What are you reading these days?

I do audiobooks, but I am on the last book of the Murderbot Diaries and decided I needed to read something else because I don't want it to end. haha I LOVE this book series. Plays out just like a movie/show in my head without being too full of itself.

So now I am on We are Legion(We Are Bob). Liking it so far for the same reasons.

It turns out I really like books/audiobooks that are easygoing and don't try to be literary masterpieces. I like escaping into the worlds and visualizing what's described instead of having to do a thesis in my head.

I like these kinds of popcorn novels.

Outside of those, I'm also reading a lot of books on potential scenarios for the future of the US given the instability. Trying to absorb as much knowledge to help navigate the future as I can.

Finished V. For the most part I enjoyed this book, I have yet to be disappointed by Pynchon. That being said, this was probably the most uneven of his that I've read so far. In particular the Confession of Fausto Maijstro, which is a nearly 100 page long chapter, really was hard to stick out. Most of the book I flew through, but that chapter alone took me about a week to get through. That being said, very impressive that this was a first novel. Hard to believe he was younger than me when it was published!

I also just read The Farthest Shore, the third installment of Earthsea. It's probably the weakest of the ones I've read so far, but still a quick and enjoyable read.

I'm now reading Virginia Woolf's To the Lighthouse, the second of hers I've read. She has such beautiful prose, and she expounds so wonderfully on all the little minutia of life, thoughts and experiences I've had countless times yet she puts so effortlessly into words. I'm certainly going to continue reading her works!

Currently reading: The Fall of Hyperion because we read Hyperion for book club. Like Hyperion, it's well written and fascinating.

Started A House with Good Bones for Tildes book club.

Currently reading A Fine Balance by Rohinton Mistry. This realist novel is set in India around the time of partition. Some of it is tragic but I like the characters and the historical setting.

Finished The Swerve: How the World Became Modern It's about Lucretius' manuscript and how one unique copy was found in a monastery because humanist scholars were digging up the past. This manuscript brought epicurean ideas and the theory of atoms to western culture. I believe this book was originally recommended to me here on Tildes, so thank you.

Finished A Natural History of Dragons which was a fun fantasy adventure.

Finished Dancing in the Mosque: An Afghan Mother's Letter to her Son. This book about growing up as a girl in Afghanistan starting during the war with the USSR was fascinating but very sad. The author took many risks growing up and as a woman in Afghanistan. She also lucked into opportunities that are unusual for Afghan women like studying in Iran. I found myself doubting that I would be as brave under those circumstances.

I'm finishing One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest by Ken Kesey tonight. Excellent book. I haven't seen the film in a long time, so I'm excited to give that another go.

Before this I read Michael Connelly's new series starter, Nightshade. Pretty good book. He's kind of exhausted Bosch, so its nice to see him moving into fresh territory. Honestly, I wish he would just go back and cover Bosch in the early days. While the book was good, its very much in line with the genre. If you made it a little funnier, it could have been Robert Crais.

A few days ago I finished Bleak House by Charles Dickens. This was after we discussed a study that used the first few paragraphs. I read the first chapter and decided to keep going.

It kept me interested and I’m glad I read it, but I’m not sure what to think. It was written as serial fiction and it shows. Many of the characters are caricatures, but they are somewhat amusing nonetheless.

Has anyone here read Dante Alighieri's Divine Comedy? How did you read it? And do you have any recommendations for how I should read it?

I currently have the Henry Wadsworth Longfellow translation. I have been reading and re-reading the first handful of cantos of Inferno, enjoying them immensely but also regularly diving down Wikipedia rabbit holes when trying to clarify words or stanzas that I get stuck on. At this pace, I'll be done in a good two years or so -- which I'm ok with; I'm in no rush. But I want to find out if I should do anything else to make the reading better, not necessarily faster.

If you've read Divine Comedy, or at least Inferno, and enjoyed it, what would you recommend to someone reading it for the first time? Should I back up and read any preparatory material first? Should I just keep leaning into it? Is there anything else you wish you had done before or while reading it?

