What are you reading these days?

I just finished: Chronicles of the Black Company first trilogy I enjoyed it. The narrator doesn't have any magical skill. He's a soldier and a medic and a bit of a historian. The story is full of magic and monsters but also the mundane military experience. As the trilogy progresses, the experience becomes less and less mundane. I thought the ending of each book was well done and the characters drew me into the story.

I read Circe by Miller This book retells the life of Circe and collects in one place different greek myths in which Circe plays a bit part. I really enjoyed it but fair warning. Greek gods are not nice to each other or to humans for the most part. The ending is the most modern part although the author justifies it by referencing an ancient poem that we only know because it is mentioned in other writings.

I read Between Two Kingdoms which is a memoir about surviving bad cancer as a young adult. It's very well written.

I'm currently reading When the Cranes Fly South which is a novel set in rural Sweden about an old man at the end of his life. The book is told in the voice of the old man with his thoughts and his memories. It also intersperses notes from his home health care team every few pages. The question of whether he is still fit to care for his dog is a point of conflict between the old man and his son. The book is poignant and thoughtful and meditative.

I've been reading Metaworld Hopecore, a serial novel that might be the most potent propaganda I've ever been exposed to: a world where the cruel can be reformed rather than killed, where art is meaningful and powerful, where kindness is rewarded. It feels nice to read. Not in a way that ignores the problems of the world, but in that it is inherently hopeful. I highly recommend it.

I'm about halfway through Middlemarch, and I am loving it! Every character seems so well realized, it's no surprise that Virginia Woolf was a fan of this novel. It's easy to see myself and others in so many of the characters' failings, but the narrator has great sympathy and compassion for them. This is a long book, but a no point has it been a slog. Curious if anyone here has read any of Eliot's other works that they would recommend.

I took my time with the latest entry in the Dungeon Crawler Carl series, A Parade of Horribles. I found it a bit slow to start, but it really shined as it reached the climax. Looking forward to the next entry whenever that may be.

I then finished up Piranesi by Susanna Clarke which was a wonderful bit of magical realism and mystery all wrapped up together. It had been recommended by a couple friends recently and I'm so glad I gave it my time!

Currently reading Blood Meridian by Cormac McCarthy. It's dark, intense, and captivating. His prose has dragged me into the world with a strong grip. I've only read The Road from him before many years ago and that story stuck with me unlike most anything. I can see why Blood Meridian is so highly praised despite the disturbing subject matter.

So after a highly enjoyable trip through the Bobiverse, I explored more books from Dennis E. Taylor.

First up was

"The Singularity Trap"

Really enjoyed this, right up my alley. I find it hard to talk in a non spoilery way about books I've read so suffice to say it's my ideal blend of hard sf with a sprinkling of mil and a cast of characters with, well... character. Also the first fiction book I've read in the longest time that wasn't part of a series.

Next up was

"Outland". Again highly enjoyable for most of the same reasons. Good characters, and a totally different premise. Which led me to ...

"Earthside". Hey, another series, but sadly a dud. A total snooze fest. I'd give this one a miss and just enjoy Outland as sometimes I think that a rotten sequel can sully the text from whence it sprang.

It makes me a bit nervous for my current read

"Flybot"

But I'm only 1 page in to that right now so I can hardly form much of an opinion there :)

I just finished reading N. K. Jemisin's The Fifth Season, The Obelisk Gate, and The Stone Sky on my partner's recommendation. The first book took a bit to get me hooked, but wow, what a series. The story and world are really interesting but I especially appreciated the characters themselves. There's themes around parenting that resonate with me right now, and also a lot of positive queer representation that is just nice to see.

I've just started reading Maintenance: Of Everything. So far, I'm enjoying it. Something I've definitely appreciated is how first section of the book deals with three approaches to maintenance and how preventative maintenance relates to anxiety. As someone who is dealing with a newborn and with some cascading household maintenance issues, this feels timely!

Finished book 6 of DCC, now reading audiobook of UKLG's Lathe of Heaven (halfway through). Interesting concepts, but I'm waiting for a shoe to drop (I hope one does, feels like it's getting there).

Next, if I don't pick up DCC 7, then I might move on to We Are Legion (Bobs), or Children of Ruin.

