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What book(s) are you currently reading or listening? February 18

Have been pretty busy last couple of weeks, so still reading Shadows of Self by Brandon Sanderson. Book 2 of second era of Mistborn.

Also started Wandering Inn, have read a few chapters, and while interesting, I am not a big fan of the main character. Maybe I have read too many (web) novels that I can't understand when people don't act like typical isekai protagonist, but still...

The world building is interesting, want to know more about what's happening. Will probably try to read at least the first volume and then decide whether I want to continue or not.

What about all of you? What have you been reading or listening to lately?

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For details, you can checkout the initial Book Bingo, and it's Recommendation Post . Links are also present in our community sidebar.

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  • Just finishing up Roman and Local Citizenship in the Long 2nd Century CE. It's taken me almost two weeks. Not because the material is poorly written, or not interesting; it's absolutely fascinating. But I converted it from a PDF to an EPUB, and the formatting is so utterly fucked that my reading speed is slowed to a crawl.

    • If you enjoy fantasy Rome, have you checked out Jim Butcher’s Codex Alera yet? It started as a bet between two writers arguing whether good writing or novel concepts were more important. Jim Butcher came down on the good writing side and to prove it asked the other author to give him a tired writing trope and they chose the “lost Roman legion” trope. And then Pokémon got added in somehow to the challenge too.

      It’s really good

  • Speaking of Sanderson, listening to the audiobook of Tress of the Emerald Sea. I haven't read any other Cosmere and wanted to try out a standalone book to see if I liked the worldbuilding. Really liking it so far, even though it's closer to a YA book than what I understand the rest of the series to be.

    It does something interesting in the narration, wondering if anyone else has seen this before. It's standard third-person narration to start, and then the narrator is revealed to be someone in the story, and uses first person sometimes when talking about themselves. I couldn't think of any other books I've read that did that, thought it was a cute trick.

    • Yeah, these standalone books are pretty good, and they take much lighter tone than the usual Cosmere.

      You can try different series in Cosmere and read them as standalone. There is one character that makes an appearance in all his books, but other than that each series is kind of standalone.

    • Is that how you get meme material for !roughromanmemes@lemmy.world? How often do you think of the Roman Empire?

      • I assume this is aimed at me XD

        Is that how you get meme material for !roughromanmemes@lemmy.world?

        No, mostly I just steal memes from elsewhere. I'm generally too lazy to make memes myself.

        How often do you think of the Roman Empire?

        Every day, unironically. Not every hour, but definitely multiple times every day. It's my fascination.

        If I'm not thinking about Rome, I'm thinking about Roman-derived concepts. I fancy myself a writer, so I spend a lot of time in my own headspace - but that just means it's time for FANTASY Rome!

        When I'm well enough to take walks, I think about general historical issues and how they connect through the ages... and since my core of knowledge centers around Rome, Rome almost always features at some point during the train of thought. I might consider WW1 packaged rations, Civil War hardtack, and starvation in the Revolutionary War, but I'll also think about the prominence of meat and bread in the diet of Roman legionaries. When I think about the application of advanced concepts with primitive techniques, post-apocalyptic style, my thoughts often flit to Roman methods of engineering and organization.

        Sometimes, it's just something simple, a flash of daydream qualia, like connecting the sound of my footsteps to the stamping march of a Roman Legion, or the gentle click of my cane to the walking stick of a Roman traveler along the via munita, or the smell of my pancakes to a streetside thermopolium serving honey flatcakes on a holiday.

  • Finished “The Rising Sun” earlier today and jumped right into “Judgement at Tokyo”. I do audiobooks non-fiction.

    However, I read fiction, and I’m working on “The Tatami Galaxy” right now.

26 评论