WHAT ARE YOU READING?

[odessasteps]

I know we’ve discussed RogerAckroyd before, but if you’ve read that, did you think same thing? 

[RazorbladeKiss87]

I'm about to read the 3rd issue in the Batman: Run, Riddler, Run mini-series. It's good. Puts Batman into some interesting situations.  The art is cool too, definitely not traditional Batman art. 

[RazorbladeKiss87]

Finished "Run, Riddler, Run" just a bit ago. Sending paramilitary to clear out "undesireables" who may or may not be committing crimes that politicians say they are. Huh. 

I really enjoyed this three issue run. I feel like if it were a 6 parter we'd have had some more Bruce Wayne political stuff, which might have been interesting.  As it is, a tight 3 issue arc with unique art. 

Batman's inner monolog thought boxes needed to be a different color though. My color blind eyes were struggling.  

@The Natural have you ever read this one?

[SirSmUgly]

Here's a lot of stuff that I read that I don't think I've previously mentioned in an earlier post.

Becky Chambers, A Psalm for the Wild-Built and A Prayer for the Crown-Shy - I don't think I mentioned reading these books, but I was sort of low at one point this summer for some reason, and I decided to read Psalm because my wife had suggested it to me. I loved it so much that I went right out, bought Prayer, and I think convinced the lady who checked me out to read the Monk and Robot books, too. We live in a country built upon a series of systems that not only work inefficiently, but that are explicitly designed to do so, and this book is a reminder that it doesn't have to be that way. We can make better choices. I also like, though, that making better choices about the systems we develop doesn't mean that we won't be individuals who still have ennui sometimes. Dex still needs other people, not just better systems. Or other robots. Either/or. When we engineer better systems to facilitate society, we make more space to build better communities and friendships. These books are lovely and optimistic in a way that I think I needed. I would encourage y'all to read these as well. 

(And never forget: You are wonderful!)

Elizabeth Lunday, The Secret Lives of Great Composers - I loved The Secret Lives of Great Authors as a fun little "before bed" book, and this also functioned that way. I read about one or two composers before bed each night. Dmitry Shostakovich had quite the life. We need a biopic post-haste. 

Mark Dunn, Ella Minnow Pea - This was a neat idea for a book. It's about standing up to tyranny and fascism, but also it's about how people often ignore basic scientific explanations and instead substitute nonsensical mystical imaginary explanations for things. Also, once you're about a hundred pages in, the letters (as in epistles) lack letters (as in characters that help form words), which is a cute concept but also which makes reading this book a pain in the dick, which is the point. The very last epistle in the book really drives home the "ignore science and technological advances in favor of mystical thinking at your own detriment" message, by the way. I mean, this is an allegorical novel, so you'd expect as much. I liked it! It's short! You should read it!

John Grisham, The Street Lawyer - It's meh Grisham. Just read The Runaway Jury again instead.

I recognize that there are still a series of books that I bought and probably mentioned earlier in this thread, but that I still haven't read yet. I have yet to crack open The Crossing, but funny enough, I did grab a copy of Streets of Laredo that I'm about to start even though if you'd asked me in the summer, I would have said that I wanted to get right to more of the Border Trilogy, but that I didn't feel a desire to read a Lonesome Dove sequel. Yeah, I'm capricious. 

Edited October 29 by SirSmUgly

[zendragon]

I got really into Grisham a while back when I couldn't get a library card till I updated my license but they had a paperback section that was on the honor system.

[SirSmUgly]

1 hour ago, zendragon said:

I got really into Grisham a while back when I couldn't get a library card till I updated my license but they had a paperback section that was on the honor system.

Which one was your favorite?

[RazorbladeKiss87]

1 hour ago, SirSmUgly said:

Which one was your favorite?

Not ZenDragon but the rehab I was at had almost every book of his. I probably read 75% of them. I really liked The Chamber, The Partner and A Painted House.

[zendragon]

Its been a while but The Last Juror, A time to Kill, A painted House, and Runaway jury come to mind

[zendragon]

Also Skipping Christmas was fun, as was Playing for Pizza both outside of what he normally writes

Edited October 30 by zendragon

[twiztor]

On 10/28/2025 at 6:02 PM, RazorbladeKiss87 said:

Finished "Run, Riddler, Run" just a bit ago. I really enjoyed this three issue run. I feel like if it were a 6 parter we'd have had some more Bruce Wayne political stuff, which might have been interesting.  As it is, a tight 3 issue arc with unique art. 

somehow i missed this in my Batman read a few years ago. Sounds intriguing. will check it out.

On 10/11/2025 at 12:46 PM, JLSigman said:

Adds to the "things to yell at the library about" file

are you mad at the concept? the author? i'm not sure what we're yelling about (inadvertent Anchorman)

 

[JLSigman]

Sorry, that means I need to beg my library to get the book at some point. Lately anything not Top 10 New York Times takes up to a year for them to purchase. (Yes, I know their budget is shit)

[odessasteps]

Listening to Robinson Crusoe, which I presumably haven’t read in 40+ years, it’s a lot more religious than I remembered, but then I read Defoe was a Puritan, so no surprised. 

also listening to lesser known Jules Verne which has been interesting. 

[RazorbladeKiss87]

10 hours ago, odessasteps said:

Listening to Robinson Crusoe, which I presumably haven’t read in 40+ years, it’s a lot more religious than I remembered, but then I read Defoe was a Puritan, so no surprised. 

also listening to lesser known Jules Verne which has been interesting. 

What would you suggest? I've read "Around The Workd In 80 Days" and "20000 Leagues Under the Sea." Enjoyed "Around..." a lot but not "20000..." 

[odessasteps]

I like both From the Earth to the Moon and Mysterious Island, which is long and has a spoilery connection to one of the more famous Verne books. 

