A short stories collection about loneliness and isolation, definitely in the weird literature area, gives Ligotti vibes.

Picked up:

Being Human: How Our Biology Shaped World History

while traveling recently. Haven't gotten far yet but it seems like a good, fun science based read.

I'm on Shakespeare for Squirrels by Christopher Moore. I recently worked through Lamb, A Dirty Job, and Secondhand Souls by him during a couple of long road trips.

I picked up reading You by Caroline Kepnes assuming I might be able to get back into print reading with material that I'm vaguely familiar with ( I watched a season of the show years ago), but I've stalled with it the same as I have every time when attempting reading over listening in recent years.

I went on a reading blitz in 2023 but haven't done much since then, which kind of sucks.

I did Jemisin's Broken Earth trilogy, loved it. Becky Chambers? Read everything she wrote. Love.

Some other things in there that were kind of dumb but enjoyable (Rysa Aoki's Light From Distant Stars) or just shallow (Legends & Lattes) or forgettable (Alice Oseman's Loveless) but I have tried several others and it isn't sticking.

Too bad; I really do enjoy reading but nothing's really taking hold.

I really liked Broken Earth too, and I have Becky Chambers on the TBR.
You could try sci-fi magazines or short-story collections (like The New Yorker's Century Of Fiction which is over 1000 pages!) to find new authors you like and check out their work. Or you could double-down on Jemisin's other books.

Why did I have to see this post now?

Three books:

Righteous Victims by Benny Morris, the detestable Zionist who laughs about starving children. It’s very weird reading about Israel’s historical atrocities throughout this book given the author’s recent behavior.

Blood Meridian by Cormac McCarthy. About a quarter of the way in, and this book is strange. It has not proven its legacy to me yet, despite the descriptive writing and impressively gritty plot.

Where the Sidewalk Ends by Shel Silverstein. Some of these poems make me cry. That is remarkable.

Just wrapped up Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas by Hunter S. Thompson. The book is better than the movie, and I enjoyed the commentary.

44% through War and Peace...stuck in the wolf hunt, going very slowly...

Just finished Sphere by Michael Crichton this morning on my commute. And started State of Fear by Michael Crichton on my evening commute 😅. Kinda binging through his books currently and saving Jurassic park for last.

I’ve finally gotten around to The Expanse series and I’m about a third of the way into Cibola Burn, the 3rd book.
I really enjoyed the first two and I’m liking this one but it’s starting a bit slower then the other and I find the tension ratcheting up different not worse but different.

The hive mind generally says Corolla Burn is the slowest, so if you’re enjoying it you’ll likely enjoy those that come after.
Those books could have benefited from a more scrupulous editor, but are good nonetheless!
- Yeah but I find most authors 4th or so books start need better editorship. I think it's more of an industry / ego problem. Once an author get to a certain level of notoriety they get editors who don't feel comfortable tell them to tighten up their work. A lot of authors figure it out around the 5th to 7th book though so sometime I just slog through I guess.

Clockwork angel (book 1 of Infernal devices series) by Cassandra clare, which I started on 31st of July

"The Giza Power Plant" by Chris Dunn, nonfiction.

As a mechanical engineer it was absolutely fascinating and should be a must read for technical people.

Now starting the follow-up "Lost Technologies of Ancient Egypt" by the same author.

I'm stalled in the middle of like 6 different books and I'm not feeling any of them at the moment.

I just DNFed Assassin of Reality as the second in the Vita Nostra series (I really liked the first book, but...), so I ended up rereading The Scholomance series by Naomi Novik instead.

I started the Four Quarters series by Tanya Huff last night, and I just aggressively don't care about any of the characters. I don't know what I'm looking for in books right now, and I'm getting a little cranky about it.

Oh no, that's the worst. Sometimes I can snap out of it with something that's fast-paced or complete fluff, but other times it's nails on a chalkboard for like a week. I hope you find something compelling soon!
I just DNFed Assassin of Reality as the second in the Vita Nostra series (I really liked the first book, but...)
Yeah, Vita Nostra's really cool so far (I'm at ~80% atm), but having read blurbs/reviews for the sequels, I think I'm done after the first one.

