What are you currently reading? (09/06/2024)
What are you currently reading? (09/06/2024)
Example: I’m reading Moby Dick by Herman Melville to get back into reading classic books.
Just started House of Leaves by Mark Z. Danielewski on a recommendation from a friend, I’m a couple of chapters in and so far it’s been pretty interesting
I really should read that one. I've been a fan of Poe's Haunted for a long time.
I'm reading The Way of Kings by Brandon Sanderson. It's my first Sanderson and I'm a little over 300 pages in. It's been on my TBR for a few months and finally decided to take it on.
I am currently reading a collection of short stories titled Lake of Souls by Ann Leckie.
They’re all in the sci-fi genre, and they have been pretty interesting so far.
I adore Ann Leckie, her way of introducing characters and adding dimension through thought and action rather than physical description always excites me. I was hooked on Ancillary Justice as well as the sequels.
What's Lake of Souls like?
I am reading Wheel of time. Currently on Book 4. Book 2 was a slog to get through but I am loving book 4 (book 5 counting the prequel).
My brother has tried to get me into reading those since we found the first one in our public library in the early 2000s. Are they as good as he says? I've read The Sword or Truth series, are they similar?
I haven't read sword of truth and I actually started reading because I am a Sanderson fan. But they are good. A bit slow to be honest, and apparently it will get even slower, but the world is fucking awesome. The world is set in an age which lasted for 3000 years, and there are significant things that lead to the creation of this age and Robert Jordan makes it feel like so. The world has a deep fucking history.
There is a part in book 4 where the main character gets to know events of the past (This is the best I can say without spoilers) and that had me in tears man. I would tell you to read upto there at least, then decide. I know it's a long journey but I am loving it.
As someone who has been a fan of the Sword of Truth series, I can confidently say that Wheel of Time is superficially similar but definitely better. Both main characters are unknowing chosen one's with mysterious lineages, who go on their heroes journey to save the world. Both have an interesting magic system, and mostly engaging and enjoyable characters. Both have a morally headstrong lead character who has a hero complex after being thrust into the position, who are genuinely fun to root for as they grow into the hero they become.
Wheel of Time is a much larger story, more grand epic in comparison, with a larger cast and 5 "main" characters that are followed with their satellite characters. The timeline and scope start out with the entire world and remain on that scale in comparison, and Jordan is a significantly better writer in my opinion. I would say that Wheel of Time is like if J.R.R. Martin wrote the Lord of the Rings, so there is more individual depth (almost too much sometimes) and so the story takes longer to tell but is incredibly "lived in".
I have a real soft spot for Terry Goodkind, having found the series in the late 90s or early 00s. It was one of my first big high fantasy series and before Wheel of Time. That said, i just couldn't really get further than Confessor in the series. It looks like there were only 4 more books in the series, so I may have to go back and try and finish it and see if it gets better. Goodkind has a habit of pulling new powers out of Richard's butt or changing how magic works when he seems to have written himself into a corner, which eventually killed my suspension of disbelief. And as much shit as Jordan gets for "men writing women", his female characters are significantly better written than Goodkind's. Both stories are rather traditional male power fantasy, but Goodkind can be kind of egregious there.
I am not ragging on Goodkind even if it seems like it, honestly, but read Wheel of Time because it is that good. The best way I can describe the difference is that it feels like going from a YA or main stream series to adult literature. You won't be disappointed.
I'm reading Universal Harvester by John Darnielle. I think I like it, but how much probably depends on how the writer is able to bring it all together in the end. I do like the somewhat unconventional structure though, and the book is very atmospheric. It feels like it's more focused on painting pictures of a time and place than strictly telling a story, or something, I'm not good at describing it.
Currently in the middle of a few:
A Schilling For Candles - Josephine Tey
The Art Of Thinking - Ernest Dimnet
Titus Groan - Mervyn Peake
The Pillow Book - Sei ShonagonI used to read a lot, but I lost my love of reading somewhere in high-school/college. Before then I always had a book going, often 2 or 3 at a time. My high school, however pushed reading really hard to the point that certain math classes even assigned books, which left me without enough time to read my own books and just kind of burned me out on reading and I've struggled to get back into it. I occasionally manage to get into it for a bit but inevitably fall off of it somewhere after a while.
