What are you reading these days?

Small Gods for Tildes book club. Limberlost, a beautiful rural Australian coming of age story. I just finished Sea of Tranquility by Emily St John Mandel. It's a beautiful time travel novel

I'm almost finished with A Dance With Dragons, the fifth (and so far, last) Song of Ice and Fire (Game of Thrones) book. It's so fucking good, I don't want it to end, so I've been forcing myself to read as little as I can each evening.

GRRM, if you're here: PLEASE just push out the rest! The perfect is the enemy of the good!

I finished reading Nona the Ninth the other day.

The below contains spoilers - this is a NtN review as well as a review of the whole series.

I'm going to call it quits on The Locked Tomb, and won't be picking up the fourth book when it comes out. I enjoyed Nona as a character throughout the book, and I liked some of the characters. I thought I understood more of this book than I did book 2, but chatting with @DefinitelyNotAFae a little bit, I realize that I actually missed the main plot!? The author is very clearly a great writer, but I'm not a big reader and also English isn't my native language and so she's just way too difficult to read for me. Besides, I actually only went and read book 3 here because I had already bought it while I read book 1. Look how excited I was back then! Seriously, I loved book 1.

I already posted my thoughts about book 2 as well, so I won't get too much into it but the summary of that review is that I was just so fucking confused throughout. Nona the Ninth on the other hand, despite actually missing large parts of the story, I still really enjoyed the main character and relationships. However it also felt like a filler episode during large parts of it. Apparently the child characters are allegories for other characters or other things in the universe but I missed that too - I have always been really bad at reading between the lines (the worst grade I got during school was in literature class lol)

So like I've said before, I am a Gideon fan, not a Tamsyn Muir fan. I really can't explain how much I love Gideon and book 1! It was so fucking good. It was hilarious. I could understand most of it. And I don't know how much stock to put into Goodreads reviews, as I'm quite new on that platform, but I think I'm not alone. GtN has 150k ratings, HtN has 70k, and NtN has 42k. Maybe it's because of how old they are and people haven't gotten around to reading them yet. I suspect though that a lot of readers called it quits after HtN - a significant portion during, too, just people DNF'ing it. Maybe there are other reasons. Like I said though, for me, I only finished all 3 books because I had already bought them, and I don't want to have unfinished books on my shelf. But I wish I knew what I was in for - I should have just stopped after book 1. Lesson learned to just DNF books I don't enjoy and just donate them or whatever.

I also read the 3 companion short stories, by the way. Finished the last one today. I can't say those really grabbed me but like book 2 and 3, they all at least had elements to them that I really liked. The last one had such a sweet moment between Sexpal and Dulcinea which I loved.

This review is pretty negative overall, so let me just be clear that I love the universe and almost every character is well thought out and have their own clear identities (except for the schoolchildren who I found bland as hell). The writing is intelligent - too intelligent - to the point that "word salad" comes to mind to describe large parts of it. It's kind of frowned upon when writers hold the hand of the reader and spell everything out but that's genuinely what I needed throughout book 2 and 3. I am so very disappointed that the tone and vibe from the first book just.. vanished. Only 50 or like at most 100 of the one thousand pages since I finished GtN gave me the same feeling of joy, because the PoV switched or good and Gideon's hilarity is gone save for very, very few moments.

As already mentioned, I'm not a big reader. I get through one chapter in a day, maybe 2 or 3 if they are short or if I'm stuck on a train or something. And I'm seeing that a lot of the discourse surrounding these books is that they become better on re-reads. But when I only get through 5-10 books in a year (depending on length), there's no way in hell I'm re-reading anything unless it's been decades since I first read it. And so if I have to re-read your book to understand it, then I'm really sorry but that means your writing was way too confusing and complicated. And I know I'm not stupid lol, because a lot of other reviews are saying that they were just as frustrated, confused, and aggravated as me. It's fair that some people are into it, but I sure am not.

I don't mind stories that force you to think, but the sheer depth and complexities of this series reminds me of the movie Primer which I hate with a passion. It's an experiment in confusing the audience, not an actually well made movie. The Locked Tomb is well made, and I can't wait to read a summary of Alecto the Ninth once it comes out because I'd like to see how it ends, but we are 3 books in, and as I understand it, there are still a ton of loose threads and unanswered questions and I don't want to exert myself anymore than I already have to understand it all.. which, by the way, why is she still asking more and more questions in the third book? Shouldn't they start to get answered at this point? And not introduce heaps of new characters?

