Started next book in the Dresden Files series, Ghost Story by Jim Butcher. This is book 13, and is pretty unique so far. The previous book “Changes” has changed quite a bit, and now we are living those changes.
Can’t put it down, want to see how it develops!
My previous book, Streams of Silver covers 2 bingo squares: Title: [X] of [Y] and Off your TBR pile (hard mode).
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.
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Howling Dark by Christopher Ruocchio. The second book in the Sun Eater Series. The first book was alright. The last third carried the whole book. Howling Dark is so much better. I’m about 350 pages in and everything about it is a vast improvement over the first book. Pacing, prose, the plot, everything is a big step up from the first book. Even Hadrian.
I’m reading Chapterhouse Dune right now. Really enjoying it so far and I’m a little sad that this will be the last of Frank’s books. The book is just as slow and a bit silly as the previous but I’m loving it fully.
Still reading East of Eden by John Steinbeck.
I in fact did not start those two other books I had mentioned previously. I think I’ll enjoy them more if I read them on my own time instead of feeling pressured by a book club.
Today, for some reason, I decided I wanted to learn about making a water well. So I’m about to read that section from Back to Basics: A Complete Guide to Traditional Skills by Abigail R. Gehring
East of Eden took me months to read a couple years back. It’s good and engaging, but it’s so dense and full of sidestories that have nothing to do with the matter at hand
I’m enjoying it quite a bit myself. This is the first Steinbeck that I’ve read and I’ll probably end up reading some of his other works.
I also enjoyed it. I was mainly saying don’t feel bad that it is taking awhile to read. It’s dense and challenging and takesoat people a long time to read. I’ll have to read Grapes of Wrath at some point, but i have sich a huge backlog as is
Yeah, it’s definitely not a light read. Really good though.
I’m rereading the entire discworld series but in a new language and I’m just loving it. I’m just about to finish equal rites, and I’d honestly forgotten what a joy these books are. I miss Terry Pratchett and his profoundly positive impact on me.
Nice. Learning a new language? Or just a different language you already knew?
Reading a book is a great way to improve your language skills, also makes learning fun.
Learning a new language, I can speak and understand pretty well now, but reading is a great way to expand vocabulary I think.
Yeah, reading is great for that.
I’m still working through Kushiel’s Avatar by Jacqueline Carey. I love the series, I just read her writing style pretty slowly.
Also working through Cibola Burn by James S.A. Corey audiobook. I’m rereading the whole Expanse series in publication order, including the short stories.
I’m also thinking of starting The Expanse: Dragon Tooth graphic novels since I have a really nice boxed set from the Kickstarter.
How are the dresden files? Had a friend recommend it years ago but I never really tried it
It’s one of my favorite series. If you’d like to read just one book to get a feel for it, Dead Beat was written as a soft introduction because the TV show was coming out on scifi at the time. If you’re willing to start from the beginning, the first 2½ books are enjoyable but pretty cliché. About midway through the third book is when it really starts to take off and hit its stride. There’s a reason it’s one of the most well-known urban fantasy series and it truly has some really fun moments.
Other than what Jaymes mentioned below (above?), it’s an urban fantasy, protagonist is a wizard in a chicago, working as a PI. Starts from there, but characters evolve as the series progresses.
Also, “dresden” isn’t my real name 😀
Finishing up Die, Respawn, Repeat.
Not sure if I will continue with the series I like the premise but the execution seems to not be there.
Started reading Entangled Life. Just a few pages in and I was dumbfounded by how almost ubiquitous and even supernatural fungi is, and how we barely even scratch the surface even with what we learn about them in school, and with our fascination with horror content about fungi like the cordyceps or something. Like for example, fungi served as roots before plants had them, they make microclimates, they have high metabolic ability, in which the book also described as something akin to alchemy… The ability to turn the raw environmental ingredients into a variety of substances, and structures with unique properties. And that’s just in the few pages of the first chapter!
Also, when I started getting into reading this year I got interested in the classics, and had a good time with reading Don Quixote. Interestingly enough, the part with Marcella almost seemed like it criticized incel culture. Also to those who say that brainrot culture is a recent thing and that the past was better, read Don Quixote as it portrays a phenomenon of brainrot except with chivalric romances, which was the pop culture of the day. I also recently read Teleny: The Reverse of the Medal and Manon Lescaut. Damn Des Grieux, you were born for tragedy… Also, I’ve read the Picture of Dorian Gray, Carmilla, and Venus in Furs. You may see where I’ve been going if you’re familiar with these titles, and it’s all about love and passion and, well, a dash of homoerotism. Just in time for Pride Month. I honestly wanted to see how love and desire, such messy feelings, was felt by people who we were less likely to relate to, even idolized in our flawed perception of their orderliness, and whose lives were struck, smitten by it. The twitter post about Rennaissance teenagers comes to mind. What was their lives like, outside of cultural survivorship bias. I might even read On Love after reading Entangled Life if I have the time (unfortunately I have to deal with summer class, so I’m reading as much as I can before my time and energy gets sucked into it).
