9
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.
I started reading Frank Herbert's Dune after watching the recent movie. I'm really excited about it!
I usually read American authors in English, but Dune is very long (especially if you count the sequels) and, from a quick glance, full of poetic language and uncommon words, making it somewhat harder, I imagine, even for native speakers. Besides, many terms are not even English per se, but rather neologisms or completely made-up words.
I'm reading in My Native Language (MNL) for now, on a somewhat recent translation. It is good, and there's an effort to maintain a sense of rhythm and style. Every once in a while I find a word or a phrase that sounds weird or imprecise, and, when I check the original, it is clearly a mistranslation. Nothing egregious, but enough to make me wonder if I should just buckle up and go to the original. Even in MNL, I use the Kindle Dictionary a lot, so maybe it wouldn't be a big change. But IDK. I'm kinda tired of reading English, especially complicated stuff.
On the book itself: it's nice to recognize things from the movie, and seeing how they were dealt with in the book made me realize the screenplay by Villeneuve, Jon Spaihts, and Eric Roth is a lot smarter than I thought. The book is way more straightforward, with dialogues filled with exposition. I didn't read a lot, but I don't get the impression that mystery is such a big deal, at least in the very beginning. A lot is revealed right up front! But I don't care, it's a different beast, and I'm loving it.
I already know a lot about Dune from a 2h+ podcast episode I listened to years ago, when I never dreamed of ever reading it. On one hand, many events were spoiled. On the other, I'm very anxious by nature and would have a hard time diving into such a vast universe without some guidance. It is not uncommon for me to abandon a book that I really like just because I cannot deal with the anxiety of wanting to know everything already. Besides, I'm really interested in understanding how a universe like that takes shape, the how is just as important as the what for me. And I know it'll feel good to finally close this gap in my literary culture!
I'm reading A Memory Called Empire by Arkady Martine. I've only just started it but the world she's building is really fascinating. So far we have been introduced to the new ambassador from a small, spaceborne community to a vast multi-star-system spanning empire, and are journeying with her as she finds her way in the planet-sized city which is the centre of the Teixcalaanli empire. I always find it interesting when authors create and explore highly formalised societies, and I'm looking forward to finding out more about this one. It's well constructed prose which is pleasant to read, and hopefully she'll explore some interesting themes as well. I'm expecting (hoping) for a complicated and nuanced political drama rather than talking squids in space rockets with this one.
Prior to that I read Neal Asher's newest, Jack Four, which is a fast and thrilling story on a much smaller scale than his normal work. No vast space battles with ineffably complex AIs here (although Asher is particularly good at that), it's probably the smallest book he's written for some time. Which is nice, for a change. Bit hard to discuss too much about this one because spoilers, and Asher is never really all that deep thematically anyway - but it's got just enough to be interesting above and beyond the (frankly very exciting and pacey) surface story. As always he doesn't shy from violence and goriness when appropriate but then neither do the Prador or the various other unpleasant fauna of Asher's universe (eeuuuw hooders eeuuuww). It's fundamentally military sci-fi, after all.
I'd recommend both books, albeit for very different reasons.
I haven’t been reading much lately so I decided to change that.
The first thing I read was Batman: Year One. I don’t really read comic books in general, and specifically superhero comics. But I’ve always heard good things about it. I didn’t like it at all. I thought a lot of the dialogue was cringe-inducing. I plan on reading The Long Halloween and I just hope it’s better than this.
I’ve also been reading The Witches: Salem, 1692 by Stacy Schiff. Not to get into it, but I don’t think witches are real. And I was on a Reddit thread that had modern witches stuff as a subject. And there was someone there that clearly did his research on the history of witches. What he was writing got me interested in learning more about the Salem Witch Trials, and I really dig American history, so I did some research and downloaded this book.
I don’t think I’ve ever read anything about this topic outside of a high school textbook. So the writing of it, which flows in a way that narrative prose flows, was a little bit of an adjustment.
I love Batman Year One. If you don't like super heroes but wanna read something in that vicinity, Gotham Central is a good option. It's a series about the cops in Gotham. Batman only shows up once in 40 issues. He is not universally loved and some cops fear him as much as the bad guys. Other than that, it's a great crime narrative. Surprisingly down to earth.
DC's Vertigo imprint (now DC Black Label) is really adult and generally don't follow the super hero model. I like Preacher and Transmetropolitan.
I don’t have much interest in reading much else in this world. I’m only gonna be reading The Long Halloween because I know it inspired The Dark Knight and is also gonna be a big inspiration for The Batman.
The last graphic novels that I really liked were Alan Moore’s Swamp Thing and The Fade Out. I also like Watchmen (of course), and I’ve been meaning to read From Hell. But I haven’t found anything else that I really want to sink my teeth in.
I see. Well, there are lots of comics that have nothing to do with super heroes. You might like those. Sandman is sublime...
I'm re-reading Ada Palmer's four-book Terra Ignota series. The last book just came out and it's been so long since I read it that I decided to start from the beginning, and just finished the second book.
This is set on a far future Earth that's a sort-of-utopia, or at least it seems that way before things start falling apart, which they do in spectacular fashion. There haven't been any wars for centuries and the geography-based governments we know today have been replaced by Hives. People can join any Hive they want, or no Hive at all. (Being a "blacklaw," a sort of anarchist, is an option.) A fleet of flying cars lets you go anywhere in the world in a few hours and everyone wears a "tracker" at all times, which is a sort of earpiece. Crime exists but violence and accidents have diminished to very low levels. Racism is unknown and the gender pronoun is "they." (At least, normally it is. Some characters disagree, including the main narrator, who assigns pronouns to characters for reasons of his own.) Religious discussion is banned except with your "sensayer," a sort of neutral religious therapist who helps you decide what you believe. Revealing your religion is taboo.