I've been reading Mistakes Were Made (but not by me), and it's halfway interesting. Each chapter is a series of anecdotes about how people lie to themselves to stay comfortable with the choices they've made, even when those choices were terrible. It really cuts across the political and career spectrum, showing everyone is vulnerable to a comfortable deception to protect their own self-image even if they know about the mechanism by which it works. It was all fairly obvious and a little boring showing how professionals will defend their mistakes, and then I got to the section on how we do this in relationships. Suddenly it was insulting me personally in all sorts of ways. I'm not done with it yet, but it's a solid intro to cognitive dissonance and an interesting read.

Libby told me to try the First Formic War Trilogy by Orson Scott Card and Aaron Johnston. I must've read the entire Ender/Bean octology five times in my teens, so I took it as a reasonable recommendation. I'm about half the way into the second book.

Some of the stuff it does well

• The tech is cool in a grounded way. Space tugs, asteroid mining ops, early fusion propulsion, the kind of near-future extrapolation that gives the setting a realistic texture. Like in Ender's Game, for example, there's no sci-fi imaginary artificial gravity; there's grav-boots and centrifugal (centripetal?) force. We also get an early introduction to the Doctor Device, which was very fun for me.

• The action scenes are well-paced and feel cinematic without being totally over the top. You get that tense "humanity is outmatched and scrambling" vibe pretty effectively.

• ((Audiobooks, specifically)) - Decent voice acting. I'll take it. It's an ensemble cast, for better or worse. With the viewpoint consistently shifting throughout the series, I appreciate it. Stephen Hoye is a liiiiiiittle melodramatic at times, especially because some of the action scenes are several minutes long, and not every sentence needs to be breathy and intense. His performance reminded me of Conner from Love on the Spectrum (and I played my partner ten seconds of audio, and she said the same), so much so that I checked if Hoye narrated some fantasy Conner might've listened to.

• Some of the adult characters, like Mazer Rackham and Wit O'Toole, are decently fleshed out and carry the emotional weight of the story better than expected. The internal monologue of some of the "bad guys" is quite solid, fleshing them out as complex characters with conflicting ideals and motivations. Card's characterization is always is great, but on the other hand....

Some of the stuff that isn't working for me

• While the characterization is great, some of the characters themselves are unbelievable. Just like in the original series, the teen characters are rough. In the cold, harsh light of adulthood, they read like they were written by someone who was told they were gifted in middle school and never fully questioned it. The kids are unrealistically competent and philosophical; it breaks immersion constantly. As someone who was told they were ✨✨Gifted and Talented✨✨ all throughout childhood and grew up to be a disappointing nerd with ADHD, the characters seem like wishful thinking. Maybe I'm just a bitter old man.

• There’s a kind of idealized view of non-US cultures that feels very missionary-influenced (Card is Mormon, as is his co-author, and it shows). It’s not offensive so much as shallow, like his understanding of other cultures got locked in during his early 20s and hasn’t really evolved since, as though all of his understanding of Latin America and other cultures were from his time on his mission in Brazil and those cribbed from talking about foreign lands with other missionaries. While there's some stereotyping, it's mostly just tired tropes (Rackham performing a Māori haka the first chance he gets, an Indian general referring to his wife as a nag, etc.).

• The dialogue often leans into moralizing or overexplaining. Maybe I'm just projecting what I know about Card, but gee whiz, bud, calm down on the preachiness. It slows down otherwise tense moments with characters spelling out themes that don’t need to be spelled out.

In the end...

Like I said, only part way into the first book, but I wouldn't read this if I hadn't read the rest of the Enderverse first. There are better-written and more inventive first contact/military SF books out there. But if you want to see how the pieces were put in place before Ender’s Game, there’s enough here to make it worth a read. Just go in knowing it carries over a lot of Card’s familiar weaknesses, and that his strengths (worldbuilding, escalation, some character work) are only sporadically on display. I don't really know what the dynamic between the co-authors was, but it feels like a new author writing fan fiction with the original author watching closely over their shoulder.

I have been reading stuff from Portuguese speakers on Brazilian online groups. Apparently I am a "beta reader" now.

The age gap is proving difficult. These kids don't know how to use dots and commas. They use way too many adjectives. Their stories are full of holes and stuff that leads nowhere. One particular writer only used verbs in the present tense for an entire book.

