WHAT ARE YOU READING?

[Robert S]

I recently read The Mercy of Gods, the first part of a trilogy by the authors of The Expanse. I really liked the character-focused parts of the story. For example, it depicts a character suffering from depression really well (I am currently myself fighting with depression and could really identify with that character). I am not really sold on the built world and the greater story arch and the book was also really slow in that regards but as it focused more on the personal issues of the characters and did that really well, I did not mind that much.

And I know that OSJ hated his writing, but I am reading some Brandon Sanderson stuff right now (Oathbringer, to be precise). I get the main criticism John had for Sanderson (that if you look close enough, you can see the seams of how he builds his worlds and stories) and I guess he was right, but I don't really mind. I mean if I read The Lord of the Rings, I could point out issues in the construction if I wanted to, but I am not reading stuff to criticize it, but to simply enjoy it (John was an editor, IIRC, so he had a different approach to reading, I suppose). Yes, you slightly need to switch off your brain selectively, I guess, but not on a "this writing insults my intelligence" level.

In parallel, I am reading some textbooks on astrophysics and cosmology. I have got a background in mathematics (master's degree) and have learned some slightly advanced physics (special relativity and quantum mechanics; I've also read some introductory textbook on general relativity, so I have some basic understanding there, quantum field theory however just eludes me, I tried more than once to get into that subject and no bueno) over the last decade and can follow the basics at least quite well. It's quite shocking actually, how much you can learn about cosmology without a super-duper deep background (if you take a thing or two for granted, mostly reg. general relativity, which the books usually skip and just give the results).

[supremebve]

2 hours ago, Robert S said:

I recently read The Mercy of Gods, the first part of a trilogy by the authors of The Expanse. I really liked the character-focused parts of the story. For example, it depicts a character suffering from depression really well (I am currently myself fighting with depression and could really identify with that character). I am not really sold on the built world and the greater story arch and the book was also really slow in that regards but as it focused more on the personal issues of the characters and did that really well, I did not mind that much.

 

I just finished this book on Tuesday.  I feel like I'm in the same exact boat as you, except I thought the character development was a weakness because there are really only 3 characters that developed at all.  I don't know if there are too many characters or they didn't flesh out the characters well enough, but it's one of the two.  The world-building wasn't great, and quite frankly everything took a little too long to develop.  With that said, by the end I was invested.  It took forever to really catch my interest, but I really want to see where it goes.  It's a bit of a slog, but it's always at least interesting if not always entertaining.

[JLSigman]

On 1/1/2025 at 12:07 PM, JLSigman said:

Starting off the new year by reading Saladin Ahmed's Daredevil run, which has been collected. Interesting premise so far.

Read Volume 3, and it's starting to totter a bit under it's weight. I also am not buying at all Fisk's reaction to the proceedings.

[JLSigman]

On 2/27/2025 at 12:59 PM, JLSigman said:

Since all the books are out, I am starting in on Tad Williams "Last King of Osten Ard" series. Will be re-reads of the first two, then into the stuff I haven't read yet.

Finished this up yesterday night, and I'm waffling about the ending. The fourth book also has some pretty egregious editing/spelling errors.

[Contentious C]

You try reading The Night Circus, because it's cheap and well-reviewed. It sounds like a steampunk Romeo and Juliet where the princess saves herself, at least at first glance of the cover description. And then you realize it's written in present tense, like the Wolf Hall books. It dawns on you that Erin Morgenstern is not Hilary Mantel. It also dawns on you that nearly every writer isn't Hilary Mantel. You struggle to find a rhythm because the tense feels stilted instead of urgent. You consider reading something else.

[SirSmUgly]

Here are some books I have recently read:

Mieko Kawakami, All the Lovers in the Night - Kawakami writes some of the most beautiful sentences in literature, and I suppose that I have to give credit to her translators for preserving that beauty in English. This book is essentially a character study of a closed-off, traumatized woman who has isolated herself. She works from home and struggles to connect with her own humanity. Then, some stuff happens. It's fantastic. I thought that Heaven was also amazing, but I think I prefer this book (maybe it's the hope that I have for Fuyuko at the end of this particular story that elevated it for me). I have read one Kawakami book a year over the last couple of years, and I think I'll stick to that schedule. I'm excited to read Breasts and Eggs next year.

