What are you reading these days?

I finished All The Pretty Horses by Cormac McCarthy. I overall liked it but I did think it was slow throughout the middle. I think it’s fascinating how McCarthy can wax on poetically about the setting and then when a character dies he states it in a short sentence. I’ve heard that’s how Blood Meridian is too.

I also read Tarzan of the Apes by Edgar Rice Burroughs. Which was a nice and easy read, very entertaining. I know Burroughs’ isn’t considered a great writer with his prose, but I liked it. I think it’s effective and vivid. There’s a propulsive quality to the way he writes. And I’m looking forward to reading A Princess of Mars.

Klara and the Sun is the first book I’ve read from Kazuo Ishiguro. I’ve seen the film adaptation of Never Let Me Go which I loved. And I read this as there’s a Jenna Ortega movie coming out in a few weeks that’s based on it. I liked it. It did feel a bit slight, and I think the thematic material is a bit obvious and writerly. It’s from the first person perspective of a robot and it does the thing of observing human behavior that I don’t love. Like “humans sometimes don’t say what they mean, how strange.” Like yeah I get it. I like his prose though. Very simple and easy to read, but from what I understand this is considered one of his weakest books. So when I pick up Nocturnes I expect something a bit more substantial.

I’ve also read three Shakespeare plays I’ve never read before. The only works from Shakespeare I was assigned were his sonnets, Romeo and Juliet, Hamlet, and Macbeth. I was also assigned King Lear in college. So I read Julius Caesar, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, and Antony and Cleopatra. I find Shakespeare’s writing to be significantly easier for me to read now compared to when I was in high school when I would rely on the Sparksnotes translations. Now that I don’t have the added pressure of school I can just enjoy his work for what it primarily is: entertainment. I mean I liked Romeo and Juliet and Macbeth when I first read them. But, reading these three has been a treat. Especially the lyrical quality of Midsummer’s dialogue.

I was also in the middle of reading Vineland by Thomas Pynchon but lost a bit of steam a third of the way through. Same thing happened with All The Pretty Horses. Which is when I picked up the Shakespeare plays to read. I was liking it so far though. I didn’t expect it to be so funny (I thought PTA put all the humor in One Battle After Another) and I like how this is considered high brow despite the crude humor and frequent references to pop culture. Though I suppose that’s post-modernism in general.

I just finished the first omnibus volume of The Department of Truth by James Tynion IV. Its a comic / graphic novel that explores the question "what if collective belief had the power to alter reality?" The story follows a man who is drafted into a secret US government agency whose job is to control and manipulate conspiracy theories so that they don't gain enough believers to actually become real.

The author uses this concept to explore real life conspiracy culture and mysticism, from bigfoot to flat-earth to lizard-men and to some very salient modern topics like the Satanic panic and QAnon. Its definitely a very dark story with some difficult content. I really enjoy conspiracy theories and the occult as a fiction topic, so I love this take on the subject matter. For anyone who is familiar with the roleplaying game Delta Green, this series shares a lot of the same DNA.

I own the second omnibus as well and am looking forward to reading it, although I'm taking a short break to read a couple non-fiction books in between.

Finished Ursula K. Le Guin's 'The Dispossessed' Published 1974. I can't say this is a bad book because it's not, I also can't say it's a great book. For me it seems a bit unsure on what it is trying to be, is it a literary work of ideas? If so it falls short, while parts of it are interesting I think it doesn't dig deep enough or ask the right questions to really make me take it seriously. Is it a Sci-Fi novel? I think it falls short here too, the plot doesn't have that much going on and I found the ending unsatisfying. It doesn't have enough self-reflection or the quality of writing to be serious literature and it doesn't have enough plot to be good Sci-Fi. Now this probably sounds like I didn't like the book which isn't true, it has its moments and I think would be a lot more interesting if I had read it in the cultural context of the 1970's it has been written in. So maybe the problem is the book hasn't aged that well? If I can find some time I want to read the threads where this book was discussed as part of the Tildes book club. I find a huge amount of value in seeing what other people got from books and what they like/don't like about them. Sometimes I'm just not in the right headspace to appreciate a book at the time I'm reading it and seeing other people's praise can help me think more about the book and draw out a deeper appreciation for the work.

Finished J.M. Coetzee's 'Foe' Published 1986. Now here is a book that turned out better than expected. What is a story, how much does it matter who is telling a story, what voices are raised and what voices are silenced to drive a narrative? Can you tell a story and be a part of that story too? This is experimental writing playing with the ideas of story telling. I think it was quite well done and I really enjoyed the later parts of he book as the story and story telling gets more and more blurred, the last chapter is great. A few themes running through this book and all quite self-evident on the page for you to think about. It reminds me a bit of Italo Calvino's 'If on a winter's night a traveler' but less post-modern feeling, less playful.

"But if these women are creatures of yours, visiting me at your instruction, speaking words you have prepared for them, then who am I, and who indeed are you?"

Started listening to A. B. Guthrie Jr.'s 'The Big Sky' Published in 1947. A classic western novel. Not the shoot-em up kind of western but more of a western adventure novel about chasing the dream of freedom in the first half of the 19th century in America. I think this will be an entertaining listen, I have basically no expectations and know almost nothing about this book or author.

