8
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.
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.
I just finished Beckett's trilogy a few hours ago. It reminded me a lot of Faulkner's Sound and Fury, in the way that each section of the book becomes more lucid and you understood more of the plot. However, the trilogy is far more ambiguous I feel in its events. I believe there's enough information in the text to make a well-supported answer to those questions, but they're very obfuscated. My favourite book was Molloy, because it seemed to pass from one setting and time to another with you only realizing several paragraphs after the transition, being unsure whether a transition even occurred or if Molloy was always there and then.
The one issue I had is with the last book, The Unnameable, feeling very repetitive towards the last 20% or so. I feel like several large pieces could have been cut here, and making for a less frustrating reading experience. I was hoping each next page would either close the book, or move on to something other than seeking and wallowing about subjects.
I just finished reading A Brief History of Intelligence: Evolution, AI, and the Five Breakthroughs That Made Our Brains and absolutely loved it. Highly recommend for anyone that is curious how brains evolved.
I'm looking for something light for my next read and I'll have to dig through my ever-growing kindle library
I'm almost done with a combo book of The Lair of the White Worm and the Lady of the Shroud by Bram Stoker. I read Dracula and then the Icelandic translation/fanfic Dracula earlier this year so was curious about some of his lesser known works. I'm disappointed.
The Lair of the White Worm, putting aside the racism/sexism, really felt like the timing was way off. They discover the "monster" way too quickly off too little evidence, it has a lot of filler that doesn't advance the plot or meaningfully establish much, then suddenly it's resolved in a rather unsatisfying manner.
The Lady of the Shroud started a bit slow then got good, but then had the big plot twist way too early. The back half of the book has been entirely focused on B-plot lines I really don't care about. I kind of wonder if Bram Stoker resented being viewed as "the vampire writer" and this is his way of capturing gothic horror fans into reading political intrigue. Maybe something will change in the last 30 or so pages I have left but I'm not optimistic.
edit: nothing changed in the last 30 pages
I just finished The Judas Blossom by Stephen Aryan, which is set in 1260 & 1261 in the Mongol Empire. It has multiple points of view and a little bit of magic, and an astonishing amount of conspiracy. It felt really character-driven, and something was always happening as a result, because most of the main characters were acting in opposition to each other. I feel neutral about the book overall, which is new for me. I'm interested and I'm planning to read the next one, but I'm not feeling positive or negative in a detectable way. Even the criticisms/positive feedback that I recognize others have don't really resonate with me. Maybe it just needs to percolate more.
My partner and I finished our listen of Eragon, which was fun. I last read this in like 2005 or 2006, and I didn't read the other books in the series, so I'm looking forward to Eldest coming in from being on hold. Eragon is just one of a handful of series I'm planning to revisit, including The Unicorn Chronicles by Bruce Coville, A Series of Unfortunate Events, Sabriel, and the Chronicles of Narnia. I didn't get past the first book or three of these before "outgrowing" them in my gamified reading program in school.
I'm about 10% into What the River Knows by Isabel Ibanez, and I'm not sure if I'm gonna be able to manage this read. It's YA, first person (tough for me), and a little bit too much in the FMC's head so far. We'll see.
Once I do (or don't) get through that, I have A Breath of Snow and Ashes by Diana Gabaldon, book 6 of Outlander. At 57 hours long, it'll probably be a bit of a long haul, but I'm looking forward to it.
The anatomy of fascism by Robert Paxton,
A tree grows in Brooklyn,
The city we became for Tildes book club.
I had to read A Tree Grows in Brooklyn for class in 9th grade, and it was absolutely my favorite book that I ever had to read for school. Ended up buying myself a copy a few years after graduating, and some friends from that class and I still make casual references to it to this day.
Burned through James Butcher's "The Unorthodox Chronicles" (only 2 so far). He's the son of Jim Butcher (Dresden files), and it shows in a variety of ways.
Scratched the itch I wanted though. Enjoyable and "mindless" without being bad in my eyes. Interested to see if he'll wind up doing as much ambitious world building as Dresden or if it's lower scope in the end.
I just finished Dead Astronauts by Jeff Vandermeer. It was a fever dream of a book to be sure. I didn't realize until part of the way through that It's actually in the same universe as one of his prior novels, Borne. Borne was definitely a more straightforward read with traditional storytelling, this one was very eclectic and had whole chapters of phrases just repeated. It was very poetic though and even through all of the interesting writing choices, I did catch the thread of the plot and it really was beautiful writing, extremely visceral.
I'm fascinated by the whole genre of new weird and have read several of Vandermeer's books. I'm waiting for Perdido Street Station by China Melville to come off hold to try that next. Would love some additional recommendations if anybody else has read stuff from this genre!