Another busy week without much reading done. Just my daily chapters of different web novels.
What about all of you? What have you all been reading or listening to lately?
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Part 1 of Piranesi just hits my mind in the right spot. (Both the book and the audiobook)
Its now 5am, having to take a new flight because my first one got canceled, having a croissant for breakfast, yet listening to the House and the Statues can still calm me down, even in this semi-streased out morning
Finished “Isabella Nagg and the Pot of Basil”. I didn’t like it that much and probably would have dropped it if I hadn’t felt obligated to finish it, as my niece recommended it to me. The book’s main problem is that the author tried really hard to write like Terry Pratchett and never really manages to be nearly as funny or interesting. It also has way too many goddamn footnotes.
However, during the last quarter of the book, all humor and cozyness is forgotten and the story takes a pretty dark turn. I actually thought that that was the strongest part of the book by far, as the author finally seemed to find his own voice. Even so, I’d only give the book a 5/10 or so.
I have now started “The Pride of Chanur” by C. J. Cherryh and it’s quite an enjoyable read so far.
Yesterday, I finished “Mister Magic” by Kiersten White. I enjoyed this one. The form was pretty okay. Basically it had chapters of narrative separated by a small chapter of something like a wiki page or a reddit thread or an email. It’s meant to lean horror and at no point was it terrifying, but it was a bit creepy at times. The writing hinted at some literary ability, but it didn’t ever break out and have me ooing and awing, but the writing was very solid. At the end it got a little bit muddy, but the author was describing an imaginary world – it’s a tall order to keep that 100% coherent. I also thought the metaphor/allegory of the story was about as subtle as being kicked by a horse, and the epilogue drove the message home like having a piano dropped on you.
All that said, I likes the dialogue and the characters. I felt each were unique from each other. I liked the story too. The descriptions of the desert were very good. For any of its faults, it never stopped being entertaining.
For all of those reasons, I give this book 4/5 Fudgy points. Give it a read before Halloween for a taste of creepy, but know that you won’t be scared at any point.
Pretty good book.
Nearing the end of my Culture series re-read. Matter, the 8th book of the series (my 7th since I skipped Consider Phlebas). Matter is longer than the previous books, and although it seems to start slowly, it really revs up fast and is such a fantastic ride by the end. Absolutely brilliant series.
Guards, Guards by Terry Pratchet.
One of his best!
Girl in the Mirror by Wes Boyd
I just devoured A Closed and Common Orbit in like 4 days. This is a sequel and I did the same with the first one as well. Now to find something else to read
I believe theres more in that series. Iirc the second was by far my fav
I got the next one on request from the library already. I had to wait a month last time but I will see this time.
Got all of Narnia for a fucking dollar and man am I happy. Got it from an Spca thrift store too so it helped some critters
Win, win! That’s awesome, happy reading and I’m sure they appreciate your support :).
I have been reading The Dawn of Everything, an archeology book trying to prove that capitalism and centralised power are not a necessity for civilizations. While the book is dense and the political bias is clear, it’s an interesting if slow read. Very slow…
Yeah, I started reading that too; it’s definitely dense.
You might like Lost Worlds by Patrick Wyman. It tries to show civilization didnt just happen A to B to C using archeological data and DNA evidence. Only say that because last week someone mentioned this exact book in a reply to me finishing Lost Worlds.
David Graeber readers unite! Finally getting back to reading Debt: The First 5000 years here.
Just finishing up Stranger in a Strange Land, and it’s a slog. Heinlen’s views have gotten harder and harder to ignore, in particular the homophobia gets pretty bad near the end. I have like 80 pages left and am not sure if it’s worth it…
I started with “Tue moon is a harsh mistress” , and loved it. Read some other ones, biut stranger was the last.
He’s got a real incest, tall red head thing, and his libertarian views now piss me off. Guess that’s just growing up. I can’t say I recall the homophobia, but I don’t doubt it.
I enjoyed “Moon Is A Harsh Mistress”. I don’t really remember any homophobia in it. If you like audiobooks, there is an excellent version of it narrated by Lloyd James.
I was referring to the homophobia indicated in stranger. Thanks, but I think ive had enough Heinlein
My current nonfiction read is Femina by Janina Ramirez. As for fiction, I’m reading Said the Dead by Doireann Ní Ghríofa, which I’m really enjoying. And I’m listening to Good Girl by Aria Aber, which is excellent. I usually have a few books going at once, and I’m glad to have a few great ones at the same time.
Just finished “There Is No Anti-memetics Division” by QNTM, and heading to the library now to pick up the second book in the “Old Man’s War” series by John Scalzi. Loved TINAMD, btw. Very creepy, lots of existential dread. Quick read, too - only like 270 pages.
TINAMD has been on my “maybe to read pile”, can you sell it a bit more?
There’s an organization that deals with weird, anomalous stuff in the world; their antimemetics division specifically studies things that make you forget information. Part of their mandate is figuring out how to protect against world-ending phenomena that can’t be remembered… like the one creeping up on them right now.
If you like SCP or the game Control, this is liable to be your jam.
Anything along the lines of Control makes it the next on the to read list. Thanks
The book began life as a series of stories set in the world of the SCP Foundation. If you’re a fan of that kind of cosmic mystery/horror it’s a must-read.
To my mind the best part is going in blind, cause the ideas are what makes it. To me the first half/three quarters are excellent, then it was just OK.
Well - it’s inspired by the SCP Foundation wiki. The guy who wrote it was a prolific poster to that. Some of what’s in the book was actually posted by him in serialized format there; in fact, there’s even a video series covering some of the stories:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w-IiVeGAydE
If the videos seem like your cup of tea, you should give the book a read.
Just finished “capital and ideology”. It is dense, good,but hard to recommend.
Started “something in the forest loves you”
I’m currently reading Hexed. A book about a small town cursed by a witch who drives you to suicide if you try to leave the town permanently. It’s a really slow book but in these last 20% or so it’s really ratcheted up.
I also started listening to the Isles of Emberdark. It’s pretty good. I’m still early on in the book but being that it’s Sanderson it feels very familiar
Who’s the author of Hexed? Lots of books with the same title it seems.
So this is kind of weird because I swear my Kobo version calls it hexed. But Goodreads calls it hex
Hmm that’s weird, I checked on my Kobo and it appears to be titled Hex. Though there seems to be multiple versions (still all by the same author). Thanks, this sounds properly creepy!
Hexed sounds quite interesting. I’m a horror novels fan, would you recommend it?
If you don’t mind a lot of world building. It’s a lot better now but a few times I did think “what’s the point” and considered dropping it. But overall I’m glad I stuck with it.
I’m sold! I’ll see if my local library has a copy to borrow next time I go there. Thanks!
Operation Bounce House by Matt Dinniman. It’s got the same feel as Dungeon Crawler Carl. Enjoying it so far as well, after this it’s book 2 of the Corellian Trilogy. Hopefully the proofreading in this one is better.
I disagree. It doesn’t feel like DCC but you can see some of the same humor. Especially with the AI. It’s still worth a read and I hope there is more in the future.
Same humor, same writing style, same tempo, yes it’s not in the same universe and lacking the “RPG” parts, if that’s what you meant. It could almost be one of the levels at this point.
Maybe we read it differently. I didn’t feel like it was even close. This felt more like medieval uprising to me than alien takeover.
Medieval? They went to the planet on generational ships to build an instaportal back to earth. The mechs are controlled by fully immersive simulators.
And in DCC they’re fighting with swords and bows as well as spells, with the tech and aliens. The parallels are there.
