10
votes
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.
Not much to update. I'm about to finish Dark Tower III: The Waste Lands. I'm really enjoying this chapter of the series.
A few days ago I mentioned in another thread that I recently finished A Deadly Education by Naomi Novik. It's absolutely excellent, but I'm going to try to avoid repeating what I already mentioned in the other post. Also I'll get a BIT more spoilery here, so I'm gonna thread it. Even still, I'm gonna try to avoid any major plot points.
Minor Spoilers - A Deadly Education and some stuff about Naomi Novik's other work
So I mentioned before that Naomi Novik's recent work often draws parallels from other works and then deconstructs them. Reading even a brief summary of A Deadly Education makes it clear, at least to me, that it's roughly based on Harry Potter. One of the characters, who I won't name, even seems to embody a very similar sort of prototypical destined hero role that Harry fills. But as I mentioned in the other post, one of the core themes of the book is looking at how fucked up ideas about destiny are, especially when it comes to the expectations placed on children and what that sort of thing does to their development.
It's also got more than a little class commentary, which I always appreciate when it's handled well. And IMO Naomi handles it well here.
And it's all interwoven into the story about friendship, adventure, coming of age and what-not.
God, I just want to gush about this book, but I also don't want to spoil it for anyone, so just read it if it sounds like your jam.
Update on A Year in Provence: We began to understand it would never deepen, nor move past cliché. A diary of home renovation asks a lot of indulgence from a reader. It is unlikely to be repaid, given the fundamental lack of curiosity shown by the author, his passivity, his privilege, his obviousness. In fact, take the rest of this book and shove it under the Tuscan sun.
Mostly boppin' around Reddit/here/HN/Lobste.rs/whatev... but also trying to get through PAIP and I have like, 6 books out from the library too.
I'm currently reading "Why Buddhism Is True" by Robert Wright. So far, it's really helped me visualise and work through some experiences I've had while meditating, and using the science Wright talks about I've contextualised a lot of what I've intuitively picked up on through the years. Highly recommended to anyone vaguely interested in psychology/philosophy/meditation.