What are you reading??
What are you reading??
I've just started reading The Wager. I'm a sucker for ship based media, and I'm hoping this'll be no exception.
It's my third book of the year after previously reading both A Clash of Kings and How to get rid of a president
Currently readingA Separate Peace because I was convinced my high school self was just too immature when he labeled it as the worst book he has ever had to read... it's not the worst book I've ever had to read but it's not a good book either.
Next up will probably be either The Guns of August or Teddy Roosevelt's autobiography.
Just finished Dune Messiah. It was good, but I liked the first one more. Feel like it could've been shorter, while at the same time I feel like I would've appreciated more info on how the jihad affected people outside Arrakeen.
I'll probably start on either Colour of Magic or Gardens of the Moon next.
Just finished reading The Wager, fantastic book.
Just finished War and Peace. Took me a good 6 months so I've been itching for my next book.
This week I started Comanches: The history of a People. I've read a few fiction books on the tribe but am excited to learn more about them.
Soil Science Simplified by Neal Eash and others, and Landrace Gardening by Joseph Lofthouse.
Soil Science Simplified is a bit textbook-y but it's easy to understand, and it's about soil in the context of, well, anything that could be used on or in the soil, such as in agriculture and building infrastructure. I'm not that far into it but if you remember clay, sand, silt and loam soil from Elementary, then it goes into much more, such as how the soil made out of certain minerals can behave like.
Landrace Gardening is a lighter read for me, and I'm honestly just reading it to feel persuaded to grow healthy plants. It does feel like the author is hammering his points into you, but there are some useful information here and there. Then I'm proceeding to Principles of Cultivar Development by Walter Fehr.
Why am I reading these? I got interested in preserving Siling Labuyo, a local cultivar of hot chili in the Philippines, which is gradually being overshadowed by Thai Bird's Eye... Most people in my country don't know what Labuyo really looks like nowadays, despite being popular in the past... the bird gods have randomly given us labuyo some time ago, and since labuyo has usually been grown wild, it has quite a high genetic diversity. I'm thinking of cultivating it. Maybe make a super labuyo and make it get popular by attaining the title of hottest chili again. But that's obviously a pipe dream, lol. Anyway this is what ADHD does to you /shrug
started the wayfarers by becky chambers.
Immune by Philipp Dettmer
It's an accessible book which provides a layman intro to the immune system. It even has pictures.
Apparently there's a cell that rips itself open and casts out a web of its own guts, which sticks to any pesky invaders!
Hat an exciting question the day I start reading a book for the first time in YEARS after finishing off my schooling and life finally calming down a bit.
Started reading Animal Farm today. Never read it before and kind of jealous of the people who would have had it assigned in university and had discussions after each chapter. I think this book was made to be discuss3”Ed.
Also, oh boy oh boy. I remember reading 1984 which sticks with me to this day a decade later, I can already sense this book is going to have a similar impact. Orwell just has a way.
I'm reading To Sleep in a Sea of Stars by Christopher Paolini. It is a lot of fun so far. The characters are deep and believable. The plot is complex and interesting. I love it!
I just finished Whalefall by Daniel Kraus if you are looking for a gripping, hard-science, scuba survival thriller. The ending is so metal. The writing is great and the tension makes it hard to read and hard to put down.
Just started The daughter of Doctor Moreau yesterday.
Before that, Rana Joon and the one and only now was absolutely wonderful and I really recommend it.
Currently I'm reading (if audiobooks count) Bookshops and Bonedust by Travis Baltree
I'm enjoying it so far, I really enjoyed Legends and Lattes by Travis Baltree as well so when this one came out it was an instant buy
I’m struggling to get through the first of the Thieves’ World anthologies. I generally struggle with anthologies or short story collections because the character and the writing styles change so I can’t really be build up any momentum. The stories are generally enjoyable and it’s something that’s been on my reading list for a long time because one of the short story characters is one I really enjoy.
Great reader, by the way, kobo makes by far the superior device currently for a dedicated reader.
Deciphering Aztec Hieroglyphics a Guide to Nahuatl Writing by Gordon Whittaker.
Finishing the Lightbringer Series by Brent Weeks.
Next up is I think Murtagh by Christopher Paolini.Slugging through book 6 of A Practical Guide to Evil. Still have about 4000 pages to get to the end of the series
Your pick reminds me I really should get into some naval fiction. I used to love it on the screen (Hornblower, Master and Commander, etc), I'm a big fan of it's sci-fi equivalents, I was into sailing as a kid and I am a total sucker for command drama stuff. Frankly, I'm shocked I've never read any naval fiction as far as I can remember.
