What are you reading these days?

After Mrs Frisby and the Rats of NIMH, Inhave been reading the sequel Racso and the Rats of NIMH at bedtime. A few chapters in, it has about the same feel as the first novel.

I listened to Mimicking of Known Successes because it was innthe Hugo nom list. It was enjoyable as a sapphic "Watson and Holmes" vibe, plus a nice bit of world building, painting a realistic look at the culture of far future Earth exiles living in the upper reaches of a gas giant. I read Thornhedge (the novella winner) a while back, and while I am a fan of T. Kingfisher and the way she subverts expectations, I don't remember it is her strongest work.

For a break, I listened to The Road to Roswell by Connie Willis. A rollicking, light hearted read that engages the "aliens among us" conspiracy theories in interesting ways. I know @definitelynotafae will put T. Kingfisher up as Pratchett's successor, but I have to put Connie Willis there too. Each of her novels is enjoyable or interesting, though her protagonists feel a bit samey (thinking about Road to Roswell, The Bellwether, and Crosstalk) in a way that reminds me of Heinlein.

I am currently listening to Station Eleven based on a recommendation here on Tildes, I thought, although search didn't turn the post up. So far, I am enjoying it. It weaves a story between pre- and post-collapse worlds in a way that makes the story more approachable for me. Sometimes the unrelieved dystopian badness can be overwhelming given my anxieties about our current world.

I'm currently reading "The Hike" by by Drew Magary.

A modern day businessman goes on a business trip. During his stay at a hotel he takes a hike on a trail and manages to stumble into another world full of strange creatures and people. Very "Phantom Tollbooth" or Fantastica from "The Never Ending Story". Its a pretty funny book, but is overall fairly serious in tone, and has its emotional points as this man desperately tries to find his way home.

I just finished Kraken by China Mieville. After loving The City and The City I was actually a little disappointed with Kraken, it was still a fun book but it felt overlong, the writing was a bit all over the place and some of the characters were annoying or made me cringe, especially Collingswood. Her references to memes that were popular at the time the book was written made my stomach turn. Wati was a great character though and Goss and Subby were incredible villains, absolutely terrifying.

I've heard though that a lot of people find Kraken to be one of Mievilles weaker novels though so I'm not discounting him yet. If anyone has any suggestions for my next Mieville novel I'm happy to hear them.

I've now moved on to Five Decembers by James Kestrel which I've heard absolutely amazing things about and I'm really enjoying it so far, about 100 pages in so far.

Afterwards I'm planning on reading Authority and Acceptance, the next two books in the Southern Reach trilogy.

The Daily Grind by argusthecat.

The authors description:
Working as overnight tech support, James Lyle has long said he’d do anything to escape the boredom. But his commitment to excitement is tested when a slight coincidence one shift sends him to a different part of his office building . . . and he discovers a stairwell that contains not stairs but rather a landscape of seemingly infinite cubicles against a distant horizon.

Unwilling (and unable) to stay away, James and a few of his trusted friends begin to explore this endless maze of supernatural business ennui, a few minutes in the real world turning into eight hours of encounters with strange creatures and even stranger interior design choices. But in a realm that allows them to level up in fax machine repair and provides them with enough cash to pay the rent, there are also adversaries that are quickly becoming dangerous—and potentially lethal.

As James, along with his companions, delves ever deeper into this extraordinary place, James starts to realize that animate staplers and time dilation might not be the biggest challenges they face, and those challenges might not stop at the entrance . . .

...

I'm past the first 4 books that have been released as audiobooks and am reading through the chapters on RoyalRoad. It's addicting and a really fun ride. The author doesn't fall into the common online fiction trap of ending up with nonstop combat scenes - it has a very nice balance of some combat, some fantasy / magic, some slice-of-life, some everyday issues and just a little bit of non-gratuitous romance all mixed together. I'm not looking forward to when I burn through the years of already posted chapters and have to make do with a once-per-week addition.

I finished Limberlost by Robbie Arnott which is a beautiful coming of age story set in rural Australia.

I'm halfway through the downhill hiking club a walk across the Lebanon, which is lighthearted, self deprecating and fun touristing in a country with a tragic history.

I started Migrations by Charlotte McConaghy and island of the missing trees by Elif shafak.

