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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.
Ministry for the future by Kim Stanley Robinson for Tildes book club. I'm 30 percent in and it's an intense story.
Empire of Pain a nonfiction about the sackler family and opioids.
The spear cuts through water by Simon Jimenez, fantasy.
A short history of the world in 50 lies.
Any Tildes user is welcome to participate in any Tildes book club discussion with no obligation to read other books.
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I have not yet read say nothing but it is on my list.
You'll get added to the ping list, but jump in on any topic, past or present!
I, ah, thought that we had one this month (for what ever reason), so I had read Ministry for the Future in preparation for the non-existant December thread. But, I will be ready for next month, when we are actually posting.
You missed or forgot about one post. The holiday at the end of the month was incompatible with me setting up a book discussion.
For some reason I thought "The City we Became" was this month and I'm halfway through it thinking I was behind. The audiobook is great, by the way, the reader can't pronounce baozi (包子) but she seems to be really into the story.
Family Friendly Read Recommendation:
Little Fuzzy, by H. Beam Piper
Public domain link
It's an older sci-fi courtroom drama to decide if (1) cute fuzzy alien species (2) can be considered Sapient, or not.
There are sequels and modern rewrites and fan SF author additions to the universe. Come for cute antics, stay for discussion on corporate ethics, sapience, and colonization of space.
Also available from Standard Ebooks: https://standardebooks.org/ebooks/h-beam-piper/little-fuzzy
(I prefer Standard since they put a lot of emphasis on device compatibility and a good reading experience. It's a great organization!)
The Mercy of Gods by James S.A. Corey, writers of The Expanse series, which are a favourite of mine (both books and TV series).
The plot describes a much advanced alien species capturing a planet of humans (not Earth), and follows an enslaved research team as they navigate and survive under alien rule.
Overall 6/10 for me. Its an interesting premise but I felt the execution to be a bit off. I cared little for most of the characters, but the mystery of the aliens kept me reading.
That being said, I am looking forward to the rest of the series because
Some spoilers for the book
Of the "great enemy" the Carryx are at war with, which are hinted at to be humans, although more technologically advanced than those that were captured.And building on that,
Major spoilers for the ending of The Expanse
My headcanon is that this series takes place in the far future of the Expanse universe, after the ring gates were shut down at the end of Leviathan Falls. Anjiin is probably an isolated settlement that managed to develop separately, while the more advanced humans are possibly those that managed FTL travel.I put this one down after hitting the halfway mark, because yeah, the characters are just so dull and I couldn't give a damn about any of them or anything they happens to them. Oh no, one died! Anyway...
I finished Red Rising (one book), a lot of people already know it but it's about an oppressive caste-based society in future Mars, built on the backs of lots of slavery. Good so far! Pretty brutal but I appreciated the contrast between the red and gold communities and how they each see themselves, as well as Darrow's epiphanies regarding leadership. I'm curious to see how the story develops in future books and hoping for some satisfying revolutionary themes.
That's a fun series! If you like Red Rising, I strongly recommend you keep going in the series. The plot is a tad formulaic at times, but it's a gripping arc.
Dream Story by Arthur Schnitzler — the short story Eyes Wide Shut is based on.
Before this, CHAOS: Charles Manson, the CIA, and the Secret History of the Sixties by Tom O'Neill — basically him poking holes in Helter Skelter and more. Nice, fun read.
Woah I watched Eyes Wide Shut last night and was wondering if it was based on a book like all of Kubricks other movies. I'll have to add this to the list.
I love Eyes Wide Shut. If you search Traumnovelle you'll find some other adaptations of the novella. I think this one is out next year.
Anyway, great film, pretty good book.
I decided to reread East of Eden, and would like to try to complete it before the end of the year, but I also have a massive youtube backlog to finish (long story). So I've been reading it on my drives, and any time I take the dog for a walk, where having my phone out to watch videos would be detrimental to my health and safety. I'm almost done with Part 2 and am remembering why I liked it so much, and why it's stuck with me all these years.
As a lifelong Californian who grew up in a farming town (not in Salinas Valley, like Steinbeck), it really speaks to me.
I read EoE this summer for the first time and it honestly changed my view on life. Such an amazing read. I was also impressed by the quality of the writing: it's so beautifully written while also remaining incredibly understandable and easy to read.
It was my first Steinbeck but I am really looking forward to reading more from him now. Next up will be Cannery Row I think, though I have some other books I want to read first.
