What are you reading these days?

Just finished reading Susan Sonntag - Regarding The Pain Of Others. It was suggested to my by evie ( i sadly don't know their full username but am always happy to take recommendations)

Probably will either start a book about fear and stuff or actually i should read this months book...

So much to read so little time...

I'm working on Elder Race for tildes book club. At this point my participation is kind of treating this like it's a suggested reading list due to other time constraints, but dang it if I'm not giving it a shot! This one is so nice and short.

I've been reading Narnia on my phone while in transit. Currently on The Silver Chair, with The Last Battle remaining. This will be my first read through of all of them (Narnian chronology) and I'm completely in the dark as to the events of these last two books. They're fun, though there are certainly places where you catch the Christian imagery and symbolism. They can be a little overbearingly juvenile at times, though, and that's usually when I take a break.

Continuing with my listen of the Witcher series. Currently on Tower of Swallows. I could take it or leave it. Next up is Happy Place by Emily Henry and Go Tell the Bees That I Am Gone by Diana Gabaldon; after that... whatever shows up from hold first?

My partner and I have been attempting to listen to the Murderbot Diaries. Currently on Rogue Protocol, but it's about to return itself because we're moving and haven't been settled for a listen.

I just finished Journey To The West/Monkey King. The translation I read was quite enjoyable, it's clearly meant to be easily read rather than being super accurate so it read like a native english novel. At one point the phrase "Yama's advocate" was used which is clearly a liberty on the translator's part. I'm left a little curious how the translation compared to the original but honestly not enough to really dig in and find out. But overall the story was enjoyable. There's a slight lull between the prologue and when the Journey actually starts when you're suddenly dumped into the fully mundane mortal world but it's quickly over and back into Monkey hijinks. There's some clear hints of the politics of the time when it comes to Buddhism vs Taoism and the proper "ordering" of the three religions as well as references to various political and historical figures I don't have the knowledge to fully appreciate. It was also interesting to read after hearing how it's the "inspiration" for Dragonball for so many years.

I'm currently halfway through Her Body And Other Parties. It's a collection of short stories I originally bought for the "Storygraph Reads The World" challenge for Mexico but replaced after realizing it really has minimal connection to Mexico. I honestly was a bit worried the book would be just a depressing series of depictions of sexual violence but, while that's certainly a strong theme in the book, the stories are much more enjoyably surreal than that. The one I last read consists of the (real) title of each episode of the first dozen seasons of Law & Order: SVU and gives a fictional synopsis of the episode. The episodes build on each other and this whole twisted horror-filled series arc is constructed.

Next up is probably going to be Captain Vampire. I'm starting to form a neat little collection of 19th century vampire stories.

I'm currently reading People's Future of the United States for Tildes Book Club and really enjoying it. The short stories are really compelling and making me wish for longer versions of some.

I'm also listening to No Gods for Drowning by Hailey Piper. It took a bit to get into but I'm really enjoying it so far. The mystery and world building is really intriguing.

I just started Surviving to Drive by Guenther Steiner. I've really gotten into F1 since Covid and enjoyed watching Steiner as Haas's Team Principle and now that my favorite driver is on the Haas team, it just seemed appropriate.

Recently have been enjoying some of Samuel Beckett's short fiction! Particularly the stories "First Love", "The Expelled", "The Calmative", and "The End". These stories all share a similar or the same narrator, sort of a vagrant who tends to mainly have the goal of staying indoors somewhere. These stories have a very interesting perspective and a lot of humor in them. I've previously seen Waiting for Godot, and I plan to check out his novels soon.

I'm about halfway through Pynchon's V. so far I am enjoying the Stencil segments a lot more than the stuff focusing on Benny Profane. I am close to done but not quite with the Kurt Mondaugen segment, which a lot hold as the best part of the novel. Having read Gravity's Rainbow, the connections to that make it particularly appealing. Overall I can tell it's his first novel and seems kind of rough around the edges, but it's still Pynchon!

I'm reading Internment by Samira Ahmed

It is the (dear gods please stay this way) fictional story of Muslim internment in the US, following the MC Layla and her parents into a refurbished Manzanar.

It's really harrowing, and even as I read it I don't know what I would do.

Edit: I've finished it, and I didn't enjoy it, but it's well done.

i read The Price of Salt, The Blunderer, and a few short stories all from Patricia Highsmith. She’s one of my favorites.

After that I did Darth Maul: Shadow Hunter, which was pretty good. I always feel for Maul. nobody ever looked out for him.

Anyway, with that done, i’ve moved onto the Coruscant Nights series, starting with Jedi Twilight. The book is uneven and a little scattered at times, but enjoyable enough. Not that i’m running out of Star Wars books, but i’m trying to stick to series as much as i can.

I’ve also got David Simon’s, Homicide: A Year on the Killing Streets for the third or fourth time. If Simon wrote the phone book, I’d probably read that a few times.

I'm currently reading Stoner by John Williams. Doesn't disappoint so far.

I'm reading travels with my aunt by Graham Greene. Only about 70 pages in but its been enjoyable. It has that old timey feel to it with his the language is used but also deals with topics of drugs,sex and other criminal activities just very casually. I assume this is purposeful as these are the contrasts with the characters. So far I'm happy with the book especially since it was a blind buy.

Between Small Gods with the book club and The Wee Free Men with my daughters, I caught the Discworld bug and am working my way through those in chronological order. I'm currently on Sourcery and so far I've liked all of them. I know some people say not to start with the wizard books but I've found them to be pretty good, although he definitely is still developing his style.