These books are really very divisive. Nona the Ninth gets 3/5 because it was an improvement in enjoyment from Harrow the Ninth which I recently adjusted to a 2/5, but it was a long way from Gideon the Ninth which is a rare 5/5 for me since it quickly became one of my favourite books of all time. All in all, the overarching story throughout these 1500 pages is just too fucking baffling and therefore the series as a whole is only going to get a 2/5 because it was not worth my time - even though I thoroughly enjoyed aspects of each book. I can only dream of what could have been if it had only continued in the same vibe, tone, humour, as how GtN was written.

What a rollercoaster.

I'm trying to read Breasts and Eggs, but it's a struggle. The prose is fantastic but the story is so slow to get going. My husband asked what the book was about, and I described the characters and he was like "yeah, but what do they do? What happens to them?" And I had no answer, they're just hanging out. I'm like, almost 100 pages in and it's a 400 page book.i would have given up on it already, but it was loaned to me by a friend and I don't want to hurt her feelings. I also never figured out how to read a paperback without destroying the spine so that's stressing me out a bit.

I started reading Horror Movie by Paul Tremblay, but I've already dropped that one. He's very hit or miss for me as an author, and this is a miss. I gave up at a point in the story where I was waiting to learn the motivation for a group of teens doing something strange and horrible. It's explained that they have no motivation, they're just doing it, and I couldn't get past that.

I'm a bit stuck now and looking for something new to read. Recommendations are welcome!

Nearly done with a re-read of Jeff VanderMeer's Authority, having already re-read Annihilation, with the much-anticipated Acceptance up next, all courtesy the current Humble bundle. Reality-bending weirdness is my jam.

I just finished Annihilation by Jeff Vandermeer and it was...ok? By the last section/chapter, I was just very bored with it, but was so close to the end I pushed through. I don't hate it, I just feel kind of meh about it and have no desire to actually continue the series, especially as many people claim the first book is the best. Though, somewhat ironically, I feel like I might enjoy the other two, as people also say they're such a departure from the first.

At any rate, I'm going to pick up something different.

I don't remember posting in one of these topics before, but currently, I'm really into short stories. Things that are under an hour, that I can listen to on my "commute" to my office (about 10-15 minutes each way), or things I can listen to in smaller chunks while I'm working on things between clients.

I'm really into old fairytales, folklore, and mythology from all over the world. That's kind of where I've landed in my fiction reading game in general, but the current group of things I'm reading aren't novels, though I do need to download a few for my next trip since I'm flying across the country.

I'm reading Carrie and will most likely finish it tonight. I really like the structure. I'm right at the part where shit is gonna get real. :)

Got kinda bored with Vineland, which I will likely return to later, but I still wanted to scratch that Pynchon itch, so I decided to just dive in and start Gravity's Rainbow. In my thoughts about Vineland the other week I mentioned that Pynchon always has beautiful prose and hilarious moments, and that's especially true here. I'm nearly to the end of part 1, and the standout for me so far is the episode where Slothrop swims down the toilet. Rarely do I find myself laughing out loud while reading, but it happened multiple times in that sequence. That humor doesn't seem to kill the gravity of the more serious moments however, the moment when Roger and Jessica are laughing and beginning to forget their troubles for just a moment before being brought back by the rocket blast really hit me. It's definitely a challenging read at times, but not as bad as I was expecting, and much more manageable on a page to page level than Ulysses was.

As a result or my decision of not using phone in the bedroom, I am currently reading a lot of science fiction (and different kind of weird) short stories. I've finished all stories by Ted Chiang, and ended up being absolutely impressed by most of them. His way of exploring simple what-if ideas is absolutely captivating. Too bad there are only a few.
Now I am reading through the backlog of Reactor (ex-Tor.com) Short Fiction eBooks and am also occasionally very pleasantly surprised. Next in line is Asimov's digital version, which I subscribed to to shorthen the wait until the print issues I've ordered finally arrive :)

Making my way through the Wayfarers series by Becky Chambers. Similar to Monk and Robot, it's very cozy and slice of life, but it's also deeply into it's science fiction genre. The first book, A Long Way to a Small Angry Planet, is very much a road show that feels very episodic, cosy and low stakes, making it kind of jarring when the ship is in danger and things are really starting to get serious. But it never loses focus of the characters involved, and unlike something like The Murderbot Diaries, I don't have trouble remembering people's names and I care about their dynamic rather than the singular experience of the one viewpoint character.

