Still reading The Crystal Shard by R. A. Salvatore. First book of The Icewind Dale Trilogy, and The Legend of Drizzt / Forgotten Realms series (publication order).
Book is pretty fast paced and full of action. Really enjoying it.
What about all of you? What have you been reading or listening to lately?
A regular reminder about our Book Bingo, and it’s Recommendation Post . Links are also present in our community sidebar.
Blood Meridian by Cormac McCarthy. The prose is beautiful and mesmerizing. It forces me to read it at the speed of speech, to let it flow. I’m a sucker for long and winding sentences (when they’re done well), and this doesn’t disappoint.
It’s also quite disgusting, just as everyone says about it. If you can’t handle brutal senseless violence, don’t pick this up. It’s pretty interesting to see the racism/xenophobia of today reflected in American history (1850-ish). It reminds me of the Dark Forest theory from Three Body Problem: these guys go around killing not just out of a love of violence, but because it’s the only guaranteed way to come out on top. If you aren’t the killer, someone else will be. Capitalism and greed work like this too.
I just finished listening to We Are Legion (We Are Bob). It was a fun one to listen to and easy to follow even whilst working which meant I blitzed through it.
Now I’ve gotta wait almost a month for my next credit :( Not sure what I’ll try next though, I don’t usually bother with sci-fi but I’ve been on the lookout for something after finishing The Three-Body Problem trilogy. Nothing is really hitting the mark currently.
Just started listening to the audiobook version of Robert Caro’s “The Power Broker,” about Robert Moses and New York. Will also check out the book from library in case it has pictures or diagrams.
99% Invisible did a 10-part series on the book this year, so will be toggling back and forth to hear the commentary as well.
The audiobook is around 60 hours. Guessing this all will keep me busy for a couple of months.
Just finished “The Message,” by Ta-Nehisi Coates. Highly recommended.
Two books:
- Bullshit jobs by David Graeber
- Crack-up capitalism by Quinn Slobodian
I’m currently reading the first book of the 3 body problem series. Still trying to decide if I like it or not even though I’m almost done with it.
Holy shit! Me too, except I’ve decided I like it. It is a compelling story. It goes a bit hard on the scientific accuracy which can kind of interrupt the flow, though.
I find the most interesting part is the insight of modern Chinese commentary of recent Chinese history. I wasn’t sure what popular sentiment was, or what criticism / critiques would be allowed to be published by the party.
Been wanting to read this, but I’m halfway through book 7 of 8 of the witcher series, and I don’t want to leave the series undone before switching to the next book. The witcher series has been great, but this book is getting slow and hard to finish.
I finally got bored enough on a plane to watch the 3 body problem TV show. Based on liking the TV show, I’m hoping I’m gonna like the book too.
Ah, I set the Witcher books down halfway through but gotta get back to them! Glad to hear you’re enjoying them. At least they’re mostly short-ish.
They’ve been pretty fun reads so far, but this 7th book has been a bit of a slog. I think I finally got over some of the more boring parts last night, so hoping the rest of the book is easier to finish.
Radicalized by Cory Doctorow. It’s an anthology of four short stories that all share a common theme of dystopian applications of technology. So in other words… Pretty much on brand for the author and it’s well done so far.
Kind of like Black Mirror (TV show)?
Nah the stories are a little more hopeful. Like one about toasters that work like a Keurig machine and this refugee community learning how to hack them to work on unauthorized products after the company whose servers that authorize the bread goes bankrupt.
Interesting. Will check it out.
I’m currently reading “The Coming Insurrection” by “The Invisible Committee”
How are you liking it?
I am loving it. It is written in a very poetic language and really makes you reflect. In my case, it also generates a nihilistic feeling towards society and the possibility of change. It is a call to insurrection; it shows you, in an aesthetic and philosophical way, that there is no other way out but rebellion.
Ahan, thanks for info. I have become too lazy to work on any kind of rebellion, but it sounds like an interesting read.
Just finished The Waiting by Michael Connelly and haven’t started the next book yet.
How is the series? I have The Black Echo (first Harry Bosch) book but haven’t gotten around to reading it yet.
I love it, read all the books. I particularly enjoy the Lincoln lawyer series, but Bosch is great too. I read them in order starting with The Black Echo, and the series is consistently good. It’s worth reading in order to have an understanding of Bosch’s career and life progression.
I’d say Michael Connelly is my favorite author. The only book I didn’t really enjoy was “Chasing the Dime”.
Thanks for the recommendation. Will start it soon.
I listen to A Night in the Lonesome October every October. It’s the diary of Jack the Rippers dog from October 1’st to October 31’st.
How are you liking it? It was recently recommended to me in another thread, but haven’t gotten around to it yet.
I really like it. This is probably my 10 listen. If you can find the version read by the author it’s better than the other audio book version.
I’ll probably be going for the paperback. Can’t listen to audiobooks.
Fair enough it’s great either way. I usually like to read rather than listen. However Zelazny does write in a style that works best read a aloud.
