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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.
I finished Middlemarch! What a delightful book. Every character was so fully realized, and I enjoyed how all the storylines tied together towards the end. I was slightly disappointed in how little we got of Fred Vincy and Mary Garth towards the end, but I suppose that's just because their story was essentially finished and just needed to be tied up by the ending of the Bulstrode story. Overall, a terrific book, and I will certainly read more Eliot in the future. I've already picked up The Mill on the Floss so that may be the next one I go for!
I also read Piranesi by Susanna Clarke. I was surprised, based on what I heard and how it seemed towards the beginning, how plot driven this one ended up being! It was almost structured like a thriller. A very good time, loved Piranesi as a character and the unraveling of the mystery was very satisfying.
Now I'm back to Vineland by Thomas Pynchon, which I previously started but got a little bored and decided to jump into Gravity's Rainbow instead. Now I've read much more of Pynchon's work, as well as having seen the film adaptation last year. Very much enjoying it, but we'll see if my interest holds the whole time this go-around.
Happy to hear you liked 'Middlemarch', it is one of my favourites! The 'Mill on the Floss' is the only other Eliot I've read and I also really enjoyed it but it doesn't have the depth of 'Middlemarch'. The rich character development is really what grabbed me too, only topped by Tolstoy's 'War and Peace' which probably has the richest character development of any novel ever written.
There was a two year old discussion about Piranesi here, for what it's worth: https://tildes.net/~books/1fm7/tildes_book_club_discussion_april_2024_piranesi_by_susanna_clarke
I'm about a third of the way into Pachinko by Min Jin Lee.
It's gripped me so far. It has managed to keep me perfectly balanced on the edge of expecting everything to be fine or be a total disaster.
I'm really enjoying the setting. I've read a few books now set in east Asia and I really love exploring the cultural differences (whilst appreciating many of them will be exaggerated, embellished and characateured when consuming them indirectly through literature). I'll be looking for more novels set in Korea and Japan particularly.
just finished anarchist pedagogies, and was pretty bored by it. i am trying to read some books on anarchist parenting, or at least how the two subjects can relate to each other; but this was more of an academic endeavour and likewise the book itself was a series of essays. there were some fascinating tidbits to be sure, but i forced myself to cram the last ~200 pages last weekend just to be done with it
now working on the solutions are already here, which i discovered via andrewism on youtube. so far it's pretty bleak but seems to be leading towards a pitch on degrowth and looking towards indigenous peoples for how to address our climate collapse
im on bookwyrm at https://books.solarpunk.moe/user/xyhhx is anybody uses that :3
Have you read at the cafe by Errico Malatesta? He is my favourite anarchist writer as well as being a generally badass dude
not yet, but i'll add it to my list of stuff to check out! thanks for the recommendation
Finished listening to Arthur Golden's 'Memoirs Of A Geisha' Published 1997. Meh, lame. Already said a little about it with my last post, no need to add anymore. Didn't work for me, not even on a plot level which was all I was hoping for.
Well into Patrick White's 'The Solid Mandala' Published 1966. Just finished the first brother's perspective and now moving onto the other brother's which is a much slimmer chunk of the book. Enjoying it a lot, I can see some of myself in the more logical, cold brother (also a lover of literature) and to watch him constantly self-sabotage himself by being a snobby elitist and unable to make human connections due to a superiority complex reminds me (only slightly) of my younger self, but much like Dostoevsky's 'Underground Man' you can see self-parallels but it is ramped up to the Nth degree. The narrative jumps all over the place in time but since there isn't really a traditional plot to follow it doesn't matter and I'm pretty sure you are just meant to soak up these little glimpses of their lives and interactions with people to build a bigger picture of who these 2 brother's are. The end of the first brother's section was shocking and I'm still not sure what to make of it.