Just finished reading all the currently-published books in the Chronicle of the Unhewn Throne by Brian Staveley.

This series is INCREDIBLE. When people say they want to know what up-and-coming fantasy epics there are, this series is the answer. I picked it for /r/fantasy bingo literally based on the word "empire" being in the title and it's one of the best series I've read this year. Highly recommend!!!!!!

Continuing my readings of Very Short Introductions (VSI) series of Oxford University Press. This time it's Postmodernism: A Very Short Introduction by Christopher Butler.

I can't fathom why someone would pick this guy to write this book. He's so obviously a modernist, not to mention a card carrier liberal that is hostile to a lot of left ideas. Not to mention he gets some fundamental things wrong because he's very quick to dismiss leftist or postmodern ideas. It's obvious, at these parts, he doesn't know what he's talking about.

Here are some excerpts from the first 25 pages, and my brief comments.

Another simple example of metanarrative is the Marxist belief in the predestined and privileged function of the proletariat, with the party as its ally, in bringing about a revolution, and in the Utopia which is supposed to follow, when ‘the state has withered away’.

Marx changed his beliefs and theory a lot during his lifetime. As far as I know, he shifted to a softer transition of power in his late years, rather than a revolution. He also really did not see "The Party" as fundamental to the process. That's the vanguardist Marxist Leninist approach, which the author mistook for Marxism itself (which has a lot of branches).

Postmodernists reproached modernists (and their supposedly ‘naive’ liberal humanist readers or spectators or listeners) for their belief that a work of art could somehow appeal to all humanity, and so be free of divisive political implications.

Supposedly 'naive' part is part of a bigger pro-liberal pattern.

There is therefore a great contrast and tension between the postmodernism which derived from French intellectuals and the main stream of Anglo-American liberal philosophical thought in this period. The latter tradition had been very suspicious, in a post-Orwellian manner, of jargon, of grandiose synthesis, and of Marxist-derived ‘ideology’.

"Ideology" in quotes definitely smells of negative judgement. In addition, he positions liberalism and postmodernism in a fundamental conflict, and makes it clear that he thinks he's on liberalism's side.

Although there are good liberal reasons for being against such ‘grand narratives’ (on the grounds that they do not allow for disputes about value, and often enough lead to totalitarian persecution), the plausibility of Lyotard’s claim (...)

Again, siding with the liberal ideology.

Of course, an opposition to such narratives (particularly holistic or totalitarian ones) is an absolutely traditional liberal concern.

His side is much more apparent here.

He also wrote the VSI book on Modernism, and his main focus seems to be modernism. Also he's an English literature academic. Literature is absolutely a place where postdmodernism has had a substantial effect, however, a philosophy professor would be a better academic to write on this topic. Philosophy academics are in a position to explain this kind of multifaceted phenomenon better, compared to a literature major.

Combining this with his open hostility to postmodernism, and his defense of a modernist liberalism (which I'd say is a branch of conservatism), I can't fathom why any higher up would choose this guy as the person to write this book. It's the worst VSI book I've read so far, and I decided to drop it. Instead, as a more general introduction to postmodern thought, I will read the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy entry for Postmodernism.

I just started T.E. Lawrence's Seven Pillars of Wisdom -- its great. Lawrence of Arabia is one of my favorite movies, so I figured I'd tuck into this gem.

I am reading Kat Dunn's Bitterthorn. It's a page turner! I haven't been this excited about reading since last year. Reading, for me, can sometimes feel like a bit of a chore but with this book, I can't wait to read the next chapter! The prose is not the best but the story is super exciting.

Just finished 'Emotion: A Very Short Introduction' by Dylan Evans. It was a book that fluctuated a lot in quality. For example, I believe he was really out of his depth in the last section where he talked about robots being programmed to have emotions or evolving emotions. There was also a fair bit of misrepresentation of scientific findings. For example, he described depressive realism as being realistic, but I've seen findings that heavily suggested this hypothesis only applies under some conditions. Yet he talked about it as if it was a fact that was true in every context.