I'm curious about the YouTube backlog! What type of videos are you watching?
Most of my backlog is sewing, food (cooking, food science, food history), history, making stuff, Atomic Shrimp videos from the last month, and Technology Connections from the last month.
As for EoE, as a lifelong Californian, it's also made me feel more connected to the state and the history of the state. I don't remember feeling this way as a teenager reading this book, I was more interested in Cathy and her life back then. One of the things that's really struck me is the beginning of the book with the weather patterns, and it really does feel like those weather patterns still ring true, not just in Salinas Valley, but in the entire state.
EoE is beautiful. I haven't read Cannery Row, but I have read Grapes of Wrath and it's stellar and more strongly strongly plot-driven than EoE.
Remnant Population by Elizabeth Moon
A corporation tells the 40 year old colony they own that they will have to be packed up and shipped to a new world. An elderly woman who is tired of being bossed around by the corporation, the town, and her son's family decides to hide in the woods when it is her time to leave. She revels in the freedom to do what she wants, when she wants for the first time in her life.
One of my favorites.
Just finished Seveneves by Neal Stephenson. He loves to describe in detail how orbital mechanics works, but the other parts and the overall plot were pretty good and felt real. I like how he sort of completely transforms the style of the book at a few places during the story, although it makes it somewhat more difficult to care. I think this was the first book from the author I've managed to read through. 4/5
I am currently reading Love in Time of Cholera by Gabriel García Márquez (he is the author of One Hundred Years of Solitude). It's interesting, to say the least.
And had finished the Ministry for the Future by Kim Stanley Robinson for the book club that is in January.
Words of Radiance (2nd novel of Stormlight Archive). Brandon Sanderson has his faults as an author but man I’m a sucker for his writing and this book is superb so far. His worldbuilding is just remarkable.
I have been taking a small break from reading after finishing The Count of Montecristo. To my surprise I absolutely loved the book, but I was so engrossed with it that I ended up reading it very intensely, so I felt like I needed a little pause.
However, I am planning to start Joel Dicker 's "The Enigma of Room 622" in the coming days. I have really enjoyed his work I've read, and this is one of the few I am missing. I have heard that it's one of his weakest ones, however it is set in Verbier, where I am spending New Year's, so I thought it would be fun to read it while there.
I'll report back on how I end up liking it!
I'm currently listening to Shutter by Ramona Emerson, which I didn't expect to have as much in the way of horror vibes as it does. I'm at about 35% and doing okay with the gore, though... it's interesting to read this directly after The Only Good Indians. That was not a conscious decision!
I have The Future by Naomi Alderman queued up to listen to with my partner. Our library has a sci fi book group that will be discussing this in January, so we've started (3%). Maybe planning to listen to this while puzzling or gaming. The first two chapters are... striking.
No new text-based reads until I finish rereading my own (50%).
Recent listens: Under the Whispering Door by TJ Klune (5 stars), Emily Wilde's Map of the Otherlands (4.75 stars - this is probably the best format for me to take in first person point-of-view; it's written as a journal), Iron Widow. I'm not sure what to do with Iron Widow. I'm still reeling. I DNF'd a YA book I was really looking forward to because I couldn't deal with the first person perspective (A Magic Steeped in Poison) and wished I had DNF'd another one for the same reason (Fable)... at least I'm getting to know myself? I've known I don't enjoy first person generally since like 2006, so I'm starting to try to teach myself when it's okay to close a book.
I found Emily Wilde interminable as an audio, and I think I decided I just didn't like Emily that much. And not because she's autistic coded. My review was:
By the end I just wanted the book to be done. Even sped up. I do also realize that I don't love the timeframe as a setting for fiction and because I'm not enamored with all the society things it doesn't engage me just because it has fae...( whatever those are.)
Anyway I'm glad it worked for you, it's weird because it seems like it should be up my alley and I'm always interested in discussing why things work and don't forget different people.
I liked Iron Widow a lot, and am eyeing book 2
I'm not the best reader of first person. I typically view books written that way as an easy way for the writer to immerse the reader in the story via self-insert, so as long as the main character behaves consistently, I pay zero attention to them except as a narrator and like... an agent for moving the story forward. I enjoy that Emily has observations about other people that she doesn't really remark on, since that can form an image of other characters' traits and personalities. For example, Wendell's personality and traits reflect a HUGE tendency toward the classic brownie-like behavior with cleaning up, mending clothes, etc. as acts of love and care. (I think this calls up knowledge from reading Spiderwick or something like two decades ago.) Even though Emily remarks on his brownie heritage like a grand total of once in the first book, I noticed her observing similar behavior by him throughout and it really made me enjoy him.
