Hello Everyone!
What are you all reading?
I am currently going through a re-read of Dresden Files by Jim Butcher. Currently on 2nd book, Fool Moon.
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I just finished Project Hail Mary. A wonderful and fun read. Highly recommend if you like science fiction.
I just got it during my latest book shopping! Going to read it soon.
As you should. It was very interesting.
I found it to be one of the most engrossing and wholesome books that I’ve read in years!
The Wheel of Time
What do you think of it? It’s on my list to try and read before the end of the year.
I watched the first 5 or so episodes of the Prime show a while ago and was interested but it didn’t keep me hooked.
I watched s1 and thought it was ok. A little too teen angsty for me, but the introduction to the universe was enough to get me to start the 1st book. A year and a half later, and 14 books in ( I’m halfway through the very last one) and I’m absolutely floored.
The whole series is nothing short of epic; the world building, magic system, character arcs, the story. One of my favorite reads so far, and certainly my most favorite in the fantasy genre.
It’s a great series, but like many such stories, some of the books in the middle are a bit of a slog, but still a great series overall.
It’s one of my favourite series, and probably one of my most re-read one. Maybe because it was one of the first epic fantasy of such huge proportions that I ever read.
It has been a long time since I read it last. Just not sure I have the time to start 14-book series these days. Maybe some day…
Just read an erotic romance, Heart of the Mountain by Snek Guy. It is about a mercenary going up a mountain to slay a dragon and take her hoard of gold. Things don’t go quite as he planned. It was well written, but a bit too much smut for my taste. I wrote a bit more here.
Just started the My Best Friend is an Eldritch Horror series.
Is “My Best Friend is an Eldritch Horror” available as a web novel somewhere?
It was originally published on Royal Road, but has since been moved to Amazon.
Ah, okay. Thanks for the info!
Bit late to the party, but I just started reading the Final Empire, Mistborn series #1. Only a few chapters in, but I’m enjoying it so far!
I’m almost done with Mistborn! Hope you enjoy
Ah, great series. Have you read any other of Brandon Sanderson’s work? Or is this your first?
My first. I have Way of Kings on hold at my library, so certainly not my last haha.
Welcome to the club!
I just started City of Refuge by Tom Piazza. It’s a fictional account of two families in New Orleans during hurricane Katrina. I’m only 12% in but so far I’m impressed by how real I feel like the pov characters are.
Also reading Lichtenbergianism by Dale Lyles. It’s about using procrastination as a creative strategy. 30% in, and juries out on whether I’ll find anything helpful in it.
> procrastination as a creative strategy
I want this. I like procrastinating! Share your opinions about finishing it.
City of Refuge looks like an interesting book. Going to check it out.
I got more inspiration from the Lichtenbergian book than new information. Among other things, it made me start a kanban for my personal projects and now I have less anxiety over how much I need to do and in what order. If you’d like, I’m happy to mail you my copy, since I’m unlikely to read it again.
I’ve read maybe 3 books all the way through in my entire life. My girlfriend has been trying to get me to read before bed and on the recommendation of some discord friends I purchased Infinite Jest and am a quarter of the way through it. It’s been a jarring book with the tonal shifts and the way it rapid fires between characters and settings, but I’ve absolutely loved some of the perspectives and dialog that DFW creates. If anyone else is a fan, I’d love more recommendations in the same vein, specifically the type of warped humor and how it stems from the human condition.
I haven’t read Infinite Jest, so can’t recommend anything like that, but keep visiting these posts, I am sure you’ll be able to find something you like.
Or you can create a separate post, asking for recommendations, it should get you more visibility.
I’m doing a reread of Human To Human by Rebecca Ore. It’s the third book in the trilogy.
It’s an old scifi series from the early ninties, but holds up well. I absolutely love how she designs her aliens.
The first book is Becoming Alien.
I was itching for a good alien show recently, didn’t find anyhting I liked (though with so many streaming services, couldn’t figure out where to watch half the stuff).
If not TV, I can atleast read a good aliens book. Will check it out.
It is pretty hard to find a good alien show on TV or in movies.
The downside of Star Trek is that aliens are often TOO human, and the downside of Star Wars is some of the aliens are TOO alien…
I find SFF literature does a much better job than visual media at really exploring alien psychology and and how communication might go with aliens who do not look human. Because it can base things in real scientific concepts without worrying overmuch about how much the CGI or prosthetics will cost, or if you’ll lose the casual non-nerd viewer.
I’ve a few quibbles about how Rebecca Ore looks at human behavior with a little too much “nature” over “nurture”, esp. re: gender dynamics, but the biology really is solid with the aliens. And you could argue she’s only looking at humans through the same lens she uses on her aliens.
She posits that intelligent life will sort of fill certain convergently evolved body plans, much like how in an ecosystem animals with very different ancestors can come to look like one another.