The other books in the series involve side characters, and work perfectly well on their own, but continue to flesh out the setting and universe this takes place in rather than the overarching plot or stories of the original novel. So a very low stress, loosely connected, all vibe setting, even when things get serious.

I'm nearing the end of The Mercy of Gods, the recently released new novel from James S.A. Corey (aka Daniel Abraham and Ty Franck, authors of The Expanse series). This kicks off a brand new sci-fi series for them and they are definitely going harder on the 'fi' part here without sacrificing the science - I'm getting many Project Hail Mary vibes from this first entry. So far it's been a very enjoyable read, plenty of juicy worldbuilding and strong characterisation throughout, and it feels like the Corey boys have a more ambitious tale to tell this time round so I'm very much looking forward to whatever comes next in the series.

I'm reading the 3rd Foundation book. I read before sleep and just put the series on my Kindle and read everything together.

I am liking it a lot. Didn't watch much of the TV show (only first season), but it is very different.

I recommended Project Hail Mary for my wife and the book is keeping her awake at night. She is really liking it.

This week's reading:

Annalee Newitz, The Terraformers

It's a somewhat heavy-handed, but still uplifting, technological morality play. As you might expect for a sciencey scaffold of terraforming and ecological engineering, the story plays out episodically over a time scale of thousands of years. There are corporate villains, enchantingly star-crossed lovers of varying genders, species, and carbon vs. silicon types, a remote stellar bureaucracy that's uninterested/powerless to intervene... I enjoyed it.

Thanks to /u/kfwyre, I just gulped down Jason Dearen's Kill Shot, an investigative journalism piece about the U.S. compounding pharmacy that killed 100 people and sickened 800 with contaminated medicine, as well as the legislative landscape and the criminal trials that followed. Some people watch Fox News for ragebait, I just follow what's happened to the U.S. public health regulatory state. Kill Shot is such an infuriating story of corruption, greed, incompetence, and fucked-over healthcare consumers that I was inspired to start...

Dan Davies, The Unaccountability Machine: Why Big Systems Make Terrible Decisions - And How the World Lost Its Mind

An example of the inspirational material to be found within:

Many years ago, in an earlier financial crisis linked to small savings banks in the USA during the 1980s, the fraud investigator Bill Black had coined the concept of a ‘criminogenic organisation’. It referred to an institution in which incentives and management systems were structurally designed to ensure that crimes would be committed. This was an integral part of his theory of the savings bank crisis, that of a ‘control fraud’. This occurred when a bank came under the control of a criminal, who was then able to set in place a system of incentives which ensured that fraudulent loans would be made and profits declared, which would naturally flow into the fraudster’s pockets.
This solved several of the key problems that had bedevilled white-collar criminals over the years, the biggest of which was the need for overt acts of embezzlement. Stealing money by dishonesty had previously tended to require you to make illegal
transactions – improper payments or false bookkeeping entries – which posed a risk of detection. In a control fraud, the dishonesty resided in the overall scheme and all the transfers of cash were legitimate – dividends, salaries, stock options and commercial transactions with parties connected to the management. Furthermore, there was often a number of layers between the guilty mind and the criminal act – unless there was a paper trail, most of the prosecutable things were done by people other than those that the authorities would naturally want to prosecute.
As it happened, the technology was in its infancy in the 1980s and most of the crooks pursued by Bill Black were careless about leaving the kind of paper trail he needed. But by the beginning of this century things had got weirder. After investigating some of the biggest scandals of the financial crisis, I concluded that not only was there no paper trail between the low-level crooks and the bosses, in most cases there was actually no connection. I ended up coining the term ‘self-organising control fraud’. The idea was that the financial system of the developed world, from around the fall of Communism in Europe, had reached a point where the overall system of incentives in the economy was so criminogenic that banks had a natural tendency to organise themselves into fraudulent behaviour. All the top executives had to do was set unrealistic profitability targets and underinvest in legal departments and compliance systems. It wasn’t so much that anyone had told their traders what to do; more that nobody ever organised things in such a way that they wouldn’t form a criminal conspiracy.