Am I the only one irked by the improper grammar on this weekly post going back months? How has it not been corrected yet? In a community full of readers.
Umm… what’s wrong? And what would be the correct version of that?
Probably “what book are you listening?”
No one else has complained because no one cares lol.
No one cares. As readers we know what the intent was and just gloss over it. If i got hung up on incorrect grammer i think readding would be rather miserable.
Currently reading There Is No Antimemetics Division by qntm, which involves a department of the SCP Foundation dealing with entities that delete memories, communication, etc. I don’t intend to go down the SCP rabbit hole, but I’m finding the book inventive and enjoyable so far.
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Read Dark Harvest by Norman Partridge. Short, fun, mindless Halloween action horror.
Bingo squares: Family Drama; Eazy, Breazy, Read-zie; Now a Major Motion Picture; It’s About Time; Award Winner; It’s a Holiday (hard); (alt) A Change in Perspective
Dark Harvest looks interesting.
What’s There is no Animemetics Division? Series of web novels?
It looks like Antimemetics was originally posted online as a series of entries and short stories, as part of the SCP universe, which is an online collaborative fiction project (wikipedia for more info ). From a quick search, it seems some (all of?) it is still available if you look up ‘qntm’ on the SCP wiki, but I’m not sure if the self-published release included rewrites or additional material.
Sounds interesting, but it does sound like a rabbit hole where you can sink tons of hours. Don’t want to do that right now 😀
Shards of Earth by Adrian Tchaikovsky
I’ve been on a bit of a Tchaikovsky binge lately. I read Children of Time years ago and enjoyed it, but for whatever reason, didn’t read anything else by him then. I had a copy of Made Things knocking around though, and I finally read it a few weeks ago and was so impressed I started reading him in earnest. This is the… let’s see… seventh book of his I’ve read lately.
He sort of reminds me of Michael Crichton. He’s not a particularly notable prose stylist - his writing is entirely competent and sufficient, but not in any way really remarkable. But he tells very imaginative stories very well, so he’s a satisfying read.
This one is a sort of political thriller wrapped around a mystery that plays out a bit like a science fiction update of a Lovecraftian eldritch abomination story, leavened a bit with Emily St. John Mandel style misfit spaceship crew slice of life. I’m enjoying it.
I have his Shadow of the Apt series, though haven’t started it yet. Your comparison with Michael Crichton is making me want to start it soon.
I haven’t read those yet, but I intend to. And I expect that, like every one I’ve read yet, they’ll be solid 7 or 8 out of 10 books.
That’s the thing that reminded me of Crichton. He has that same ability to start with some fascinating idea and run with it and deliver a solid, well-told and satisfying story, then move on to some completely different fascinating idea and run with it and deliver another solid, well-told and satisfying story. He’s not locked into any specific genre or any specific approach to telling a story - just whatever works for that idea, that’s what he does, and it just works.
Finished Rhythm of War. The end hit hard, and I’m definitely impatiently waiting for Wind and Truth now.
Rhythm of War Spoilers
Right after Kaladin jumps through the battle for the tower were all super emotional, and I also really enjoyed Eshonai’s last ride with the Stormfather. I had kind of been holding out hope that she was Venli’s spren somehow, but I appreciated giving her that send off, at least.
I have used hard copies of Edgedancer and Dawnshard that should be showing up today to add to my collection, so I’ll probably start into those.
In the meantime I read book 5 of CJ Archer’s Glass Library series, The Secret of the Lost Ledgers. I think I prefer Glass and Steele over Glass Library so far, but that’s partly because magic was more secretive at the start of the arc.
edit: the novellas are itty bitty.
I wish I could experience all of Sanderson’s books again for the first time and agree Rythm of War was great! I can’t wait to get to Wind and Truth either. Being an audio book only guy though I’m going to have to wait a bit longer until I can continue that story!
Have you read Mistborn?
I’m mostly an audiobook guy, though I have both hardcover and audiobook preordered. I doubt I’ll really read the physical copies, but I recently decided to refresh my bookshelves with some of my favorites just for the sake of having them and the Stormlight Archive quickly became a favorite once I finally buckled down and just bought all the audiobooks to listen straight through.
I’ve read some of his random smaller stuff. I thought the premise of Rithmatist could have been a pretty fun VR game. I haven’t read Mistborn yet, but it’s definitely on my radar. One of my biggest things is availability, though. My binge on physical books the last couple weeks was an outlier, but I generally can’t afford to actually buy anywhere near as many books as I read. They’re mostly not as substantial as Stormlight Archive, but according to goodreads my new books this year are still comfortably in the triple digits, so I need libraries and subscription libraries to fill in most of the volume or I’d go broke pretty quickly. I definitely want to read Mistborn, but I’ll probably wait a while, because my self control on buying books can get me in trouble if I’m not careful.
Wow, that’s a really good number. Good luck reaching 200 books!
lol I pretty much listen to audiobooks all day while active doing other stuff. If I really wanted a high number, I’d either stop re-listening to stuff or go through the hassle of tracking every time I listen and let goodreads count all those towards this year.
