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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.
Currently reading: The Poisoner's Handbook by Deborah Blum for future tildes book club. Demon Copperhead by Barbara Kingsolver (book club with coworkers, this one is a bit of a drag to get through and I'm already late because I was sick). Hemlock and Silver by T Kingfisher (fun, listening with partner).
Just finished: Siege and Storm by Leigh Bardugo, Dune Messiah by Frank Herbert. Continuing some series I've started.
Up next: The Language of Bees by Laurie R. King (continuing series), The Undocumented Americans by Karla Cornejo Villavicencio (library book club), Exit Strategy by Martha Wells, Ruin and Rising by Leigh Bardugo (continuing more series).
I have a lot of book clubs and a lot of series going. I'm trying to whittle away at both. It's been harder recently, as work has been more demanding and I haven't been able to listen as much.
On the fiction side I read Boomsday by Christopher Buckley and The Last One at the Wedding by Jason Rekulak since last thread. Both of them were in the bucket of generally enjoyable but far from my favorites.
The quasi-America but even worse in Boomsday certainly makes the satire easy though I did find some plot points a little strange given the that predicate. I would probably have enjoyed it more had I read closer to the Bush era than our current Trump one.
In Wedding, I was mostly impressed by how the fact that literally everyone was quite unlikable didn't seem to detract from how enjoyable the book was to read. I like there being unlikable characters but it often can make it harder to stay in the book but that really wasn't the case here. A lot of it comes down to an unusual balance of the predominance of character flaws I suppose. The major shift in how the daughter was presented was very well done though that did leave a lot of the ending predictable. Not in a bad way necessarily, but in a "of course that's how this goes" way. One that pairs with Boomtown now that I think about it.
The only non-fic I finished since last time was On Writing by Stephen King. I definitely walked away with some good things to think about. One thing I'd learned myself recently and the book helpfully helped reinforce/validate is the importance of taking a break between Draft 1 and 2 to give yourself the headspace to look at things cleanly. As an aside, I had such a weird feeling of deja vu reading the chapter about his car accident until I remembered it was due to the Dark Tower books where he literally wrote the accident into the narrative.
I've started in on The Fellowship of the Ring as I didn't want too big a gap between the prequel and main books since it messes up my bookcase. I think it's going to be slow going for me to get through the trilogy as I'm not loving it so far. At the current rate I'll still be working on it through October but maybe that'll change once we leave the shire and things pick up. On the bright side, reading this might help me finally get a month where I read more non-fiction than fiction.
On the non-fiction side, I'm most of the way through I'm Gonna Say it Now: The Writings of Phil Ochs which is a collection of various (non-song) things Ochs wrote. It's quite interesting to see how his lyrics are mirrored in his prose and the themes/repeats between his writings from things he liked. One thing I've noticed is how much he loved to say someone's name as a punchline. It's something he did a bunch in his on-stage introductions to songs and even a few times in the songs themselves, but that trend is also present especially in his earlier writings. This book is also a great companion to the biography I read earlier that quoted bits of some of these writings. I have a couple more biographies about him still on my shelf.
Addendum... Not a book book but since there's not a (non-Japanese) comic thread... I recently finished reading The Boys TPBs. I quite enjoyed it. It was remarkable how utterly different it is from the show; pretty much all of the things I didn't love about the TV show are things that were totally absent from the comic. I get some of the changes they made, especially given the politics (corporate and otherwise), but a lot of them feel like they just make the story weaker in the long-run. It does make me more curious where the show is going though as obviously many of the comic's machinations can't happen. The very last TPB (vol 12) took me by surprise, it's certainly appropriate for the characters and in some ways now that I've had time to digest it feels perfect, but it was gut-wrenching in the moment. I especially love the way Homelander is so much more of a slowburn in the books that gets more and more intimidating over time and how no-chill the comic's satirizations are. Comic-wise I'm planning to read Maus next.
How far are you in the Fellowship of the Ring? The beginning of the story is slow-going, and I feel like it picks up more in chapter 8 or 9.
I'm currently rereading the Fellowship of the Ring and do agree with you that the book takes its time in getting started.