With my son (8) we've been reading the Unicorn Rescue Society series. The premise is that there is a secret organization that protects mythical animals, so they have to visit Europe to save a dragon and then the Texas/Mexico border to save the chupacabras and so on. They're fun books that include some educational background which is a nice touch. We also discovered that one of the co-authors wrote a Carmen Sandiego novel, so now my daughter is itching to get her hands on that.

Yesterday I finished Elder Race from the Tildes Book Club, it was a very compelling story, the masking of sci-fi in a fantasy setting worked great, and the short format was a good way to explore Arthur C. Clarke's idea of Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic in the most literal sense, the parts about handling depression and solitude were incredibly touching.

In the future, I might give a try to People's Future of the United States, at the moment grounded politics/activism it's probably not the kind of book I want to read when I lay on the grass and the sun shines.

I decided to start The Fall of Hyperion, the previous book left too many ideas open, and I need to know the destiny of each character.

For nonfiction, I'll continue reading Overcoming Gravity, this is a dense book that it does wonders to clearing my mind before going to sleep.

I decided to give romantasy a chance because I liked the idea of the storyline of the series I decided to read. I read Hades X Persephone and boy do I regret it. The 7th book blew up everything I enjoyed about the series and left so many open ends. It made me furious.

So I started We Shall Be Monsters by Alyssa Wees, and am about halfway through it. It was a slow start, and I'm not sure if I love the way the story is told, but I started it, and I'm going to finish it to see if I enjoyed it. My BFF has it on her TBR and we usually enjoy the same books, so maybe we can chat about it once I'm done.

I started a people's future of the United States for Tildes book club.

I'm reading Their eyes were Watching God by Zorah Hurston,

I'm reading the Swerve how the world became modern by Stephen Greenblatt.

I'm reading a Fever in the heartland about the second ku Klux Klan

Currently Desolation by Yasmina Reza.

I stumbled over her works by watching the excellent God of Carnage - which is not a gore movie as the title implies, but rather a very dark comedy.

Desolation is a long rant from an old man that is extremely unhappy how his son turned out - because he choses "being happy" instead of "being productive". So far it is unclear if the son is even present while the guy is just laying into him. It is also about missed chances, the ethics of work and the general question what makes a life a life well lived.

Some selected quotes, crudely translated from my german translation:

In my philosophy, the father expects the son to NOT turn out like the rest of the world.

May I introduce you to my son, from the gang of the beheaded flowers. I would have preferred if you had become a criminal or terrorist rather than an activist of happiness.

Any Terry Brooks fans on Tildes? I remember reading some of the Shannara novels when I was younger (pre/teens) and loving them, but I read random ones and never got the full story or any kind of continuation. I think the books I read as a youngster were The Sword of Shannara, followed by Scions of Shannara, and then the entire Voyage of the Jerle Shannara trilogy.

A little under a year ago I got the itch to re-read Magic Kingdom for Sale. Sold! and the rest of the series after learning there was a 6th book released. I had read the first 5 (or maybe only 4, because I really didn't remember almost anything that happened in Witches Brew). Great series if you're looking for fun, playful fantasy without very high stakes most of the time.

I decided I'd continue along and reread the Shannara novels but in order. Sword was fairly standard "Sort of the Rings" and I totally get why it gets a lot of criticism as a Lord of the Rings rip-off, but I feel like the world-building and lore of Shannara holds up or even rivals Tolkien as Brooks expands on it over the rest of the series.

For those uninitiated, the basic premise is that it's your "typical" fantasy fair, with elves, dwarves, humans, trolls and wizards (Druids) and such, but it's set a couple thousand years in the future, after "man" wipes themselves out in nuclear war, and the aftermath leads to evolutionary splintering into the aforementioned races.

Anyway I am now on to Wishsong of Shannara after finishing Sword and Elfstones of Shannara.

So far I am really enjoying trudging back through the series(these are LONG books) slowly before bed. Just wondering if anyone else enjoyed this series around here and would be interested in my thoughts as I go along, or wanted to share any of their own.

This morning I finished A Higher Call by Adam Makos

It ostensibly tells the story of an incident over Europe in 1943 where a heavily damaged American B-17 is limping over Europe trying to make it home. A German fighter pilot in his BF-109 fighter finds them and ends-up pitying them, especially after seeing how damaged the thing was and being able to peer through a large hole in the side of it and see its dead and dying crew. The fighter pilot ends-up escorting the B-17 over an area heavily infested with flak and out to the English channel where he then peels off and the B-17 limps home, barely making it.

That's really only about a chapter of the book and instead is an exploration of the Fighter Pilot, Franz Stigler's life in the German Air Force; how that came to be, his misgivings about what he was doing and a general "day in the life" of an average German who never joined, nor supported the Nazi party. It recounts Franz's boyhood and then his life in the service starting in North Africa and how even then, many of the regular enlisted men knew the war was lost (this is 1942), but kept fighting.

As I got into the latter half of the book, I really struggled to put it down and as a WW2-Lover (sound weird to say), it was fascinating to get a closer look at "The Other Side" and really made me all the more disdainful of Hitler and the Nazi's for what they put the German people through and the entire book feels like it carries echo's of things that are happening today.

If you have any interest in WW2, I'd recommend it. I'm generally far more interested in the ground war and this book was still absolutely fascinating.