Jason Schreier, Press Reset and Play Nice - Schreier does a fine job of showing how unstable the video game industry is outside of the C-suite, and his strategy of tracking a series of shuttered studios and canceled games that directly impact the next set of shuttered studios and canceled games is a good one. Play Nice, on the other hand, is a story about many things. How greedy your C-suite execs are, for one. How gender imbalances in the industry are harmful, for another. How games are art and not some sort of factory line widget that you can just crank out on a conveyor belt year after year for another. I loved both of them and would think that anyone into video games and how they are made should read them.

Next up: I'm finally going to read All the Pretty Horses, and I got a Lucy Worsley book on sale! I adore her and am excited to read her meticulously-researched biography of Agatha Christie. 

[Contentious C]

Hey my library actually has the Kawakami book. Cool.

Saw a Stephen R Donaldson book at Goodwill for 2 bucks today but didn't grab it. It's not one of the Thomas Covenant books, so I wasn't sure if it was worth the pickup. I tried reading the first of the Covenant books a while ago and didn't exactly enjoy the style (not to mention the early events in that edition).

Edited April 17 by Contentious C

[JLSigman]

10 hours ago, Contentious C said:

Saw a Stephen R Donaldson book at Goodwill for 2 bucks today but didn't grab it. It's not one of the Thomas Covenant books, so I wasn't sure if it was worth the pickup. I tried reading the first of the Covenant books a while ago and didn't exactly enjoy the style (not to mention the early events in that edition).

Donaldson also wrote a bunch of sci-fi that I've never read.

I finished up Victoria The Queen by Julia Baird, a biography that was fascinating and frustrating by turns. Fascinating because of the length and breadth of the things she reigned over.; frustrating because her kids burned basically everything she ever wrote, everything many of the people around her wrote, so there are huge gaps in our knowledge.

Edited April 17 by JLSigman

[SirSmUgly]

20 hours ago, Contentious C said:

Hey my library actually has the Kawakami book. Cool.

Please tell me what you think of it if you read it!

[J.H.]

The Long Fall - Hey, Walter Mosley writing a mystery set in somewhat contemporary times (2008) and set in NYC instead of Los Angeles. Still, Mosley always brings a certain vibe to his Mystery/Thriller novels and while this ain't Easy Rawlins and Mouse, Leonid McGill is just as interesting as PI.

I appreciate writer's who have at least researched NYC enough to write about it competently and Mosley captures the feel of Manhattan. 

I'm only 60 pages in so it is basically getting to know Leonid. His work life, his home life and his routines. Mosley is shaping this character as if he were clay that he's molding with each chapter. Carving away excess bits before we can getvtobthe meat of the story, which will be the mystery.

Im really digging it so far.

James

Edited April 18 by J.H.

[JLSigman]

Hidden away on the free table at the library was a HARDCOVER copy of Octavia Butler's Xenogenesis!! In very good condition! Yes I snatched that up and now it's in the hardcover bookshelf in my office!

[Contentious C]

23 hours ago, SirSmUgly said:

Please tell me what you think of it if you read it!

Well, the first little snippet chapter is a masterclass in what you're highlighting. It was a little like starting A Brief History of Seven Killings by Marlon James and thinking, "Fuck, I've been saying stuff like this to myself all the time, but I'm not putting it into things I write nearly often enough. Fuck." So, that's... something. And the initial introduction past that hits more than a little close to home. It may be a slog to get through unless there's a particularly grabby moment around the bend. Or maybe I can try to leaven it some by progressing further in Night Circus if I feel bogged down.

[Mike Campbell]

It took me way too long, between the job, family, and other things taking precedence. But, I finally finished reading The Thursday Murder Club. Despite taking so long to finish, I actually really enjoyed it. There were lot of parts that had me cracking up. I'm definitely looking forward to seeing how the Netflix adapation turns out. 

