Last book I finished? The Dragon Reborn. Currently reading? The Princess Diaries.
Ayyyyy, are you reading The Shadow Rising soon? I liked it more than the Dragon Reborn.
Yep! Just need to find a bit more time for it. I've got a book club with a friend where we're reading through the series.
I love that! If it's your first time through, I hope you both enjoy it!
Do audiobooks count?
Leviathan Falls by James S. A. Corey. It's the final book in The Expanse series. Really got hooked on it. I haven't made time to find another book since then though 🤔
They absolutely do! I don't understand the snobbery against audiobooks. When Borges lost his sight he had to have books read to him, and just consider the amazing stories he came up with (and the literary devices he developed) to make up for his blindness.
I read up to Cibola Burn but then ran out at the time, I haven't gone back since books beyond that came out. I need to start over. Would you describe it as a satisfying conclusion?
Yes, I was more than happy with the ending. Loose ends were pretty well tied up.
One day there'll be an expanse movie that covers what the tv series didn't.. one day..
They definitely count as ingesting books but there is a difference between reading a book and listening to an audiobook.
Reading IS the activity but I feel like with audiobooks people are typically driving or something where the book is in the background. Though maybe some people put on headphones and just sit and listen or something. I don't know if this makes me a snob lol.
Also The Expanse was the first book series I ever read. It was so good. And it made me like the show less even though the show is still great.
I just finished Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson. Great book, that not only coined terms like "avatar" and "metaverse" (for better or worse), but is also really well written. It somehow manages to find a tone that is consistent for the dystopian worldbuilding, the silly and self-aware things that happen in the world, and the philosophical aspect dealing with culture, religion and free will. Highly recommend!
And I'm currently reading his newest novel, Termination Shock. Quite different, but still has that Stephenson sense of world building that I love.
Last finished was Acceptance by Jeff Vandermeer. Currently reading Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir.
Project Hail Mary was excellent. Loved every second.
Same, I'm flying through it right now. Started it on Monday and already like 3/4 of the way through it.
Story-wise, it felt a bit clunkier than the Marsian but I liked the worldbuilding a lot.
The iRobot series by Asimov. Going into Foundation now.
I loved the 'Foundation' series! The 1st is in my top 5. 'I, Robot' was such a fantastic book as well, infinitely better than the movie.
I loved the first Foundation, but never read beyond that, for some reason. I know I have the first trilogy around here somewhere. I should dig up the other ones.
Piranesi by Susanna Clarke, and I hated it.
It takes a very cool premise, then fills it with incongruences and predictable twists that you understand chapters ahead of the protagonist. Then it all ends up being (SPOILERS AHEAD) a "humans used to literally talk to nature, modern society bad" mumbojumbo with some kind of unexplained multiverse in it.
The Broken Earth Trilogy by NK Jemisin. Fantastic and heartbreaking. It's kind of a crossover in science fiction and fantasy, set in a world that experiences apocalyptic levels of climate and geological change every few hundred years. Jemisin does excellent world building and a very admirable job of writing parts of the narrative in second person in a way that seems seamless/not gimmicky. Highly recommended.
I loved those books! In the beginning second person felt extremely weird, but the "resolution" of why it is written that way made so much sense that it made the books even more enjoyable IMO.
Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir. I keep starting some books after this one but I can't seem to finish anything.
Old Man's War by John Scalzi - not high literature by any means, but a fun read nonetheless. Currently reading the sequel, The Ghost Brigades, which is equally as fun :)
I was recently reading Scalzi too! His blog is great too.
The Lies of Locke Lamora by Scott Lynch -- a really fun heist-y story set in an engaging and well-crafted fantasy world
Last book on paper: D&D 5th edition Player Handbook (German edition)
Last novel on paper: Frank Herbert - Dune
Last audiobook: P. Djèlí Clark - A Master of Djinn
hemingway's debut the sun also rises, i went in blind and didn't expect it to be about bull fighting. i enjoyed the vibe of the 1920s travel through spain and france, the aimless plot and the character interactions.
i learned that bullfighting is terrible and cringed at the casual anti-semitism all over the book
Upgrade by Blake Crouch. Great book.
The Burning Land by Bernard Cornwell. It's book 5 in the last kingdom series that the TV show is based off of. I love the time period.
Dune
Yumi and the nightmare painter by Brandon Sanderson. (very good)
Last series I finished was Malazan Book of the Fallen by Steven Erikson. (probably the best fantasy series I've ever read)
Current read: The God is Not Willing by Steven Erikson
"Greenlights" - Mathew McConaughey, surprisingly good. Currently reading 'Look to Windward' by Iain M. Banks
Napoleon: A Life, really well written biography that reads like a novel highly recommended!
Raft by Stephen Baxter. Part of the Xeelee sequence series.
Currently on book 2: Timelike Infinity and I'm liking it quite a bit.
Brent Weeks' "The Way of Shadows".
Currently reading second part "Shadow's Edge"
1984 (nineteen-eightyfour) from George Orwell. Currently reading nothing but news.
I read The Violin Conspiracy by Brendan Slocumb and it was fantastic
All but my life by Gerda Weissmann Klein.
An amazing autobiography of a lady who survived WW2 and Nazis. It was very emotional and it felt like she was paying homage to all the little things that contributed to her survival.I would highly recommend.
Last I finished: A Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian
Currently reading: The Witcher: The Last Wish (for the second time)
The Rise and Fall of the Dinosaurs: A New History of Their Lost World - Steve Brusatte
The last book I read was one of Jack Reacher novel series. Truth be told, I need to restart that reading for enjoyment habit.
Most recently finished: The Twisted Ones by T. Kingfisher - an enjoyable, but not exceptional, folk horror.
Currently in the middle of: Finnegans Wake, Children of Time by Adrian Tchaikovsky, Flashman and Madison's War by Robert Brightwell, and a collection of Para Handy tales by Neil Munro.
“Toll The Hounds” by Steven Erikson, it’s book 8 in The Malazan Book of the Fallen series.
Women, Race and Class by Angela Davis.
Reading some of the history that gets left out elsewhere. Did you know that before the end of the Civil War lynching was primarily used to terrorize white abolitionists? After the Civil War during reconstruction, during Jim Crow, white supremacists needed to find a reason to terrorize and control the black community so the myth of the black man as rapist was woven into public discourse. It was the most convenient excuse to find a reason to violently punish and control black people who in whatever way challenged or violated the status quo. Accusations of even inappropriate forwardness were enough to justifying hanging. But the real reason would be that some black person or family started a business, sought education or became empowered in some way, challenging the white supremacist social hierarchy - and were lynched for it.
Why We Sleep by Matthew Walker. Unsurprisingly, I've become more conscious of my bedtime, but one small diagram was significant to me— having small periods where you wake up every 3 hours or so was a normal part of sleep. Since then, I've become less stressed over the quality of sleep I was getting, which then improved my sleep quality...
Dune
A. Das and T. Ferbel -Introduction to Nuclear and Particle Physics.
It was an interesting book but a horrible experience in general. I gotta finish this degree
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