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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.
Finishing up Kitchen Confidential by Anthony Bourdain. It's pretty entertaining and ties in with the movie Tony pretty well, even though Tony in the movie came off as a bit too creepy for me.
I read three books: Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov, The Stranger by Albert Camus, and Bunny: A Novel by Mona Awad.
I know The Stranger is often assigned in high schools, but it wasn’t assigned to me. I liked it a lot. Reminded me of Notes from the Underground a little bit. Also really easy to read, I finished the whole thing in like two hours.
Lolita is brilliant. It’s probably one of the best written books I’ve ever read and it makes me want to read more by Nabokov. I was not expecting it to have such a sense of humor considering the subject manner.
Bunny: A Novel was fine. I feel disappointed by it overall, but there’s stuff that I like about it. Such as the fourth wall breaks and it’s intended satire on rich artists types. But the prose often read like a YA novel. Reading it showed me that the film that came out earlier this year Forbidden Fruits was heavily inspired by it though. Wonder why there hasn’t been an adaptation of this book yet.
I’m also in the middle of reading All The Pretty Horses by Cormac McCarthy (I’ve only read The Road from him) and plan on reading Vineland by Thomas Pynchon right after. As they’re both seen as entry level novels for them.
Nabokov is a genius, if I can recommend another novel of his it would be Pale Fire.
I'm about to finish The Dungeon Anarchist's Cookbook, book three of the Dungeon Crawler Carl series. I started book one on September 5th, I expect to have all eight books done by mid October, at this rate. I'm listening via audiobook, but I've heard there's extra chapters in the physical print media, not present in the eBook or audiobook versions. Sad to be missing out on that content, given how much I've enjoyed the series. But overall, it's been a great read (listen) for me.
I'm just about finished with The Butcher's Masquerade. I'm reading the hardcovers, and just got to the end of the book, technically, but there's still the bonus chapter. They're very popular at my office right now.
The extra ("Pineapple Cabaret") chapters are basically telling a side story about some of the surviving mobs. I don't think they're super important so far, since they don't even contain any of the regular characters, but I'm curious if they'll add to something much later in the series.
I just finished book three this morning, and was delighted to find out there was a "bonus chapter" that seems to be exclusive to the audiobook. It was essentially some "outtakes" of the scene where Carl and Donut are recording voice lines in the studio. Here's a link, if you want to give it a listen. Just under 8 minutes, but you could stop at 5:42, that's where the actual "credits" start.
Interesting. I'm kind of curious in trying one of the audiobooks (either original or the expanded cast ones) later on, since I've heard a lot of people like the voice acting for Donut in particular, and I have no idea what they're talking about lol.
Finished Antkind, what a great book! I don't think it's for everybody, but if you have watched and enjoyed the films of Charlie Kaufman, it's definitely worth checking out. One of the funniest books I have read lately. I will mention, the book can give the impression early on that it's sort of an anti-progressive type of thing, but that doesn't seem to be the viewpoint of the author. The main character is a hypocritical "woke" type, who is self policing and doesn't really believe the things he says, but that is largely because he is a caricature of New Yorker film critic Richard Brody.
After that, I read Dr. No by Ian Fleming for Tildes book club. I will save my discussion for the actual book club thread, but suffice to say I enjoyed it.
Now I have started Dark Matter by Blake Crouch for my IRL book club. I'm about a third of the way through and not loving it. Plot is interesting enough, but nearly every sentence in this book is a new paragraph, many of them very short sentences! I am also annoyed at the main character for taking way too long to figure out what's going on, but that seems to be past now so we will see if it improves.
I am also reading Hamlet, one of Shakespeare's plays that took me too long to get around to. What do I even need to say about this? Beautiful, beautiful poetry, and a deep understanding of humanity.
Recently finished the first three Culture books.
After Use of Weapons I needed a break from this particular brand of intellectual/political sci-fi and picked up Adrian Tchaikovsky's Children of Time quadrology. Currently about halfway through the second book, Children of Ruin.
Children of Time was a fantastic read, though definitely not for arachnophobes. I wasn't really a fan of the ending though for a few reasons that I won't spoil here. However, Children of Ruin maybe makes up for it, at least that's the vibe I get, so we shall see! I'm enjoying the second book, though it was a bit slow to start and I'm a bit confused on the timeline within the universe, but I'm sure it'll become apparent at some point.
I consumed 'Use of Weapons' as an audiobook and it was basically impossible to follow. I gave up on the Culture series after that, while I thought 'Consider Phlebas' and 'Player of Games' were decent books nothing really grabbed me.
FWIW I like all the later books better. But I also didn't hate Use of Weapons. (I didn't love Player of Games as an introduction to the Culture.)
The Door by Magda Szabo. Still early into it. So far so good tho. I dig it.
Listening to the Threshold series.