[SirSmUgly]

18 hours ago, Contentious C said:

Well, the first little snippet chapter is a masterclass in what you're highlighting. It was a little like starting A Brief History of Seven Killings by Marlon James and thinking, "Fuck, I've been saying stuff like this to myself all the time, but I'm not putting it into things I write nearly often enough. Fuck." So, that's... something. And the initial introduction past that hits more than a little close to home. It may be a slog to get through unless there's a particularly grabby moment around the bend. Or maybe I can try to leaven it some by progressing further in Night Circus if I feel bogged down.

It's certainly a slow-burn character study. I don't think there's a grabby moment early; there's more of a slow-building dread that you'll have. I would say that there are a couple of reveals and a callback to one of those reveals that would be those moments where the narrative swells a bit. I found it an easier read than Heaven, which was a rough (and realistic) read about teen bullying.

4 hours ago, Mike Campbell said:

It took me way too long, between the job, family, and other things taking precedence. But, I finally finished reading The Thursday Murder Club. Despite taking so long to finish, I actually really enjoyed it. There were lot of parts that had me cracking up. I'm definitely looking forward to seeing how the Netflix adapation turns out. 

Richard Osman is a funny dude. He's quick with a one-liner as the host of House of Games, too. I felt like Thursday Murder Club and the second book in that series (I haven't read the third yet) were so much written in his voice that I heard him narrating it in my head as I read it. 

[CoffeeBlack]

Currently reading The March North  by Graydon Saunders.  Saunders drops you straight into a world with little explanation of what is going on, leaving the reader to slowly figure things out. His style is terse, reminding me of Glen Cook, with that same approach in The Black Company where the narrator assumes you're just as familiar with the world as he is.  If you're just going to speed read this, good luck. I find myself re-reading pages, enjoying that small burst of understanding when you go Oooooh now I see. 

I'm really enjoying it.

The book may be hard to find, since Saunders has no use for Amazon. I bought a Kobo just to read this series, but you can also find it on Apple Books.

[JLSigman]

Read 2312 by Kim Stanley Robinson. It was OK.

My library has reduced the number of Hoopla borrows a month to 3, which sucks.

Currently reading Seraphina by Rachel Hartman, technically a YA fic that deals with some pretty heavy themes (self hatred, self mutilation) wrapped in an amazing amount of interesting world building. Really enjoying it.

[J.H.]

Picked up the first volume of MADCAVE's Gatchaman comic and... it was a really fun read. They basically put it in the timeline of the original series so no worries about Gatchaman 2 and Gatchaman FIGHTER. Using the idea of a Beta team for Gatchaman in case something should happen to core 5 is a nice story hook and I found myself humming some of the old Gatchaman OST as I read.

I'm hoping Vol 2 will be out fot Christmas. I can't recommend this enough!

James

[JLSigman]

Peter Morwood, author of many books, including several with his wife Diane Duane, died last night after a short illness.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Morwood#Bibliography

[Contentious C]

About halfway through All the Lovers in the Night now and man, is it fucking weird. This character is just a disaster. Historically, there have probably been a gajillion male protagonists like this and they're played totally differently. Kawakami is just...bereft of judgment one way or the other. On one hand it makes it harder to slog through, but as a writer, it's also a fucking impressive trick.

Edited May 13 by Contentious C

[RazorbladeKiss87]

Went to Target for some stuff today and impulse bought the Marvel Premier Collection version of Daredevil: Born Again.  Matt has just been saved by Maggie where I'm at. The format is a bit bigger than the DC collections they recently released. I bought Watchmen in that and gave it to one of the hosts at work as soon as I found my old TPB at my parents'. 

I'm digging the story so far. Even if it does kinda rush through Kingpin's plan. How often had they done a story like this before? I'm feeling that Knightfall might have been slightly influenced by this story. 

