Hello everyone! The weekly threads are back after a small hiatus.
I was reading Rosemary and Rue by Seanan McGuire (first book in her October Daye urban fantasy series), picked it up again but bookmark had dropped somewhere and I couldn’t find where I was, so may start from some earlier place.
What about all of you? What have you been reading or listening to lately?
For details on the c/Books Bingo, check the Midpoint check-in post.
‘Fado Alexandrino’ by António Lobo Antunes. Amazing book, I’m sad I didn’t read him before he died…
Im coming to terms with the fact I may have ADHD, talking to a psychologist.
So, reading is often nothing or everything, lately it is nothing, but prior to that I was re reading Dune up to Children (I have like 20 pages left to read and I have been at that part for about 5 months )
Today I will revisit Master and Margarita where I have about 100 pages left also have been at thst part for 2 or 3 months.
Prior I read some Spanidh novel about a poor man who went from master to master, each one treating him badly until he was more or less liberated.
I plan on revisiting Don Quixote after…I’ve resd the first few hundred pages like 6 times and quite liked it…
I may read Amadis of Gaul along with Don Quixote.
Uhh…and there is King Arthur and the Round Table (Mark Twain) thst one I am ln the last 10 chapters or so)
I really hope to come to a solution with this
It fear and feel that I’ve been ‘with’ Don Quixote for the better part of 5 years. Listening to audio books before sleeping and forgetting where I left off and re listening. And then starting over completely. Or just starting a chapter over.
That is leading me into a rabbit hole of romantic novels. Romantic as in Chivalry because I feel as I though, while I love the hunour and now feel a strange closeness to Sancho Panzo, his aquire, his Horse, and Don Quixote himself-I jave done Cervantez a disrepect bu not digesting it fully.
Which is also becoming true of Master and Margarita.
Like Im reading and choosing books based on my insatiable drive (sometimes there sometimes not) to fill these made up gaps of knowledge (Chivalry Romance novels, European Classics, Russian Classics, at one point biographies and memoirs of big events such as a Vietcong Memoir…)
I’m reading Demon Copperhead and listening to Lonesome Dove. Both have been great so far.
Nice that the weekly thread is back 🙂
Since the last one I finished Roadside Picnic. It was good. Still have to watch the movie though.
After that I tried reading Duin, the Dutch translation of Frank Herbert’s Dune, but I stopped reading after about a third of the book. The translation wasn’t good, so I thought about reading it in English, but ultimately the story was annoying me.
Then I read Holly by Stephen King and his The Outsider after that. They were fine. Just fine, nothing more. Not really interested in reading more by him. It was nice to read something better after Duin though.
Then I read The Road by Cormac McCarthy, which I had wanted to read for years already. It was heavy and the world he describes is very bleak, but the book is beautiful and so well-written. I highly recommend it.
And now I’m reading A Single Man by Christopher Isherwood. A few months ago I saw the movie and I can already say the book is so much better.
“We wish to inform you that tomorrow we will be killed with our families”
It’s about the Rwandan genocide. Very difficult to get through just because of how horrific what happened was.
Related: Fuck the Catholic church and Madeleine Albright/ClintonEnshittification by Cory Doctorow
Oh! It has been on my “maybe” reading list for a bit! Can you give a review? Is it worth a read?
It’s ok. It’s worth a read. It’s very US centric.
I’m not that far maybe the first third.
So far it’s mostly exposing the concept and the forces at play. For me it’s mostly things that I already know
Missed you! Read the stainless steel rat series by Harry Harrison up to “The stainless steel rat for president”. Started reading “Der Jesus-deal” by Andreas Eschbach, but didn’t get far, it’s on the “didn’t finish” pile. After the first chapter it sidetracked to “religious conspiracies in the USA” and I’ve read plenty of those, though Eschbach probably did a better job than some others I’ve read.
Now reading “A death in Cornwall” by Daniel Silva. This one’s been on the shelf for some time, I never started it because this series is centered around some Israelian super spy, and earlier installments tended to glorify Israel. However, this is just a nice detective story so far, I’m about 2/3 through and no Israelic involvement.
Jean M Auel - The Earth’s Children, volume 4 (The Great Journey), book 1/2.
An adventure in the Europe of 30,000 years ago
- Wild Seed by Octavia Butler (Almost done!)
- Dune by Frank Herbert (just started; IRL Butlerian Jihad when??)
- Castle of Wizardry by David Eddings (audiobook; wow do I ever hate the narrator of this series)
- The War on Cars by Sarah Goodyear, Doug Gordon, and Aaron Naparstek. (Somewhat painful to read)
- Automatic Noodle by Annalee Newitz (this one is fun!)
