Still reading The Well of Ascension by Brandon Sanderson. Book 2 in the series. I am more than halfway through, so should be able to finish it this week.
What about all of you? What have you been reading or listening to lately?
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There’s a Midyear Bingo check-in post, do take a look. Even if you haven’t started this year’s Book Bingo, you can still join, as there are still 6 months remaining!
For details, you can checkout the initial Book Bingo, and it’s Recommendation Post . Links are also present in our community sidebar.
Reading everything by Victoria Goddard. I should stop, I’m close to ODing, but it’s delicious.
I’ve just started Aftermath by Craig Alanson, book 17 in the expeditionary force series. I’ve never read such a long series and it’s been quite comforting to be with the same characters for so long, it’s probably been almost an entire year since I started them. Lots of zany antics and fun, reminds me of Stargate SG1
Stargate SG-1 is probably my favourite show. The series is already on my wishlist, but going to bump it closer to the top!
I had to give up on that series after book 10. They all just became so formulaic, with the exact same plot, conflicts, and jokes every book. To be fair, all of that is very fun, and each book in a bubble is enjoyable, but just because I think a meal is great doesn’t mean I want to eat it every day.
I’m about halfway through The Turnglass by Gareth Rubin
Really not the sort of thing I’d normally read but I’m finding it very engrossing. Would recommend
How are you liking The Well of Ascension on reread?
I finished Demon Copperhead by Barbara Kingsolver. Overall a solid book with some good commentary on modern poverty, foster care, and the opioid crisis. The first half stuck too close to the plot points of David Copperfield, but thankfully it stood more on its own in the second half. The ending felt a bit rushed.
Now I’ve started Hex Education by Maureen Kilmer. If it wasn’t such a short read, I would not be finishing this book. Almost every character is unlikeable. I was hoping for a campy witchy book where I want to hang out with the characters, but instead I got a suburban mom who married rich and can’t stop humblebragging about it.
I am really enjoying it. I am about 2/3rd done, and as I mentioned last week, I had forgotten most of the stuff. So, really enjoying everything going on. And while I remember the ending of the book, I don’t recall how exactly they get there.
I haven’t even read David Copperfield, how is it?
lol at suburban mom’s humblebragging. Good luck!
David Copperfield is ok. I really liked the writing style and found the characters interesting. It dragged on for too long though and the main character didn’t have much agency throughout the story which can be frustrating.
I guess I never going to read that then. 😀
My re-read for Stormlight Archive has been taking longer than I figured it would, so I just started Rhythm of War this morning. I even got Wind and Truth delivered a day early, but didn’t get to start it lol.
My re-read hasn’t even started yet. I was hoping to have read at least The Way of the Kings and Words of Radiance this year. Well, no hurries, it’s not going anywhere.
I’m in between fiction right now. Contemplating what to read next. Maybe going to give Earthsea another try.
I’m also working through Guns, Germs and Steel, which is a fascinating read.
Earthsea is part of the 3 books that showed me I loved Fantasy.
What are the other two?
Magician by Raymond E Feist (later broken into Magician: Apprentice and Magician: Master and the split works even better)
Pawn of Prophecy by David Eddings.
Both are pretty cliché by modern views, but both are pretty well written otherwise. Good world building.
But ooo-boy, if one is the type of person that has trouble mentally separating the very problematic writer from their works (like JK Rowling or Marion Zimmerman Bradley), Eddings probably isn’t the best to read.
Currently a couple of chapters into Deadhouse gates. I do enjoy it, but the malazan universe is so massive and filled with so many characters, that I need the malazan wiki around, just in case I need to check something.
I’m plowing through the Dungeon Crawler Carl books, I’m currently on book 4. Book 1 was for bingo, the rest are just to boost my numbers for my annual reading goal :).
LitRPG can wildly fluctuate in quality, but if LitRPG interests you at all, this is one of the top 3 series I’d recommend.
I guess I have to get it now.
I’ll try this later.
They can vary even by the same author: I felt burned by the “he who fights with monsters” series whose 1st book is simply awesome in my opinion, but by book 10 has devolved
Yep. It takes a certain amount of skill to be able to ramp up the power and abilities of your protagonist without the story getting away from you.  That’s kind of why I described what I could recommend as series because there’s a few where the first few work well HWFWM being one of them but after that, there’s a pretty significant drop off in quality.
And even one of those that I’d say that I recommend (Ready Player One/Two) works pretty well but more so for a subset of readers that I just happen to be part of (those whose main cultural media experiences were between the 70s and the 90s.) and while the series works moderately well it’s definitely written to a specific subset of readers.
