What are you reading these days?

I decided July is going to be the month i clean up my kindle a bit and read things that i started but never finished for whatever reason.

Tomorrow's Kin by Nancy Kress. Nancy Kress's books are great and they are always interesting to read because they tend to focus on the social ramifications of her ideas rather than the more hardscience-y aspects that many scifi ideas lead to. This book was good but i really recommend her Beggars in Spain which is about what happens when a group of kids are genetically modified to no longer need sleep.

Islamic Mystical Poetry: Sufi Verse from the early Mystics to Rumi by Jamal Mahmood. Enjoyed many of the poems but towards the middle it got a bit repetitive, like they picked poems/translations that overwhelmingly appealed to secular/modern western sensibilities rather than a wider spectrum of poems.

War in Human Civilisation by Azar Gat. This book took me over 2 years to read and was the inspiration behind this july. Holyshit it was hard work. Its a very dense book and it sits at over 800 pages. A social-anthropological-historical-political look at why we war. I'd be lying if i said i got 50% of what this book had to offer. In 10 years ill give it another go.

Dark Night of the Soul by Saint John of the Cross. I was hoping this would help with the spiritual malaise i have been in the past few years. I certainly related to parts of it but it wasn't particularly helpful at this point in my life.

Fifth Season by N.K Jemisin. I enjoyed this book. The world was one of the best i have read in a long time, it's up there with the all time greats when it comes to world building. Unlike many reviews i read the second person writing didn't bother me. The characters and story were just okay though both a bit forgettable and i saw the twist a mile away. It felt a bit oppression checklisty at times too.

Horus Hersey #1 - #2 - #3. All of them were fine but not great. I think the Night Lords trilogy set too high a bar for the rest of the warhammer books. I get more enjoyment out of reading the Wikis and watching youtube videos than i do the books it seems but i felt obliged to read the first HH trilogy.

The Road to Oxiana by Robert Byron

An English architectural historian has adventures in Iran and Afghanistan in the 1930s. This isn't historical fiction, the book was written then. He conveys a sense of awe about how remote and exotic these places were then. You can't have adventures like that anymore. It's in first person, and the author has a great sense of humor and respect for the culture he is studying (not so much respect for the Shah, though).

So I’ve mostly only read three books recently.

The first two (and I’m coupling them together as they are part of a series) are The Guild Secret and Rise of the Elder by D.K. Holmberg. They’re both the penultimate and last books in the Dark Ability series respectively. Both of them were great adventures, each contained within themselves, while still adding to the overarching plot. Definitely a good series, but there are a lot of lull points where it feels like nothing is happening. 7/10

The more recent book that I read was A Beautifully Foolish Endeavor by Hank Green which is a sequel to An Absolutely Remarkable Thing. The first book in the duology talks about how we use the social internet and how we view fame and celebrities while the second book talks about how we use our time on the internet as human beings and what we give our attention to. It’s a thrilling read from start to finish that made me read the second half of the book in one sitting (taking 3.5 hours btw). Any human being should be required to read these two books. Hank Green (and I’m quoting from his brother) does what a lot of Sci Fi stories don’t and criticizes the corrupt systems of modern society while simultaneously celebrates the joy that the social internet has created and the hope that it brings for many who use it. 11/10 would read again