Like the mammal wolf and the marsupial tasmanian tiger (Thylacine) have converged to have even really similar skull shapes despite one being a placental mammal and the other a marsupial, or how sharks and dolphins have very similar body plans despite one being a fish and the other a mammal.
So in the series, there’s a few “buckets” that most sapient aliens evolved to fit in…ape-like ex-brachiators, bipedal ground-walking birds/aivan lizards, bear-type creatures, bat-like creatures. There’s cases where the main character runs into two “birds” but they’re not even from the same planet, they just both evolved a bird-like form and became intelligent separately.
The computer tech in her series is old–pre-internet sci-fi didn’t do the greatest job of predicting how fast or complex computer and information technology would become–and the main character is a not-too-bright everyman sort of character…
…but it still works pretty well, to allow us to deconstruct her world through his eyes.
Interestingly enough, my favorite characters aren’t the humans (they’re all very flawed), but instead the aliens, esp. the Rector and the Sub-Rector.
Yeah, I agree about alien shows and movies. There are still some fun shows, if you are willing to let go of few things, like Falling Skies.
Thanks for such a detailed response, it looks interesting. I am going to check it out.
I have a couple of overdue library books I should probably finish and return, but instead I’m reading a couple volumes of Combatants will be Dispatched because laughing is better than being a decent human being.
laughing is better than being a decent human being.
Heh, that made me chuckle.
How is “Combatants will be Dispatched”? I have read Chinese and Korean light/web novels, but am not acquainted with Japanese ones. Any recommendations?
Combatants will be Dispatched is hilarious. It might be the dumbest, most useless cast of characters I’ve ever read about. After a couple of volumes most of the main conflicts are problems they caused for themselves which is very satisfying.
I find I read a lot of web novels (or more commonly the graphic adaptations) to tweak certain tropes I crave now and then. It’s not often I find one that is actually just a satisfying read chapter to chapter. Light novels are often similar, but they’ve gone through some more editing and development so it’s more common for a volume to actually be some sort of satisfying chunk of story to read.
If you’re looking for genuinely good reads, I recommend Apothecary Diaries, Death’s Daughter and the Ebony Blade, or the Monogatari series. If you want some dumb fun there are so many options, but The World’s Finest Assassin Gets Reincarnated in Another World as an Aristocrat, Konosuba, and I’ve Been Killing Slimes for 300 Years and Maxed Out My Level are a few different but good ones.
Thanks, I’ll check them out!
Currently Reading:
The Iron Heel, by Jack London
Basically one of the first major political dystopias written in the modern sense. It’s super cool too, basically the book is an old manuscript about an attempted socialist revolution, before the world was taken over by oligarchic tyrannical capitalists. There’s basically two stories being told, one in the socialist narrative itself occurring in the past, and one in the footnotes, showing glimmers of some of the capitalist horrors in the “present time”. Super neat way to tell a story, and I’m really enjoying it so far. It’s super heavy handed, and I would maybe call it similar to a socialist version of an Ayn Rand dystopia, like Anthem, but you know… Actually good. And thematically opposite to any coherent thought Ayn Rand tried to impart onto her readers.
Paved Paradise, How Parking Explains the World, by Henry Grabar
Not too far into this one, but it’s a non-fiction book about parking policy, and how parking has basically ruined American cities over the last 70 years. I’ve been really getting into city planning books lately, so we’ll see how much I like this one. Some pretty eye opening statistics so far, and the writing style seems fine.
DNF’d recently:
Walden, by Henry David Thoreau
Jesus this dude is insufferable. I read a lot of dense stuff, and have read many authors that like the sound of their own voice, but Thoreau takes the cake. Preaches self-reliance and disparages philanthropy but squats on his buddies land and lives off of gifts from friends, while doing absolutely nothing and providing no value to society. The guy just exudes a “holier than thou” attitude throughout the whole book, with absolutely nothing to back it up. I quit after 100 pages of this absolute joke contradicting himself the entire time. He would occasionally stumble upon some brilliance that I found a bit insightful, but it was few and far between, and the 98% of the rest was pure, unadulterated garbage. I really haven’t had this negative of a reaction to something I’ve read for quite some time, I generally like everything I read. Maybe I’m just too simple to understand his self proclaimed brilliance.
Interesting list of books. Not the kind of thing I usually read, but The Iron Heel looks to be an interesting book. I would also be interested in hearing what you thought about Paved Paradise once you are done with it.
As for Walden, if you didn’t know anything about Thoreau and his life, would you still think the same about the book? I am just wondering if it’s the contradiction between his life (which I know nothing about) and his work that turned you off.
