Still reading Whispers Underground by Ben Aaronovitch. Book 3 of Rivers of London series.
Though, technically I hadn’t read anything last two weeks to it’s more of “got back to reading”.
It’s still book 3, but I found it interesting how different it is from Dresden Files. There is no forces of nature with personal enmity with the protagonist (yet), it’s just (magic) crimes being solved by (magic) police. More of a police procedural then whatever genre Dresden Files is 😀
What about all of you? What have you been reading or listening to lately?
For details on the c/Books bingo challenge that just restarted for the year, you can checkout the initial Book Bingo, and its Recommendation Post. Links are also present in our community sidebar.
I just finished Dark Age from the Red Rising series. Started on the Light Bringer audiobook this morning while working! I haven’t been this into a series in a long time so I’ve been blazing through it, though Dark Age was a bit of a slog for me so I’m hoping book six will pick up in pace a bit.
I also started The Colour of Magic last night to give myself a lighthearted option in between the heavier series. I’ve read more books this year I think than I ever have before thanks to the Book Bingo challenge keeping me motivated! :D
Red Rising gets lots of praise here, should get around to it soon.
Finished Thomas Sankara: A Revolutionary In Cold War Africa. A very nuanced look at the man. A real idealist bursting with energy, a brilliant man and a visionary, yet inexperienced in politics and governance and prone to misjudging people by assuming (and demanding) the best of them. By nature an improviser, trying to improvise an entire government, and often with a mindset too military for civilian tastes, but too ‘revolutionary’ for military tastes. It’s made me hungry to read more about the situation ‘on the ground’ during Sankara’s administration.
Just started From Volga To Ganga by Rahul Sankrityayan
I’m currently almost completely through The Capital / Das Kapital by Karl Marx.
About 20% into Nietzsches Thus Spoke Zarathustra. Not an easy read but fascinating.
Nearly done with Project Hail Mary, Andy Weir! It’s quite good, and I’m glad I’d read somewhere here to go in with zero context. Would highly recommend.
Continuing to listen my way through the Otherland series by Tad Williams. Currently in book two, River of Blue Fire. It seems to me that he wrote all four books as one book and was told that was ~3000 pages wouldn’t sell well. I’m very much enjoying it. Williams writes in a detailed pace, which can seem slow at times, but I love his use of 20th century literature as the basis of all the VR worlds. They’re never the same as their origin and are wonderfully permuted.
I went into Project Hail Mary blind too, and it was very interesting to see how things unfold.
Someone else mentioned Otherland series in the same thread. Have never read it, but I remember loving Memory, Sorrow and Thorn (though I don’t remember a single thing from that), so will check it out.
I think I’m enjoying Otherland more than Memory, Sorrow and Thorn! They’re both following many of the main tropes of their own genre, cyberpunk, and fantasy respectively, but I think Otherland is more unique of an entry. MSaT possibly would have hit harder had I read it as a teenager.
I did read it as a teenager, maybe that’s why I remember liking it so much.
Will add Otherland to my list, but I have his Shadowmarch series in my TBR pile, so will prefer to read that before getting anything else.
I ended up tearing through Babel by RF Kuang and finished it today. It was a solid 4/5. I think at times it was very in your face with the anticolonialism and racism but was probably very in line with the time frame. I would have enjoyed some more delving into how the magic system worked/was created as well. But if you can make etemology engaging i feel like you did a pretty good job.
Maybe now i can focus on finishing Lady of the Lake.
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Maybe chose something easier to read before jumping into something so dense.
If Audiobooks are your thing, I highly recommend Otherland in audiobook format. It’s slow and methodical, but it scratches the same itch Wheel of Time did. Characters that you know you can come back to for a long time. Comforting, even if the content isn’t always cozy or nice.
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Fair enough! Enjoy your next read :)
It’s a horror week for me. Currently reading Shoot Me in the Face on A Beautiful Day by Emma E. Murray and also beta reading a horror novel by someone I know. Quite enjoying them both.
Recently read Albert Camus’ The Stranger. That was pretty decent. Think I’ll go for one of his nonfictional works soonish, been intending to for a while.
I’m 80% of the way through my star wars: aftermath book by chuck wendig. I plan to pivot to Billion Dollar Ransom by James Patterson after this, instead of reading the rest of the series. I will likely come back to the series after i read that Patterson book.
I am currently reading Legends of Localization Book 1: The Legend of Zelda by Clyde Mandelin as part of a readalong with a friend. It focuses on the first entry in the TLOZ series and I’ve found it really interesting so far. I hesitate on reading fanmade gaming history books cause I don’t trust the information will be accurate or well-written but so far, so good.
I’ve just started another book (haven’t even finished the prologue yet) with another friend called Secrecy World: Inside the Panama Papers Investigation of Illicit Money Networks and the Global Elite by Jake Bernstein. This book got on my radar after I found out the Laundromat film is based on it. I suspect to get mad at rich people’s audacity by the end of it.
Right now I’m reading the biography of a Finnish conservationist Pentti Linkola. He was controversial but interesting a character.
I also have City of Darkness on the table, it’s about Kowloon Walled City. Both books are great!
I remember learning about that Kowloon city from playing the game Stray, whose setting is heavily inspired by it. While not a book, it might be something you’d be interested in if you haven’t already played it.
I just finished Fahrenheit 451. It was pretty decent but the ending was kind of a letdown.
Now… I’m searching for a new book and don’t know what to read.
I feel like Fahrenheit 451 and 1984 go hand-in-hand if you haven’t read it already.
Yeah, I have read 1984 a while back ago. Was a really good book. I still think about Winston and o’Brain with the … scene.
I freaking dislike how Lemmy does the spoiler tag. So I will avoid what, I wrote previously.
Yeah. The spoiler tool is a little janky.
I haven’t read that book in so long, I can’t clearly remember what happens but I do remember it left me feeling rather hopeless.
Oh yeah, the book does give that kind of feeling. Especially the ending. However, I have decided to pick up Before Your Memory Fades by Toshikazu Kawaguchi. It’s the third book in the series of ‘‘Before the Coffee Gets Cold’’ and I do highly recommend the books.
I finished Grendel by John Gardner. There were some parts I really liked and some that were just ok. Overall a decent read.
I’ve started rereading the Lady Astronaut books by Mary Robinette Kowal. They are just as gripping and bingeable as I remember them being. I finished the first one (The Calculating Stars) and am currently on book 2 (The Fated Sky).
Lady Astronaut books
Is the series finished? Or atleast have non-cliffhanger ending?
So I’ve only read the first 3. The 4th just came out recently, hence my reread. Each of the books I’ve read had a non-cliffhangery ending and was self-contained enough that I’d be satisfied even if the series didn’t continue.
Almost finished ‘Les entretiens’ de Confucius (in French, because, well, I’m French). Started today: ‘Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave’.
Work of fiction waiting to be started: Mary Shelley’s ‘Frankenstein’, J.M. Barrie ‘The complete Peter Pan’.
Lots of classics! Have fun!
Thx.
Yep, a lot of classics indeed. Moving back to print from ebooks a little over a year ago was also an opportunity to (re)read a lot of them as they can be found for dirt cheap, on the used market.
The Douglass one was annotated by the previous owner (I don’t mind that, provided that doesn’t make the page unreadable) and the funny thing is that their notes so far are really not focusing on what I’m getting out of this very unsettling text. In its own way, next to the text itself, this person’s notes are another enriching encounter.
That’s interesting. A luck find, I would say.
Depends the kind of book you read and the shop you’re visiting but it can be relatively frequent, and sometimes it’s more interesting than the others.
Ahan, I am apparently going to wrong bookshops.