- City of Brass by S.A. Chakraborty (so far… it’s so-so.)
Sharp Ends by Joe Abercrombie, and Guards! Guards! by Terry Pratchett.
Joe Abercrombie is where I’m headed once I finish the expanse. I read the First Law trilogy and loved it and haven’t stopped thinking about it, so I want to read more of his writing.
The Heroes and Red Country were my favourite so far, so at least in my opinion you have the best to come. Red Country was a 5/5 for me.
I’m currently reading book 8 of the Star Wars XWing series “Isards Revenge”. It takes place immediately after the Thrawn trilogy and brings back Isard who was supposed to have been dead. She took over the Emperors “role” after he was killed.
During the hiatus I read a few of the other XWing books and the entirety of the Remembrance of Earths Past (3body problem) by Cixin Liu. Wonderful read, and gave me a few new perspectives about the universe.
Im looking forward to The Captives War book 2 in a couple weeks! Same author(s) as The Expanse.
I just finished Thrawn (the prequel not the trilogy) and it was every bit the one-dimensional schlocky romp that I had hoped for. Marc Thompson does some p entertaining voice work.
Ah man, I forgot to specify this is legends! My brother enjoyed the new trilogy, not as much as legends though.
The Thrawn trilogy was my first foray into the SW/Legends book universe, from there I’ve been reading all the legends books in chronological order. So this puts me around 70 or so. My brothers collected them all used and I’m borrowing them.
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I’m Glad My Mom Died by Jennette McCurdy. So far so good, though I’m only 100 pages in. It’s been an interesting and valuable perspective into what it’s like living with a hoarder as a child and what Hollywood is like for a child. While the writing is nothing special, I admire McCurdy’s juxtaposition of levity and sadness.
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Brief Interviews with Hideous Men by David Foster Wallace. This one’s a tough one. The stories in this collection discuss very tough topics through the perspective of your average alpha male. While it’s obviously a critique of that archetype, DFW does not go out of his way to paint them as fools and dirtbags. Instead, he does the opposite: carefully structured arguments for misogyny, some truly horrid rape scenes, detailed breakdowns of employable manipulation tactics, all presented to the reader raw. DFW does not criticize these men, he merely presents them, and I would be gravely concerned about the damage this could do to the reader’s thought process if his readers were not so fucking weird and discerning. The verbosity of his prose acts as a sort of filter, ensuring that for the most part these stories are only read by people that understand the books premise, that these men are HIDEOUS.
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History of Puerto Rico by Fernando Pico. The subtitle for this one is A Panorama of its people, and yet half way through I’m still forced to read about colonial conflicts and the actions of the elite. Demography and social sentiment are touched on, but it’s tricky because pretty much all of the sources on Puerto Rico’s pre-colonial history were destroyed and pretty much all of the sources on Puerto Rico’s colonial history are from the perspective of the colonizers. Definitely a dry read so far, and I’m sick of reading about imperial atrocities.
I really liked McGurdy’s book. Her mother was a piece of work, but it’s obvious she’s done the work and is in a better head space now. Good for her. And yeah, the writing isn’t exactly complex, but it gets the point across.
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Soviet-era sci-fi, The Final Circle of Paradise (Хищные Вещи Века) by Strugastky brothers.
It’s really weird. MC poses as a writer in a peaceful resort town while investigating a case, but the townsfolk are just strange and unpleasant. There is a conflict between “intels” (high society type of people) and regular people, but it is still unclear if anyone is in the right.
After my trip to the gulags, I hopped back in to The Wheel of Time series by Robert Jordan with the eleventh book, Knife of Dreams. It’s the last book he wrote before his death. I actually liked the previous - tenth - book, though it had very little plot. I think maybe two chapters in the whole book moved the story along, so practically you could skip the whole of it and not miss much. Luckily the one I’m currently reading actually starts moving things towards the climax. As ever, I am terribly conflicted with Jordan’s writing.
I also some time ago watched the movie The Death of Stalin and quite enjoyed it, so inspired by that I picked up the original comic book by Fabien Nury and Thierry Robin. It was a good comic book, though perhaps somewhat more sombre in tone than the film. I heartily recommend both though.
Micky 7 books (2 released so far; basis for the Mickey 17 movie), both wildly entertaining in a sassy sci-fi way
Sea of Tranquility by Emily St. John Mandel. Tight little time travel tale with a tidy, satisfying conclusion
Termination Shock by Neil Stephenson. Decent ideas, characters a bit 2-D for a book that long but their unexpectedness kinda makes up for it? Exhillerating moments for an existentially depressing subject.
