What are you reading these days?

I just finished Infinite Jest, immediately had my mind blown, and restarted it via audiobook/podcast and am making more connections this time around exploring this world he created.

I still like reading a physical book though, I enjoyed most of his essays in Consider the Lobster (was too dumb for 3 of them) and I wanted more fiction so now I’m reading The Pale King which I had on my shelf already. I’m in the middle of chapter 19 where unnamed characters are talking about civics and wealth inequality (sort of) and it’s fascinating how relevant these ideas still are (and how no one’s done anything about it).

I have Oblivion and This is Water in the mail, I can’t seem to get enough of DFWs writing. I wish I had discovered him while I was still in college.

In my quest to find new hard Sci Fi to tickle my taste buds I landed upon Seveneves

I'm a few hundred pages in and liking it a great deal. Enough (i.e. a little) personal drama, lots of science, and an interesting story.

I'm slowly reading through 20,000 Leagues Under the Seas by Jules Verne. I picked up this book recently from a bookstore that had this "blind date" section. Books were covered in wrapping paper with a simple description written on the paper. The description on this book sounded interesting so I picked it up.

I'm only about 10% through the book so far but it's been a fun read. It's easy to forget how old the book is sometimes. The only times I've been caught off-guard by the age of the book is when a character mentions that the US only has 37 states or when characters are mesmerized by electricity that I remember that this book is 150+ years old.

Antkind - Charlie Kaufman

What a freaking whirlwind. I'm only 42% the way through the 25 hour audiobook and it feels like I've read 14 books. I've literally laughed out loud too many times to keep track of, and I both love and hate the protagonist. Like, genuinely, what a milquetoast piece of shit that I see parts of myself within.

The story follows the exploits of a white, cishet, male antihero film critic obsessed with both demonstrating how woke he is while also clarifying continuously that he's "not a Jew," and everything that happens to him is either his own fault, or the fault of a chaotic universe indifferent to him.

If you like DFW or Charlie Kaufman's films, or if you're really into unreliable narration it really is worth the trudge. There're dull points, but I've never laughed at a book as much as I am with this one. It's absurd. It's painful. It's cringe. And, most fun of all, I still have no idea what's real and what's just in the narrator's head.

@Weldawadyathink, for your expressed interest in unreliable narration.

Currently almost done reading Franz Kafka's 'The Castle' (Published 1926), which has been really great. I've enjoyed all the Kafka I have read (The Trial, Metamorphosis). I'm also listening to '2 Years Before the Mast' (Published 1840) by Richard Henry Dana Jr. as preparation for a deep read of 'Moby Dick' that should take up most of my winter. Melville considered '2 years' as one of his favourite books and used it as research when writing Moby Dick. I have already read Moby Dick twice, once on paper (brutal) and once as audiobook (extremely enjoyable). This time will be on paper again so I can write in the margins. I have also consumed Hubert Dreyfus’ lectures on Moby Dick which should be required viewing/listening for anyone really interested in Moby Dick.

I consider it to be in the Top 3 books ever written, there is nothing like it and the depth within the book is infinite (you can get more and more out of it no matter how many times you read it). My other 2 are 'The Brothers Karamazov' and 'War and Peace'. These are the greatest works of art produced by mankind. *In my not so humble opinion :)

Every year I pick a 'Brutal Winter Read' which usually features something especially long and difficult. Past Examples: Milton's Paradise Lost (last year), the year previous it was Dante's Divine Comedy, year before that Middlemarch. I usually set aside 2-3 months to accomplish this yearly feat.

I haven't posted on one of these in a little while, so this is about for the last month or so.

For non-fiction:

I finally got around to reading When Breath Becomes Air by Paul Kalanithi. I didn't find it quite as emotional as some accounts since it is a pretty objective look at the events unfolding around him, leaving out much personal emotion, but it was certainly sad especially during his wife's epilogue. But overall I found it to be very informative, providing perspective I would otherwise be blind to.

I recently started A Promised Land by Barack Obama after finishing Becoming by Michelle Obama. It's refreshing hearing about a time not long ago in which the office of president was a respectable position. And a little disappointing to hear that there's supposed to be a second volume to it, but apparently there's been no news since it came out in 2020.

For fiction:

I read Tender is the Flesh by Agustina Bazterrica and wow, absolutely incredible. A very quick read that I couldn't put down in which cannibalism becomes state-sanctioned when a virus infects animals rendering them unsafe for consumption. I don't have much to say about this one without spoiling things, but this was excellent.