I think this one's going to last me a while.

At my daughter's request, I listened to Mrs. Frisky and the Rats of NIMH. I have vague memories of the animated version from my childhood, but can't remember ever reading it as a child.

It had shades of Watership Down, but the animals are definitely more anthropomorphic. One of the things I like about WD is the way the rabbits relate to the world as rabbits would (like they call all cars Hudrudru because of the sound they make). The animals in MFARN relate to human technology as humans would, like Mrs Frisbee knows on sight what a gas stove is, even though it's the first time she's seen it. This is somewhat explainable for the rats due to their origin, but not for other animals. This interferes a little with my suspension of disbelief.

Some of the philosophy embedded in the dialogue reminded me a little of (a very light version) of Atlas Shrugged. But the ideas were interesting. Overall, I would recommend it.

I have the sequel (written by the daughter) on queue from the library. Wondering if anyone knows if it is worth it.

Tasting Beer, by Randy Mosher.

Seems like a nice primer on various aspects of tasting beer. I'm about halfway through, and it's got enough technical info to be interesting without being too dry for someone with a casual interest like myself.

We are Legion (We Are Bob)
Book 1 of the Bobiverse series

Enjoyed this quite a bit. It hits some of the "competence porn" notes of something like The Martian. Bob did not know when he signed a deal to freeze himself after death that he'd become the controlling digital intelligence of an interstellar probe to look for habitable planets and resources. But well, surprise!

Very readable. Definitely does not pass Bechdel but doesn't have any major red flags. About an 8 hour audio listen.

Service Model by Adrian Tchaikovsky

Charles is a robot whose master is no longer alive which is only a problem in that it disrupts the schedule. But in a world where humanity appears to have wanted significantly, what purpose does a valet robot have? Charles isn't really sure.

Very Jeeves and Wooster-esque in its vibes, comedic bordering on slapstick but dry, with a hefty mix of a wasteland of robots incapable of breaking their routine tasks just repeating forever. There's gotta be something else right?

A bit stylized and read by the author on Audible but it was very enjoyable. A bit weird in listening because the robots tag their conversations like a chat but it does keep it easy to track who's talking.

Doesn't pass Bechdel but also a distinct lack of humans. (Robots do use gendered pronouns, or at least Charles does.)

Never and Again by Justina Ireland

Soldiers are recruited to join a special program where they resurrect you when you're killed. There are absolutely no side effects to this. There's definitely not shady shit in the military over soldiers that are both disposable and a renewable resource. Plus, if you survive an hour in combat you don't even have to pay for your resurrection!

But volunteering gets your family citizenship, which means your family can get actual medical care and schooling, not the non-citizen care. And with a perpetual civil war, someone's got to fight it

No idea if this passes Bechdel because I thought the main character was a woman for most of the book and I don't think that's correct. So probably not. But maybe idk. I really like Justina Ireland's work. This may be the one I've read of hers that least directly deals with race in America.

House of Salt and Shadows and House of Roots and Ruin

This started as a fairy tale retelling of the sisters that dance their shoes to pieces. But it's a fantasy horror series. We follow one of the sisters, whose family keeps dying around her, meanwhile they keep running off through a magic portal to a new dance every night. Their stepmother is pregnant with a boy, but the eldest child (and thus daughter) inherits on the islands... If only they would stop dying.
The first book starts slowly, I think if I'd known it was horror I'd have felt the creepiness earlier but idk the name felt like every other fantasy novel right?

This is a world where the gods are real and visit parties sometimes to hang out as well as have their own realm behind the material. The world building is really quite good. And the second book was also excellent. I have to stop reading these at night.

The Last Cuentista

Petra goes to space on the last chance to save humanity from a comet hitting earth. She brings the stories of her family with her, and wakes as the only one to remember those stories because the ship has been taken over by a group determined to erase the past to create a "better" future.

This was really well written and obviously a Newberry medalist. But it didn't feel too young, even if I'd say it feels a little too wrapped up. But I think that's a children's fic thing.

I’m currently reading House of Leaves. It’s one of the most confusing, bizarre and surreal bogs I have ever read and I’m absolutely loving it. When I’m not reading it, I’m thinking about it. It really gets into your head. I don’t know if I would recommend it to everyone, but it really is a unique read.