What have you been reading or listening to lately?
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Burial rites by Hannah Kent. No oppinion so far.
Just finished The Works of Vermin by Hiron Ennes (which was fantastic); starting There There by Tommy Orange and What Art Does by Brian Eno and Bette Adriaanse.
Have you read Leech by Ennes? It’s a bit different from Vermin but I really liked it. (Do check content warnings, though.)
Finally Out - Letting Go Of Living Straight by Loren A. Olson, M.D. and
Before We Were Trans - A New History of Gender by Kit HeyamThey are the first two books I checked out at the library after coming out, if anyone has any other good recommendations by all means.
Woodworking by Emily St James is an amazing book. It’s fiction about a trans woman in her 30s finally coming out, and a trans teenager who has already been out for a while.
Sounds perfect! Thanks so much for your recommendation :)
Finally reading The Lord of the Rings.
Almost at the end of Fellowship, but I must say it has been a bit of a drag.
I will most definitely finish it, but from all the hype I did have slighty higher expectations.
It’s also very likely that since I have already seen the movies and loved them, and already know what is going to happen, it has somewhat taken away from the book experience.
Although the whole Bombadil section was new, and I did not find it especially interesting.
Bear in mind that LOTR started out as a sequel to a children’s book, and changed into something else about halfway through FOTR. So you’re literally reading the epic fantasy genre being born on the page in front of you.
While technically true, I feel that this is a bit of a misnomer. Even though LotR is usually considered the archetypal example of “epic/high fantasy”, based on the other most popular works in the genre I think that LotR (and the rest of the non-Hobbit legendarium) is better described as “myth”, and I think that fans of epic/high fantasy coming to Tolkien are often disappointed for this reason.
For me the disappointment went the other direction - I read LotR first, and then I went on a fantasy reading binge and was repeatedly let down because I couldn’t understand why none of it felt like Tolkien.
I did read The Hobbit and enjoyed it quite a bit. It felt much smoother.
Also read his short stories “Farmer Giles of Ham” and “Leaf by Niggle”.
The first book is always a bit of s drag. Up until Moria at least. After that the pager picks up and the narrative gets split, which makes for better pacing and slow burn cliffhangers.
Henry David Thoreau - Walden
So far I only read the first chapter, Economics, and I’m not sure what to think of it. On one hand HDT clearly had a great capacity for identifying issues with society and capitalism, on the other hand his reaction to these feels like a capitulation, almost like a suicide. He diagnoses all those social issues, but instead of looking for a collective solution he takes the most individualistic course possible. He even states that this isn’t feasible for everyone and that wants others to go their own way. But if everyone lived his way there would be no human society possible. He states that cooperation isn’t really possible while at the same time taking advantage of cooperation (living on people’s land, help setting up the cabin, his mom washing his clothes, etc). The Indians who he praises so much were living under very cooperative social constructs, helping one another. Looking forward to seeing where this is going…
I finished Children of the Jedi just in time to get Dungeon Crawler Carl for my birthday, the entire series.
So I finished book 1 yesterday and am moving on to read Darksaber before going to Carl book 2. Tough decision haha.
Goddamnit Donut!
What did you think of Children of the Jedi? I have thoughts, but am interested to hear what you thought.
I… didn’t enjoy it, I don’t know if was the author, or just an issue with the publication era if that makes sense.
They introduced characters like you knew who they should be, I had just finished reading the Jedi Academy trilogy, so was super confused about Cray and Nico’s at first. I get introducing characters to flesh out later in other stories, but it just wasn’t well done.
What were your thoughts?
I completely agree with you. I wanted to know what you thought before I started crapping on it, but I think Hambly’s books are the two in the EU that I enjoyed by far the least.
There are others in this era that are quite good, so I really do think it’s the author/writing style/choices in this case. You’ve got some good stuff coming though (if you’re reading in chronological order), so enjoy! :)
My brother whom I’m borrowing the books from has read a couple of the further sagas and is waiting for me to get to them.
I’ve loved reading from the beginning even before Banes rule of 2.
He’s just starting to get the comics, so I’ve missed the Emperor Risen arc, so I’ll have to go back to that one eventually. Also none of young adult books either. I’ve heard… mixed things about them.
I loved the Bane trilogy - they might even be my favorite books from the EU.
