Taking a break from fantasy and reading the rise of wolf 8 right now about the reintroduction of wolves to Yellowstone

It's honestly fantastic so far

I'm reading the Mistborn Trilogy. I'm coming straight off of The Stormlight Archive and it's fascinating seeing which characters Sanderson "reuses" throughout the two stories. They're not the same characters (besides Hoid, of course!), but there are some VERY similar traits between a few key characters.

Side note, I loved Mistborn book 1, but I'm on book 2 now and it's definitely slowed down so hoping it picks back up!

Been with the rona this week so have had some extra time to read. Finished this week:

The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald - My foray into trying to get into some literary classics; starting with the short ones. Kind of hard to follow, but oddly charming.

Ender's Game by Orson Scott Card - Had a bad streak of DNF's, so decided to read something that would surely not miss. A really gripping story. Will try Speaker for the Dead at some point.

Currently reading (perusing my library's digital catalogue):

A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms by George R.R. Martin - Picked this up on a whim. Collection of short stories in a century before GoT.

(Arrival) Stories of Your Life and Others by Ted Chiang (short story collection) - Titular story was a bit of a let-down, but I loved the first one with the tower of babylon.

Did-not-finish:

Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir - Not a fan of the comedic self-narrative and lack of characterization. Mostly tell not show worldbuilding. Someone on reddit put it aptly: it's a sci-fi beach read.

Up Next (subject to change, too many great books in my to read pile):

The Old Man and the Sea, Dogs of War (moar Tchaikovsky!), Animal Farm

I’ve been reading Michael Pollan’s In Defense of Food: An Eater’s Manifesto.

I picked it up because I wanted something to read during my vacation thinking I would have plenty of downtime to read it in. My daily life makes it difficult to concentrate on long books. Unfortunately (but thankfully!) I haven’t had much downtime! Luckily the chapters are fairly short so I have been able to cover them bit by bit.

I wanted to read it for a while because I was intrigued by the tagline the book has, which has often been quoted on the internet: “Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants”. I’ve written many comments on Tildes about my transition to a whole foods plant based diet, and while this is not a WFPB book it does have a bit of overlap in foundational ideas.

Unfortunately it’s written in a style that seems to obscure its sources more than I would like for this kind of book. There may be more info in the footnotes but they are broken in the ebook version I am reading. So for now I am taking this book as an informed opinion rather than a well researched fact. I am inclined to believe it though, since it presents a fairly well reasoned set of arguments. It’s kind of interesting that it’s already starting to feel a little out of date; the popular opinions on nutrition seem to be changing fairly dramatically over the past couple of decades.

Finished Rogue Protocol, the third Murderbot story. I really enjoyed it.

Finished How Big Things Get Done by professor Bent Flyvbjerg. This book summarizes a career worth of research about why when and how large projects succeed or fail. I learned that Heathrow Terminal 5 was an astounding success in finishing on time and under budget. I learned that the Sydney Opera House project gave the reins to an inexperienced architect who happened to submit the prize winning drawing. After many delays and a lot of money lost he was fired. The building once finished is beautiful, but the architect missed his chance for a ground breaking career. He was never trusted with another signature project.

Started the Hundred Foot Journey by Richard Morais. It is also a good film. The food descriptions are mouth watering. The characters are flawed and fun to read about.

Started Of Mice and Men, which has been on my to read list for a very long time.
Edit. I finished Of Mice and Men. I thought I knew the story because I've seen a lot of people write about it. I did not in fact know most of the story. Powerful book. Sad. Beautiful. Really conveys a lot about that time and place. Steinbeck was a man of his time but also a man of compassion, a keen observer, a humanist. There is a lot more about race relations in the book than I expected.

I've been working my way through Stephen King's Insomnia, more than 20 years after my last read, so much of it is fresh again. It's one of the only (older) novels of his that hasn't been adapted to the screen. And that's cause it's both weird and touchy, almost moreso now than back when it came out almost 30 years ago (1994).

The main character is an old man, Ralph, grieving the death of his wife and developing insomnia. The main plot is about abortion culture wars. And at some point, Ralph starts losing it.

It's King, so the hallucinations aren't just hallucinations, as is expected...but this is a wild ride that I am doubtful will ever get a half-decent adaptation. In some ways there's comfort in knowing that it is possible to write something impossible to adapt to the big screen.

Pairing it with the Kingslingers podcast as I go, and it's definitely a great experience (though I suggest if you've never read it, save the podcast for your second read).