I also read The Long Walk by Stephen King, and honestly I feel like this one is a bit overrated. It's probably going to end up being forgettable for me compared to King's other novels. It's got a lot of dialogue that could at times feel circular, and you're supposed to feel the pain and emotion that the walkers felt, but it didn't really hit for me. I feel like the concept is better suited for a movie, but I haven't gotten around to seeing it just yet. I'll be going this coming week.

I'm taking forever to finish this round of Blood Meridian. I read it two weeks ago and started over right away. This time I am re-reading chapters again in an effort to properly pull everything out of it.

Next up will be the latest from Mick Herron's Slow Horses series, Clown Town.

I recently finished Gone to Soldiers by Marge Piercy . It's not a perfect book and it's not for everyone but I really liked it. It takes ten people's stories during wwii and they intersect in interesting ways. One of the things I like about the book is that the point of view characters have occupations/ experiences that are not usually represented, including a Wasp pilot, a merchant seaman, a factory worker, a military correspondent as well as more typical, resistance fighter, marine and code breaker.

I've started the Poisoners handbook for tildes book club.

I've started the Adventures of Amina al Sarafi, a fantasy pirate adventure.

Got around to reading The Pillars of the Earth last weekend, having seen it mentioned multiple times over the years as something worth reading. I did end up thinking it a decent read, despite there being parts in the first half or so which were getting close to a neverending litany of woe without a positive balance (something that tends to put me off a story). This does even out more by the end and I liked the digressions into architecture and building techniques.

Followed that up with book 13 of The Primal Hunter (a LitRPG series). Like the rest of its series this is a casual reading sort of story, it's not exactly thought provoking but provides a bit of action/system power escapism which is the sort of thing I want sometimes (after all I have read 13 books of it).

Currently reading one called The Ancient Engineers, which unsurprisingly is about historical constructions/inventions/engineering starting with ancient Egypt and continuing onwards through mesopotamia, the Greeks, etc. It's an older book but quite readable and at about halfway through has been interesting so far.

Started The Count of Monte Cristo, although on audiobook. I'd tried several times to read the book the old-fashioned way, but I never got past the first few chapters. Now that I'm 12 chapters in, I'm feeling like it's starting to get good.

I also finished The Poisoner's Handbook for the book club. Interesting stuff about science, science communication, and society. Many parts seem relevant to this day, unfortunately.

it’s audio — but Julie Andrews appears to be reading some Jane Austen novels in thirty minute chunks twice a week.

https://shows.acast.com/jane-austen-stories

Her performance is decent and the stories themselves are great. this will be perfect if you’ve never tucked into these stories.

I recently finished reading Spaceman by Mike Massimino, an astronaut who was on two of the Hubble Telescope servicing missions. It's a great book about the end of the Space Shuttle era of NASA and an autobiographical look at what it takes to realize one's dreams. I have yet to read his other book, Moonshot, but it's on my list as well.

Listening to American Gods full cast audiobook. It's really good. It really sucked me in. I'm almost done with it. The reveals so far haven't been surprising, but I don't think that was the point. I know Gaiman is controversial as a person, but his stories are good. The idea of the gods and how they're adapting is intriguing.

I'm curious about the TV show now even though it was cancelled

Currently reading: The Shadowed Land by Signe Pike (audio), My Next Breath by Jeremy Renner (audio with partner), Ruin and Rising by Leigh Bardugo, The Light Pirate by Lily Brooks-Dalton, and Wool by Hugh Howey. Mostly finishing up series I've started (really exciting to get to the end of some of them!) Or working on book club reads. Partner and I are listening to Renner's book because we're interested in him from his Marvel work and I appreciate him conveying his perspective about his accident (even though he didn't want to). We've just barely started this. We're also both reading Wool while we wait for the next season of the show to come out, since we seemed to have hit a good stopping point.

Just finished: The Boy on the Bridge by MR Carey (audio with partner). This was a follow up to The Girl with All the Gifts, which was an earlier book club read that we ended up really enjoying (despite my ongoing avoidance of the subject matter lol). This one felt like a little more of a slog, but it filled in some backstory, and also had an epilogue that took place after the events of the first book, so that was pretty cool. I also finished Clockwork Boys by T Kingfisher, which was very funny, and mostly lighthearted but a little grotesque. Also Season of Storms by Andrzej Sapkowski and A Sky Beyond the Storm by Sabaa Tahir, which unfortunately were rather lackluster installments in their universes, in my opinion. China Rich Girlfriend by Kevin Kwan was another one of my listens, but I couldn't tell you how much of it I really absorbed.