[SirSmUgly]

On 5/12/2025 at 9:22 PM, Contentious C said:

About halfway through All the Lovers in the Night now and man, is it fucking weird. This character is just a disaster. Historically, there have probably been a gajillion male protagonists like this and they're played totally differently. Kawakami is just...bereft of judgment one way or the other. On one hand it makes it harder to slog through, but as a writer, it's also a fucking impressive trick.

I like that Kawakami, or at least the translation of her, is able to step back and just let her characters exist. Even though there is that sort of distance, almost like the characters are part of some sort of secret anthropological study, she also manages to imbue them with a humanity that makes me care deeply about what happens to them.

I spent most of my time terrified that Fuyuko would make a mistake that would turn fatal. 

Speaking of spending most of my time terrified that characters who I was rooting for would make fatal mistakes...

Larry McMurtry, Lonesome Dove - What a nasty, brutish, pretty, melancholy story in which bursts of joy and success are hard-won and are often ripped away in a second through no fault of your own as often as they are ripped away as a direct result of your faults. I absolutely adored this book. What came through the most for me thematically is how bad we are at communicating with one another. Most of the bad communication comes between men and women, and McMurtry does a wonderful job of contrasting the perception that one character vocalizes about someone's actions against what that someone is actually thinking or feeling (but simply can't express). The final conversation between Clara and Call is probably my favorite example of this, but also Call and Newt's last conversation stands out. I hate it when people declare that OTHER people need therapy, but look, I'm going to hate myself: Call needs therapy. This is true of other characters too, which is why Gus is able to connect with so many people in the book; he actually says what he's thinking or feeling and is also the most perceptive character at understanding what other people are thinking or feeling. I think this is why he and Clara don't get married, honestly; I think it bothers Clara that Gus that actually has a higher emotional IQ than she does. I think it's a massive turn-off for her. 

Anyway, McMurtry can write the hell out of a sentence. What a gorgeous writer. 

Cormac McCarthy, All the Pretty Horses - Speaking of nasty, brutish, pretty, etc., Westerns, I also enjoyed this, though not as much as I enjoyed Lonesome Dove. I'm still most partial to No Country in both book and film form when it comes to my favorite McCarthy works. As a bildungsroman, though, it's top-notch. I liked it so much that I picked up a cheap paperback copy of The Crossing; I expect to finish the whole Border Trilogy at some point in the next year or so eventually. 

Lucy Worsley, Agatha Christie: An Elusive Woman - Worsley, as a British career woman who is indebted to the British career women (and suffragettes) who paved the way for educated middle-class-and-up women to pursue white collar work for a living, is understandably glowing about Christie as a beacon of female advancement. She also makes an argument that Christie should be respected as not just a popular writer, but as a key modernist voice when she was doing some of her best work in the 1920s. I agree with that. However, I do think Worsley sort of brushed aside all the, you know, racism and xenophobia in Christie's novels to do this. She was a bit too congratulatory to Christie for presenting a Jewish character that was a normal human being as Britain and Nazi Germany got more aggy at one another, which I would be more okay with if contextualized against a genuine look at Christie's many flaws as a writer of non-white characters in most of her other works. Worsley also gave wide berth to Christie's politics, which Christie was very open about and which were also...let's say problematic in some ways. I felt the book was too fawning for my tastes, too uncritical of the ways in which Christie maybe might not as much an inspiration to, say, middle-class-and-above BAME women. It's not that I think that it's impossible to appreciate Christie in the way that Worsley does, but if you're going to make an argument that someone from a different time is someone to be admired today, I do think you have to work harder than Worsley did to contextualize the stuff that isn't so admirable. It's a bummer, as I do love me my Lucy Worsley TV specials, but on the other hand, I at least have a better understanding of her biases and blind spots now.