Only chapter 3
Is this your first time reading LotR? If so, welcome to the nerd club! The first 7 or so chapters of Fellowship are tonally much more similar to The Hobbit than to general high fantasy, and to that end they can be fairly tedious to read through if you're not up for simply accompanying some hobbits on a jaunt through the countryside. It's slow going, because the hobbits themselves are going at a leisurly hobbit pace,
(very mild spoiler for the first half of the book)
in stark contrast to the overwhelming danger they are really in, a danger that we (and the hobbits) are only given small, unsettling glimpses of throughout their initial journey.
Chapters 6 and 7 are the most emblematic of this difference, and honestly there's no shame in skimming them or outright skipping them if you find yourself losing interest. Better to skip them than to miss out on the rest of the book, which is, of course, stellar.
Right now I'm not reading anything.
But in longer term I'm going through Ian Fleming's James Bond series. Currently I will be starting Dr. No (6th book in series).
I got to the series because I mentioned/recmmended them in a thread here on Tildes with disclaimer that I haven't read any of the books. And since then there was a thought in my mind that I should probably read it myself and no only recommend it to others. Or better - I should know what I'm recommending.
And I can recommend them now knowing what I'm recommending. They are great books and I read them like an add-on to movies that I know. Sometimes the book and movie goes hand in hand, sometimes the movie was actually "just inspired" by the book meaning there are bigger differences.
EDIT: I'm Czech and I read English originals (well, the "originals" that Amazon sells for Kindle - they may have been edited due to different points of view those 50+ years since they were written).
After you finish Dr. No, you might enjoy Percival Everett's Dr. No -- which is the same story told from a different perspective. I really enjoyed it.
On the Bond-front. I loved the books. The movies are fine, but pale in comparison for me. I'd LOVE for them to reboot the entire franchise as a TV series, lending three or four episodes per book... sticking to the books. I think its a better, classier Bond.
I will keep the other Dr. No book in my mind. I have to start reading the original one yet.
I love the older movies, say up to some with Pierce Brosnan, then it kinda fades off for me. I just love the movie style of older movies (overall), it is hard to describe.
I would actually (probably) hate if they remade the movies and probably even more so if it was done like TV series. I hate when studios try to milk the last cent of a franchise and destoying it in the process.
It would have to be done on very high standard to work for me (think the new Dune for example) otherwise I'm not interested. And one more thing - it must be available to buy, not to lease (which they likely wouldn't do if it was series). But if they remade it on very high standard, I would likely be interested.
I own a ton of books and I keep wanting to read through them, but 75% of the time when I pick up an unread book from my shelf and start reading it, I find out that it's a depressing book, and I don't like reading depressing books because the world's depressing enough and I'm trying to read to escape that depression reality. I'm sure Steinbeck's East of Eden is an excellent novel, I gave it a good go, but damn I just want to have a happy time, yknow? I keep thinking "okay, gonna read a comfort book, then after that I'll crack on reading that big allegory on the human condition or whatever", but then I finish the comfort book and need even more comfort and I pick up another comfort book and before I know it I've read half of the Discword novels and my twentieth LotR reread.
To that end I'm re-re-reading The Silmarillion, probably like the fifth time now. Tolkien just too good. Something about a world where there's actually light at the end of the tunnel and the tragedy exists to make the happy moments all the sweeter, rather than just, yknow, more tragedy piled up forever and ever.
I feel wanting to avoid the heavier books so much these days. You didn't ask, but a couple of recommendations that were on the lighter side for me:
Giving T Kingfisher a thumbs up, she's very good at incorporating humor into her work! Some of her stuff is a bit horror-y though, so depending on your tastes, it's worth carefully checking what you pick up.
Agree, TWGTDB is almost YA, but is not representative of her other work!
Finished Pillars of the Earth which is a historical novel with action, intrigue and a twisty generational plot. Some of the main characters are professional builders and a cathedral gets built as the book progresses. It was a fun visit to the middle ages.
Started Stories of Your Life and Others by Ted Chiang for Tildes Book Club September read.