A lot of my criticisms come from his mishandling of scientific uncertainty. He either doesn't know how uncertainty is handled in science, or he doesn't care when he's writing. Having checked his background, I'd say it's the former. Because he comes from Lacan's psychanalytical school of thought (pseudoscience), and even though after some time he seems to have rejected it, he fell in with another field filled with pseudoscientific overgeneralizations: evolutionary psychology. He doesn't seem to get the relationship in the scientific method-uncertainty-evidence nexus.

I wouldn't say the book was a waste of time, because it did talk about some interestings things, such as emotion's role in attention and memory. But it seriously lacks in quality. I was disappointed quite a bit. In other words, Oxford Press did not cook this time.

I've been in a slump, reading-wise. I really want to get into classic science fiction stuff, if anyone has recommendations. I've heard good stuff about Isaac Asimov

Reading The Secret of Gaslight Lane, the fourth book of the Gower Street Detective series. It's a Sherlock Holmes-style series with a likeable assistant narrator, March Middleton, and a pretentious detective who can tell a person's life story from a single glance, Sidney Grice. I read this series years ago, and it's just as enjoyable as I remember.

But it's been so long that a lot of my memories of the past books are hazy. I almost checked out the third book before realizing I had indeed read that one, though I've forgotten enough I might as well reread them. I ended up checking the Goodreads reviews for the first book just now to try to jog my memories, and found myself laughing.

See, Grice may be one of the most cantankerous detectives in fiction. Even by Victorian standards, he is pretty insufferable. If I met Grice in real life, I'd hate him just as much as pretty much everyone he meets. He's snobby, sexist, classist, has no sympathy, constantly belittles people's intelligence and insults them, shows no kindness even to his clients...

And that's what makes him fun as a character. A good chunk of the dialogue is just him and March trading barbs and witty jabs. By now in book four, she's just rolling with the flow and rarely bothers calling him out. Instead she throws back her own sarcastic little remarks. Their dynamic is just a lot of fun compared to the usual friendly pairs, and they work off each other well when questioning people.

A lot of the bad Goodreads reviews from the first book just focused on how unlikeable Grice is, and all I could think was "this book is not for you". This isn't a cozy mystery series, but it's also not a super dark and grim one that focuses on gore and shock value. It does have some graphic descriptions, but it never feels like it's done for show. It just strikes some sort of sweet spot for me, if that makes sense.

Regarding the one I'm reading now, I'm about a third of the way through, and I'm seriously puzzled on it. There are strong hints to who the killer could be, by which I mean entire chapters that seem to be a specific character's dreams of committing the murders. Yet the fact it's so early in the book has me doubting that. These books tend to have a lot of twists and turns, and I'm looking forward to how this one will surprise me.

Adrian Tchaikovsky’s Service Model,

Imagine C-3PO, from Star Wars, stuck in Terry Gilliam’s Brazil. Charles the automated valet finds he out of work when his owner dies due to mysterious circumstances, and he goes on a bit of a journey to find new employment. Complicating things is that human society is falling apart, made apparent to even the incredibly sheltered Charles, and he comes across a hanger on and instigator of a lot of his problems, The Wonk, who has convinced herself that Charles has developed free will, even though that’s far outside of his operating procedures. It’s fun, but drags a little bit near the end, and feels like it’s exploring more ideas than it has to, IMO.

On a long drive, I checked out the (12 hour long) audiobook of Terminal World by Alastair Reynolds. I had never heard of it, despite having read a number of his other books.

Reynolds seems to really enjoy writing classic noir as science fiction and, if you can reframe the book from hard sf to steampunk-inflected noir, it's a fun ride. Much like Century Rain or Chasm City.

I haven't been reading much of anything at all recently. The other day someone posted the movie trailer for Amy Adam's Nightbitch. Reading the book the movie is based on now. The trailer was probably put together by someone who didn't read the book or got access to the script (which, afaik is how they're usually done), or else they're going in a very different direction. There's nothing goofy and silly about the book: it's visceral. It's the opposite of the pretty, tidy, gentle persona that young mothers are pressure to portray.

Fight club for women, or what happens if the Yellow Wallpaper woman was unleashed outside.

Pretty fun light reading. I wouldn't say it's pretending to speak for all mom's: probably more of us had far easier time at it. But it's fun to see the darker moments take the lead. Sort of like watching a office worker going postal: we're not doing that badly but there are small elements we can empathize with.