I'm about halfway through the book collecting volumes 1 & 2 of Manning Clark's A History of Australia. It's actually been decent so far, I figure I'll continue the series through if I'm still feeling it by the end of this book. The subject is the European history of Australia starting with the first voyages of discovery around the region.

I've also been reading various stories on Royal Road as a distraction but I can't really say anything has particularly stood out. I should learn to only bother with completed ones as so many are incomplete or currently being posted and that just tends to lead to me getting to the current end and being slightly disappointed before moving onto something else.

welp, I finished Sarah Waters - Fingersmith (2002, 592pg) -- this is the source material for The Handmaiden (2016), which is as perfect a movie as we'll see.

After that I moved to Michael Connelly - Ironwood (2026, 327pg) -- this is the second book in his new series and the dude is absolutely phoning it in at this point. My sister finished it... and I got to a point where I asked her if my idea of how it would play out is what happened and I was close enough. Connelly's characters are so whiny now and have been for a while. He was once a legend in the genre, but it just doesn't have it.

I dropped that and moved on to Mary Oliver - Devotions: The Selected Poems of Mary Oliver (2017, 456pg), which is really good. I'm halfway through and decided to intersperse it with the Sherlock Holmes' stories.... a few poems, a mystery, then on to another book.

With those out of the way, I'm now on to Patrick Radden Keefe - Empire of Pain: The Secret History of the Sackler Dynasty (2021, 535pg)... and its great! I'm excited to read more of his books. One of his other books, Say Nothing: A True Story of Murder and Memory in Northern Ireland (2018, 441pg) was made into a really great series a few years ago.

This covers me since last week. After this I'm gonna tuck into a the Bounty Hunter Wars trilogy for Star Wars :)

It's been years since I read books regularly, and I'm trying to change that. Was surprisingly successful this past June! I finished 8 out of 10 books that I picked up.

Children Of Time series by Adrian Tchaikovsky: The prose is ordinary, but I enjoy the plot and the sci fi premise. Far future, deep space, last few remaining human populations struggle to survive, terraforming, genetically-enhanced Earth species evolve to become sentient. (1) Children Of Time - I like the sentient spiders! Very interesting to imagine an intelligent creature with a built-in tool and construction material (spider silk webbing). Wasn't hooked at the start but got more and more invested towards the end, which I enjoyed. (2) Children Of Ruin - Less engaging, but I enjoyed the sentient octopuses. Skimmed through a lot of tedious exposition / laborious technical explanations. Still enjoyed the plot. I liked the start and end the best, and found the middle dragging. (3) Children Of Memory and (4) Children Of Strife - I started these but did not finish them because I found them too dragging. I found this series through an FB group thread recommending "cozy sci fi"-- I wouldn't consider it as such, but it's not depressing, and I enjoyed the endings of the books I finished.

How To Become A Dark Lord And Die Trying, and its sequel, Everybody Wants To Rule The World Except Me by Django Wexler: I almost didn't get past the start as I have a weak stomach for violence, and wasn't sure I liked the main character. But the premise was promising enough and the prose entertaining enough for me to keep going and I'm glad I did, it's fun! Isekai + time loop + "levelling up" + amassing an army... Reminds me of webtoon tropes but I find it more satisfying than a lot of webtoons, which often have a lot of fillers / annoying cliffhangers. I'm so invested in the sentient rock creatures. I like the protagonist, she's tough, funny, and constantly horny :)) These books are very satisfying and easy to read. Thanks Tildes book club for the reco!

Will Save The Galaxy For Food series by Yahtzee Croshaw: Funny, action-packed, and easy to read. Disgruntled, selfish, occasionally (and reluctantly) heroic space fighter pilot keeps stumbling into one misadventure after another while trying to get by in a society where his profession has been made obsolete by quantum teleportation. Lots of action in these series and I skimmed through some of it because I prefer to watch rather than read action. Still, the plots and the characters were entertaining enough for me to finish the series. I had fun with book 1 (Will Save The Galaxy For Food), less fun with book 2 (Will Destroy The Galaxy For Cash) as I found the protagonist annoying in this one, and the most fun with book 3 (Will Leave The Galaxy For Good).