The Fold
I bought the first three audiobooks with credits and listened to this first on accident. I really enjoyed this. I loved the MC in this book and the slow reveal of what was going on. Since I read this one first the cameos at the end felt random. Other than that though I thought this was a great story.
14
I liked this one, but not as much as The Fold. Listening to this second, the big reveal was kinda spoiled. I still liked the MC and other characters. I was invested in their journeys. I thought the ending was good too.
Dead Moon
This one was forgettable. There might have been too much action for my liking. Just kind of blurred together. I wasn't too invested any of the characters. The reveal was cool, but not that great. Mostly just interesting, given what we already know from the other books.
Terminus
I'm only fourteen chapters in. (14, heh). So far I'm into this way more than Dead Moon. The parallel stories is a fun mechanic. It keeps me interested in how they'll come together. Both journeys are good in their own ways. I'm invested in both sets of characters.
Overall this is a really good series. I would definitely recommend this to Sci-Fi fans
I didn't know this existed! thanks.
I loved the fold and also read it first. It was a ride, at first i was disappointed with the book because i went in expecting harder scifi for some reason and it felt like all the genre stuff was a bit hand wavy. then I readjusted to the half satire, lovecraft ghostbusters vibe. and really enjoyed it.
Yea I was surprised after reading The Fold first. Seemed like a totally different story, but made sense since it's the first in the series
Yesterday I started (and finished...) the book More Than This by Patrick Ness. I wasn't expecting anything from it as I just randomly picked it up at a book sale and had no idea what it was about. I used to be a voracious reader of anywhere between 3-10 books a week as a kid/teen. I think this is the first book in 10 years that I finished in basically one sitting. The back cover said it was quite philosophical, but I honestly just thought it was a rather thrilling story, probably as I didn't know where it was headed.
The week before I finished The Lost City of Z by David Grann. Also a super fascinating nonfiction book. I didn't know much at all about the Amazon and don't particularly fancy going into the jungle after reading the book. The description of the journey into the jungle from 100 years ago compared to the one from 20 years ago shocked me though. The author didn't go into it .such, but the amount of destruction and deforestation that implicitly describes is unreal. Also I was visiting Belgium while reading it and the amount of African art and heirlooms being sold there really stood out to me, especially considering the similar/more? brutal colonial history.
ETA: I now have a few more books on my shelf that I want to read before selling/donating/decluttering them. They sound interesting, but a slog to read and I feel like I'm always just counting down the pages until I'm finally done and get it out of to do pile. Not a great way to read tbh :/ Just a but too information dense for easy reading.
I first read Silo by Hugh Howey ~13 years ago, but I never read Shift or Dust. It’s time to complete the trilogy, so I’m re-reading Silo to jog my memory and work my way through all three.
Also almost finished with the audiobook of Under the Banner of Heaven by Jon Krakauer. Very disturbing, not for the faint of heart.
Some other books I’ve finished recently:
Well it's an audiobook/dramatization, but I'm finishing up Hellboy: A Plague of Wasps.
I'm nearing the end and it started off strong but became a bit monotonous with long descriptions of walking through the jungle, multiple long descriptions of wasp nests, and Hellboy becoming progressively sicker. It's like I get it, lets get to the next part where something actually happens.
After that I'm reading The Infinite Extent from Dennis E. Taylor! I'm excited to hop back into the Bobiverse, but admittedly I think I need a refresher.
So I finally finished Hellboy: A Plague of Wasps, and boy am I disappointed and frustrated.
Spoilers below.
1st off, whoever's idea it was to do a Hellboy graphic audio dramatized story then turn around and fill the large majority of it with walking while the narrator thinks to herself in illustrative prose needs to re-evaluate their writing experience.
I can't believe for such a shortish story in entirely audio based on an action oriented character that there's so much walking. It takes me 20 minutes to drive from home to work as I'm listening to audiobooks, and during multiple drives to and from work NOTHING happened in the story. Everything interesting that happens is over in like 10 minutes broken up by 45 minutes of walking it seems. It starts with walking from the plane to the town, then driving from the town to the dig site, then driving back from the dig site to the town, then walking from the town to the car, then driving back to the dig site, then using a boat to go up river, then walking from the river to the temple, then walking from the temple to the chamber, then walking from the chamber to river. It's never ending walking.
It doesn't feel like any of the travel is truncated. It's like 1:1 with the characters. If the characters walk for 45 minutes it's like you have to listen to them walk and talk to each other and themselves for 45 minutes. Meanwhile the action parts are over in like 10 minutes.
Second, I feel like they've nerfed Hellboy. Hellboy, who's gone up against armies of occultist Nazis, literal gods, armies of the dead, assasins, occultists, the works, gets his ass handed to him to the point he thinks he's definitely going to die after... Checks notes: He got stung by a wasp in a jungle.
Mind you, it's supernatural wasps, but Hellboy practically rolls over and accepts he's going to die after roughly 2 hours of walking in the jungle.