I thoroughly enjoyed Pillars of the Earth. I also enjoyed the next two books in the 'series': World Without End, and A Column of Fire. I have not read the other two.
Pillars of the Earth was an intense read for me! It almost didn't feel worth it, like there was not quite enough light or goodness to balance the darker aspects. I read World Without End recently, and it felt a little more balanced to me.
It was intense and setting it during a civil war was definitely a choice. Toward the end they talked about the king enforcing the king's peace as a relief from violence.
Living at a time and place without social safety nets other than family is hard.
I just finished Supergirl: Woman of Tomorrow and absolutely loved it. It's very much akin to a cosmic True Grit. There's no deep symbolism or anything like that, but the on-the-nose moralizing suited the story being told, I think. The art is amazing.
While counting it as reading might be a stretch, I'm working through Murdle: The School of Mystery. I enjoy logic puzzles, and Murdles have the added benefit of being very tongue-in-cheek with the puzzles tied together by an over-arching story.
My next book will be Shock Induction by Chuck Pahlaniuk.
Currently reading Disaster Capitalism...its rough. Well written and easy to understand with no real fluff but each chapter boils down to "this corporation extracted value from a terrible situation and everyone had a bad time...except the profiteers." Highly recommended if you into that sort of stuff.
Then I'm reading the second book in the silo series called Shift. Its a really fun read (probably due to how depressing the other book is) and is continuing the mystery of the silo from a completely different viewpoint.
If by chance you haven't read Naomi Klein's Shock Doctrine, be sure to check it out. It's older, but still a great companion to Disaster Capitalism. Lowenstein's books on Israel-Palestine are also really good, especially The Palestine Laboratory.
Yea iv heard The Palestine Laboratory is really good but I'm not sure my soul could take that kinda subject matter right now. I'm already nearly radicalised to violence from my current reading list.
As for Naomi Klein I'll add that to the list. If its on verso books I might pick it up during another sale.
I just finished Hotline by Dimitri Nasrallah. It was sweet and sad, an easy listen I quite enjoyed. I'd recommend it if you like more slice-of-life, character-driven stories.
I've been making my way though the City Watch Discworld subseries as holds become available. Recently finished Feet of Clay and on Jingo now.
I'm intending on relistening to Stories of your life for the book club. I read it about a year ago, and need a major refresh.
I also fairly recently finished Hotline. It's an immigrant story set in Quebec and it is sad but hopeful by the end.
I enjoyed it.
Glad you liked it!
I just finished East of Eden last night.
Holy shit, that was amazing. Timshel y'all.
I'd get into more detail about what i thought, but I need to consult with my local chinese scholars, wise men, and rabbinic authorities first.
Absolute masterpiece! Have you read any other Steinbeck?
When I was a teenager, decades ago. I read Travels with Charlie, Grapes of Wrath, and To a god unknown. I liked them all and sometimes reread parts of Grapes of Wrath.
I somehow just missed East of Eden. I never knew it was considered one of his best. Then I heard it mentioned/recommend I think 4 times in the last year. I'm glad I finally got around to it!
Just finished The Devil's by Joe Abercrombie. It's very much like his other works and I loved it. Suicide squad meets witcher with Joe's usual take on "protagonists".
Kinda running out of things other than a few Sanderson novels i've been putting off, so I decided I'll try The Scar next by China Mievielle. I LOVED The City and The City. I'm....glad I read Perdido Street Station but it was also an odd mix of "i appreciate what you're doing but I don't always care". I expect The Scar to be similar to the latter but it should still be unique.
Emile Zola's 'Nana' published in 1880. The 9th novel in the 'Les Rougon-Macquart' series of 20 novels. I'm a big fan of French Realism, specifically Balzac and Zola, I've read far more Balzac so figured it was time to pick up another Zola. This book is interesting because of its portrayal of the main character Nana who is a prostitute/stage actress. It was a pretty big deal to feature a character like that in 1880.
Took me a couple chapters to really get into it, there are a lot of characters to map out. Somewhere around halfway now, enjoying it so far.