Even though they are begging for feedback, when I give it, they get defensive and give me all the indications that they will not change their text in any way.

They also have no wish whatsoever to write short stories, and they are all making full blown multi-book sagas before they even learn how to make sentences. The idea was for me to get a better understanding of those dynamics, and the reality is that older writers are simply not online.

My reviews are long, thoughtful, sensitive, and respectful, containing both negative and positive criticism. They take work, and it is heartbreaking to see that nothing I said is being taken to heart. I will not answer to requests for feedback from young Brazilians in the future.

They seem to have contempt for any kind of rule or general principle of good writing. Not just a disregard but active contempt.

Since they ignore all my points, it is not like they're getting any benefit from me anyway. Perhaps other young people can provide criticism that is meaningful to them. To me, it is just not worth it. I end up in a role that is similar to a teacher, substituting for the gaps in their education that are not mine to resolve. Let their actual teachers do that.

Staircase in the Woods - It's a horror book that came out recently. It was OK. Horror isn't really my favorite and I didn't totally love the ending. But certainly don't regret reading it.

In Full Flight: A Story of Africa and Atonement - This one was interesting. It's a biography of Dr Anne Spoerry who is best known for being a "flying doctor" in Africa who treated an insane number of people over her life. It also covers her life before and during world war ii when she was in a concentration camp and then did horrific things herself. It really does an excellent job of painting the many, many sides of a very complicated person.

Self-Portrait Abroad - An odd little Belgian novella with slices of life from totally-not-the-author's travels. Maybe I would have liked it more had I read the author's other books first.

Life and Other Shortcomings - An odd little anthology of slice of life stories that are vaguely interrelated and focused on women's experiences. Stores like an awkward dinner party. Or another where a teenage girl makes friends with a new neighbor and her new friend then makes friends with a boy, turning her into a third wheel. I didn't particularly enjoy it nor did I feel I gained anything from reading it.

A People's Future of the United States - for the bookclub

Howl's Moving Castle - Just finished today. A really pleasant read. I'd heard the title before but hadn't heard much of what it's actually about nor have I seen the movie, so I went into it quite blind. I found the beginning a bit slow and the "oldest of three" thing is still a bit strange to me, but I quite enjoyed it once the castle got moving. I found the ending a bit disappointing as the resolution felt really rushed and I'm disappointed with a particular part of the last couple pages. Apparently this book is part of a trilogy so maybe I'll need to get the next one and see from there.

One Puzzling Afternoon - I'm 40% of the way into this. I'm not loving it so far but I've read much, much worse. It's about an elderly British woman trying to remember what happened to a friend of hers who got murdered when she was 15. It's one of those books where it alternates back and forth between "then" and "now" as a psuedo-framing device, which I find to be very hit or miss. With this one it really doesn't seem to add anything so far and I really don't care for the "now" sections at all.

The Fall of Hyperion, since the first one was amazing, I wanted to continue the story.

So far, 35%, it adds some more information, but it has not taken my interest as the previous did from the beginning, I guess it's building up, still a very good read.

I've been in a "slump" for reading during May. I've lately been engaging with some other media in my free time (like trying to beat Accession 20 for all characters on Slay the Spire on my phone) and reading more books to my kids.

I'd only opened my ereading app a few times during the month but didn't read more than a few pages. I finally did what I usually do to get over a reading slump, I started reading. Sometimes when I've taken a break from a book for a bit I tell myself I'll just try to read another chapter. Usually by the time that chapter is done I've reinvested myself in the plot.

Currently The Forge of God by Greg Bear is keeping me engaged. I also have a friend's novel who I need to finish reading for some beta feedback. Once those are done I plan to finally dive back in to Malazan Book of the Fallen. I want to get the last 3 books of the main 10 finished this year before I start on any other big epic series.

I've been thinking of going back to the Realm of the Elderlings after finishing the initial trilogy a little while ago.

Finished Harrow the Ninth! Although a little confusing, it wasn't as confusing as I expected. I kind of figured out a lot of stuff before they were mentioned because I'm pretty observant & I had freshly read the 1st book. Also I kind of cried in the first 2 acts because Harrow's trauma resonated with some of my own experiences.

Nona the Ninth's next!