[zendragon]

Finished Outliers: The Story of Success by Malcolm Gladwell. Interesting but really just confirming that success is as much about opportunity as it is about smarts and talent. Does make me wish I had certain opportunities at a younger age. If you've heard of "The Ten Thousand Hour Rule" it comes from this book , its much that we all have 24 hours in a day but everyone's 24 hours are different. Environment matters as much say work ethic.

Edited November 9 by zendragon

[zendragon]

AMERICA FIRST LAST : THE RIGHT'S CENTURY - LONG ROMANCE WITH FOREIGN DICTATORS  Jacob Heilbrunn 226 pgs.

Record scratch yep that's white supremist Nick Fuentes being interviewed by prominent right-wing commentator Tucker Carlson, Nick made headlines a few years back dining with you-know-who at White House South... how the hell did we get here? We'll its a long story going back to WW1 where there was sizable contingent that opposed entry in the the war, and seemed to prefer Kaiser Wilhelm to Woodrow Wilson, continuing through WW2 where people like Henry Ford and Charles Lindberg openly supported Hitler, through the 90's with notable nutcase Pat Buchanan who apparently Trump himself thought was a bridge too far , too modern day idolization of Putin and Orban for their opposition to LGBT rights, "wokeness" and "gender ideology". past is prologue and those who don't learn from history are doomed to repeat it. 

[SirSmUgly]

Larry McMurtry, Streets of Laredo - The online scuttlebutt around this book appears to be that it isn't very good and that McMurtry was writing this from a place of post-surgery depression, but the online scuttlebutt is wrong, and I am tempted to state based on how people seem to feel about Lonesome Dove that McMurtry wrote this book to deconstruct the popular perceptions of the most popular characters from that book. On another note, a lot of online book fandoms have some wild takes about characters, mostly based on how much they want to a) fuck them or b) get a drink with them. Anyway, this is about as much of a masterpiece as Lonesome Dove is in my humble opinion. 

Rebecca Rupp, How Carrots Won the Trojan War - I'm almost at the end of this book, so I'll write about it here so that I don't forget to do so later. This is a fun little book, a mix of mythological, anthropological, and biological information about various veggies and a couple of fruits besides. I think if I could live for five hundred years before dying like David the Gnome, I'd spend fifty years studying to enter the field of botany. This is a neat book for food and/or plant lovers, light and easy and conversational in its prose. I've been following up on some of the info in this book on my phone, and my favorite little discovery that the book clued me in to is the WW2-era British mascot Dr. Carrot. I ended up going down a rabbit hole on British WW2-era propaganda and PSAs, and now I'd like a book solely on that. 

Speaking of the British and reading, I'm leafing through Graham Greene's The Quiet American, and I think I deeply hate it, but maybe reading this work as "British guy is annoyed that deluded young little Americans are doing all the imperialism that proper dignified British people used to do" and "Phuong represents the developing colonized world as trying to get some sort of foothold by allying with the right imperial power while the imperial power is looking to fuck her" is the wrong way to go about it. 

Edited December 1 by SirSmUgly

[twiztor]

On 11/28/2025 at 12:30 PM, zendragon said:

past is prologue and those who don't learn from history are doomed to repeat it. 

and the rest of us are here repeating it too, despite having learned that history and banging the drum warning that it was coming.

[JLSigman]

Read the first Powder Mage trilogy by Brian McClellan. It's a really neat magic system, and a not too complicated plot. 

[CoffeeBlack]

Reading old New Avengers Hickman, from ten years ago. It's an entirely different experience than reading the Avengers now. McKay is fine, but he's not creating anything memorable. Hickman's run was so idea heavy, so nihilistic, it read like these were the final issues of the series. That we as readers had grown up. And now, we're right back to tie ins, monthly threats that don't go anywhere, and the Avengers promoting whatever hero Marvel thinks still has a dollar in them to wring out.

[RazorbladeKiss87]

Stopped by my LCS to dig through the dollar bins again and grabbed the prestige format mini-series Gilgamesh II by Jim Starlin. Read the first two issues last night and it's definitely an interesting take on the Superman tale. Probably finishing up today. 

 

I also grabbed a big chunk of the second series of American Flagg.

[Justin877]

I recently finished Dungeon Crawler Carl by Matt Dinniman

I thought it was fun. Not sure I am ready for the whole 8 book series. I might read vol. 2 and take a break.

Anyone else read it?

[RazorbladeKiss87]

22 minutes ago, Justin877 said:

I recently finished Dungeon Crawler Carl by Matt Dinniman

I thought it was fun. Not sure I am ready for the whole 8 book series. I might read vol. 2 and take a break.

Anyone else read it?

It's on my list to check out. I'm on the waiting list for book 1 at the library. 

Just finished Gilgamesh II. The 4th book was a trip. I'm definitely glad I grabbed that. Plus, I got all 4 issues for the cost of buying one issue online. 

[supremebve]

4 hours ago, Justin877 said:

I recently finished Dungeon Crawler Carl by Matt Dinniman

I thought it was fun. Not sure I am ready for the whole 8 book series. I might read vol. 2 and take a break.

Anyone else read it?

I've listened to the audio books, and the books get increasingly more Dungeon Crawler Carl.  If you like the first book, you'll probably like the rest of the books, but understand that you are going to get more of everything you like about the books and everything you don't like about the books.  They're a lot like the Fast and the Furious movies where if you're in, you're in for the long haul, but if you're out, you're probably out pretty early.  My advice, read or listen to the first book and decide how much you like it, because the stakes will get higher, but the things that make this series unique do not change.

[odessasteps]

That V2 Flagg is interesting but I dont know if it recaptured the magic of the first year or two of the original series.