9 votes

What are you reading these days?

What are you reading currently? Fiction or non-fiction or poetry, any genre, any language! Tell us what you're reading, and talk about it a bit.

8 comments

  1. [4]
    fazit
    Link
    I am halfway through the first discworld novel The Color of Magic. It is wonderfully entertaining, although I have to admit that I sometimes struggle with books where every character has a weird...

    I am halfway through the first discworld novel The Color of Magic. It is wonderfully entertaining, although I have to admit that I sometimes struggle with books where every character has a weird name - and there are plenty in this book. Then again I guess it makes sense for a failed wizard to be called Rincewind instead of something like Thomas.
    (It's the same reason why I struggle with russian novels - while I thought that Nochnoi Dozor - Night Watch was captivating and really suspenseful, I frequently tripped over all the -witsch and -novs and their respectable diminuatives (Alexei is Sascha in some contexts - that was a real revelation when I finally learned that its the same person...) so it took me waaaay longer to read than usual.)

    I really like the character of Death and all the "real world stuff in magical context"-things like the picturebox or Twoflowser failure to anticipate insurance fraud. Had a lot of laughs so far!

    6 votes
    1. [2]
      wervenyt
      Link Parent
      It may encourage you to know that most of the weird names do return in later novels, so the series isn't just an interminable list of hard-to-recall screwballs. Like Protected implied, The Colour...

      It may encourage you to know that most of the weird names do return in later novels, so the series isn't just an interminable list of hard-to-recall screwballs.

      Like Protected implied, The Colour of Magic is usually held as one of the lower quality installations, so if you can hang with it, you might be surprised how good they get.

      4 votes
      1. fazit
        Link Parent
        Thanks for the encouragement! I'm really enjoying the novel so far. I decided to dive into the Discworld novels after reading a quote somewhere that deeply resonated with me: After looking up this...

        Thanks for the encouragement! I'm really enjoying the novel so far.

        I decided to dive into the Discworld novels after reading a quote somewhere that deeply resonated with me:

        "[...] And sin, young man, is when you treat people like things. Including yourself. That's what sin is."
        "It's a lot more complicated than that--"
        "No. It ain't. When people say things are a lot more complicated than that, they means they're getting worried that they won't like the truth. People as things, that's where it starts."
        "Oh, I'm sure there are worse crimes--"
        "But they starts with thinking about people as things..."
        -- Carpe Jugulum, by Terry Pratchett

        After looking up this picture on wikipedia: Discworld Reading Order Guide I decdided to start with the first starter novel in the branch that Terry Pratchett picked his starter novel from.

        Let's see where it takes me!

        2 votes
    2. Protected
      Link Parent
      You're in for a ride if you're reading in publication order. Discworld just gets better and better.

      You're in for a ride if you're reading in publication order. Discworld just gets better and better.

      3 votes
  2. rogue_cricket
    (edited )
    Link
    A few weeks ago I got my mitts on a library card and have been devouring books in my downtime. I recently finished Gillian Flynn's Gone Girl with the experience of having seen the movie, which I...

    A few weeks ago I got my mitts on a library card and have been devouring books in my downtime. I recently finished Gillian Flynn's Gone Girl with the experience of having seen the movie, which I think made it less enjoyable than it would have otherwise been. Still, it was fun, though some parts of it stretched my credulity in a way that made me think "c'mon, really?" for a minute before getting back to suspending my disbelief.

    I've just started on The Name of The Rose by Umberto Eco, which is an interest that stemmed from playing the game Pentiment, although I am only one chapter in. It is a bit slow going because I have only some familiarity with the historical setting, but one thing that helps is that I'm reading it on Libby, so I can highlight a passage and pop over to translate it from Latin or whatever. How did people deal in 1980!

    I also tried to finally read Pride and Prejudice - well, I say read, but I grabbed an audio book copy and I am finding it absolutely dreadful to try and pay attention to. I've given up on it and will just try reading it later. I'm not sure I can do audio books well, I always end up itching to multitask like I do with music or a podcast, but generally a book requires more of my attention to be enjoyable and I can't manage if my eyes aren't on it.

    5 votes
  3. tomf
    Link
    I started The Autobiography of Malcolm X by Malcom X and Alex Haley today -- and it is unbelievable! This is nothing like I would have expected. I'm doing the audiobook, which is performed by...

    I started The Autobiography of Malcolm X by Malcom X and Alex Haley today -- and it is unbelievable! This is nothing like I would have expected. I'm doing the audiobook, which is performed by Laurence Fishburne, which is absolutely perfect.

    1/3rd in and its hard to pause.

    After The Old Man series wrapped for the season, I figured I should check out some Thomas Perry novels. I read The Burglar the other day and it was awful. Unbelievably corny, rushed in the wrong places, and just... textbook. I love some puply detective (etc) novels, but my god -- I couldn't wait for it be over with.

    3 votes
  4. scrambo
    Link
    After not having read any books since at least mid 2022, I'm back... and apparently very hungry. At least relative to my usual book consuming levels. I read the entirety of "A Court of Silver...

    After not having read any books since at least mid 2022, I'm back... and apparently very hungry. At least relative to my usual book consuming levels.

    I read the entirety of "A Court of Silver Flames" by Sarah Maas in about 12 hours over 2 days, and then I started (and finished) "Scythe" by Neal Shusterman yesterday. I enjoyed both books for different reasons, and am excited to read the rest in the series, eventually.

    CoSF:
    I love me some romance, especially when it's full on adult romance (smutty :]) and not the piddling YA mind games romance. My sister introduced me to this series and I have loved it every step of the way; it's had some pretty good twists and turns through the 5 books, and had some GREAT character development. In my eyes at least. This book specifically starts at ground 0 and shows how a person might "unbreak" themselves after multiple traumatic events. Heartwarming (in places), heartbreaking (in others), relatable, and with some good action; I probably enjoyed this more than I enjoyed book 4 to be honest.

    Scythe:
    Reading this not even 24 hours after CoSF was a pretty interesting switch up. It's YA, so I didn't expect the romance subplot to rise to the level of CoSF, thankfully, because the romance was a _SUB_plot, not even sure I could call it anemic. That wasn't a bad thing though, as it left room to explore other aspects of the story. The world is an interesting place to be with 2 interesting characters that I enjoyed diving into the heads of. I think the next couple books in the series will dive a little deeper into the Sci-fi aspect which I'm excited about as it played more of a background part in this one.

    2 votes
  5. elcuello
    Link
    I've started listening to The Frontier Saga by Ryk Brown because I saw The Expanse some time ago and I'm almost finished with the second book Rings of Haven. I've always loves science fiction but...

    I've started listening to The Frontier Saga by Ryk Brown because I saw The Expanse some time ago and I'm almost finished with the second book Rings of Haven. I've always loves science fiction but never really got around to reading it because the world building always seems so excessive and overwhelming (one of the reason I also had to give up on LOTR). But I've found listening to books gives me a better overview and understanding somehow (which is a bit weird to me because I like to put subtitles on shows I perfectly understand to get the same sort of overview). I like it so far and it's entertaining although somewhat "old fashioned" at times in lack of a better term. The narrator is a bit dramatic but it works and I'm actually glad he's doing all the books because I'm so used to it now. It's really understated a lot of times just how important the narrator in audiobooks is IMO.
    I have no idea if they're considered "good" in the genre but they fit my need right now and maybe it can kick start some motivation to move on to other great science fiction books afterwards.

    1 vote