Fungi sounds interesting, which is so weird!
Interesting list of books. Have fun!
I’ve been on a Brandon Sanderson kick after starting and finishing all of the Mistborn books last year. Now I’m on The Stormlight Archive series and just finished The Way of Kings (book 1) a few days ago, so I’m onto the second!
Second book is my favourite on of the series!
Fiction: The Wandering Inn series
Nonfiction: Homage to Catalonia by Orwell. Started yesterday and almost done. Highly highly recommend.
Homage To Catalonia is my favorite book. It should be mandatory reading before anyone touches 1984 or Animal Farm
Never read it, adding to my list.
It is so good. The opening little thing about the Italian militiaman just sucks you right in and then it just gets better.
I think about that scene everytime i have a great encounter with a stranger or look at an interesting map. I probably read (a heavily edited and censored verison) that book 20 times in high school. He has such an English take on the Spanish: eternally frustrated by their carefree attitude while simultaneously enamored with it. There is nothing else like it.
Last three weeks I finished John Scalzi’s “the consuming fire” and “the last emperox” and “the android’s dream”. Latter one was just up my ally, the other two were fine except for the villains of the story, they were too over the top for me. Somewhere along the line I also read Orson Scott Card’s “the last shadow”, I had read all the Ender and shadow books years ago, but somehow missed this one. It’s not the best book in the series, way too much people for way too little storyline. In the last month and a half or so I’ve read the Beastie Boys book by Adam Horovitz and Michael Diamond, which was a good book to read on and off between doing other stuff. Basically I forgot to mention it before because I wasn’t reading it during my normal reading time. Currently I’ve just started “the long earth” by Terry Pratchett and Stephen Baxter, it’s a bit too early for an opinion on that one.
Fate Cycle - Sins of the Past by Randolph Lalonde. I’m a huge fan of his sci fi and fantasy books, but hadn’t got around to this one as it’s not part of one of his other series. I’m really enjoying it so far, but it’s longer than I expected, and more complicated, which is a nice change.
I’ve got the latest in his space opera universe queued up next, Rogue Chase. It’s the third in a short series, set in his Spinward Fringe universe, and I’m really looking forward to it.
I’ve just set up KOReader with a few books, and will be setting up Calibre to feed it books too, so have a few options for when I finish these :)
Currently finishing up Old Man’s War by John Scalzi. It’s well-written, but not really my cup of tea.
__
Finished:
The Curse of Chalion by Lois McMaster Bujold
An ex-soldier gets a job as a tutor/secretary for a member of the ruling family, helping her navigate court life, enemy schemes, and the titular family curse.
As I said previously, this was too slow for my taste, but I liked the characters and the plot. I did spend a lot of the book hoping the 35yo MC would get introduced to a potential love interest that wasn’t 19, though. (Thankfully, not much time is spent on their crushing.)
Bingo squares: x of y, steppin’ up (HM), political (HM)
Why didn’t you like Old Man’s War, and do you like Scalzi’s other work?
You copied my bingo square “x of y”!
This is gonna sound dumb, but it was too much war for me. I imagine the battle after battle after battle + blur of faceless soldiers was the point, but I needed either a more interesting plot or more character work for it to hold my attention. I haven’t read any other Scalzi, but I liked the narrative voice well enough in Old Man’s War to be down to try something else by him at some point.
Hmm…
I have read only his Kaiju Preservation Society and it’s good. I got the first few books of Old Man’s War, and plan to start it soon.
Let me know how you end up liking it!
Sure, will share it here when I read it.
Just finished Slaughterhouse Five again. Reading Starve Acre and the complete farside collection.
deleted by creator
I’ve never heard of deleted by creator.
What’s it about?
:p
For the first time in my life, upvoted a deleted comment, only because of you! 😀
Haha, I just had to say it. :D
ChatGPT describes the hypothetical book thusly (this sounds like a book that I would pick up based on it having an interesting description, but later be disappointed by, also somehow the main characters name is the same as the author?):
In the sprawling neon megacity of Aurix, memories are currency, and forgetting is a service you can buy. “Delete & Repeat” is the motto of MemEdit Inc., where Creator once worked as a senior technician scrubbing trauma, rewriting truth, and building better lives—for a price.
But one morning, Creator wakes up in a blank apartment with no ID, no connection to the memory grid, and no digital footprint. Surveillance doesn’t see her. Her former coworkers don’t remember her. She doesn’t appear in any registry—not even her own memories show her face in the mirror.
As she begins a dangerous search for who deleted her and why, Creator uncovers a subnetwork of “ghosts”—people wiped clean by the system—and a conspiracy to control not just what people remember, but who is allowed to exist at all.
Now, Creator must decide: is she rebuilding her past to reclaim her identity—or rewriting the world to forge a new one?
Wow, that is alarmingly good for AI.
I’m sure a competent scifi author could write a really good book from this prompt.
If I wasn’t so concerned about the future for humanity, I would be impressed.
Maybe it’s my bias since I already know, but it sounds like a book written by an AI.
💯
