What are you reading these days?

I'm reading The Last Man by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley:

A futuristic story of tragic love and of the gradual extermination of the human race by plague, The Last Man is Mary Shelley's most important novel after Frankenstein. With intriguing portraits of Percy Bysshe Shelley and Lord Byron, the novel offers a vision of the future that expresses a reaction against Romanticism, and demonstrates the failure of the imagination and of art to redeem the doomed characters.

So help me, I’m reading the Ascent of a Bookworm series for the third time. I need to find something new to read.

Currently reading A Gentleman in Moscow. Wonderful book so far. I'm also reading Batman: Year One at the same time, which is pretty cool.

Scott Lynch's Gentleman Bastard Series is a fun read

• Babylon's Ashes, more of The Expanse series, space tribalism
• Summer Knight, more of Dresden Files, a guilty pleasure

I can't remember the name of the book I'm reading right now - the downside of having a reader which powers up when you open the case is you never get to see the cover art! It's not amazing so far though.

However, before that I was reading Yoon Ha Lee's Phoenix Extravagant. You might know Lee from his excellent Machineries of Empire sci-fi series, but this is not sci-fi. It's set in 16th century Korea, when Japan had invaded. It's not Japan and Korea, it's two fictional countries but the veil he's drawn over that particular bit of history is paper thin. That doesn't matter though, there's an excellent story there with Lee's trademark style of magic - in Empires his civilisations use calendrics to manipulate reality, in this book it's a different mechanic. It's well written with strong, believable characters and it's an exciting, generally well-paced story. Recommended.

Finished

We are the Dead by Mike Shackle. An enjoyable yet generic grimdark with poor writing. Evil evils conquer city, underground resistance resist. Fun enough but the writing was very hamfisted, a lot of repetition, a lot of telegraphing.

Zero to One by Peter Thiel. Interesting book, i'm sure a lot of the "advice" is already fairly well known in business and start up circles but I dont know much about the Thiel or his world so this was interesting to read.

The Last Storm by Jack Hunt. The cover and blurb imply post-apocalypse but its mostly a die hard one building thriller. Short enough that i finished it but meh, i wanted weather apocalypse not McClane taking down gangsters.

The Heroes by Joe Abercrombie. I enjoy Abercrombie in small doses. I find i read one book and then i'm done for a year. This feels no different. Everything is a bit too self aware, a lot of *elbow nudge* get it.. the heroes *elbow nudge* and "oh the irony of us being so good at war who do not like war anymore". That said i really like his characters.

Reading:

Sitting In Oblivion: The Heart of Daoist Meditation by Livia Kohn. Feeling a bit too advanced for me so far.

Kushiels Dart by Jacqueline Carey. Alternate historical fantasy that is heavy on the politics (and sex).

I finished The Stand by Steven King today. It was good. It was a far better ending than I expected given It. I feel like Stephen King doesn't make a point with his characters, which is why his endings feel unmotivated. He tends to shove the unnatural and mundane together, which works for horror, but not as well for purposeful writing.

I finished Agamemnon by Aeschylus a week ago, and it was really interesting how the Greeks seem to condense their plays into a single short time when everything comes together. It goes against the show don't tell maxim, but that maxim only really applies when you don't know what you're doing anyway.

I am halfway through Bowling Alone by Robert Putnam. So far, I think the answer is that I am really out of tune with the isolation problem in America. It's interesting though. I tend to give these books a wide berth, since reading paragraphs of stats is moderately uninteresting, but it seems comprehensive at least.

I'm starting American Gods by Neil Gaiman. I dropped it a while back, but had my interesting renewed after learning that he wrote the dub for Princess Mononoke before it got rearranged by the higher-ups.