What are you reading?

[Alatar]

I watched the recent TV Adaptation. I enjoyed it but it wasn't amazing.

[Impenitent]

I'm reading Brave New World, but - I really don't like it. I might return it to the library unfinished.

Anyone else read it and like it?

It was a set text for English one year. Can't say I liked it but I certainly found it powerful and haunting in a very dystopian way.

Maybe try Island; it's Huxley's utopian apology. Beautiful and light-filled and paradisiacal.





Completely new channel: just finished the first book in the Dresden Files by Jim Butcher on recommendation of a friend. Set in pre-mobile phone America where magic exists but no one really believes in it, and narrated in a very tongue in cheek style by down at heel wizard Harry Blackstone Copperfield Dresden.

Enjoyed it! Jude - violence warning.

[Voronwë the Faithful]

Island is definitely my favorite book by Huxley.

[Maria]

I'm a long time Dresden Files fan but bogged down on book 16 and haven't made it to book 17 yet.

It's kind of funny- we first saw it as a TV series- and liked it well enough we tried the books. It turned out that almost everything we liked about the TV show wasn't in the books.... but we got hooked on the books anyway.

[Inanna]

I did read the Dresden files after Maria’s reco here. First 6 books or something. They are ok - light etc. Somehow I never got into them.

[Frelga]

I gave Dresden another try on audio, and found the main character even more annoying when I couldn't skim through the chapters.

Kevin Hearne's Iron Druid series is somewhat similar in concept, and has the advantage of a fun dog sidekick.

Reading Becky Chambers now. Lovely SF stuff. The Psalm for the Wild Built has a great premise, but it's really just the first act of the story. A Long Way to a Small Angry Planet was much better, and satisfied my desire for character driven SF with imaginative aliens. Reading the 2nd book in the series now.

[Inanna]

I like Becky Chambers!

Her stand alone “To be Taught if Fortunate” is also a great book.

[Impenitent]

I like Becky Chambers!

Her stand alone “To be Taught if Fortunate” is also a great book.

Agree. Filled with both joy and pathos; hope and ... not despair, but acceptance.

Frelga, have you read the second in the monk and robot duet? It rounds it beautifully. As with all of her books, I longed for more of the same.

[Frelga]

Impish, I haven't yet but the audiobook is on my shelf in Libby. Chambers has a lovely voice and her casts are wonderful.

Also finished Anne Leckie's Provenance, set in the same universe as her Ancillary series but otherwise standalone. It's good, although I wondered at the reader's choice to give different accents to characters even when they belong to the same family.

[Maria]

We are really enjoying the Bob & Nikki series right now. It starts with "Bob's Saucer Repair" by Jerry Boyd.
I really had a hard time with it at first because the reader does the protagonist with a rather extreme hick accent. I grew up severely disliking many of my schoolmates who sounded like that in the Ozarks, and it was kind of hard to get past that initial revulsion. I doubt any of you have that particular hangup, though. And it shouldn't be a problem at all if you are reading a text version.

They are what I call popcorn books. Amusing but not deep. And that's what I need right now.

edit: The author is quite parsimonious with adjectives. Almost everything except the action and dialogue is left to the imagination. And strangely enough, that works for me.

[RoseMorninStar]

I just finished reading Where the Crawdads Sing. I'd be interested in seeing the film, has anyone seen it?

[Frelga]

Oh cool, I didn't know a new Rivers of London book was our! It's now on my holds list in Libby.

I do wish Libby would add notifications when my libraries add books that are of interest to me.

[Inanna]

Oh cool, I didn't know a new Rivers of London book was our! It's now on my holds list in Libby.

I do wish Libby would add notifications when my libraries add books that are of interest to me.

Ooh! I’ll look for it…

[narya]

Has it really been 9 months since I gave a book report here? In that time, I've wrangled in my out-of-control Libby app and now have things organized by custom tags. Instead of automatically checking out anything that I hear that is interesting, I have just looked them up, and put tags on them. Only a few of them are actually on my shelf. Come to think of it, with a queue of 183 tagged books, perhaps my list is still a little out-of-control. On the other hand, since I started using Libby in October 2021 (about 15 months total) I have finished 127 books at least once. If I don't add anything to my pile, I can get caught up in a year and a half, right?

Since I last reported 9 months ago, here are 33 more books to report on:

* Cory Doctorow's Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom - is a fun ride, set in future Disney World.

* Rachael Bach's series - Fortune's Pawn, Honor's Knight, and Heaven's Queen - I mostly disliked the main character, an mercenary who had no qualms about killing people, but wanted to see a happy ending for her, so I went through all the series. I kept thinking "Why would my cousin have recommended this to me???" As it turns out, she hadn't. I don't know who told me about these books. If you like Lois Bujold's books, you'd probably like these. I have the same complaint about Bujold's books - a somewhat flippant attitude about killing people.

