Reading When Moon Hits the Eye by John Scalzi.
What about all of you, what have you been reading or listening to lately?
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I finished the first 3 Red Rising books and have moved on to T Kingfisher’s Hemlock & Silver.
How are you liking the Red Rising series (what’s the series’ actual name?) so far?
The series is titled after the first book. The first few were generally good and enjoyable. The writing is a bit wonky and takes some to get used to.
My biggest complaint is that the book is filled with deus ex machina solutions and Diabolus ex machina problems to ramp things up that aren’t really earned.
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I read the series last year, the second and third books are definitely better written. I read one other if his books, “Elantris” which is my favorite of the four.
I’m close to finishing The Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien. This month has been a bit rough in my personal life and I haven’t, perhaps, been quite feeling it. Luckily, there’s always next year.
I don’t know what I’ll read next.
very recently got an e-reader so that i can get back into reading, i am excited to be able to post something! hopefully i will find some contemporary fiction to read soonish, it’s a bit overwhelming right now so i am just reading stuff that has been sitting in my Calibre library. frankly it has been so long that i am not even sure what i like to read anymore.
anyway, last week i read Concrete Island by J.G. Ballard and now i am chewing through the Standard Ebooks collection of Clark Ashton Smith short fiction. i haven’t particularly loved either but that’s okay!
Welcome back to reading!
If you want any suggestions you can ask here, or just make a separate post.
thankyou! i ought make a dent on my backlog, but once i figure out more about what i might be looking for i will certainly do just that!
Great that you started reading again! I had also been on a hiatus for a few years and picked it up again last winter. It took me a while to find stuff I enjoy reading and sometimes I still choose books that aren’t right for me, but I’ve learned that it’s okay to just not finish a book. If I’m not enjoying it, why continue? There are so many books out there, there is bound to be a better one.
yeah that’s fair! i don’t mind not finishing things but i have to be having a bad time and feel like i am getting nothing out of it. mostly i can find worthwhile elements in media that otherwise is not my jam, it is kind of a challenge i give myself, to find buried treasure in a way. if something isn’t even fun for me in that way then it is definitely time to hit the bricks tho.
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it is a Boox Go, i don’t think i needed the colour but i am not one to complain about such a nice birthday gift!
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ahh kobos look really nice too! and thankyou, it is definitely late but i will take the good wishes anyway :)
I’d love to hear your thoughts on Clark Ashton smith if you are up to going into more detail. He’s one of my favorites and I so rarely see him mentioned. He was a contemporary and friend of both Robert e Howard and HP Lovecraft, and I personally found him better at sword & sorcery than Howard and better at weird fiction than lovecraft.
ahh that’s cool that he is a favourite! i did vaguely know he was buddies with lovecraft but that was the sum of my knowledge about him before this.
i have finished the collection now and very much enjoyed his descriptions of settings and objects, so while many of the stories were not quite my jam i did appreciate his prose and would like to explore more! alas i am not a words person (nor a brains one) myself so that is about all the detail i can give. though i may say it started some cogs turning, i would like to start a drawing based on a setting in one of the stories because it became so vivid in my mind.
The Anthropocene Reviewed, by John Green
finished it yesterday actually. The Book is a compilation of stories, memories and thoughts of John Green in the form of short reviews. Quick read, some stories had me laughing others are very touching, revolving around the loss of a dear friend or concerning his mental problems, but it’s mostly about how John Green views Humans and Humanity, he appears to be a big fan which is a suprisingly refreshing take.
If you’ve been keeping up with the vlogbrothers videos (as I have) there’s not many stories you haven’t heard before; it’s fine, but I was a bit disappointed.
yeah, i think almost all the stories from the book where part of the podcast by the same name, but i didn’t knew about that before picking up the book. I was vaguely aware of John Green as the author of “the fault in our stars”, which never seemed like my jam, and the only other touchpoint i had was the first epsiode of Hank Greens “Humans”-Podcast, which made me think he might have stories i’d enjoy, which i did.
Brian Wilson’s autobiography.
Less than Nothing, by Zizek. Very Hegel.
Would you say this a good place to start for someone who isn’t well versed in dialectical materialism?
Oh no! He’s very rambling and hard to follow, but entertaining.
I got my dialectics from Marx - like the manuscripts of 1844 - but their might be a better or more philosophical introduction.
I’m nearly finished with 14, Peter Clines, which has turned out to be great! Nice and slow burn of strange things happening in an LA apartment building, and slice of life of the protagonist, which has turned into truly out there concepts and strangeness. Would recommend to anyone who likes weird fiction and mysteries.
I’m also working my way through Shorefall, Robert Jackson Bennett, the second book in The Founders trilogy. It continues the interesting magic-hacking from the first book, but I still don’t think Jackson Bennett has his dialog feet under him yet. I found that The Tainted Cup felt much more natural than this series. Overall still fun!
Just finished Gridlinked which was the earliest Polity book I could find.
It still felt like I was reading a sequel. Apparently Asher published some short stories before this one…ugh.
Entertaining, though. It partly had a “007 in space” feel, mixing in a subplot with an alien intelligence manipulating the main character, a villain hell-bent on revenge, and even a surprise (and surprisingly heartwarming) romance between two supporting characters.
I’m in the middle of Restoree by Anne McCaffrey. This one has some elements of mystery, mistaken identity, and political intrigue. It’s painfully 60s (which, ok, fair, that’s when it was published).
I’m about to start another Robin Hobb “Assassin” novel (part 2 in the last trilogy), and I have Resolute by Jack Campbell queued up. It’s another entry in a long line of what I call “Space Captain Popsicle” when talking with my wife. The basic premise is that the main character was in a coldsleep escape pod from his starship for about a century. He gets picked up before its power fails by an allied battle fleet and ends up commanding the fleet in a desperate flight from deep inside enemy territory. Great space battles, infuriating interstellar politics, fascinating glimpses of aliens in a few spots. It’s quite a lot of fun :D
A Gentleman in Moscow by Amor Towles. Really charming and witty, with lots of references to classic Russian literature.
The Fox Wife by Yangsze Choo. It’s an interesting look into Manchurian folklore, with Snow’s explanations about how fox-girls like her see the human world, navigating potentially dangerous interactions with superstitious humans. The lady who sold it to me said it was excellent, but I’ll have to see how it ends before saying if I agree.
It’s a match for the ‘Supplementary’ bingo square, even though the author’s note unfortunately includes "However, I realized readers might not be fond of footnotes so I cut back on them." There’s plenty of room left in the margins, and she’d have heard no complaints from me if she’d done as she originally proposed. I like marginalia.
Reading 1984 rn.
I finished that last, god what a beating my mood took seeing it literally happening around me as I read it.
You know what I’m saying?
It’s the reason I started reading it in the first place. It feels highly relevant now in our western parts of the world, based on what I’d read about it.
I just finished When You Reach Me by Rebecca Stead. It’s a wonderful little scifi mystery that just draws you right in.
“Introduction to Mathematical Thinking” by Keith Devlin. Just an interesting (and short) book about the concepts around math.
And I’m slowly getting through a book about the history of Ottawa.
There There by Tommy Orange
On The Calculation of Volume by Solvej Balle
The Ontogeny of Information by Susan Oyama
