Hello Everyone!
What are you all reading?
I am currently going through a re-read of Dresden Files by Jim Butcher. Currently on 2nd book, Fool Moon.
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I just finished Project Hail Mary. A wonderful and fun read. Highly recommend if you like science fiction.
I found it to be one of the most engrossing and wholesome books that I’ve read in years!
I just got it during my latest book shopping! Going to read it soon.
As you should. It was very interesting.
The Wheel of Time
What do you think of it? It’s on my list to try and read before the end of the year.
I watched the first 5 or so episodes of the Prime show a while ago and was interested but it didn’t keep me hooked.
I watched s1 and thought it was ok. A little too teen angsty for me, but the introduction to the universe was enough to get me to start the 1st book. A year and a half later, and 14 books in ( I’m halfway through the very last one) and I’m absolutely floored.
The whole series is nothing short of epic; the world building, magic system, character arcs, the story. One of my favorite reads so far, and certainly my most favorite in the fantasy genre.
It’s a great series, but like many such stories, some of the books in the middle are a bit of a slog, but still a great series overall.
It’s one of my favourite series, and probably one of my most re-read one. Maybe because it was one of the first epic fantasy of such huge proportions that I ever read.
It has been a long time since I read it last. Just not sure I have the time to start 14-book series these days. Maybe some day…
Just read an erotic romance, Heart of the Mountain by Snek Guy. It is about a mercenary going up a mountain to slay a dragon and take her hoard of gold. Things don’t go quite as he planned. It was well written, but a bit too much smut for my taste. I wrote a bit more here.
Just started the My Best Friend is an Eldritch Horror series.
Is “My Best Friend is an Eldritch Horror” available as a web novel somewhere?
It was originally published on Royal Road, but has since been moved to Amazon.
Ah, okay. Thanks for the info!
I just started City of Refuge by Tom Piazza. It’s a fictional account of two families in New Orleans during hurricane Katrina. I’m only 12% in but so far I’m impressed by how real I feel like the pov characters are.
Also reading Lichtenbergianism by Dale Lyles. It’s about using procrastination as a creative strategy. 30% in, and juries out on whether I’ll find anything helpful in it.
procrastination as a creative strategy
I want this. I like procrastinating! Share your opinions about finishing it.
City of Refuge looks like an interesting book. Going to check it out.
I got more inspiration from the Lichtenbergian book than new information. Among other things, it made me start a kanban for my personal projects and now I have less anxiety over how much I need to do and in what order. If you’d like, I’m happy to mail you my copy, since I’m unlikely to read it again.
Bit late to the party, but I just started reading the Final Empire, Mistborn series #1. Only a few chapters in, but I’m enjoying it so far!
I’m almost done with Mistborn! Hope you enjoy
Ah, great series. Have you read any other of Brandon Sanderson’s work? Or is this your first?
My first. I have Way of Kings on hold at my library, so certainly not my last haha.
Welcome to the club!
I’ve read maybe 3 books all the way through in my entire life. My girlfriend has been trying to get me to read before bed and on the recommendation of some discord friends I purchased Infinite Jest and am a quarter of the way through it. It’s been a jarring book with the tonal shifts and the way it rapid fires between characters and settings, but I’ve absolutely loved some of the perspectives and dialog that DFW creates. If anyone else is a fan, I’d love more recommendations in the same vein, specifically the type of warped humor and how it stems from the human condition.
I haven’t read Infinite Jest, so can’t recommend anything like that, but keep visiting these posts, I am sure you’ll be able to find something you like.
Or you can create a separate post, asking for recommendations, it should get you more visibility.
I recently finished the Discworld series by Terry Pratchett. Wonderful books. I read it in order of subseries which is a good way to get into the books, but it does make it a bitt jarring when going back to the first books, before Pterry really found his stride. Once I get around to a reread I think I’ll do it chronologically.
As a change of pace i continued with Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. Something of a whiplash change from Discworld and a it got me a bit too amped when reading right before bed. Still a very fun and interesting read.
