Welcome to year’s first weekly thread! How are you all doing? And what are you book / reading related resolutions for this year?
I started Ultra-processed Food by Chris van Tulleken
Just started it, but looks like an interesting read. It’s about the ultra-processed food we eat these days.
Also skimming through Ryder Caroll’s The Bullet Journal Method. Read this last year (or was that year before that?) and wanted to check something but decided to skim through most of it.
Still reading The Bands of Mourning by Brandon Sanderson, 3rd book in the 2nd era of Mistborn. It was going great but didn’t get to read much last week or so, should be getting back to it now.
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.
Just finished listening to:
- Every Tool’s a Hammer, by Adam Savage (self narrated)
- Moby Dick, by That One Guy (Anthony Heald narrating)
- Immune, by Philipp Dettmer (Steve Taylor narrating)
- Everything is Tuberculosis, by John Green (self narrated)
Just borrowed to listen, but haven’t started:
- Animal Farm, by George Orwell (Ralph Cosham narrating)
- Fahrenheit 451, by Ray Bradbury (Tim Robbins narrating)
Earlier in the year I listened to Kafka’s Metamorphosis in Persian, that was wild.
Libby is awesome
I’m around one third into Crossroads of Twilight, book 10 of the Wheel of Time -series by Robert Jordan. The consensus seems to be that this book is a sort of low point in the series, but so far it’s been ok. Still full of Jordan’s typical bullshit, but ok. Got to take the bad with the good. I do hope the next book, the last one before he died, picks up the pace at last.
Currently: O Pioneers! by Willa Cather. I picked it up somewhat randomly and feeling good about my luck. Sort of has a less depressing Thomas Hardy vibe, though still definitely about people trapped by society and circumstance.
I’m probably going to continue to read reach into the past for novels this year. Not sure what’s next, though.
The Three Musketeers (English translation).
- The Buffalo Hunter Hunter by Stephen Graham Jones
- Glorious Exploits by Ferdia Lennon
- Notes from Underground by Dostoevsky
The Buffalo Hunter Hunter is bloody fantastic. I love Stephen Graham Jones’ work.
How are the Notes from the Underground? I am thinking or reading them or Karamazovs.
I’m mostly reading it in order to follow Bakhtin’s Problems in Dostoevsky’s Poetics, so I’m kind of viewing it through that lens… I wouldn’t say it’s a compelling read on its own, but it’s interesting to see how Dostoevsky can create a character that engages in its own autonomous dialog with the reader.
I read Notes about 25 years ago and don’t remember anything about. I read it recently after Crime and Punishment (which I liked) and some short stories including White Nights (I loved it at the time but feel very differently about it later in my life). I still can’t get through Karamazovs, though. I’ve tried multiple times, but it is so unbelievably boring for me.
As I recall, Notes is a pretty short read, and also pretty good. May I suggest reading it first, and then Karamazovs, which is a much longer book?
In the middle of two books right now.
The first is Dungeon Crawler Carl which was given to me by my best mate for Christmas.
The second is On The Triangle Run. Read it before, but I really enjoy it.
I love Dungeon Crawler Carl. I listened to all 7 audiobooks twice last year.
I wanted a place to talk about them, so I just made !dcc@piefed.world in case you’re interested.
!dungeoncrawlercarl@lemmy.ca has some subscribers already
Awesome, I searched a few times over the last month and that one never popped up. Thanks!
Must have been due to Piefed not syncing properly with that instance or community.
Bizarre!
I finished “The Mass Strike, the Political Party and the Trade Unions” by Rosa Luxemburg a few days ago. I want to continue with another book by this author, but I’m undecided.
I’m about half way through Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut. And I just started The Witches by Roald Dahl. Trying to read as many banned books as possible this year. So far, I don’t get why any of them have been banned.
If you’re reading banned books, try Henry Miller. I love his work.
Tropic of Cancer is on my list! I don’t know much about him but I will add him to my list of authors to look into.
I’m about halfway through Obscura by Joe Hart, the only book on my hundreds-of-books-long TBR list that seems to qualify for the regular mode center square for bingo. It’s a fast read, as one would hope for a scifi thriller, but the badly done science keeps making me grumble and put it down.
I also started A Case of Mice and Murder by Sally Smith, which is fun so far.
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Finished Call for the Dead by John le Carré (Cold War spy murder mystery) | bingo: different continent, war, motion picture, short, political
When a routine security interview results in suicide, a secret service agent investigates the death with the help of a retired inspector.
Le Carré’s debut novel. I found it a little clunky and poorly aged in a couple of places, but thoroughly enjoyable overall. Smiley’s just fun to read, I think.
I’m reading Stranger in a Strange Land and How to do Nothing.
I’m really liking stranger in a strange land. What he imagined as sci-fi is interesting especially if you remember it’s written in the 60s. Lots of dialog, which I enjoy.