This is an excellent story. I thoroughly enjoyed it. I think I saw another comment mention it but after you finish this, you must read (or listen to) "Endurance" by Alfred Lansing. The narration was excellent. I borrowed the audiobook from libby and it was such an amazing story!
Just finished The Breach. Poor Jacob
The MANIAC
Peter Watts' Blindsight for the second time. It's pretty dense. I'm catching more this time around. It's a fantastic read with some of the most alien aliens ever put to page. It was a meme how often it used to get recommended back on r/printsf which I miss a lot since its replacement here is essentially dead.
Ilium by Dan Simmons. Haven’t got to the end yet but already boggled my mind.
Currently reading Brute Force: cracking the data encryption standard by matt curtin.
Currently switching between Prequel by Rachel Maddow and Naked Empire (book 8 of the Sword of Truth series) by Terry Goodkind.
Sorting the Beef from the Bull: The Science of Food Fraud Forensics. I saw it mentioned in one of the threads about the recent apple sauce food poisoning, and it's very interesting (whoever that was, if you are reading it, thank you!).
Currently on the third book of J. D. Kirk's Bob Hoon series
I've never laughed so much at an audiobook in my life.
Imagine if you took something like The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo and made it really Scottish, extra violent and incredibly sweary. That's Bob Hoon
Female villain - "I'd ask you to join our operation, Mr Hoon, but I know exactly what you'd say"
Hoon - "I'd tell you to shove it up your fish-hole, you badly-aimed batch of ejaculate"
Female villain - "Well ok, I didn't know exactly what you'd say..."
If you didn't already read it: O'Brien's Aubrey/Maturin Series. He greally goes deep into ships and sailing but the story is still compelling.
Just starting "The Time Regulation Institute," by Ahmet Hamdi Tanpinar (translated).
Exile
Book 2 in the chronological order of The Legend of Drizzt series
Not sure what happened but I used to knock back 50-80 books a year, now I barely read anymore. I'm trying to get back into it with all the books being on every electronic device so I can read wherever, and I have two physical copies of the books from different releases. Yet I'm still dragging my feet getting through it.
The frustrating thing is once I get into the book I don't want to put it down, but once I stop reading it's hard to start again.
I miss reading.
Incidentally, I was looking at the Kobo readers recently and they look pretty neat!
Gnomon. A massive disappointment.
I just finished reading Leech, by Hiron Ennes. Very strange book, some described as Gothic horror science fiction. Thought provoking, but weird.
Permanently Deleted
My Name is Red by Orhan Pamuk.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/My_Name_Is_Red
Trying to capture the nuances of writing in first person.
Currently reading A Desolation Called Peace by Arkady Martine. There's also a first book called A Memory Called Empire and both are very good.
I'm one of those people who reads several books at once, swapping between them depending on my mood and engagement. Currently the great mortality by John Kerry, the salted earth by Jeff Somers, woken furies by Richard Morgan, a journal of the plague year by Daniel Defoe, velocity weapon by Megan O'Keefe, and a couple of others that I may not finish.
Just started reading Erich Maria Remarque - Three Comrades. I'm really liking it so far.
The One Hundred Thousand Kingdoms by NK Jemisin.
It's basically this:
"My Heart Is A Chainsaw" by Steven Graham Jones
Berserk
Just finished Persepolis Rising and eagerly awaiting to get my hands on Tiamath's Wrath from my library. Fiction has always been my goto in such times and never once has it disappointed me.
I'm most of the way through Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir. Same guy that wrote The Martian (the book that got very faithfully adapted into a movie with Matt Damon) and this book is jam-packed with just as much real-world science.
If you've never read (or seen) The Martian, here's the basic premise: the year is 2040-something and NASA has started manned missions to Mars. Our hero Mark Watney is one of six crew aboard Ares 5, which is planned to spend 30 sols (Martian days -- 37 minutes longer than an Earth day) on the planet and do research. On Sol 6 of those 30, there's a massive dust storm with winds strong enough that they threaten to make the rocket for the return journey tip over, leaving them stranded on Mars, if they don't abort now. Just one problem: Mark is nowhere to be seen. The dust storm is too thick to see through, and the last thing his team saw just before his radio went dead was all his vital signs drop to zero. The captain searches for him for as long as she can, but eventually she's forced to call it off and return home with only five of the six crew.