I decided it was time to read a big brick of a 19th century Victorian novel so I started reading George Eliot's 'Daniel Deronda' Published 1876. Eliot's final novel, about 700 pages. I love Eliot and her novels. We are so extremely lucky to have a female writer from this time that produced works of the absolute highest quality. She is a genius of a writer and Middlemarch is among the greatest novels of all time. Through her we get a truly authentic female perspective of life in the Victorian era, instead of having to depend on Tolstoy who had such a deep understanding of the human condition that he could write any perspective authentically. This is kind of 2 books in one, 2 stories only loosely connected, the marriage and life of Gwendolen Harleth who is quite the female character written like no other I have ever come across. Secondly Daniel Deronda who is discovering his Jewish heritage which leads to a deep dive in the early ideas of Zionism and Jewishness. Sounds strange, I haven't made it to any of that yet. I'm in this one for the long haul, probably 6 weeks+ which may run until I'm ready to start my yearly 'Brutal Winter Read' where I purposefully choose something brutally difficult and or very long to eat up a large chunk of the darkest months of winter, but I'll have more to say about that next time :)

Always been big on fantasy and sci-fi but im just now starting Brandon Sanderson. About half way through Mistborn and im really enjoying it! Magic system is pretty unique and he does a solid job with character.

I've been continuing my way through Prachett's discworld, and recently finished Masquerade. I've really enjoyed the witches storyline, and just one left of it.

I've also been making my way through the Ana and Din books, and just finished a Drop off Corruption. They really are the entertainment trifecta of interesting world, interesting characters, interesting storyline.

Finally, mystery/whodunnit isn't a genre i generally gravitate to, but i just read It's Not What You Think by Clare Mackintosh, after hearing a radio interview with her. It was fine, but not really my cup of tea.

I just finished reading the fourth book in the Grand Illusion series by L. E. Modesitt, titled Legalist. It was okay, but took a little detour from the main series. I'm looking forward to finishing it with the fifth book.

Now, I'm reading how to be an epicurean by Catherine Wilson. I'm only through part one at the moment, so not much to comment on.

What I'm really looking forward to is the next book in the Ana and Din mystery series. It's been a fantastic series so far.

I mostly read horror, but I started Demon Copperhead this morning on my best friend's recommendation because she knows how much I liked East Of Eden. They have very similar vibes. I'm enjoying it so far.

I read China Mieville's new novel The Rouse. It's an extraordinary book; extraordinarily large, dense, and difficult. It's a real genre-bender, dancing between social realism, horror, supernatural mystery, military memoir, spy thriller; its subversions of the novel's form, its use of poetry, undifferentiated dialogue, and a kind of breaking, failing language do extraordinary things for mood and tone and theme. As an exploration of late 20th century British culture and colonialism it's nuanced and toothy; as a character study it's layered and deeply affecting. It's certainly the most singular novel I've read since, say, House of Leaves; also the most difficult, since at least The Man Without Qualities. Really really excellent, then, but probably not for every reader. It's only been a week since I read it and I'm already salivating to start again.

Currently reading The Secret History by Donna Tartt and The Secret History by Procopius, and both are good but I especially like when it works to read two books with a distant connection. A few years ago I was reading The Martian and Out of the Silent Planet at the same time, and the combination ends up being more enjoyable than the sum of its parts.

Finished Dark Matter. This was not very good at all! Perhaps it's hurt by me knowing the premise going in and years of multiverse media making the idea stale since this book was released, but I thought it took the main character waaaaay too long to figure out what was going on. I hate the writing style, tons of single sentence and single word or phrase paragraphs. I think plot is mostly okay, but so predictable, with exception of

which was an interesting idea but ultimately not that well executed. Will not be reading any more Blake Crouch!

Other than that, I have picked up a few things from library but not finished much. I'm enjoying the short fiction of Flann O'Brien, nice little 4 or 5 page stories so far and quite funny. The first 5 are translated from Irish, and they are apparently difficult to translate because the jokes are very much about the Irish language and make sense in the original, but the annotations do an admirable job and I found them entertaining. The English ones I have read so far have been great as well! Haven't gotten to it yet, but what's interesting about the volume is that Flann O'Brien wrote under many pseudonyms, (his real name was Brian O'Nolan) and some are believed to be undiscovered. The editors of the collection included one story by an author who they propose is another pseudonym, John Shamus O'Donnell, who wrote a science fiction story published in Amazing Stories.

Ghost in the wires by Kevin Mitnick

Very intriguing story and person and what a drive….but for what and at what cost? As much as I like a good story sticking it to the man I just can’t get over just how egotistical this guy is. He’s hurting so many people just for the fun of it and not once using his skills for some common good. I ended the book having almost no compassion for him because of this and it kinda ruined the cool hacker story I was looking forward too.

Annie Ernaux - The years

An almost beat-ish story through France history seen through the authors eyes and life. Hard to describe but very much worth the read. The melancholy and nostalgia is strong but not overly done. I absolutely recommend this book especially if you know the basics of french history the last 50 years.