I started making my way through the dune books a couple years ago. I made it up to God emperor, and stalled out. I was enjoying, but it's the kind of book I really need to really dedicate some time to reading through it. So that's been on the back burner for a while. Probably need to restart it when I get back to it. Chunking my way through it a couple pages at a time on my downtime at work like I tend to do isn't gonna cut it for this one.
I had just started reading The Road before the pandemic, and that just had the wrong vibes for me at that time. Was really enjoying it until I suddenly couldn't buy toilet paper, then it was all hitting a little too close to home. Haven't picked that back up yet, but definitely intend to.
I'm slowly working my way through an Esperanto translation of Treasure Island, I'm far from fluent, so that's slow going but I'm making progress. I've seen and loved just about every adaptation of the book, the 1950 movie was a pretty important cornerstone of my childhood and started a lifelong love of pirates, but somehow I never read the book, so I'm killing 2 birds with 1 stone reading the book and working on my Esperanto.
I'm starting to get into Warhammer 40k, so while I save up a bit to start buying and painting minis I've started reading some of the books. Decided to start with the Horus Heresy series. I'm currently on the second book, I'm probably not going to read all 60 or so books in this series because I can already tell there's some definite quality differences between the different authors involved. This seems like it's gonna be a good fit for me though, there's a ton of 40k books so there's always going to be something for me to have lined up as my next book, but they're light enough reads that I'm not going to burn myself out on them.
I also read in my second language! It's always interesting to see place name changes.
How do you feel about the Treasure Planet movie? It's one of my all time favorites.
I love treasure planet, and I hate that Disney sort of refuses to do anything with the property. I'm not clamoring for a remake or sequel or anything, I just want there to be more merchandise and such out there for it. The map would make for a great knickknack to display on my shelf (yes, they're out there, and I may buy one someday)
I went to Disney world for the first (and so far only) time a few months before the movie released, and I feel like someone who had some sway over park operations was excited for it to come out and was trying to drum up some hype, I remember there being some behind the scenes stuff on display somewhere and it had me excited to see it.
And yeah, reading in another language is an interesting experience, like I said I'm far from fluent, so I have to stop a few times every page to look up some words, or cross-reference the English version to make sure I'm understanding a sentence properly (luckily it's in the public domain so it's easy to pull up on project Gutenberg) I think this was a good choice for me as a first book in Esperanto, it's an easy enough reading level, I'm very familiar with the overall story so I have a general framework for what's supposed to be happening but have no famiarity with the actual text, so imcant just coast by on having read the book before to fill in the gaps in my knowledge.
And I'm just fluent enough to have the occasional opinion on whether I like how something was translated or not. The first time that happened was kind of cool, I figure it means that I am kind of getting the hang of the language if I have an opinion on something like that.
Names are definitely interesting, I'm not sure which other languages have similar features to this, but in Esperanto nouns end with O and there's various suffixes that might be added on for various reasons, so if you have a name that doesn't end in an O some of that can get a little awkward. Sometimes names end up getting esperantized, other times they just let it be and you just kind of have to roll with it.
Stop reading here if you don't want a mini Esperanto lesson. I'd stop myself but I find writing this kind of thing out is helpful for my learning process.
To kind of illustrate what I'm talking about, there's the English saying that "Hurt people hurt people" meaning that people who have been hurt tend to hurt other people
In Esperanto the sentence would be something like "Vunditaj homoj vundas homojn"
You have the root words vund- having to deal with injuries (from the rame root as "wound")
And hom- meaning person (same root as the homo in homo sapiens, or the French "homme" for "man" for example)
-o- makes it a noun
-as is a present tense verb
-j- makes it plural
-a- in an adjective
-it- shows that something has been done to something. "Vunda" would be "hurtful," and "vundita" is "hurt" or "injured"
-n indicates the direction of the action, so which person is the one being hurt and which one is doing the hurting, sentence structure is a little flexible in Esperanto so "homojn vundas vunditaj homoj" in essentially the same sentence as the original, it would probably be understood more like "people are hurt by hurt people," and if you move the n around to make it "vunditajn homojn vundas homoj" it would be "hurt people are hurt by people")
So without those vowels at the end of nouns and adjectives, it gets hard to add the j, n, and other suffixes on
And you can kind of play around with those and other suffixes. "Vundo" would be an injury, -e is adverbs, so "vunde" would be something like "hurtfully" or "injuriously," "vundito" would be a person or thing that has been hurt, "homa" would be an adjective describing something as being human-like, "homas" would theoretically be a verb meaning something like "personing," (which feels like it pulls from the same millennial slang dictionary as "adulting") etc.
