Didn’t get time to read anything this week either.
What about all of you? What have you all been reading or listening to lately?
Book Bingo midpoint is also up, check it out!
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I’m right now listening to The Haar. Mhairi Morrison does a great job in narrating the audiobook.
I recently finished Magical Girl Mechanical Heart by Natalie Maher and Are You Even Human by Natalie Maher. Both are heavy and dark, SciFi/fantasy. Best things I have read in years. I can’t wait for the next books.
Current reading Memory’s Flame, The Wandering Inn, Book 20.
Finished Apples Never Fall by Liane Moriarty. Apparently her books are quite popular with the wine moms. That’s not me, but even I thought this was a good family mystery.
Next up I think is going to be Ringworld Throne by Larry Niven. I read the first two Ringworlds a while ago, and recently came into possession of the sequels Throne and Children.
I finished book 1 of Dungeon Crawler Carl!
I bought The Secret Life of Bees by Sue Monk Kidd like 20 years ago and somehow it never made it to the top of my stack. It stayed with me all these years though 2 moves including one overseas, and I finally started it. Love it so far.
I started Victor Hugo’s Les Misérables, I’m suprised how colorful and interesting the language is but still it’s easy to read.
Two hundred some pages into The Rise and Fall of D.O.D.O. by Neal Stephnson and Nicole Galland, and I’m thinking about dropping the book, which I rarely do. It could have accomplished in fifty pages what it’s taken two hundred some pages to do.
While it occasionally has its moments, it’s so boring. Which should be impossible. The whole government set up is a goldmine for comedy, and somehow it’s still dull.
To be fair, Stephenson is kind of a pro at doing in 200 pages what could be done in 50.
I think Galland drags D.O.D.O. down. I read D.O.D.O., and agree with you (I pushed through it) and decided to give the sequel written by just Galland a shot. It was awful. I quit after a chapter or two.
I’m re-listening to How to Be Perfec t by Michael Schur, as I’ve been on a beginners philosophy kick lately. It’s a fun light overview of Moral Philosophy and using the Good Place cast as part of the voice cast makes the whole thing breezy. Also the full body slams on Ayn Rand and her Objectivism ‘Philosophy’ made me laugh out loud.
I just finished The Dawn of Everything. An anarchist presentation of other ways of living and what could have been. Amazing, thought inducing, challenging in all the good ways (and long, plenty of meat to chew on)
It’s such a great book! It gave me new hope for humanity - something I’ve really needed.
Just started foundryside. Interesting “magic” system so far.
I just finished reading Donald D. Hoffman - The Case Against Reality. I skipped some pages when it got into physics because i am not that bright when it came to that stuff; otherwise it’s a good book and i do agree with how each species have their own interface, i.e we don’t see reality as it is, rather what benefits us for our survival and procreation. It’s a bit wordy too. Right now, I am reading Joseph Conrad short story The Idiots just for the sake of improving vocabulary and English, and probably will read his other ones as well. BTW am i the only one who sees his writing a bit hard to grasp, his description are always wordy.
A few months ago, I finished Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison. While i did resort to dictionary for some words, but i didn’t experience any difficulty understanding there, unlike Joseph’s stuff, so my English isn’t that bad i think.
I’m still working on We are Legion(We are Bob) and Seasons of Glass and Iron, but nearly finished both. Not sure what I’ll pick up next, yet.
Finished Harrow the Ninth by Tamsyn Muir. I’ve complained enough the past couple weeks about the pacing, so I’ll just say my opinion didn’t change, and the payoff wasn’t worth the build up (imo). The epilogue did kinda make me want to see what would happen next, but I have no immediate intentions of coming back to this series (if ever).
Read/finished The Extraordinary Adventures Of Arsène Lupin, Gentleman-Burglar by Maurice Leblanc, the first collection of Lupin stories. I found this absolutely delightful, and a nice palate cleanser after Harrow. I’m gonna throw the whole series on my TBR, and read them when I want something cozy. They’re free on Project Gutenberg/Standard E-books!
Currently reading The Elementals by Michael McDowell. I started this some time ago, but wasn’t sucked in, so I put it down in favor of something else. Surprisingly easy to get back into, even though my memory of the first third is a bit hazy. Of course it’s slow-paced, the bane of my existence, but the characters are interesting, and I have hopes it’ll ramp up.
If you don’t like Harrow, I wouldn’t continue the series. Nona the Ninth is more of an interlude (personally it’s my favorite of the three), and sets up more questions than it answers. Unless you really loved Camilla Hect and Palamedes Sexton (because Nona is their book along with Nona herself). Also, the final book, Alecto the Ninth, still seems to be nowhere in sight (on goodreads there’s no release date set). It’s been years now.
Ah ok, good to know. I appreciate the heads up! I didn’t dislike Harrow, per se, I just had more issues with it than with Gideon, which was already in my “fine” pile. I can see why others like it, though!
I loved Harrow the Ninth! Not as much as the first book but I utterly enjoyed it and read it again a year later. Nona is confusing… I’m still unsure about it, but I’m eagerly waiting number 4 of the series
I loved Nona (it’s my favorite), but when I originally read it, I thought it was supposed to be the final book (I didn’t know that the series had been changed to 4 books), which left me baffled until I looked it up.
Its biggest weakness is that to me, everything aside from the end itself wasn’t confusing at all. It felt fairly predictable to me.
Even rereading the plot on Wikipedia I am still confused. So many characters with exceptional stories/bodies/souls, it stops being meaningful
I’m about 400 pages into War and Peace, and I’m blown away. The story is rich in themes, well-developed characters, history and ideas. At the same time, it is a gripping read and nowhere near as tough as I feared. My only regret so far is that I wish I had bought a translation that kept the French intact; I am switching between translations – I read the free Maude translation digitally, and my physical edition was translated by Anthony Briggs. While both are enjoyable, neither indicates which character is speaking in which language. But it’s important to know, because Tolstoy puts a lot of meaning into how characters express themselves.
Anyway, is anyone else reading it at the moment, or has anyone read it in the past? How do/did you like it?
I read it ages ago. I didn’t like it. I find Tolstoj robotically moralistic. His obsession with the Napoleonic war seemed shoehorned into the story. I liked the characters, almost in some of the writing. And I hated the Epilogue, let me know what you will think of it!
The second epilogue I also don’t look forward to. I usually don’t do too well with the straight philosophical exposition. And I would agree with you on Tolstoi being moralistic overall, but here I feel like it’s not really that on the nose. Kreutzersonata or Master and Man on the other hand were both quite unenjoyable because of the preachiness.
Still working my way through Ian Fleming’s Goldfinger, but also now reading through Jessica Fern’s Polysecure.