Picked up a book called Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin because I saw John Green had written a blurb for its cover. It reads as the rare platonic love story, where the main characters hold their deepest, most lasting bond with each other, even as they fall in and out of romantic love with other people and ride the rollercoaster of fame. If I hadn't known better, I would have assumed John Green had written it- the prose has so much compassion for its characters even as it clearly describes their own poor choices. It also has a strong background in video game history. For those with a shared love for video games as an artform, I would heartily recommend it.

Have also been trying to work on improving my German, so I recently did a "Free-Little-Library" crawl around Frankfurt to find some simple books. Managed to locate a German translation of The Old Man and the Sea ("Der Alte Mann und das Meer") by Ernest Hemingway and a surprisingly(?) pristine copy of the Brothers Grimm fairytales. When I was younger I realized I picked up way more vocabulary from reading books than I did just in daily conversation, so I'm hoping the same trick will work here.

Just finished Ashes of Man by Christopher Ruocchio. It's a space opera and this is the fourth book in the series. I liked this one better than the previous one which was a bit too dark and gruesome for my tastes. I'll likely pick up the next book in the series from the library, but this one ends kind of bleak for the protagonist...

I'm gonna read Ringworld by ??? niven? next in any case.

I've not been doing as much reading over the last ~month. I've been engaging with some other hobbies instead which has been nice.

Finished:

The Eagle's Conquest by Simon Scarrow book 2 of the Eagles of the Empire series. It's a straightforward Roman military historical fiction book that follows a few fictional characters and the future emperor Vespasian.
I found the book very enjoyable as it continued with it's relatively action packed battles and overall light political intrigue. I'll probably keep reading through these slowly. While the writing style isn't the same, it almost reminds of some of Bernard Cornwell's series. Well researched/grounded with enjoyable characters, though the main characters aren't dastardly/roguish as Cornwell tends to write.

Progress made

Return of the Crimson Guard by Ian C. Esslemont is another Novel of the Malazan Empire. I bit back in to this, and I'm wanting to see how it ends as I'm past the middle point and things are starting to build to a climax.
Since I didn't read these books interspersed with the Book of the Fallen I'm waiting to see how a couple of plot lines work out since they explain how characters (particularly Traveller) end up in their situation in later books. I'm happy with these books as my current main epic fantasy series, and I'll see how I'm feeling at the end of this if I'll dive in to another one.
My coworker who also reads Malazan recommends that I stop this series after this book and go read the currently published Paths of Ascendancy books before reading the next book in this series as he found it underwhelming until he had the context from that other series to give it more weight, and he thinks he'll enjoy it more as a re-read in the future with that context in mind.

AI Engineering: Building Applications with Foundation Models by Chip Huyen still slowing reading this. It is interesting, but it takes a bit to read through it as can be a bit dense. I probably have another ~3-4 hours left in here.

The Manager's Path: A Guide for Tech Leaders Navigating Growth and Change by Camille Fournier I've also poked around this a bit, not reading this as much, but I'll have it finished sometime soon since the book itself isn't very long and could be finished in a long afternoon's read if I could sit down.

No progress made:

I have a lot of books that fit in this category. I tend to not DNF a book, and usually just put it down until I'm feeling ready to read it again. There's also ~3-4 books that are on my Kindle that I've not been reading for the last while. This may be TMI, but at my old place I would keep my Kindle in the bathroom instead of bringing my phone in with me. Could read a few pages and not get distracted by any notifications, but my new place doesn't have a good spot to leave my Kindle in the bathroom so it just hasn't been used.

I've been trying to plow through Brothers Karamazov by Dostoevski... it's taken me a while. It's a fascinating book, but its a dense read. Multiple people advised me not to rush through it, but rather be patient with it and myself. I don't read a lot every day, but small parts every few days... I'm pretty much half-way through.

I guess this best fits here but recently read Final Space: The Final Chapter the comic book to wrap up the story of Final Space animation since it was cancelled.

Somewhat of a bittersweet ending, getting anything to wrap it up was great, but you could also see if they were allowed to continue the story to its conclusion via the show that there was enough for at least 2 more seasons.

I'm dropping ExForce and while it has a juvenile sense of humor, military worship, old school fanfic style of "and then they did the impossible thing and were so cool doing it" and being formulaic as all hell, the thing that finally set me over the edge on it was a scene that absolutely had no reason to exist.

The MC gets woken up by a call in the early morning by one of his officers, but his phone only rings once before the AI intercepts it to try and let him sleep some more. The AI then tells the officer he's in the shower masterbating because this is the way the AI is amuses itself, and when MC calls back because now he's awake and wants to get the situation and clear the air, the officer forgot why she called. End of scene.

Humor is suggestive, maybe it would have been funnier to a different person if the AI said he was up all night playing video games, or had the runs, or was sleeping in (because he was), and maybe it would pay off with some incredible character best about what that call was actually about, or the AI learning about decorum, but to start the scene on important late night call that MC was prevented from answering and ending the scene on "I forgor" is the straw that broke the camels back for me, and I'm not interested in dealing with another dozen and a half books of this.

Y'all got any recommendations?