In a way it's almost like someone built a language after really enjoying the Calvin and Hobbes strip about how "verbing weirds language"
Also, now that I'm thinking about it, "dolor-" might be more appropriate than "vund-" it's sort of the difference of being "in pain" vs being "injured." But that's sort of in the realm of poetic license and word choice, and it's kind of cool that I'm at the point where I can start thinking about that kind of thing. I'm too lazy to go back and change what I wrote so I'm leaving it as-is, it illustrates my point well enough.
Speaking of classics I have just now finished The Idiot by Dostoevsky. I think I need some time to process it! It felt like a commentary on the changing society of the time, and how a perfectly innocent and loving person couldn't survive said society. More than anything the book seemed like a vessel for Dostoevsky to share various ideas and philosophies.
I'm back into my childhood reading the latest book in the eragon universe, Murtagh. It's going well but I'm playing a bit too much video games to read. I have a nice edition with printed edges from my mom but I really want to get back to reading on my kindle.
I just started Ray Bradbury's Dandelion Wine, which I've been meaning to read for ages.
Before that I read The Queen's Thief series, by Megan Whalen Turner, which was fun.
I'm about halfway through the queen of the tearling
Just finished Embassytown by China Mieville. Haven't read anything for ages so took the opportunity to get back into it on a lazy holiday. Highly recommend this book, or any by China, if you enjoy dense sci-fi.
For a physical book, I'm reading "One Hundred Years of Solitude" by Gabriel García Márquez. I'm not too far in yet, but I'm enjoying it so far. I am having some issues keeping track of names, which usually isn't a problem for me, and I'm not sure why.
For my drive to work, I'm listening to "Words of Radiance" by Brandon Sanderson. I'm not sure if I'm really enjoying it or not, but I'm giving it a chance. For the first book, I thought it was just okay until about the last third of the book, so we'll see how this one turns out.
Recently finished All Fours by Miranda July read by the author and am now re-listening to Joyce’s Ulysses.
For whom the bell tolls by Ernest Hemingway
All Systems Red by Martha Wells. I’d heard that they’re making a TV show for it, and has always heard the Murderbot series was good.
I just finished Where the Water Goes, by David Owen. He gets a little rambly at times, but overall it’s a great look at the history of water use and development in the western US as seen through the lens of the Colorado River. The author chronicles several road trips he takes to follow the entire length of the river and several tributaries, and he weaves in a great amount of history along the way.
I particularly enjoyed the part about Arizona’s governor sending out the National Guard to prevent construction workers from accessing the East bank while trying to start building Hoover Dam. He also appointed someone to be the admiral of the Arizona Navy so that she could harass them in boats.
Ultimately it’s a story about just how fucked we all are, but I really enjoyed it and the specificity of why.
Recursion by Blake Crouch
The Chamber by John Grisham
The Lego catalog 2024 Summer
Heheh, that counts too!
I'm currently reading "Very Good, Jeeves". I like to mix in light books before I decide to tackle something heavier
A bunch of empty calorie LitRPG desserts right now like He Who Fights With Monsters, The Primal Hunter, and Unbound, with my currently active book being the first book in the Infinite Realm series. I am eagerly awaiting Beware of Chicken 4, and I have the latest Bobiverse book queued up as the audiobook dropped this week.
Audiobooks really allowed me to get back into reading due to time constraints, so I almost always have a book going in one ear throughout the day. I cycle between "realer" literature and light fun reads, but have been on a nice trashy kick for a little while now. I am debating another attempt at Malazin Book of the Fallen because I have no idea where I got cut off in my last listen through, and possibly another thrip through of Dune due to the movies and the nearly 2 decades since my last read through.
I'm back on my old long book kick. Just started the Count of Monte Cristo
@VanHalbgott “Dr Sleep” by Stephen King. Last read his books decades ago and nice to be reminded how good a writer he is. Also reading “Swedish Essentials of Grammar” by Viberg, Ballardini & Stjärnlöf which is not quite as gripping.
Are you learning Swedish?
@VanHalbgott I have Swedish at about B2 level but trying to improve.