I'm still reading Controversies in Queer Theology by Susannah Cornwall. It's been a great read so far, and I'm currently reading a section about queer art in Christianity where she talks about the Ecce Homo art series of Elisabeth Ohlson, which contains such images as this:

The Kaiju Preservation Society. Really light, fun read.

https://us.macmillan.com/books/9780765389138/thekaijupreservationsociety/

I am incredibly jealous you are reading this for the first time. It was my first Scalzi read and I loved it.
- Scalzi was hired to reboot a classic sci-fi series. His book was "Fuzzy Nation", but the OG book "Little Fuzzy" should be read by everyone!
  https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/18137

The Conquest of Mexico & The Conquest of Peru by William H. Prescott. I am only 200 pages in so I have a lot more to go but its good so far. For someone from the 1840s he does a remarkably good job at countering colonial propaganda and supremacist thought. There is still some of course but better than I expected

Fahrenheit 451 :3.. there was a sale on books at my grocery store yesterday, and that one seemed to be topical to current events

Get it before it’s gone!
Have you read any of the other dystopian classics, like 1984 & Brave New World?
- I've read a decent chunk of them :3.. don't think I did brave new world tho

Fought my way through to the end of If on a Winter's Night a Traveller yesterday - it's a remarkable book, but I'm not sure if I actually enjoyed it exactly. Appreciated it as a challenging piece of post-modern fiction, sure... enjoyed... Kind of.

Have now moved on to my second attempt at reading The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy (first published 1759).

First attempt was years ago, and I do think I'm getting more out of it now than I did then. It's quite challenging, with the old-fashioned language, and the many endnotes which I find useful in understanding but also distracting in maintaining a reading flow, but it's funny and I think I'm getting the overall gist. We'll see if I stick with it though!

Still on "Rama II", it's also been busy. Not much progress since last week.

I haven't posted in some time and while I did read some books in the interim, right now I'm back to reading The Wheel of Time by Robert Jordan. I'm now on the seventh book, A Crown of Swords. People say this is where the series becomes a "slog" for some books. We'll see. I was already frustrated with the last book, since Jordan seems to be a bit too enamored with his own writing and progress is glacial.

I’m currently reading Who’s Dead, Doc? by J. M. Griffin It’s the second book in a trilogy.

It’s a cozy murder mystery about a woman named Jules who runs a rabbit rescue. In the stories, she and her telepathic bunny named Bun solve murders that happen in her small rural town in New Hampshire. I absolutely love it 💚

"The Andromeda Strain" on my phone to pass time and "The Bear and the Dragon" on my Kobo.

Is it weird to read two books at the same time lol?

Just two? Those are rookie numbers.
Loooooove The Andromeda Strain!
Such a great book, both the story and the fragmentary structure of it. Got a paper copy somewhere, must read that again soon.
EDIT - found it 😁
It depends on the setting your are listening to and reading the books. I listen to audio books on my daily commute.
So if you are listening to one book for the soul sucking drive and another to relax at the end of the day..
- That's kind of what I'm doing now that you made me think about it. One book is usually a light read that is easy to hop in and out of and the other is usually more intensive. The light reads are for killing time and the heavier ones I read before bed.

Just got James by Percival Everett. Been looking forward to it for a while, plan to start reading it this weekend.

this will be my next fiction read, but I don't know if I'll enjoy it because I never read Huck Finn.
I did the audiobook and really enjoyed it

Radical: The Science, Culture, and History of Breast Cancer in America.

My best friend was recently diagnosed with breast cancer (very treatable and likely curable), and we both have the type of personality where it helps to deep dive/learn a lot about scary stuff. I picked out a few books for us to nerd out together on, and this is the first one. It’s super good so far, as frustrating as some of the aspects of the US healthcare system are.

Good luck to your friend, hope things work out well 🤞

Reading the “Ender’s Shadow” series after finishing Ender’s Game.

Card is… something else. I’m on Shadow Puppets now, and while the previous books were good, his Mormonism is seriously showing in this one, with Petra being all baby crazy despite the fact they’re literally young teenagers.

It was weird to me finding out about Card’s anti-gay and Mormon views considering there were some rather homoerotic undertones to portions of Ender’s Game (or maybe I’m reading too much into it). Plus all the IVF and genetic manipulation stuff in the Shadow series. Though admittedly, the later Ender books (Children of the Mind, Xenocide) are utterly batshit, like he was having a mental wank.