The author is a historian and there is a lot of Enlightenment-era philosophy; in a way you see philosophical ideas from that era come to life. Various theories of government appear in the Hives, for example.
It's very much a story of extremes. The characters are all extreme in some way, either Hive leaders, the best in the world at something, or the most notorious. (There is a character that people believe is a god.) There are are miracles, dark secrets revealed, extreme violence and torture (though not dwelled on), twisted sex, and strange forms of coercion involving sex, religion, and blackmail. The plot twists are reminiscent of Victor Hugo.
Each book starts with a content advisory that's rather amusing. Each Hive has its own set of warnings and approvals.
Sandworm: A New Era of Cyberwar and the Hunt for the Kremlin's Most Dangerous Hackers
by Andy Greenberg
I had no idea the titular “Sandworm” was a Dune reference, so my reading of this book while the movie is in focus is sheer coincidence.
The book is a very well-written, very interesting look into recent significant cyberattacks and how they tie back to Russia. It’s written for a non-technical audience, thus many people here might find it light on the types of details they would want when reading autopsies of malware, but I thought it was fascinating as a lay reader.
It really makes me appreciate all the effort that people put into securing digital systems, as that seems like a high-stress, high-skill job that is mostly invisible and thankless. The author told the story of how the Olympic IT team worked tirelessly to weather a cyberattack during the opening of the PyeongChang Winter Olympics in 2018, and I was exhausted just listening to descriptions of their efforts. For anyone here at Tildes who does that kind of work in any capacity, kudos to you, and thanks for keeping your users safe!
I don’t know who they were talking about in the book, but I wouldn’t say it’s an invisible or thankless job, in general. I’d guess that computer security experts are as well-paid and well-respected as anyone in computing, except compared to a really hot field like machine learning.
There are people who are famous within the profession, and there a lot of good stories, as you’d expect because it’s almost like spy stuff. My perception is that within the industry, being into computer security is kind of cool, though maybe a little disreputable, since some people learned about it by being on the other side. (Also, it’s difficult for non-experts to tell what good security is, so as an industry there is a reputation for selling snake oil.)
It’s sort of true that, if you do your job right, nobody notices, and it will be high stress if something goes wrong. Or at least that’s what I thought when I started at Google and was put to work on the internal login system, and moved to internal developer tools instead because I wanted to help people I could actually meet with. Not too long after that, computer security got very exciting and high-priority, starting when Chinese hackers broke into Google and then with the Snowden revelations.
Also, things are going to be different at businesses that aren’t tech firms. Computer security isn’t their focus and it’s not how they make money, so it’s often underfunded. What that generally means, though, is that they can’t afford to hire good security experts, they also don’t know who to hire, and they make a lot of bad decisions. There are likely a lot of people who are in over their heads.
A big part of the book focused on security researchers for places like ESET and Kaspersky which seemed to have the high profile you mentioned. I was thinking more along the lines of the people you mention at the end of your comment -- those who run IT for small businesses, hospitals, school districts, etc. It sounded like a lot of these people were collateral damage in some of the cyberattacks given that the worms tended to spread well beyond their intended targets.
So, I did it, finally. I finished William Gaddis' The Recognitions. I didn't like it. It's obviously intricately crafted and fueled by passion, but that passion seems to be coming primarily from a place of bitter cynicism. All his critique of critics comes across as an attempt to head off meaningful discussion of the novel's flaws rather than an earnest attempt at correcting the course of the culture, for example. It seems preoccupied with the meaninglessness of artistry and the inherent arrogance of intent to the extent that it's almost like a weird self-loathing ouroborous of technical skill, making a strong case for the reader to disregard itself beautifully.
I'm not gonna pretend that I understood the text, or that my 'criticisms' are worth listening to, but that's how the book made me feel. Like it hates itself, but isn't confident enough in its opinion to not be written.
I also read Sun Tzu's The Art of War. I don't have much to say here, just that I truly pity the people who center their entire worldview around its teachings. I'm not particularly good at chess, let alone a military strategist, but it was relatively engaging while fairly insightful in some ways, which is better than can be said of the experience of reading a lot of texts in its genre.
Next in line for my 'serious fiction' slot was Franny and Zooey by J.D. Salinger. Franny was a delightful little story, and Zooey was frustrating by comparison. Not because it was poorly written or conceived, but simply because of how deeply enraging the titular character was. Following The Recognitions, though, it was a breath of fresh air. At least Salinger didn't insert five straight spreads full of nothing but allusion to obscure religious doctrine to pad his mildly antiintellectual thesis.
Finally, William Gibson, Neuromancer. It's a good book. For a computer geek with a penchant for philosophy, psychology, and drug abuse, I can't imagine a better noir. The hacking scenes, often labelled dated, are practically nonsensical, and a few of the plot points feel a little serendipitous, and not in a good way. Still, great.
Continuing my recent interest in baseball writing, I'm reading Moneyball by Michael Lewis. Funny thing is that I've read almost everything else by Michael Lewis except Moneyball. I can see why it was so popular at the time, but only about five chapters in and I can already see some of the outdatedness of it. I'm still enjoying it as it is a nice snapshot of what baseball was like in the early 00's.