As an aside because I already mentioned two of the three I recommended in the original comment, I should probably also recognize the third just for posterity. It’s the four book trilogy, This Trilogy is Broken by JP Valentine.
Thanks for talking about broken, it’s on my next read list.
I did enjoy ready player 1; never did ready player 2 out of fright it would not be very good
It’s mostly fine… It kind of suffers similar flaws to the second Hunger Games book by being a “let’s do that again”-style rehash of the first.
I had to put down Fellowship of the Ring for a while due to a cascade of library books, but I’m finally back to it. God I just love how that book flows.
When I want something simpler to read I’ve been going to the Hardy Boys books lately. Read a bunch of them as a kid, they’re still quite enjoyable now. Normally if I reread something 20 years later it’s pretty clearly no longer my taste, but I’m on book 3 and still enjoying them quite a bit.
I’ve been tempted to give a few a go again. They were my jam in middle school.
The first few are available on standard ebooks and they’re quick, easy reads, go for it! With the caveat that the standard ebook versions are the original 1920s versions so there’s a bit of weird racial stuff now and then.
Recently met the librarian at kid’s school and he recommended me Hardy Boys as the next series to start (for the kid). Glad to see it still holds up well.
I just finished The Mercy of God’s by the same dudes who wrote The Expanse series. I can’t wait for the rest of the series. I also read the in-universe novella called Livesuit which was also very good.
About to finish Babylons ashes, ive really enjoyed the whole series so im gonna had mercy of god to my to read list.
Did it differentiate itself enough from The Expanse? It’s on my to be read pile but I’m worried it’s just going to be a bad Xerox copy of their previous work.
Yes, it’s nothing at all like the Expanse.
It’s also sci-fi? Or some other genre?
And offtopic, but curious, do random people send you pics after seeing your nick?
Yeah it’s Sci-fi.
No, unfortunately no one has ever sent me pictures. I still have hope that it will happen someday though.
Currently midway through The Bell in the Fog by Lev A.C. Rosen. It’s the second in a series, but I’m getting through it just fine as a standalone. Fairly quick historical mystery about a gay PI in 1950s San Francisco, dealing with a blackmail case.
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Finished Hold the Dark by Frank Tuttle. Fun little fantasy detective novel, 3rd in a series.
Bingo squares: Eazy, Breazy, Read-zie; There Is Another… (HM); Mashup; (alt) A Change in Perspective
Is being gay related to anything in the plot, or just a background information for possible romance etc.?
The story is heavily rooted in LGBTQIA+ community/culture, and the experience of existing as a gay person at the time. There’s a bit of romance, as well.
To be clear, though: despite its historical bones and the very real fears of its characters, this isn’t a cruel book. No slurs or anything so far, and even the police raids at clubs have been mild.
Ahan, thanks for info!
Norstrilia by Cordwainer Smith, the only complete SF novel he ever published. Part of the Instrumentality of Mankind universe that included “The Ballad of Lost C’Mell”.
I’m almost finished listening to We Will be Jaguars by Nemonte Nenquimo. A fascinating memoir by an indigenous woman growing up in the Ecuadorian Amazon rainforest. Heart breaking tales of her family, neighboring tribes and home being exploited and swindled by missionaries and oil companies.
Delay, deny, defend. lol
Ignoring the relation to current events, how’s the book?
Great, to be honest. It’s very educational. I’m reading things I’ve never known about.
Currently reading “Artemis” by Andy Weir. I’m enjoying it a lot more than I did “Hail Mary” which I thought was awful.
I liked Hail Mary more than Artemis, but I loved them both.
Why do you think Hail Mary was awful?
Spoilers:
I have a difficult time believing that they didn’t have enough backup plans to the point that they had to send a school teacher to save the world. I also couldn’t believe that someone with a doctorate would be teaching junior high (we don’t pay teachers enough in the US). I also didn’t care for the story stopping every few pages so that the author could do a math proof to pretend that the protagonist was some kind of genius (who just so happens to have the skills to reprogram a rocket ship trajectory???). And the endless “something else went wrong only I can fix!” every fifty pages got really tired. Oh and whatever you do, don’t send any of the probes back to earth until the last minute. Because instead of keeping Earth informed and updated as you learn things that might save them, you’re going to need all those probes for a plot point later.
Artemis was fun, but had a lousy ending. It’ll make a good tv series some day if they change up that part of the story.