Started listening to William Golding's 'Pincher Martin' Published 1956. William Golding?!? The guy who wrote 'Lord of the Flies' that I was forced to read in Grade 8 and hated? Yes, that William Golding. They awarded him the Nobel Prize in literature in 1983 so there must be some works of his that are great you would hope. 'Pincher Martin' is included in Harold Bloom's Western Cannon so I figured I would give it a shot. The idea is that a lone military sailor falls overboard or somehow ends up in the water lost from his ship, he makes it to a tiny little 'island' or really just some rocks above water. Here he is totally alone in a abyss of open ocean, he has to survive on sea urchins and what fresh water collects in a hole in the rock, we now get to watch his slow decent into madness and insanity. Sounds like my kind of book! Halfway through and the madness is now beginning, wild listening ahead I'm sure.
Finishing Woken Furies, which is the 3rd book in the series that started with Altered Carbon.
We've finally kicked off some of what's going on, I'm curious to see where it lands. One thing of course happened, but there's some interesting implications and I think the author could handle it well. Not much more to say until i'm done I guess.
I really loved the Altered Carbon series, some of the first Sci-Fi books I ever read, Altered Carbon I remember being especially good. I was really interested in Cyberpunk at the time and was ticking off some of the major works. It has been... 15+ years since I read them but I remember really not liking the gratuitous sex (I hate sex scenes in novels) and Morgan's strange fascination with the word 'cock'.
Yeah. It's...odd because it's not as"gratuitous" as many in the sense that at the very least, the sex scenes always bother to use the the setting in a way to make statements about it. So it's at least using the sci fi/cyberpunk trappings in a way that makes it more than just a sex scene.
Does not mean however that I couldn’t have lived without them, or with a hell of a lot less detail. 2nd book has one that feels like it never ends and it's just....ugh.
I finally made it to the top of the wait list to borrow Klara and the Sun by Kazuo Ishiguro from my local library. I've only just finished part 1 where
Part 1 spoilers
Klara is chosen by Josie and purchased by her motherJust before this, I read The Mouse that Roared by Leonard Wimberley. It was an easy read and I very much enjoyed it. I did not love the ending where
Final act of TMTR spoiler
The Q-Bomb was revealed to be a dud. I liked the ambiguity and I don't think the book would have suffered without the final sceneCurrently reading The Heart of the Nhaga by Lee Young-do, translated into English by Anton Hur. It's been good so far, lots of inventive worldbuilding and memorable characters. The plot hasn't yet congealed into something cohesive since I've still early in the book but there's some promising hints and mysteries so far. I'm not sure how much I like the translation, but this is also one of the first translated books I've read. The sentence structure and word choice is off in ways which cause me to occasionally have to reread a sentence before it clicks. It's just not as fluid as I'd like or perhaps I'm not used to it yet.
The book I read before this one was The Language of Liars which... I found a little maddening. I wrote up a review on my website which I'll link to instead of typing it out here since the issues are all with the ending and involve spoilers.
One Up on Wall Street by Peter Lynch. I have no thoughts on it. Just starting to educate myself on investing.
Someone, I think on Tildes, recommended Too Like the Lightning by Ada Palmer. When the hold for the audiobook became available, I had literally no idea what the book was about, as I don’t recall any description other than it fell into sci-fi. Holy moly - I’m about 70% through, and this book is ambitious and super interesting. If you like sci-fi and/or ideas from the actual Enlightenment era, here’s one for you!
It's been a crazy time in our house, and my brain is on power-saving mode.
Currently, I started listening to some of old favorites.
I started listening my way through the Terry Pratchett's Tiffany Aching books again ,and... honestly... It's nice. I love The Wee Free Men so much.
Normal speed. Don't rush. Enjoy it.
It's about a normal girl kicking ass and fixing shit. It's about power, privilege, and responsibility. It's about home and what that means. It's about seeing the truth behind what is actually presented to you.
Also: Pict-sies. The Nac Mac Feegle. The most ferocious of the fairies. We cannot forget those guys. Crivens!
I've had a couple of weeks where I got sucked into a series of honestly not amazing but enjoyable books to read. I've noticed that I haven't started any large novels since finishing Malazan book of the Fallen, and it has been nice reading books where I'm not committing to a 3-4 weeks of my reading time to finish them.