The Jedi Academy YA books are pretty good for what they are - I’d recommend at least trying them. The actual children’s books not so much.
I’m about to start the New Jedi Order books, and I’m waiting for everything to go completely off the rails.
There just sounds like there’s such good lore in them, a lot of the old republic era is YA if I’m not mistaken. But it’s for ages 8-14(?) so the quality and content is all over the place.
My brother gave me his old Thrawn trilogy copies when I got back into reading, after those I read the two horror ones, death troopers and red harvest I think, and decided to go deep from the start. He had like 80% of the books found by then.
He buys them used while he travels.
Starting the bra dragonlance chronicles. I feel its aged poorly.
About a third of the way through Blood Meridian. Basically just feels like more of The Road but less gloomy and with more of the old ultraviolence.
Claims that this is the Great American Novel leave me mystified. I realize that this book as an “anti-western” isn’t doing quite the same thing as the morally gray Spaghetti Westerns were, but I still can’t help but think that they did it better.
Probably won’t read any more McCarthy after this.
Probably won’t read any more McCarthy after this.
So is this your first McCarthy novel? I consider him one of my favorite authors, but “Blood Meridian” was nothing special to me. Neither was “The Road” which is always highly praised and was my first book of his. The reason why I consider McCarthy a great author is his Border Trilogy, starting with “All the Pretty Horses”, it was so atmospheric and touching. There is always some violence but the focus of those books is elsewhere, it hits hard in the feels ;) So maybe, before you decide never to give him another chance, try that one more book. If you do, I’d love to hear about your experience.
Thanks so much for this comment! I’ll definitely try All the Pretty Horses before I make up my mind!
This one ended up on my DNF list. I heard the buzz about it and wanted to see what the fuss was all about. But I just didn’t see it.
I will never understand all the hype placed behind “The Road”.
Same. It was fine for post-apocalyptic lit but nothing spectacular.
I read Children of Time by Adrian Tchaikovsky which I enjoyed. I now started Children of Ruin, also by him.
spoiler
It’s cool, he made me root more for the spiders than the humans :) but it all turns out nice fortunately. I am not that far into the second book, but I think it’s interesting so far
Enjoy. I’ve recently finished the 4th one in the series and enjoyed them all
Started on Name of the Wind by Patrick Rothfuss. A lot of people say they like this one. Not far enough into it yet to say if I agree with them, but it looks like there’s some detailed worldbuilding which is a good sign.
The bad sign is book three of the trilogy is likely to never exist.
Finished the Babylon 5 PsyCorps trilogy
The first two were good, fleshing out the lore of the show and some characters.
The third was a bit meh
Listening to Braiding Sweetgrass. A great antidote to corporate capitalism, beautiful writing and well read by the author. Observation of nature that reminds me of A Pilgrim at Tinker Creek, but with a grounding tradition and a vision of better culture.
Just finished Sourdough (and before that Moonbound), delightful wacky sci-fi. Science is well thought out but not central. Mostly it’s an interesting world and characters that are enjoyable.
Still very slowly working on The Silent Companions by Laura Purcell. I’m putting it in the “fine” category for now, but I’m only 25% of the way in.
After a bit of gap, I read a couple when on holiday for a couple of weeks and am now that I am back, am starting another:
- Domination by Alice Roberts - looking at the rise of the Christian church over the first few centuries as an extension of the Roman empire - just doing empire stuff by other means. Solidly written and well evidenced.
- Smuggling Under Sail In The Red Sea by Henry de Montfreid - A fascinating account of the author’s hash smuggling expedition in the 1920s. I would put it broadly under travel writing, since he clearly loves being away from the ‘civilised’ world and writes best in those sections. All the casual racism that you would expect from the era, though.
- Bleak House by Dickens - some recent editorial about falling literacy and comprehension quoted the opening passage of the book and prompted me to pull it from the shelf. As with so many, I had Dickens forced upon me at school and my contrarian streak dominated my opinion of his writing for a long while after, but I did eventually realise that, had I been allowed to find his work myself, I would have enjoyed it. A good few decades have passed since then and I can appreciate it free of baggage now.
That first one sounds great!
Currently just started reading “the regicide report” by Charles Stross. Heven’t read much the last two weeks, our town had an anniversary so I was out a lot preparing, celebrating and cleaning up after.