Now onto SAS: Rogue Heroes, which i started earlier but have yet to finish.
I have read about a quarter of Discworld novels, wanted to read them all in released order, but couldn’t find many books. I plan to start the re-read again once I have found some of the remaining books.
The books are very much worth rereading. The layers of jokes and references are so deep that you likely won’t catch all on the first or second reads.
I can recommend The Annotated Pratchett File, https://www.lspace.org/books/apf/, for an in depth review of a lot of jokes and references. It explains a lot of things that are hard to catch if you haven’t grown up in England. Many things i thought Pterry had made up for the Disc is just references to real world things and events.
Wow, just took a quick peek at the that, and it’s really detailed. Bookmarked the page and downloaded a copy. Will check it after reading each book.
Sadly i’ve just discovered that from Going Postal and onwards there are no annotations. Seems the project never finished with all the books :/
The Sword Defiant by Gareth Hanrahan. It’s enjoyable.
I really wish he’d describe scenes visually, but it’s character driven and he does a good job with their internal lives.
I used to skip all the visual descriptions, didn’t care much about them (also, didn’t understood half of the words used to explain the appearance of things or people). I have started to pay attention to them now, but I would probably still like a book that doesn’t worry about these too much.
Is it a series? Or a single book?
There’s definitely a balance to be struck with descriptions. Too little beats too much, IMO, but I appreciate a little food for my imagination.
It’s the first book in a series (I think). It’s epic fantasy, but it’s set in the Happily Ever After. The protagonist is part of the motley crew that defeated the big bad twenty years earlier.
His previous series (Black Iron Legacy) was a lot of fun. Of recommend them both.
Sounds interesting, going to check them out. Thanks!
I’m doing a reread of Human To Human by Rebecca Ore. It’s the third book in the trilogy.
It’s an old scifi series from the early ninties, but holds up well. I absolutely love how she designs her aliens.
The first book is Becoming Alien.
I was itching for a good alien show recently, didn’t find anyhting I liked (though with so many streaming services, couldn’t figure out where to watch half the stuff).
If not TV, I can atleast read a good aliens book. Will check it out.
It is pretty hard to find a good alien show on TV or in movies.
The downside of Star Trek is that aliens are often TOO human, and the downside of Star Wars is some of the aliens are TOO alien…
I find SFF literature does a much better job than visual media at really exploring alien psychology and and how communication might go with aliens who do not look human. Because it can base things in real scientific concepts without worrying overmuch about how much the CGI or prosthetics will cost, or if you’ll lose the casual non-nerd viewer.
I’ve a few quibbles about how Rebecca Ore looks at human behavior with a little too much “nature” over “nurture”, esp. re: gender dynamics, but the biology really is solid with the aliens. And you could argue she’s only looking at humans through the same lens she uses on her aliens.
She posits that intelligent life will sort of fill certain convergently evolved body plans, much like how in an ecosystem animals with very different ancestors can come to look like one another.
Like the mammal wolf and the marsupial tasmanian tiger (Thylacine) have converged to have even really similar skull shapes despite one being a placental mammal and the other a marsupial, or how sharks and dolphins have very similar body plans despite one being a fish and the other a mammal.
So in the series, there’s a few “buckets” that most sapient aliens evolved to fit in…ape-like ex-brachiators, bipedal ground-walking birds/aivan lizards, bear-type creatures, bat-like creatures. There’s cases where the main character runs into two “birds” but they’re not even from the same planet, they just both evolved a bird-like form and became intelligent separately.
The computer tech in her series is old–pre-internet sci-fi didn’t do the greatest job of predicting how fast or complex computer and information technology would become–and the main character is a not-too-bright everyman sort of character…
…but it still works pretty well, to allow us to deconstruct her world through his eyes.
Interestingly enough, my favorite characters aren’t the humans (they’re all very flawed), but instead the aliens, esp. the Rector and the Sub-Rector.
Yeah, I agree about alien shows and movies. There are still some fun shows, if you are willing to let go of few things, like Falling Skies.