Finished:
October Fall by Mark Loren and Boyd Craven Jr. is the first book in the October Fall series. This book is not a well written book, but I found it very enjoyable and quick to read after getting through the initial "first day" chapters as they explored the first day after the EMP happened from 6 different perspectives. The main group of survivors ended up in a conflict with a local family/group of petty criminals/drug manufacturers which ended fairly one sided.
November Feud by Mark Loren and Boyd Craven Jr. is the second book in the October Fall series. The first book ended in a way that made me want to see what happened next. This one was still enjoyable, but some of the book needed better editing. There were a few instances of minor spelling errors, and the most glaring incident was a character who seemed to think that Thanksgiving functioned the same as Christmas they mentioned their birthday being always on Thanksgiving and they would celebrate on the Friday after Christmas. Thanksgiving in the US is celebrated on the 4th Thursday of November, which means it can fall between November 22nd - 28th each year.
In the book they went up against a local wanna be biker gang that was taking advantage of the chaos caused by the EMP. The characters in the main group can be a mix of Gary Stus/Mary Sues, but I still found it fun to read and with its length it was only ~4+ hours to read and it is a book that I didn't need to think very hard about and could read in short bursts here and there.
A Pail of Air by Fritz Leiber is an interesting short story where the Earth is plucked out of orbit by a rogue dark star and pulled along in to that star's orbit. Since the star gives no warmth the atmosphere itself freezes and a family ends up barricading themselves in a small area that they keep heated by burning coal. They then have to warm oxygen up to breath after scooping up solid oxygen in buckets. The science doesn't hold up from my brief look at it, but this isn't supposed to be a hard scifi story and is more about the idea of Earth being abducted from our solar system.
Progress made
The Silmarillion by J. R. R. Tolkien - I've been thoroughly enjoying my time reading this. Every chance I get to sit down and read I find myself sucked in. I'm almost done with the Quenta Silmarillion, and then it's just a short sprint to the end of the work.
If I were to do one thing to make reading this a bit more enjoyable it would be having a separate physical map of Beleriand to reference while reading. I don't want to remove the map I have in my copy and I find myself flipping to it often. I thought about having one open on my phone, but when I read physical books I try to keep my phone away so I can just focus in.
I was also chatting with a friend and found out that the copy my dad gave me is a first edition second printing of the US publication which was a cool thing. The book is in create condition besides the dust cover having a lot of wear.
The Pursuit of God: The Human Thirst for the Divine by A.W. Tozer I've made some progress here and plan to sit down finish this book here soon since it is a relatively short read.
DECEMBER BATTLES by Mark Loren and Boyd Craven Jr. is the third book in the October Fall series. I've found myself enjoying these books despite the obvious flaws in them, and while I normally jump between series the ending of each book and it's day by day format makes me curious what they are going to do in the next ~1-2 months the story takes place in. Since the EMP has now been over a month a lot of the easier pickings are going to start drying up, though of course the group is super organized and manages to find all kinds of useful things easily.
This book also revealed that the EMP was a coordinated attack by North Korea, China, and Cuba. With this book taking place in Florida they have started encountering Cuban forces who are attempting to occupy parts of the state.
The Brothers War - read another couple of chapters as we had some time to talk about the last chapter for my book club. I feel like the further I get into Magic the Gathering (MTG) lore the more I am disappointed at MTG deciding to open up their whole multiverse thing to cash in on other IPs. Reading this made me wish I hadn't sold my small collection of Magic cards that I had before moving over here since I hadn't played with them in years and wanted to downsize since they fit in one of those small starter boxes + a couple of deck boxes. Reading these books makes me want to find some friends here to invest in a couple of budget cubes to play with.
Max Gladstone's Bluesky
Three of the Craft Sequence/Wars books are on sale in the US (he's working on UK, IDK about Canada).
These books are sort of about necromancy and a world where you pay for your water at the faucet with your soul but also humans threw off the gods, some at least, and learned how to gather soil power themselves... And also about, for example, probate law, contract law, and the like. Solve your legal problems with necromancy!
I do really enjoy them, I haven't gone back to read more after the original "sequence" split into the "wars" so this may be my time. But wanted to recommend them to others. Dead country caps the Sequence arc and starts the Wars arc and Three Parts Dead is the first of the Wars.
The summary of TPD