Eight hours later, Mark wakes up, says "ow, my everything", figures out that the main communications antenna that the storm ripped off the HAB (astronaut house), punctured his suit, and grazed his side poked a hole straight through his suit's bio monitor as it did so (hence why his team saw his vitals drop), looks over at the empty launch pad, and realizes he is now the only human on Mars and the first one to be stranded there. The rest of the book is him using every scientific trick in the book to keep himself alive until he can reach the Ares 6 landing site where there's another rocket set up. As a not-too-spoilery example, Thanksgiving was going to happen while the team was there, so NASA sent them with whole, uncooked potatoes among other things with which to prepare a Thanksgiving feast. He combines Martian dirt with some natural fertilizer (read: his own poop) to make fertile soil, and gets water by recombining hydrazine (leftover rocket fuel the return rocket didn't need) with oxygen in a rather terrifying method that involves small amounts of fire, then covers the floor of the HAB in soil and plants the potatoes. It's a very cool book. My one gripe with it is that the protagonist is a bit of a jerk. He's very full of himself and he swears a lot.
The protagonist of Andy Weir's next book, Project Hail Mary, is neither of those things. He wakes up, amnesiac, on board a spacecraft, and quicklu discovers that its other two crewmembers did not survive the medically induced coma they were placed in for the journey. He has a flashback and remembers why he is here: some extraterrestrial bacterium-esque life form dubbed "astrophage" that feeds off of stars has started feeding off the Sun, and at the rate it's getting dimmer, within 20 years the Earth will get cold enough that humans are looking at extinction. Additional astronomy revealed all the stars in our stellar neighborhood were infected with astrophage, and all but one were getting dimmer. Project Hail Mary, the spacecraft he's on, is (as the name implies) humanity's last-ditch effort to save themselves: take three of their best astronauts, yeet them at that star, and pray they find out why it's not getting dimmer and report back to Earth in time to save the human race. I don't want to spoil this book too much, because it's super good, but they go super in depth about the alien life form (which it turns out is DNA-based and uses truly staggering amounts of infrared light to propel itself between the Earth and Venus, whose carbon dioxide filled atmosphere is necessary for it to breed, and stores the solar energy it collects by directly converting it to mass (E=mc²) in the form of neutrinos).
There's also a huge surprise waiting for him at his destination star which I flatly refuse to spoil. You're just going to have to read it for yourself, although I can practically guarantee you'll be just as excited as I was.
Children of Ruin, by Adrian Tchaikovsky.
It's the sequel to Children of Time that won the Hugo award a few years ago.
Children of time may be the best science fiction book I've ever read (out of hundreds), and I've been devouring everything else by Tchaikovsky ever since.
The dude has range, and has been incredibly prolific over his career.
And the writing style is incredible. He makes incredibly complex concepts/plots very very easy to understand and follow.
I read The Wager a few months back. I enjoyed it. If you’re looking for something else in that vane you might try Batavia by Peter  FitzSimons.
I am currently rereading Blood Meridian by Cormac McCarthy. It’s a great read, but a little dark.
Just finished "Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow" by Gabrielle Devin and currently reading"The Code Book" by Simon Singh.
Working through Perdido Street Station on my new Kobo. I understand the critiques on pacing, and spending too much time on world building as now, 400 pages in, races, sections of the city, creatures, and cultures are still being introduced. But it has been an enjoyable ride so far, especially with one of the main PoVs being one of my favorite tropes of just "scientist doing science"
It's fucking great!
Just finished rewatching The Magicians, since it's my favorite darker adult magic TV Show. Now I am about to start The Magicians by Lev Grossman to see what it's like. Heard the books are more nihilistic.
The Daily Stoic as everyday routine. I have other books in queue.
Black Mass - John Gray
I just finished Lieutenant Hornblower and am thoroughly enjoying the series. I’ll be starting Hornblower and the Hotspur soon.
Currently about a third of the way through "Babel: Or, The Necessity of Violence: An Arcane History of the Translator's Rebellion" by R.F. Kuang.
It's pretty good so far, but also I'm really still waiting for the plot to kick into gear, lots of wonderful world building has been taking place so far.
Also, you and I have the same Kobo! I'm a fan of this device, and haven't read a physical book since last June.
I'm currently reading Fool's Fate, the third in the Tawny Man trilogy, which itself is the 3rd trilogy in the Realm of the Elderlings sequence by Robin Hobb. I've loved every book so far and this is no exception although
spoiler
I'm still grieving Nighteyes
Poor Fitz has had a shit life so far. I'm hoping he gets some sort of happiness before the end of this one.
Dungeon Crawler Carl and Yumi and the Nightmare Painter by Sanderson
Working my way through He Who Fights with Monsters by Shirtaloon (aka Travis Deverell), currently on Book 7.
I just read "Eyes Guts Throat Bones", highly recommend at least reading the "Rath" story
Hey I have The Wager in my list, but right now I'm reading The Dawn of Everything by David Graeber, it's excellent. Going really slow because it contains so much information, I read a few pages and that sends me in a research spiral for an hour and a thoughts spirals for the day.