Thanks for such a detailed response, it looks interesting. I am going to check it out.
📖 Les Furtifs by Alain Damasio
and
📖 Mathematica by David Bessis
Les Furtifs looks interesting, from what I could glean. Is it available in English?
And Mathematica is just a Mathematics book, right?
I do not think that Les Furtifs is available in English yet…
As for Mathematica, yes it is about the Mathematic however at a personal development level. David Bessis tries to explain that people’s brain is compatible with the mathenathic. Some people wrongly think that they are bad at this because nobody taught them how to do. For him abstraction is something that need to be trained. An example is that each one of us can easily imagine (to watch in our head) a perfect circle even if it does not exist in our reality. The author explains that to do Math is to learn to fail, to make mistakes, to correct our intuition.
That’s very interesting. Thanks for the info!
Ward by wildbow. Not technically a book but it’s wonderful if you are into that genre and honestly probably still good if you aren’t. Finished worm and while back and would definitely recommend that as well
To give a brief idea it’s “what if super powers came from incredible trauma and were designed to be the worst possible power for them specifically” there’s a lot more to it like A LOT but that is a general idea. It follows Taylor and her journey after gaining power. It’s essentially her struggle to be in control of everything that goes on around her
I read quite a bit of Worm, I think I was near the end, but then took a break, and after that couldn’t find where I stopped. I plan to reread it someday.
How’s Ward compared to Worm?
Ward is less fighty fighty action and more dealing with trauma and mental illness. If you remember what happened to glory girl you’ll know what I mean when I say shits fucked.
I personally prefer worm so far but I think ward is better writing objectively
Yeah, the novel/book is great, but that world isn’t a great place to live in.
House of Leaves. It’s sick. Anyone got other books that go off the rails like that?
Iron Gold by Pierce Brown.
I had a really hard time with Iron Gold. So much so that I couldn’t finish it. I keep meaning to go back to it and try again, but I haven’t yet.
Have you read the previous Red Rising series? And what didn’t you like about Iron Gold?
I have, and I really enjoyed them. I have to talk about a major event in the story, so for those who haven’t read and want to collapse this comment, this is your spoiler warning. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . SPOILERS BELOW
This is a little vague since it’s been awhile.
I got really upset when Darrow was going totalitarian and fighting with his wife (can’t remember her name) and wanted to eradicate the last of the gold resistance to the new order they had established. When they had the fight amongst themselves and Darrow killed one of his friends (also can’t remember his name) and then fled, that was just really hard for me to take in.
Objectively it makes sense that it happened. It just really hit me hard. Maybe because of this political climate we’re living in. At the time, I just couldn’t finish it. I want to, but I don’t know if I’m in the right headspace to be able to.
Ah, a sequel series to Red Rising. I have heard of that, but never got around to read it. How is the series?
A web book, the wandering inn by pirateaba
This looks interesting. Are you fully caught up? Or are somewhere in the middle?
I’m currently in the end of book 7 so still got a lot to read.I’ve been reading it several hours per day since March! So it is a lot of text but I like those kind of big books/series
Nice. I am taking a break from web novels, it effects my other books, but adding it to my list, for when I get back to them.
I’m about two thirds of the way through Since We Fell by Dennis Lehane. And I finished The Stupidest Angel by Christopher Moore today.
I don’t think Lehane ever really misses. His plots aren’t usually all that dense but the characters are deep and compelling. And the writing is way better than it seems like it should be. Every once in a while you I read a line and think, “Where did that come from, and how did it get here?” He’s a really talented writer.
Moore is not that. But he’s fun and entertaining. This book was not his best effort. But it was fine. If you like Moore, you’ll like this one we’ll enough.
Moore is on my to-read list, will get some of his work one of these days.
Didn’t know about Lehane, just looked him up, he has written some good books. Well, at least the movies based on his books were pretty good 😀 Will check out his work.
BTW this is probably one of the only two (or maybe three) non fantasy/sci-fi book mentioned in this post. It’s interesting to see that majority of people here are speculative fiction fan.