Guy DiMaria - Nintendo Game Secrets, Nintendo Game Secrets 2, and Nintendo Game Boy Secrets - I was a working class kid in a large family, so there wasn't a lot of money for video games (especially at the inflation-adjusted prices that games were back when I was a child). It was just nice to have money for food and the house payment in that bad early '90s economy. I would check these books out from the library all the time and peruse them again and again, looking at the game pictures and reading all the corny text. I felt nostalgia for these books and bought them all on Thrift Books, and I'm glad I did. I'd read about a game or two before bedtime and - in a weird experience that is only possible for adults who managed a better financial position than their parents were in at their age - got strangely nostalgic about not having money to buy these games and having to experience them through early-era Prima game guides. I don't know how I feel about this. It's like when I'm nostalgic for scraping together seven bucks so I could go to Tuesday 25-cent chicken wing nights and get twelve wings, a two-dollar Coors Light, and then leave two bucks for tip so the server didn't entirely hate having to waste their time on me. I am somewhat uncomfortable about being nostalgic about once having had very little money. I can't believe a bunch of 35-ish year old game guides have me reconsidering my relationship to the economic classes that I have once inhabited. 

Next up: I was reading Mike Medavoy's memoir before bed last evening, and I read about how Young Frankenstein got made. My wife was reading Mel Brooks's memoir in bed last night. She also read about how Young Frankenstein got made, which I only found out because she laughed out loud at something that Mel wrote as part of the storytelling, and I asked her what was so funny. We compared notes and basically Medavoy and Brooks agree on how the movie got made and why the first studio that agreed to make it turned it down. Anyway, I bought Medavoy's memoir months ago and will probably piece through it. Also on tap: I'm reading Death on the Nile while in bed. It's short, so I would guess that since I'll only be reading it before bedtime that it'll take me three-ish weeks to get through. I did get a used U.S. printing of Breasts and Eggs that I will re-sell when I am done because I want the British printing for myself. I'll try to fit that in sometime soon. I actually have quite a few books in the queue: The Crossing, a Satchel Paige biography that I have been meaning to get to, another Christie (Ten Little N Ten Little Ind And Then There Were None), and probably something else that I'm forgetting. I also want to get a copy of Mark Dunn's Ella Minnow Pea, which I'm hoping to read soon. The summer is coming up soon, so I can really turbocharge my reading. Last summer, I probably read forty or fifty books, which I'd like to match. Between the summer and the winter break, I'm usually good for about seventy books, which is the primary reason that I read about a hundred-and-twenty-five books most years, give or take a few. 

 

[Contentious C]

I think what's really telling about that level of distance is how many times I had to be reminded that her name was Fuyuko Irie.  And it wasn't an "Invisible Man"-level gimmick; you just lose touch with it.  Again, that's a really tough thing to even think about pulling off, and it just happens here.  

I rewatched the Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children film recently and was underwhelmed, despite liking it in the theater. Totally carried by the inimitable Eva Green. But I started the first book and it's pretty good, a fairly believable YA protagonist that didn't get translated well to screen.

Edited May 29 by Contentious C

[JLSigman]

For May , some highlights

- Re-read of N. K. Jemisin's excellent "Inheritence" trilogy, plus the newer novella. 

- Void Rivals, which is in the same universe as the new Transformers comics (and the GI Joe comics I probably won't read), was really good.

- Out There Screaming, an anthology edited by Jordan Peele with stories by most every amazing Black author you can think of, was really good. Only a couple misses in the whole thing. 

- The first collection of Gail Simone's Uncanny X-Men was good writing, OK to eh art. Yes, I'm picky about the art.

[Graham Crackers]

On 5/28/2025 at 1:30 PM, SirSmUgly said:

I liked it so much that I picked up a cheap paperback copy of The Crossing; I expect to finish the whole Border Trilogy at some point in the next year or so eventually. 

This my favorite novel, and the one I've revisited the most. 

I'm currently reading Pynchon's bibliography in chronological order, in anticipation of Shadow Ticket later this year.  I'm about halfway through Against the Day, first time read. I like it so far but perhaps at an emotional distance. Then again, I felt that way through Mason & Dixon only for the ending to hit like a ton of bricks. 

[JLSigman]

Reading The Buffalo Hunter Hunter by Stephen Graham Jones, and this is an excellent, tightly written horror thriller. I'll have to go look up his other stuff.