I agree these were too long for what they are, though. The plot was essentially the same for both of them (build relationships with nearby fae for flimsily-supported research purposes (kinda), get sucked into faerie for the last 15% of the book, really struggle to get out again, profit?). I listened to them at 1.8x speed. I was mainly in it because the narration didn't throw me out and I like Wendell! And the locales were cozy. The mood overall hit me just right when I needed it.
Iron Widow is something I feel like I could have an extremely long conversation or even a debate over. I've seen on the internet that people have vastly differing opinions on its treatments of some material. It seems pretty divisive, which makes it interesting in its own way. For me, I'm not taking it too seriously and I genuinely enjoyed the magic system with mecha suit... thing? But I'm not sure about the twist at the end. I'm eyeing the next one, but it's more like a side-eye lol.
I'm reading Robert Dallek's 2004 biography of JFK ("An Unfinished Life"). I'm about halfway through, and my biggest takeaway so far is the extent to which Joe Kennedy (Jack's father) essentially willed Jack's presidency to happen. He'd talk about how one of his kids would be president basically from the time they were born, and he did everything in his power to influence people and elections to make it happen. JFK was mostly complicit, and most of his early political career decisions were made solely with this end state in mind.
It's very weird (to me) to read such an explicit account of how people with money and power don't play by the same rules as the rest of the population.
I've been reading Project Hail Mary and I've been enjoying it. Wasn't expecting the...
...so that's been cool. I'm always a bit gutted to hit a flashback as I want to get back to the present day.
I do find the main characters dialogue a bit stilted at times, it's got that "I'm a super intelligent school teacher but don't forget how nerdy AND cool I am as well." vibe to it.
After you finish, feel free to check out the Tildes book club discussion for Project Hail Mary Here
If you want to add reactions or comments, please feel free.
I just started God Emperor of Dune by Frank Herbert.
I really enjoyed Children of Dune. I'm working my way through the whole Dune series, it's been a blast so far.
I'm currently reading Reaper's Gale, book 7 in Malazan Book of the Fallen. I'm ~1/4 of the way through the book and enjoying it immensely. I haven't been able to read it as much as I would normally like to due to the holidays. These books are the kind that if I was reading a physical book I would see that there's only "This much left" while holding the book in my hand and proceed to stay up way too late just so I could finish it that night because I want to see what happens.
I still read some pages of other books I have ongoing (my GoodReads says I'm currently reading 29 books), but for right now I've not really been touching any of them and instead am focused on reading this. I also usually have ~5-6 books I bounce between on my Kindle that I keep in the bathroom, but I've been forgetting to charge it so those haven't been touched recently.
I'm halfway through Edmund Wilson's To the Finland Station. It's a very engaging and approachable intellectual history of Marxism with a good deal of humanizing biographical content. So far I really enjoyed reading about Marx and Engels' youth and intellectual awakenings and feel motivated to try self-studying Hegel for the first time this spring. I like how Wilson explains that Marx and Engels' philosophy is widely misunderstood. For example, "Dialectical Materialism" is incongruous with the view that people mechanistically act from economic motives.
Spock's World (1988) is a Star Trek novel by Diane Duane, who seems to be a legit writer, with multiple awards. I got this book to learn more about the Vulcans and Spock, but so far I also got lots of general Star Trek fan service. I'm not really interested in reading about Scotty, Captain Kirk, or the workings of the Enterprise. The author is also fond of excessive descriptions, and I skipped at least one lengthy description entirely. I don't need a detailed account of what the Earth's oceans look like. I've been to the ocean!
At one point the author spent a dozen paragraphs describing the poetic beauty of Earth's night sky just to say something like "and then the Enterprise zipped through".
I've only read the very beginning, though.
This is supposed to be a book about Vulcan, Vulcans, and their political struggle. The scenes with Spock and Sarek were interesting.
I still think this book is going to be good despite this largely negative comment.
For anyone looking to grab this as an ebook: every single version available in piracy websites is broken. They lack all the double quotes, making reading through dialogue a pain. There are probably other things broken. Get the official version on Amazon instead.