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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 was a bit more scattershot this time around.
Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson was an utter bore. The primary issue is how much of it relies on the mystery which everyone knows about now.
The Prince and the Pauper by Mark Twain was good, I lost interest a bit towards the end, but I quite enjoyed Twain’s writing and class analysis.
The Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Grahame was beautifully written, it’s hard for me to believe that a child could read this considering the vocabulary used.
The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald was great too, I was never assigned it in high school and it was a fun and easy read.
To All The Boys I’ve Loved Before by Jenny Han was bad. I understand it’s a YA romance novel, but the movie elevated the material for sure. And it made everyone significantly more likable. In the book I don’t understand why the characters like each other.
Finally I tried reading Lost Lambs by Madeline Cash since it garnered controversy as a dimes square adjacent book that Dua Lipa promoted in her book club. And I stopped roughly a quarter in. The prose itself was piss poor and sloppy, it felt like very little editing or re-writing was done. And it was far too irony poisoned and extremely online for it to be an enjoyable read for me. It was very annoying. It made Mona Awad’s writing look like James Joyce.
And I’m currently reading The Suffering by David Sodergren which is so far pretty good.
Edit: I finished Suffering and it is fucking insane lol. Great stuff. Someone need to turn it into a movie.
Ha, I had the same experience. The book itself was fine, but all of the tension was wrapped up in what is now a very well known literary trope, so it didn't feel like it had much left to offer me. When the "big reveal" happened, I realized that I wasn't supposed to know they were the same person the whole time and everything made a little more sense
I was reading posts on literature subreddits and everyone was celebrating it since it talked about the duality of man and it’s a metaphor for addiction and whatnot. And I guess I have to give it credit since it was the first one to do that.
But the actual content of the book is mostly stuffy guys sitting around in rooms and talking about stuff happening outside our purview.
I didn’t know he was the same guy who wrote Treasure Island, which made me less keen to read it.
Someone here (I think) mentioned The Sky So Big and Black and got me curious, I dig the story so far, with around 40% read, there are many open questions and amazing world-building, I like how tangible their practices and goals are, the author really put the effort in figuring out what an "ecospector" has to be.
I have a habit of picking up semi old used books from flea markets and the likes and therefore I read all kinds of stuff and love the thrill of not knowing anything until I turn the first page. I’m reading Chaos by Marie Cardinal right now. A powerful book about a mothers struggle to get her daughter clean from heroin but it’s more about the forces that controls the relationship in families and the structures therein than a classic rehab story. Its chaos as a psychological condition and failing containment.
I love your method and hope to do that when I have more free time to read in the future. What do you do when you've read partway through and think you've got a stinker? Do you stick it out or put it aside?
Just move on to the next book! That's my motto. There are too many great books to waste time reading something I don't enjoy.
My strategy is I will give a book two attempts. If I start reading it and for whatever reason I'm not into it, maybe I don't like the writing style, maybe I don't like the story if it's fiction, maybe I just can't follow the plot, maybe I find myself having to look up words, phrases, metaphors, or whatever, too often, then I just put the book aside. I'll take a break, maybe a week or two, and then I'll give it another try. And if on the second try I still can't get into it, I just move on and delete (Kindle) or recycle (paper books).
Maybe I’ve just been lucky or been on a readers high lately because that hasn’t really happened. I will say though that I have a hard time dumping a book just because I feel… guilty in lack of a better word. I have no problem when it comes to movies and shows. I don’t know why that is. I sometimes feel that I have an unexplainable urge to find something to like no matter what when it comes to books. Come to think of it I actually did toss a book recently although it wasn’t a find. I finally picked up Stephen Fry’s Odyssey at the library - a book I’ve wanted to read for years and now even more after watching the movie…but I just couldn’t get past 50-60 pages. To many names and footnotes and I feel awful. It’s so silly because I wholeheartedly agree with DiggWasCools approach that you shouldn’t waste time on books that does nothing for you when there are so many greats waiting for you out there.
Just dump it. Some people English teacher themselves but we don’t have to read anything we don’t want to anymore
I've continued enjoying other hobbies and doing other things besides reading which has kept my reading pace slower. I think this was in part me not feeling like jumping between books as much right now when I felt a bit of a slow-down in my desire to read Return of the Crimson Guard as it built up to the climax since I'm doing several books clubs with people I know that have been more active lately. I'm also leading our church group in discussions so that has me doing more reading as well.
Finished:
Return of the Crimson Guard by Ian C. Esslemont is another Novel of the Malazan Empire. I got towards the climax and this book had me guessing what would happen at nearly every turn. I knew what the fate of some characters would be since they appear in later novels, but I was champing at the bit to find out what would happen
This was a fantastic book in my opinion and I felt like Esslemont found his footing as an author here compared to his previous work. I do think I'll take my coworkers advice and dive in to the other series to help get more background before reading the next book in this series, but I will be taking a small break from Malazan at least for a couple of weeks to read some other smaller works. Malazan has definitely cemented itself as the epic fantasy series I'll be reading for the next at least year or two considering the size of the novels and my usual breaks in between novels.