I hate the effort of actually adding stuff to goodreads though, so I definitely don’t care enough to count how many times I read books.
Hehe, fair enough.
I can’t multitask at all. If I am listening to audio-book, I need to stop everything and just listen to it, but then it gets boring because I am just listening.
I like numbers though, stats, graphs, charts, lists. Those are fun, so try to log everything I can. Don’t care about sharing them, but they are fun for me.
I want to replace goodreads, because it kind of sucks and my preference would be showing (and tagging/blurbing/listing) books by author/series instead of individual books, but none of the alternatives do what I want and I never seem to have time to roll my own version.
But on the plus side you can export your lists through the website, so I keep up the tracking I can there with the intent of eventually doing it myself and doing some basic self hosting.
I just care about cataloging books, with proper info, and LibraryThing is great for that. My only non-complaint is that it’s not self-hosted, but I semi-regularly export my books, so it’s all good.
I can understand about not getting time to roll your own version. I have been trying to do that for a game cataloging app for over a decade, starts with some new tech every year or so then get busy with stuff and forget about it.
Hey Dressy!
Hope you are well, bet you can’t guess what I’ve been listening to ;p So as always Deathlands has been on rotation and I am just finishing number 25 and still enjoying it.
Other than those I listened to a couple of Goosebumps books. They were fun, I’m not sure how old your son / daughter (?) is but I would suggest giving one a try if they are interested in reading some light horror. They weren’t to graphic but still enough to instill a good, slightly unsettling image in parts that I imagine someone younger would find a little scary but in a good way if they were interested in horror as a genre. I remember enjoying them a lot when I was around the age of 10 and may be a little bit simplistic for say a teenager but it was an engaging story and well written.
I also listened to “The Others” by Jeremy Robinson which is the second book in the Infinite series of books. It was a really good book that I couldn’t stop listening to and blazed through really quickly. It reminded me a lot of Dean Koontz stories in the way it was written, it had supernatural elements as well as a group of people vs government type agencies vs a supernatural element sort of interplay similar to the way his stories often go. I’m looking forward to what the rest of the Infinite series holds and enjoyed it a lot more than the first book!
So, after reading this, I finally decided to buy the first Deathlands book right away, it’s about time I at least check it out.
Well, it turns out they aren’t available anywhere. Not even as ebooks. Only audiobooks are available. Amazon (not my place of choice to buy ebooks) also has only book 48 and 49 available, rest are audiobooks only.
On a positive side, one less series to worry about!
Thanks for the recommendation. He is around 10, and likes horror / spooky stuff. Will get first book or two and see if he likes them.
Infinite series seems pretty interesting. Will check them out in a few months, hopefully they have better availability than Deathlands 😀
Oh, that’s a shame to hear about Deathlands, can’t win them all I guess!
In terms of Goosebumps the two titles that stand out in my mind from when I was a child (not that I remember the plots now) are Monster Blood and Night Of The Living Dummy. I believe both of them have a few books continuing the stories as they were popular too, so those may be good ones to start with :)
Yeah. BTW there are two different audiobooks, one are simple / plain, and other are dramatic something. Which one are you listening to?
Thanks for the info about Goosebumps, will check which ones I have at my local shop.
Yes there are, I listen to the Graphic Audio version which is the “dramatised” version that is fully voice acted for each character. There was one section of what I’ve listened to so far that it substituted the normal version where the uploaded must have been missing a file and it was jarring and not enjoyable comparatively.
I love Graphic Audio adaptations for anything where I can get them, I’ve listened to a lot of Sanderson books in this format as well as a few other things like that Gideon Sable book and I always prefer it to just one person reading.
And no worries, let us know how you get on with them :D
Just finished the latest Jack Reacher novel. Standard Reacher Murder She Wrote with a giant as protagonist plot template. I find the Reacher novels helpful if I’m having a rough week and need a low cognitive load book. Working on Candle & Crowe now, which is the third book in Kevin Hearne’s Ink & Sigil series set in his Iron Druid universe. It’s also good for a bit of cheerful escapism, but not a pulp novel.
I recently started the Jack Reacher series and got the first 3 books (though have only read the first one yet). They are much longer than I expected them to be. Are all books in the series like that?
It didn’t get boring so I don’t mind the length, just curious about it.
I haven’t considered them to be very long, but maybe I’ve read too many Sanderson novels. They all tend to have the same pacing and plot devices. It’s been long enough since I read the first few that I can’t remember if they get shorter or longer. The more recent ones where Andrew Child co-authors seem shorter to me.
Heh, well, Sanderson’s novels aren’t that long, well, not counting Stormlight Archive that is. Specially when you compare them to most books in fantasy genre.
As for Reacher novels, I haven’t read many action / adventure / crime novels, but those that I have read haven’t been very long, mostly around 300-400 page count, so Reacher’s length was a surprise. If it was a fantasy book, wouldn’t even have noticed it probably.