I also found a book at the library book sale, "Coping with Interracial Marriage." Also published in the early 90's. I read the intro and paged through it a bit. It was kind of this support book explaining to interracial couples some of the challenges they would face. It was....enlightening, to see both how far we have and have not come in 30 years. I'm sad because the "have not come" side is still much heavier than it should be.

I've been slogging through The Expanse. Just finished book 5 and am a few chapters into 6. It's been... fine?

I've been reading Obama's book The Promise Land, it has been really insightful of the struggles at all stages of his political life. I am really enjoying it, such a great guy.

I've just finished Robert Seethaler's The Tabacconist. It's set in Vienna during the Anschluss and takeover by the Nazis, centering on a tabacconist's shop and the apprentice who comes to work there from the country. There were points where I got a bit frustrated with it (Freud turns up as a character and the way it's done feels a bit weird) but overall I really enjoyed it - it didn't take the route I expected and ended up being a powerful meditation on individuality in the face of oppression.

I'm also reading The Return of Martin Guerre by Natalie Zemon Davis which I'm getting more into than I thought I would. It's non-fiction, focusing in on a court case in the south of France in the sixteenth century in which a man was accused of imposture of another man who'd dissapeared. It's a really facinating look at life at that time and I really appreciate the focus on fact without too much speculation or narrativising of events. It's also got very short chapters so it's very easy to whizz through.

Currently reading Foundryside. Overall, I've been pretty entertained by this book. For me it meets the goals of being a fairly easy to read book while still building a good backstory and fairly complex world the characters live in. I'm not quite done with the first book in this series, but am currently anticipating that I'll continue on to the next book.

I've been on a fantasy binge recently (mostly Isekai / LitRPG mental junk food) and am currently listening to Millennial Mage.

I'll just shamelessly copy/paste the authors description (and my apologies for the low effort that represents):

"The Wilds relentlessly reclaim all things. Humanity shelters within their ever-dying cities. Mages create the only path forward.

Tala had to fight tooth and nail in the Magic Academy to forge a path to power that was her own. She knows it’s her duty to use that power to serve humanity, defending them against the creatures of the untamable wilds. However, she skipped a few steps in her education, like apprenticing to someone who actually knows what they’re doing.

Now, Tala has to balance learning as fast as she can with paying off the veritable mountain of debt the Magic Academy dropped on her shoulders for the opportunity; not to mention staying alive.

Even though she should only be a Mageling, the world considers her a Mage. Bless the stars she directed most of her magic toward survival."

I've been reading some epic fantasy, currently on a reread of the entire saga of Underrealm by Garrett Robinson 👀 after the first book it's basically impossible to put down.

Starfish (Peter Watts, 1999)

A team of traumatized individuals artificially altered for that environment is sent to a habitat 3km under the sea. In complete isolation, they maintain a geothermal station. Weird stuff happens.

To talk about the good things, the characterization is superb and I love the characters. The gradual change they undergo is narrated subtly, with competence and sophistication. Even though the book is written in the third person, on each character part the narration kinda assumes a bit of their personality, and Watts masterfully allows us to see what goes in their head in a way that feels completely natural, non-intrusive, and even compassionate. I don't regret reading this book largely due to the characters. There are also interesting concepts that appear later, the most interesting being the "smart gel", a kind of biological AI that is slowly taking over. In terms of sci-fi concepts, the way Watts narrates their inner life is way more interesting than anything going on 3km under the sea. I also love the idea of sci-fi vampires.

There are many great things to say about Starfish, but, in the end, it left me unsatisfied. It has a good premise, and the author knows how to hold suspense. It doesn't have many of the obvious defects that would make me call a book "bad", but something is missing. When something is really bad, it allows for the satisfaction of feeling superior to it. You wasted your time, but your ego, at least, was fed.

Starfish is neither here nor there -- it flirts with brilliance but loses steam too soon. When the central mystery is resolved, way too late in the narrative, it feels like an episode of Scooby-Doo, with Velma revealing the man behind the ghost. It is a logical answer, and I can appreciate it for that, but it doesn't fold into anything exciting. Maybe my reading is prejudiced because I kinda thought of this as a cerebral hard sci-fi look into identity and consciousness by the author of the celebrated Blindsight. I mean, there are many interesting things, that's for sure. But they are not sufficiently developed.

I found the ending unsatisfactory. It boils down to "continues in the next book!". I never read a sci-fi series before, so I don't know if someone familiar with multi-book projects would consider this good or acceptable. I didn't like it. It felt incomplete. This is not necessarily a problem. Vague, ambiguous endings are sometimes the best. But the obvious hook for the sequel (which almost felt like a call to action) made me uneasy.