Progress made
Red Rising by Pierce Brown is a book club I started up with a guy I met at church. This has been on my reading list for a long while so I'm curious to see if it holds up to all the rave reviews I've seen. This is also the first book club that I've run on a schedule which different from the other book clubs I do that are more asynchronous and run whenever we both have a chapter finished.
The Emperor's Gift by Aaron Dembski-Bowden is another book club book I've been reading with a friend. He is in school finishing a second degree, and we are hoping that once he graduates we'll be able to start reading this more regularly as it has been months in between chapters at time.
I've enjoyed this as a Grey Knights lore fan and getting to see the Battle of Armageddon, and it's fall out from their perspective.
The Brothers' War by Jeff Grubb a Magic the Gathering setting book that I'm reading with my friend. We've been more consistent with this and reading a chapter almost every other week which is a lot faster than our normal pace. We've crossed the halfway point, so I'm curious how this will end.
The Dying Earth by Jack Vance is the first book in his Dying Earth series. This has been on my list for a long time and I'm enjoying it immensely. It is a short book and consists of interconnected short stories that are all quick reads. I'm already almost halfway through the book and I started reading this only a few days ago.
This also is a story that has heavily influenced Dungeons and Dragons, and is mentioned in their Appendix N which I posted about here. You can really see the influences and I'm enjoying his prose along with how imaginative it feels. Reading this feels fantastical and has classic fantasy feel to it. I'll definitely be reading more of his works, including the other Dying Earth series books in time.
AI Engineering: Building Applications with Foundation Models by Chip Huyen still slowing reading this.
The Manager's Path: A Guide for Tech Leaders Navigating Growth and Change by Camille Fournier I've only read a few pages here and there of this. I enjoy it, but I also am a bit of a lull in my work motivation, so my professional development reading is down right now.
Jack Vance's writing is crazy. Such evocative worldbuilding. The sexism is so weird and painful though! The Dying Earth is definitely my favorite, and Eyes of the Overworld is also worth reading. You can really see the murderhobo D&D character trope's genesis in the main character of Cugel.
I completely agree on the world building. It felt like such a believable but surreal place and lived in with such short descriptions. Eyes of the Overworld is
I tend to view any "isms" (to broadly refer to everything that wouldn't fly these days) from older authors as a product of their time. I'd imagine there will be things from current year that people will view the same way we view works written 50-100 years ago. Reading through the original Tarzan novel was an experience in some real old time racism, and then I double-checked and saw it was published in 1912 which definitely explained some of it.
I finally, after two or three failed attempts, got properly invested in Zinn's People's History of the United States.
In my past attempts at this book I never made it past the colonial era. The stories of genocide and the early trans Atlantic slave trade are just... so damn depressing. But a few weeks ago I picked it back up and vowed to make it past where I'd stopped before. Now I'm about a third of the way through the book, and it's excellent. Sad as hell, but good reading. It's filling in lots of gaps in my knowledge, and is (intentionally or otherwise) pretty transparent in its biases. Definitely a clear attempt to yell the story of "regular folks" along the timeline.
Still reading George Eliot's 'Daniel Deronda' Published 1876. Nearing halfway! I love these giant Victorian tomes so much. The absolute pinnacle of novel writing: extremely high quality prose, deep character building and analysis, huge scopes, dozens of fleshed out characters. Tolstoy is the GOAT but Eliot is right there. Genius.
Still listening to A. B. Guthrie Jr.'s 'The Big Sky' Published in 1947. About halfway through this one too. This book is all about the landscapes and the wildness and freedoms of that land. It reminds me a bit of John Williams 'Butcher's Crossing' in that way, where the land itself is a major character.
I just got to borrow Daggerbound from the library a couple days ago. It was well worth the wait, and I can't wait for Shieldborn to come out. We got to have Learned Edmond as a main character again, and he's much more reasonable than he was in Clockwork Boys. Dog Violet and Large Frances Building were a lot of fun. I wonder if Zale's boyfriend is going to show up in the next book.
I started "Der Kaiser der Freude" / "The Emperor of Gladness" by Ocean Vuong.
It was gifted to me by a friend for my birthday, apparently there is some controversy surrounding the author in the US, but I did not follow that.
So far, it is a pleasant read. It is bleak, but in a very codeine-numbed way of bleakness. It is also funny in parts. We will see how it goes. I asked for more books outside of my eurocentric world view, and for more queer perspectives, and I guess the book delivers on both ends, even though Ocean Vuong is an American.
Gillian Flynn - Dark Places (2009, Mystery Thriller)
Flynn's style is pretty good. She might be my favorite fiction author for readability... but that is probably not really the case. Nevertheless, I really like her work and this one is no exception.
Patrick Radden Keefe - London Falling: A Mysterious Death in a Gilded City and a Family's Search for Truth (2026, True Crime)
PRK is a fantastic writer. The story itself is wild.