I’m not loving how to be perfect. I’m about 25% through, and it feels like most of it could have just been a blog post. Very verbose for the content provided.
I’m halfway through Star Wars “The Truce at Bakura”. Follows immediately after movie 6, and follows Han, Leia and Chewy.
But what I’m excited for is after I’m done, reading book 2 of Silo series next. The first book I read in 2.5 days…
As an aside, watching the show with the wife too, done episode 3. No spoilers, but it tells a slightly different story with the same major plot points so far. Big differences that could affect book story lines are, book has steel stairs and doors on every level, the show is concrete and open. They also pulling future stories, so if you want to read the books, episode 2 spoils the ending of book 1.
I still own and occasionally re-read some of the Star Wars Expanded Universe (EU) novels, which are relabeled to the non-canon “Star Wars Legends” now. IMO, they’re so much better than the direction the Disney canon went. Since they’re by so many different authors, the quality varies wildly, but I’d say my favorites are Timothy Zahn, Michael Stackpole, and maybe Kevin J. Anderson. But some other individual books or trilogies are great, too. The whole thing is huge, but frankly just fun serialized reads, so not too difficult to get into.
Truce at Bakura kind of kicks off the whole thing, but the best intro is the trilogy by Timothy Zahn, which starts with Heir to the Empire. There’s a few books in-between Truce and Heir if you want, like The Courtship of Princess Leia and the excellent X-Wing series, but I think the Zahn trilogy really sets the bar high for everything. If you’re interested in following up, that’s where I’d go next, and then you can go back and fill in the others if you wish. One of the issues with the EU is that while you don’t need to read every book/comic, they do form a continuity, so it can be mildly confusing if you read a reference to something you haven’t read about yet.
Thrawn was the first trilogy I read, then I did the two horror ones. Now I’m reading them in chronological order, so I’ve read 90ish of the 150+ legends books.
I do enjoy seeing each of the “random” authors be able to tell a story about their profession, like med star, the author was a biologist. So lots of medical jargon.
The only things I haven’t read are the YA stories and the comics. My brothers collected all of the books, and he’s started on the comics slowly as well.
I’m excited to get to the X-wing 10 book series, it’s one of the few my brother has also read. He’s read most of the new Jedi order era.
Oh, I thought you were a newbie; you’re an expert! I never really read much of the comics or YA novels either, except for Dark Empire, because I was tired of references to the revived Emperor that I didn’t understand.
The X-Wing books are great, but take place in a few spots in-between the other books, so that’ll be a fun revisit of older stories. The New Jedi Order is a re-envisioning that is over a massive number of books, but feels like every book goes so fast or has major consequences. Be prepared to be upset about characters you might love, but I think it’s close to the peak. I believe the many authors got together and plotted out the whole thing before it started, which is nice. What comes after is okay, but I think they knew Disney was buying by that point, so there’s not a great “ending,” even if some novels are still delightful. Also, if you haven’t read some of the Tales books, like Tales of the Bounty Hunters, those are fun (mostly) self-contained stories you can hit in-between the main novels.
Man, I wonder if I should start a full reread. I’m sure I’ve forgotten so much that I would still be surprised by plots.
It’s interesting you mention the Tales of, and the NJO being good because that one they worked together. The Tales of worked like that, a collection of short stories that combined at one point.
I enjoy OLD (ancient?) scifi-fi and it’s predominantly short stories as full books were too risky to publish at first. So the short story collections almost worked as a homage to them for me.
I started about 3 years ago and have read a SW book and then another book, and back. I’ve read Dune, The Expanse, and hitchhikers to name drop a few books/series. Sometimes it’s takes a couple months to finish a book, good the later Dunes were slow, sometimes a few days. Life’s fun.
This week I’ll mention John Grisham’s The Brethren.
The Brethren are three ex-judges in a low security federal prison who should have been in a harsher one because they’re using their time catfishing (though the book predates that term) and extorting closeted gay men who answer pen pal ads. In another thread, I think it was @misericordiae@literature.cafe who conjectured that the LGBTQ hard mode was easier than the easy mode. I’m therefore pleased to report that The Brethren contains mail fraud, wire fraud, bribery, tax evasion, embezzlement, legal malpractice, and even some light treason, but very little romance of any sort. Having seen the result of Grisham trying to write romantic scenes, this is probably for the best. He’s much better at these sorts of characters.
Nice!
I just finished Nova by Samuel Delaney. I did NOT like it. Would have abandoned it if it wasn’t our book club book
Also listening to Off Armageddon Reed by David Weber (Safehold book 01), and reading The Player of Gamer by Iain Banks (Culture book 02), and quite enjoying both.
Oms en série by Sefan Wul, weird french sci-fi book about aliens that keep humans as pets.
I just got to part 3 of Lonesome Dove by Larry McMurtry, what a ride, loving it so far.