I recently read Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? by Philip K. Dick for class, and I didn't think I would enjoy it as much as I did. I watched the movie (Blade Runner, 1982) beforehand and liked it very much, but I felt the book was more thought-provoking and it made me want to discuss its themes a lot more. What stood out to me during reading was the way in which the novel created suspense: It wasn't so much the concern about whether Deckard could retire the androids or not but rather the constant subtle uncertainty in the background of who might be human or non-human, what the difference between them really is, and whether it even matters. The book raises so many questions, and it's fun to think about them.

And then, just a few days ago, I started and finished reading The Time Machine by H. G. Wells (even though I'm not a sci-fi fan, I kind of want to explore the genre now), and I enjoyed it even more than Androids. I watched the 1960 movie last year, so I was already familiar with the book's plot, but what I guess I liked most is the way it is written. Beyond the concept of future social degeneration and the pretty cool Morlocks (I adored the creepiness with which they were introduced), I appreciate Wells' writing style and might try to read another of his works next.

She who became the Sun by Shelley Parker Chan. It's Chinese Historical fiction set around the fall of Mongols and rise of the Ming Dynasty. This is my first time reading a Chinese author.

I've almost finished The Devil's Flute Murders by Seishi Yokomizo, Japense locked room' murder mystery, English translation done by Jim Rion. Bought this after reading The Honjin Murders by same author. I'm liking these Japense murder mysteries.

Finished Starter Villain by John Scalzi the other day. I liked it. The basic premise of the book is that the main character had a uncle from his mother's side of the family that had left him the bus is that the uncle ran, which officially parking garages. While the unofficial business was being a villain.

Tried Salvation by Peter F. Hamilton, I dropped it because it never clicked for me. Like the premise sounded great, but I will just chalk it up to it not for me.

Finally got, and started, System Collapse by Martha Wells after having it on hold for a while now at my library.

i just started the Altered Carbon trilogy. i liked the series for the most part, and the book is good so far. it’s basically a space noir.

edit: I got into the Orphan X series. Its pretty bad... but not bad enough that I won't stick with it as filler. The stories have all of the elements to be good, but the author is bent on brand names... and it ruins an already far-fetched story in an absolutely unrealistic world.

For example, our hero never goes into his fridge.. he goes into his Subzero. Same bullshit for phones, etc.

It wasn't so bad until I was telling someone about the story and... well, recapping it woke me up to the quality of the story.

And this isn't me just saying, 'oh, this book is shit' --- I've read a lot of series that stick to a formula and they're fine (e.g. Parker, Quarry, Reacher, etc) --- but this is too much!

I'm alternating books between The Bone Ships trilogy (by RJ Barker) and the Power Mage trilogy (by Brian McClellan). Both are excellent, I'd say the Power Mage series is a little more "action-movie" but both have very well written characters and are almost like historical-fiction fantasy as both tie into different bygone eras.

Also read the first Dresden Files book, Storm Front by Jim Butcher. Not sure if we have any MSTies in the crowd, but the book REALLY reminded me of Demon Squad and that made it hard for me to take seriously. Nothing bad about it, just not as good as the Codex Alera books (so far, the later books may be a bit better.)

I just finished reading The Rose Code and am now reading Room.

Both are pretty good. The Rose Code is another side of the story related to Turings Enigma machine and the women who worked in Bletchley Park. Really interesting read. Slow burn at the beginning but when it picks up it goes faaast.

Room is very good so far. I think it's gonna be one of those books that I'll be sad about it being over. I can't even imagine how someone could get into the headspace to write something like this, especially through the eyes of a child.

I just finished Five Decembers, by James Kestrel, and quite enjoyed it. The tone is noir-esque and the story is pretty engaging. Also finished Box 88, by Charles Cumming. It’s a decent spy novel that jumps around between a modern crises and a historic operation.

I just read Ishmael, a short novel, 160 pages.
Can listen, or there's a PDF link in comments.
https://youtu.be/B1gB5YtHC9c

I'm taking a break from The Frontiers Saga Episode 7 with some Blake Crouch. Dark Matter was excellent and the follow up Recursion is even better IMO. I love the time travel theme explored through memories although it can be confusing at times. The book is told through two voices in the audio book and I think it works well. I'm not done with Blake Crouch after this.

I'm reading The Player of Games by Iain M. Banks, I started reading the Culture series about a month ago with Consider Phlebas, which has a somewhat different pace than Player, so it took me awhile to get into the rhythm of The Player of Games, but now that I've found the rhythm, I'm really loving Player of Games as well!

How To Own The World...very, very slowly. Supposed to be full of useful and simple investment advice, e.g. how savings accounts work and such. I've been bad at keeping up with reading for nearly a year now.