* Daniel Abraham's Dagger and the Coin Series: The Dragon's Path (1), The King's Blood (2), The Tyrant's Law (3), The Widow's House (4), The Spider's War (5) - a good series, by one half of the James S A Corey team that wrote The Expanse. This is high fantasy, pre-industrial pseudo-Europe, with a rich helping of the sights, sounds and smells of the place, one thing I most like about Abraham's writing, and it does eventually have a dragon in it. Also interesting is Abraham's use of multiple character viewpoints from one chapter to another, including highly competent women and men, and always at least one functional alcoholic. The characters are from different parts of society, not just the usual court intrigue common to this genre.

* Daniel Abraham's Long Price Quartet: A Shadow in Summer (1), A Betrayal in Winter (2), An Autumn War (3), and The Price of Spring (4) - another good series by Abraham, with an interesting blending of pre-industrial pseudo-Europe and pseudo-Japan.

* N K Jemisin's The Fifth Season, The Obelisk Gate, and The Stone Sky - I didn't like this as much as her other series, but again, I had to see the characters thru, so I read all three. This is supposed to come out as a TV series in the near future.

* Ernest Cline's Ready Player One and Ready Player Two - On the one hand, I enjoyed these romps thru 1980s trivia, on the other hand, it was portrayed by a kid who was enjoying this as "ancient history" which made me feel a bit ancient, having lived thru the 80s myself as an adult. The movie was not very close to the book story line, but still good.

* Claudia Gray's Firebird series - A Thousand Pieces of You (1), Ten Thousand Skies Above You (2), A Million Worlds with You (3)- an enjoyable, light, time-traveling romance.

* SM Stirling's Dies the Fire - post apocalyptic story with thoughtful consideration of what would happen if some big "Event" (they never determine what is was) makes gunpowder and internal combustion no longer work. Suddenly, medievalists, Tolkien-lovers, archery fans, and SCA reenactors are highly valued for their pre-industrial knowledge. There are sequels that I haven't read yet. I enjoy the woodsmanship, but could stand to have a little less warfare between the wandering tribes of survivors in gristly detail.

* Peter Hamilton's Arkship Trilogy - The Hole in the Sky, the Captain's Daughter, and (not read yet) Queens of an Alien Sun. I'd heard Hamilton was good, and didn't realize this was a YA series until I was part way through it. This story takes place on a generation ship, where things are not going as originally planned.

*Katherine Addison's The Witness for the Dead is in the same world as the Goblin Emperor, and just as well written. I have not yet read the second in the series - The Grief of Stones - but it is on my list.

* John Scalzi's The Kaiju Preservation Society was a real kick. Godzilla, by the way, was a kaiju.

* Becky Chamber's novellas, A Psalm for the Wild-built and A Prayer for the Crown Shy are sweet, but not as good as her Wayfarer series that starts with The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet.

* William Gibson's The Peripheral is a somewhat incomprehensible book that peters out at the end, I'm not entirely sure where, even after reading the Wikipedia entry after finishing the book. I read the book to help me understand the somewhat incomprehensible TV series The Peripheral, but that didn't help, because the story lines don't have much to do with each other. I'd say watch the TV series, don't bother with the book.

* Jodi Taylor's series, The Chronicles of St Mary's, starts with Just One Damned Thing After Another. It's a light weight, charming time travel series, and if you like it, there are at least 11 more books. I have them in my future list. This one, I confirmed, was recommended by my cousin.

* David Brin's The Postman is an enjoyable post apocalyptic story about a man rallying people without the use of violence, for the most part. However, I was frustrated with the nonchalant misogyny, not befitting a story written in the 80s. It felt more like the 50s style of writing. Sadly, the movie was changed to a "Hey, let's have the protagonist fight with bad people for 2 hours". Read the book, skip the movie.

* Charles Yu's short novels How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe, and Interior Chinatown are both good. Interior Chinatown is, on the surface, a story of an actor living in SF Chinatown, who never gets any parts better than "Asian Man #3", but aspires to be part of the mainstream acting scene. Eventually, his real life starts being part of a larger script, in a kind of magical realism. The other novel has the premise that our "Reality" is just one SF version of the multiverse. It's a fun read.

[Frelga]

Narya, The Kaiju Preservation Society was a lot of fun.

I'm reading the new Rivers of London book. It is called Amongst Our Weapons, and it took me half the book to get the reference.

[narya]

Frelga, I'm glad you liked it.

It's been a month, so here are some more book blurbs. My struggle to deal with my mushrooming to-read list is real. I went through the hundreds of books on my bookshelves, and donated most of them, but not before adding them to my to-read list on my phone, where they will gather far less dust, but still probably won't get read. I'm starting to read more books in Spanish and more non-fiction, mostly recommendations by my son who is studying for his master's degree in counseling.