Honestly I noticed the contradiction first, then looked up his life as I got progressively more and more annoyed with him. The first time I noticed it was when he talked about the benefits of solitude, and denigrating people who felt loneliness. Then, not much later, he mentioned his “solitary location” is a measly 2 MILES from a town, and a railroad goes right by him. He literally hears the train whistle every day, and seems trains and train riders all the time, while acting like he’s in solitude Alaska or something. He also mentions that people visit him almost every day. Of course you don’t get lonely you idiot.
Basically I noticed some contradictions in his writing, and his tone was just so insufferable so I started looking up things to learn more about him. The more I learned, the more I realized I just hate this guy.
Heh. Well, at least he made you learn you something new, even though it was just hate for the guy himself. 😃
Thanks for the details.
re-reading the Malazan, Book of the Fallen. Currently on Toll the Hounds. I’m enjoying the re-read.
One of these days, I need to finally start reading Malazan series. Maybe time to start collecting the whole series.
Have you also read all the novellas, prequels, sequels, and malazan empire series?
I’m about two thirds of the way through Since We Fell by Dennis Lehane. And I finished The Stupidest Angel by Christopher Moore today.
I don’t think Lehane ever really misses. His plots aren’t usually all that dense but the characters are deep and compelling. And the writing is way better than it seems like it should be. Every once in a while you I read a line and think, “Where did that come from, and how did it get here?” He’s a really talented writer.
Moore is not that. But he’s fun and entertaining. This book was not his best effort. But it was fine. If you like Moore, you’ll like this one we’ll enough.
Moore is on my to-read list, will get some of his work one of these days.
Didn’t know about Lehane, just looked him up, he has written some good books. Well, at least the movies based on his books were pretty good 😀 Will check out his work.
BTW this is probably one of the only two (or maybe three) non fantasy/sci-fi book mentioned in this post. It’s interesting to see that majority of people here are speculative fiction fan.
Iron Gold by Pierce Brown.
I had a really hard time with Iron Gold. So much so that I couldn’t finish it. I keep meaning to go back to it and try again, but I haven’t yet.
Have you read the previous Red Rising series? And what didn’t you like about Iron Gold?
I have, and I really enjoyed them. I have to talk about a major event in the story, so for those who haven’t read and want to collapse this comment, this is your spoiler warning. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . SPOILERS BELOW
This is a little vague since it’s been awhile.
I got really upset when Darrow was going totalitarian and fighting with his wife (can’t remember her name) and wanted to eradicate the last of the gold resistance to the new order they had established. When they had the fight amongst themselves and Darrow killed one of his friends (also can’t remember his name) and then fled, that was just really hard for me to take in.
Objectively it makes sense that it happened. It just really hit me hard. Maybe because of this political climate we’re living in. At the time, I just couldn’t finish it. I want to, but I don’t know if I’m in the right headspace to be able to.
Ah, a sequel series to Red Rising. I have heard of that, but never got around to read it. How is the series?
A web book, the wandering inn by pirateaba
This looks interesting. Are you fully caught up? Or are somewhere in the middle?
I’m currently in the end of book 7 so still got a lot to read.I’ve been reading it several hours per day since March! So it is a lot of text but I like those kind of big books/series
Nice. I am taking a break from web novels, it effects my other books, but adding it to my list, for when I get back to them.
📖 Les Furtifs by Alain Damasio
and
📖 Mathematica by David Bessis
Les Furtifs looks interesting, from what I could glean. Is it available in English?
And Mathematica is just a Mathematics book, right?
I do not think that Les Furtifs is available in English yet…
As for Mathematica, yes it is about the Mathematic however at a personal development level. David Bessis tries to explain that people’s brain is compatible with the mathenathic. Some people wrongly think that they are bad at this because nobody taught them how to do. For him abstraction is something that need to be trained. An example is that each one of us can easily imagine (to watch in our head) a perfect circle even if it does not exist in our reality. The author explains that to do Math is to learn to fail, to make mistakes, to correct our intuition.
That’s very interesting. Thanks for the info!
Ward by wildbow. Not technically a book but it’s wonderful if you are into that genre and honestly probably still good if you aren’t. Finished worm and while back and would definitely recommend that as well
To give a brief idea it’s “what if super powers came from incredible trauma and were designed to be the worst possible power for them specifically” there’s a lot more to it like A LOT but that is a general idea. It follows Taylor and her journey after gaining power. It’s essentially her struggle to be in control of everything that goes on around her
I read quite a bit of Worm, I think I was near the end, but then took a break, and after that couldn’t find where I stopped. I plan to reread it someday.
How’s Ward compared to Worm?
Ward is less fighty fighty action and more dealing with trauma and mental illness. If you remember what happened to glory girl you’ll know what I mean when I say shits fucked.
I personally prefer worm so far but I think ward is better writing objectively
Yeah, the novel/book is great, but that world isn’t a great place to live in.