The Ship Who Sang by Anne McCaffrey - Beautifully written, well-paced, romantic. A musically-inclined woman born with a non-functioning body is sealed inside a ship to serve as its "brain". The ship serves as her body. She goes on missions around the galaxy and meets all sorts of people, while waiting and searching for someone to be her partner. I really enjoyed this. The prose is the most beautiful out of all the books I read this month. Published in 1969, and then made into a series in the 1990s, where subsequent novels were written with co-authors. Excited to read those next!

If anyone has read or is reading the books I'll mention here, I'd love to hear your thoughts on it!

I recently finished Salt, Sugar, Fat -- it's a really interesting look into how the processed food industry exploit our taste buds and rely on these three ingredients to make food more appealing and addictive. It took me quite a while to finish it but it got me interested in dieting and nutrition and I've started to become more informed an careful in what I consume ever since.

The Ghostwriter is a cool crime/mystery novel I finished in 2 days where a daughter uncovers the truth behind the murders of her father's siblings - a 5 decade old case. It's such a page turner and the story just gets more and more twisty - got me guessing even till the last chapter.

Careless People is a memoir by Sarah Wynn-Williams that exposes drama and events and the people in Facebook over the 7 years she was employed there. Page turners in nonfiction is rare; I finished this in less than two days. It's so interesting and engaging that I sometimes grew skeptical of the credibility of the stories, but considering it's Facebook, it's silicon valley, and it's Mark Zuckerberg and the like, the events are probably all true and I eventually found it pretty believable.

Currently, I'm reading House of Huawei which talks about Huawei history, and The Memory Police, a Japanese magic realism novel.

Another good couple of weeks of reading on my end.

Finished:

Night of Knives by Ian C. Esslemont book 1 in the Novels of the Malazan Empire series. I enjoyed this, it wasn't an amazing work but it got me back in to Malazan and provided some back ground on different characters. I do get why they recommend reading the books in publication order instead of one series at a time now as this would have answered some questions I had, especially for certain characters who pop up and I was thinking "wait a minute, this character was supposed to be dead".

Twelve Months by Jim Butcher book 18 in the Dresden Files series. I had meant to read this shortly after it came out, but I forgot about it with other books. Once I started reading into it hooked me and I read through it very quickly like I've done with all of the Dresden Files books. It was great seeing Harry again and also having a book that was a bit of a different perspective than the previous books since it took place over a year which is a much longer time frame compared to the previous novels. It was great seeing Harry deal with and move past his grief over the events of the last book.

After reading so many of these books it feels like hanging out with old friends. One of the things that I'd be curious about is just how powerful Harry will end up in his old (for a wizard) age considering if he doesn't get killed in a fight he would be looking at several centuries and he already considered to be in the top 10/20 strongest wizards in the world.

When Sysadmins Ruled the Earth by Cory Doctorow is a short story that follows mid 2000's sysadmins who are in a secure facility when a bioweapon breaks out and causes an apocalypse. They continue to keep the Internet running while the world breaks down. It was a fun short read that I'd recommend.

Progress made

The Silmarillion by J. R. R. Tolkien - I made a bit more progress, but I haven't had as much time to sit down and read this as I would like. I have found myself slowing down a bit, but that's because I've been enjoying flipping to the map of Beleriand and looking where everything is.

In Ashes Born by Nathan Lowell which is book 1 In the a Seekers Tale's series, which is part of the Golden Age of the Solar Clipper series. This one picks up months after Owner's Share and continues on in being cozy scifi. I've enjoyed the series as good palete cleansers. I felt like reading something scifi but didn't want to dive in to a new series so back I came. I had read these books as short palette cleansers in between Malazan books and it looks like that trend will continue.

The Pursuit of God: The Human Thirst for the Divine by A.W. Tozer This has been on my reading list for awhile after it was recommended by one of my old pastors. Finally got around to reading it though I've not made it far enough to have an opinion on it.

I just recently finished Family Business by Jonathan Sims which I enjoyed. It was kind of obvious where it was going to go if you ever listened to the Magnus Archives, but I still found it an enjoyable enough read.

I'm currently reading Galloway's Gospel by Sam Rebelein which I'm really enjoying. It's in the same universe he set up in Edenville and is scratching the right kind of weird itch that I needed scratching. I'll be sad when it's done. Hopefully he doesn't lose the ending.

I just finished The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August by Claire North and it's outstanding. The time loop / life restarting concept is executed perfectly. Strong recommendation.