Fiction:

- Old Man's War by John Scalzi - another recommendation by my cousin. Again, too much killing for my taste. I suppose I should have had a clue from the title. Still, Scalzi (who also wrote the Kaiju Preservation Society) is an entertaining and sometimes thoughtful author, and he did keep me up until 3 PM this morning finishing this book (drinking too much tea yesterday may have contributed, as well).

- Borderline (#1) and Phantom Pains (#2) by Mishell Baker - an urban fantasy series about some seriously flawed people who are protecting the border between the Fay and the rest of us. The main character has Borderline Personality Disorder, is a double amputee, and has a few other things not going for her. The first two were quite enjoyable and the third is in my queue.

- Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir - reminded me of that old non-fiction classic, "Surely You're Joking Mr Feynman", that makes physics fun and easy to digest. In this case, the book is science fiction, but still makes rocket science, engineering, chemistry, etc, pretty digestible, as the protagonist tries to engineer his way through an endless series of challenges. It gets a little slow in the middle, but the last third is can't-put-it-down material. Well, for me at least - I like rocket science - even if they are fictional rockets.

- Hunter's Run - this was written by George R R Martin (Game of Thrones), Gardner Dozois (editor of numerous SF short story collections), and Daniel Abraham (see books in my previous post). Though it was a collaborative effort, based on a plot first started by Dozois (according to the Wikipedia article on Abraham) I mostly heard the voice of Abraham, with a strong dose of Alfred Bester (an author Abraham mentioned in an interview as a major influence in his writing). Some interesting philosophy in this one, though a bit contrived.

Non-fiction:

- The Light We Carry by Michelle Obama - another book by an amazing woman, this one on building relationships.

- The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up, and its sequel, Spark Joy, by Marie Kondo. After reading the English translations from the Japanese, I read the Spanish translation, and took notes in Spanish, which was good practice for me. My own progress is slow, but I actually have some bare closet space now. Bathroom clutter is next.

- The Art of Discarding by Nagisa Tatsumi - the book Marie Kondo drew heavily from to write her famous book.

- Anti-Diet by Christy Harrison - this one was a real downer. After spending 2/3 of the book exposing the history and hoax of the diet industry, she makes it very clear that if you aren't the 0.5% of folks who can lose weight and keep it off indefinitely, anything you do to diet and get rid of pounds is going to be temporary. She was very firm about that, and left no wiggle room for hope. Instead, she focused on being "healthy at any size".

- Hunger by Roxane Gay and Heavy by Kiese Laymon are two memoirs by people who grew up with traumatic childhoods that lead to disordered relationships with food. Hard reading, but enlightening. Again, no magic answer to dealing with a heavy body.

- My Grandmother's Hands by Resmaa Menakem - a non-fiction book by a therapist about dealing with trauma, with special foci on Black folks, white folks, and police of any color. He has numerous exercises to teach us how to deal with the aftermath of trauma through somatic healing.

- The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck by Mark Manson - I saw someone in the audience pointedly reading this during the nonsense surrounding the selection of the Speaker of the House, and had to check it out. It seemed like fairly straightforward, common sense stuff, or maybe I've just gotten wiser in the past 66 years.

- This is Ear Hustle by Nigel Poor and Earlonne Woods is an audio book based on the podcast series that was produced in San Quentin Prison. It gives brief glimpses into life behind bars.

- Trauma Stewardship by Laura van Dernoot Lipsky and Connie Burk - on how people deal with all kinds of trauma and compassion burnout.

[RoseMorninStar]

Has anyone else had trouble downloading the Libby app? I was able to download Overdrive which is used by my library consortium, and when I tried to download Libby it said it would be downloaded 'soon' but 'soon' is relative, I suppose. I might have to stop in at my library for help. I guess Kindle Fires are not Libby friendly, but it doesn't seem to be showing up on my phone either. And yes, I restarted both devices.

[Frelga]

My kindle doesn't even give me an option to install Libby, only Overdrive.

It's fine on my Android (Pixel) but it's been a while since I installed it.

[RoseMorninStar]

Overdrive gives me a notice that it will end sometime in early 2023 and encourages me to download Libby. I was able to get Libby on my phone (I had to turn off the VPN.. I was 'in' the Netherlands) And my phone tells me that I should now be able to read on my kindle. SO, I may?? have to use the functionality on my phone to search/choose books but then they'll go to Kindle? I'm not sure yet. I'm still messing around with it.

[Jude]

I downloaded it ages ago on my iPad and then my iPhone after narya recommended it. It hasn't given me any issues that I can remember.