I grew up in a boarding school and Ender’s Game really resonated with me when I was younger. Shame the author is an asshole. “Never meet your heroes” and all that.

Yeah, I can't read Card's stuff anymore. The 3rd and 4th Game books got real weird, and I only finished them because I didn't have much else to read. The first Shadow book about Bean was pretty decent, but it was mostly a retelling of Game from another perspective instead of a new story.
- The Shadow series covers what happens on Earth after the events at battle school as all kinds of conflict breaks out globally, but it mostly centers on Bean , Petra, and Achilles, along with Peter Wiggin taking on a leadership role.
  But a lot of it is just weird, and much like how the later Ender books go batshit, the later Shadow books involve Bean’s gigantism and sending his descendants into space.

Still on book 1 of the Farseer series and still really liking it. She creates a warm and comfortable world that I enjoy being in.

Starsight from brandon sanderson and dune messiah

I just finished Eye of the World by Robert Jordan about two weeks back.

Been slowly working my way through Great Hunt (next in the Wheel of Time) but haven’t been able to dedicate as much time to it recently.

It’s good so far. It’s definitely hooked me more than the first book.

Currently reading (on different devices):

Babel by Rebecca Kuang
The Solitudes by John Crowley
The Best of Cordwainer Smith
Raven Scholar by Antonia Hodgson

I just finished The Courage to Be Disliked by Ichiro Kishimi and Fumitake Koga. It introduces the reader to the philosophical and psychological concepts developed and popularized by Alfred Adler. I thoroughly enjoyed it and found it to be possibly transformative for my own life and outlook.

I started listening to Stephen King’s IT.

I have read and listened a number of his books, but never IT. I am only three chapters into to it and so far It is King at the top of his game.

I finished two short novels and I did not like both: Everyday Is For The Thief by Teju Cole and You Dreamed Of Empires by Alvaro Enrigue.

So it's back to non-fiction and my next book will be Empire of A.I. by Karen Hao.

The Southern Reach series and a bit of Clarice Lispector and Lydia Davis short stories added in for the psychedelic spice.

edit it is WAY easier to read these comments if you bold book, author, and series names!

Reminder surround text with one pair of asterisks to make italic text and two pairs of asterisks to make bold text.

In a dramatic departure from usual scheduling I have only listened to one Deathlands book, number 101.

Other than that I have listened to "The Eyre Affair" and I am halfway through "Lost in a Good Book" these are the first two books of the "Thursday Next" series of books by Jasper Fforde.

Thursday Next: "Set in the Nextian Universe, where the ChronoGuard monitors the time stream, the Crimean War never ended and literature and croquet are national obsessions, the series follows the adventures of Thursday Next, Literary Detective and Jurisfiction agent. "

The Eyre Affair: "Acheron Hades, Third Most Wanted Man in the World, steals the original manuscript of Mr Chuzzlewit and kills a minor character, causing him to disappear from the pages of every copy in existence. But this was just a warning, his real target is Jane Eyre, who is kidnapped from the pages of literature. With the help of her uncle Mycroft, a genius inventor, Thursday enters the pages of Jane Eyre, teaming up with Rochester to foil Hades and rescue his beloved Jane."

lost in a Good Book: "Thursday's husband Landen has been eradicated by the Goliath Corporation. They'll bring him back, but only if Thursday releases their top agent whom she trapped in the pages of The Raven. Unfortunately, the works of Poe are restricted, so newly minted Jurisfiction agent Thursday Next will need some help in the form of her new mentor, Miss Havisham."

The entire universe is an absurd alternate history with ridiculous shit happening constantly and I'm loving it!

Hee hee, 'listening to books'

The Boomer Bible, as a pdf.

Reading Vita Nostra by Marina & Sergey Dyachenko, along with Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark by Alvin Schwartz when I need a break from Vita Nostra's slow pacing.

__

Finished:

No One Will Come Back for Us by Premee Mohamed (fantasy and cosmic-y horror short stories) | bingo: minority author, alliterative, short HM

I don't really have a description for this one. A few of the stories have a shared setting; a few others have a war/revolution theme.

None of the stories in this were bad, they just didn't all appeal to me; the shared-setting ones were coincidentally my favorite. I've realized that part of my issue with collections/anthologies is that I'm stuck diving in blind for every single story, hoping that the author/theme is enough to carry my interest.