Up next: The Midnight Library by Matt Haig, Carry by Toni Jensen, The Scald-Crow by Grace Daly, The Winners by Fredrik Backman, and The Unmaking of June Farrow by Adrienne Young.

I've been bouncing back and forth between a few books which has caused them to drag on a bit. One is Wind and Truth by Brandon Sanderson, another is The Green Mile by Stephen King (found it at a thrift store for a few bucks), and Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind by Yuval Noah Harari.

I'm nowhere near done with any of them, but I like all of them so far (though The Green Mile I have read previously).

I enjoyed The Intelligence Trap by David Robson. It covers a lot of different areas when it comes to what intelligence is and why we fall into certain "traps" where a "smart" person essentially becomes highly trained and knowledgeable in specific areas but heavily deficient in a lot of other matters. A lot of it seems based on real psychology but I certainly haven't done enough research to know how much is pop or controversial vs how much is relatively well established. But some of the basic ideas like overlearned heuristics, lack of humility impairing learning, and the need to take steps back and reconsider things socratically makes a lot of sense to me. I especially enjoyed the chapter about education.

I adored The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows. It's one of those books I can see myself re-reading just for the mood. I put post-it notes for some of the words I really liked. Didn't totally love the end when it seemed a lot of words were just synonyms for "existential dread" but the earlier chapters especially had a lot of words I related to.

I finally finished Fellowship of the Ring.

I also read On the Calculation of Volume Vol I by Solvej Balle and Theories of Multiculturalism by George Crowder. The former was OK, I like the groundhog day trope and it's an interesting reflective thing, but I didn't enjoy the narrative much and I found rationality clashes with the artistry. The latter book was similar in that I found the subject matter interesting but I was not a fan of the author's narrative.

I'm currently reading The End of the World as We Know It and liking it. Most recently read one story that has a direct tie-in to the last scene with Rita.

I started the Dungeon Crawler Carl series at the recommendation of a friend and, as an avid gamer, have been enjoying it.

But, before starting the second book, I was distracted by a book called "How to Become the Dark Lord and Die Trying" (by Django Wexler) that had a one-line blurb describing it as "Groundhog Day meets Guardians of the Galaxy," which piqued my interest. In short, an Earth girl in her 20s wakes up in a fantasy world and a wizard informs her she is prophesied to defeat the Dark Lord and save the kingdom but, whenever she dies, she wakes up back at that point with everything starting over again. After thousands of years over thousands of lives (some of which are very short) and never succeeding at saving the kingdom or stopping the Dark Lord, she decides that she's had enough of the prophecy: now she's going to become the Dark Lord.

It's probably been at least a few years since I've gone through a full book this quickly, but I only have a chapter left after only about two days. The Groundhog's Day/time loop part become far less relevant after the first quarter of the book; I'm not really sure why they compared it to Guardians of the Galaxy (maybe the humor? Or the underdog protagonist?) but I'm enjoying it, either way.

I read the Dark Rise series by CS Pacat, and am impatiently awaiting the yet-to-be-titled third book. The first book was a great setup, beautifully written and the world that was built was realistic enough. It's the best-written, messy, horny, queer YA series I've ever read and I love it. I highly recommend if you love dark fantasy of any type.

I'm also still reading the Haunting Danielle series which is just a fun light romp, it's got 36 books in it, and they're all fairly similar, but at least they're entertaining enough to me. I'm on book 8 now. I have one more book to borrow for the month on hoopla, and I'll use it for book 9, and then go back to Libby and read what I have borrowed there. Mostly horror and paranormal books, though I am trying to collect all the challenges on Goodreads this year. For this quarter, two of the challenges are not my thing at all: literary fiction and memoirs. I try not to read nonfiction unless it's about food or sewing/fiber arts because they're boring to me, and I just didn't vibe with any of the choices for literary fiction, but I did manage to pick one from each section I'm going to slog through to complete all the challenges for this year. I probably won't actively do it again, but it's been a fun adventure reading so many new types of books this year and really honing in on what I really love to read.