I feel like Hellboy's enemies should be using supernatural wasps more often, because these wasps would have gotten him if the hidden weak point was just slightly better hidden or hard to get to.
To put it simply: The stakes of the story did not feel earned. Hellboy nearly dies after being stung by a wasp after surviving literal armies of Nazi occultists and their armies. Ffs
It feels like they had a 1 hour story they needed to make 6 hours, and they filled the gaps with walking and talking. I wouldn't have minded this kind of thing if it had been a non-Hellboy short story based on a supernatural wasp goddess, but like I don't even see why Hellboy needed to be there. I'm not picking up a Hellboy Audio Drama to listen to Hellboy's girlfriend walk and talk to herself for 5 hours.
I just finished Neuromancer and After Dark, both books that had endings that just kind of...ended. When I looked online to see conversations around the books, I was surprised to see at how disappointed people were in the endings of these two books. I thought the journey was great enough, and really had no idea what people were expecting for endings on these.
Just remember that Neuromancer is book 1 of a trilogy. The book stands on its own, but it is worth reading the others IMO.
Finished reading Mario Vargas Llosa's 'The Feast of the Goat' Published 2000. This is a great book that wasn't really for me. Too much dense politics and too detailed with too many characters. The writing is top notch, great story telling. The story following the daughter who returns to the Dominican after 30 years to confront her father and family who were part of the fascist regime was the most human story of the novel and the best parts of the book. I wish there was more going on in her story line than the other ones. Are you really interested in Dominican fascist politics in the 1930's to 1961? Then this book is for you, if not prepare for a tough slog.
Still working on Ursula K. Le Guin's 'The Dispossessed' Published 1974. Things have improved in the second half of this book, I see what is being done here. The critique of Anarchy is done subtlety, slowly but surely you realize almost everything being described by Shevek about his Utopian Anarchistic home world is actually awful and either equivalent to what is happening on this other Capitalistic other world or even worse. The truth of the matter is humans are still humans and human nature rules over all systems. I still don't think this is a great book, but it isn't bad. 15% to left to go.
Started reading J.M. Coetzee's 'Foe' Published 1986. This another one from Harold Bloom's 'Western Canon'. I'm just getting into this, maybe 50-60 pages in. Strange book with a strange premise. From Wikipedia: "Woven around the existing plot of Robinson Crusoe, Foe is written from the perspective of Susan Barton, a castaway who landed on the same island inhabited by "Cruso" and Friday as their adventures were already underway." Which is strange enough, but really this book is about what story telling is, the forces of Colonialism, Feminism, Power, Language, ect. It's been pretty interesting so far, we'll see if it keeps my interest.
I decided to read We Tell Ourselves Stories in Order to Live: Collected Nonfiction (Joan Didion, 2006, 1122pg) again... between third and fifth time for some of these books.
I love Didion's writing.
Recently finished:
Reading:
I finished "The True Drama of the Gifted Child" by Martin Miller, son of the more famous Alice Miller. @thereticent mentioned it in a comment and I took interest. Its an autobiographical account of his own relationship with his mother and biographical account of his mother.
In short, its about how Alice Miller, who had large contributions in the field of child psychology, who had strongly advocated for children to grow up with agency and flourish as their "true selves", was a bad parent. This is not to dismiss her theories on childhood development (martin miller does support them for the most part), rather a kind of exposé on Alice and how or why she was a bad parent, despite not seeming so publicly due to her work.
Its definitely written by a novice writer. It doesn't always flow well, organization of the book was odd. Its not a good book in that sense but it gets his story across.
And its actually very sad and essentially about generational trauma through WWII/Holocaust. Real shocker at the end of the book with this US edition about some later discoveries about Alice by Martin.
Posted this in the previous thread, but...
I got into Expeditionary Force, which is my kinda trash. It's military fiction, but also Sci Fi space opera that bounces between the AI being the light novel cheat ability that doesn't get everyone killed, the human protagonist jerking off to competency porn by suggesting the obvious thing the AI overlooked because it's so stupid it just might work, and the two of them vamping and riffing off each other so hard that I hate that I like it this much. Worst part is that I'm running out of the books at my library, the rest of them are Audible exclusive which means I have to start paying to continue, and there are 20 installments so it's a giant time commitment that I know is just going to break down into "they got into trouble then did the thing to get out of it" formula by the time I get to the end. Sad thing is that it might already have, why do I enjoy this?
Men Without Women, a short story collection by Murakami, has been sitting half reading for quite a while. This weekend I picked it up again and read An Independent Organ and Scheherazade.
As the collection in general, both deal with estranged odd relationships between men and woman, and when it becomes obsessive. I especially liked Scheherazade about this housewife looking back at her 17 year old when she became addicted to breaking into a boy's home to just roam around his room, steal his pencils and leave behind small clues that she was there - such as an unused tampon. Murakami has a simple yet poetic language, that can make the most mundane, yet somewhat bizarre, little story become very engaging.