What are you reading now?

Just finished The Appearance of Power by Tanner Guzy. Interesting and informative read. 

Started The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck by Mark Manson. So far pretty berkeleying great. 

Finished "Dress Her in Indigo" by John D MacDonald, on my walk through the excellent series on Audible.

This was perhaps the best one yet. McGee unearths a complicated story when he was on a mere fact-finding mission. He finds a surprise, then another, then another. He stops a really bad actor, who had already partially unravelled the mystery. Then he uncovers another that you really don't expect, and rescues someone who shouldn't have been alive. Then again, maybe she was better off not being rescued. Did he succeed? He doesn't even know.

Just finished the latest in Martha Wells' "Murderbot Dairies" System Collapse.  Such a fun read. 

Now to ponder over the books in the "to be read" pile and decide what next...

In reply to Ian F (Forum Supporter) :

I listened to all the murder bot audiobooks. The actor performing the book was Kevin R. Free. And he did a great performance that made me shift how I judge audiobooks. I laughed out loud quite a few times based on his performance. I found one of the books got oddly off key and at the same time felt repetitive but the performance made it worth listening to them all. And all the better as the story improved. 

I started this last Wednesday, I'm almost done.  I didn't know a lot about Feynman before, but he's a fascinating person.  He's funny, enjoys screwing with people, a bit awkward, all very relatable.  I wish I was smarter to understand more of the science, but he spends fairly little time on it compared to the rest of his life.

In reply to Wally (Forum Supporter) :

And he did it all for the nookie.

Duke said:

In reply to Wally (Forum Supporter) :

And he did it all for the nookie.

 

I was surprised by how candid he is about a lot of it.  That's the movie they should have made instead of Oppenheimer. 

This!!

I'm still going through the Travis McGee series by John D MacDonald, I just finished the long lavender look. It was fantastic. This was a really demonstration of incredibly complicated character development and plot development. The ending, again, was so surprising and multi-faceted, it's so much more complicated than most in terms of the revelation at the end, that the end actually lasts for chapter after chapter. The final bit brings in an old character from a previous book. McGee actually cries, it's a splendid look at a tortured person. This is probably the best so far.

25

Currently caught up on the Awaken Online series. Supposed to be more coming early this year, and I'm actively anticipating it.

So basic summary of the 11 books or so far.

New videogame comes out taking advantage of a new VR system. Fully immersive VR experience. The game is something similar to Skyrim, but as an MMO. The game itself is controlled by a functional AI. There are gods, who require Avatars to do their bidding, and that's where they people come in.

It is intense. There are some truly magnificent battles, some deep introspective moments, a pointless romance (all romance in sci-fi is pointless a far as I'm concerned), and a lot more games than just the videogame.

For my first taste of the genre of LitRPG/gamelit, it was certainly enough to reel me in. With an average book length of 600 pages, and an average read time of 2 days for me, it was certainly a page turner.

I'm actually a bit upset I have to wait for more. 

If you're into fantasy, sci-fi, RPG games, or just looking for something different, I highly, highly recommend the series. Travis Bagwell does phenomenal work 

I'm going to read something random next, then look for more books from him. I also bought a copy of It I plan to read during chemo, see which finishes first, that 1200 pages or my 12 treatments.

Just finished the audiobook "Winter of the Wolf Moon" by Steve Hamilton, part of the Alex McKnight series. It was really good! Alex is terrible, always underestimating his friend and now partner. He has a fantastic sense of right and wrong, and will go through trials like crazy to do the right thing. He got swpet up in a twisted and weird plot on this one. I really enjoyed it.

Giovanni's Room by James Baldwin

I confess I've never been a reader. Never appealed to me honestly. But I did read the book on the right over the last two days and really enjoyed it. About a guy from my hometown who was a huge coal/timber baron. Polarizing figure as you can imagine, buts it was awesome to hear his side of the story. 

Just started "From the Shadows" by Robert Gates about his time in government service, specifically as the head of the CIA.  It looks very promising.  Also working on "Of Boys and Men" by Richard Reeves, which is excellent so far. 

I tried another "group of short story" book, trying, mostly, to find something to scratch my John D MacDonald itch. It's simply called "The Best Mystery Stories of the year", from 2021 and edited by Lee Child. Some were pretty good. Some were not.

Duke said:

The Curator by Owen King.

Owen is definitely not resting on his father's name here.  He has his own voice and so far I am enjoying it quite a bit.

It's written a bit like a fable, set in a sort of end-of-the-19th-century technological era, and in an England-like but not definable country.  We start out in the immediate aftermath following some kind of populist revolution against the old regime.  The main character is a young woman named Dora, or just D, who is somewhat dubiously  involved with a young "officer" in the revolutionary corps.  She is actually interested in something called the Institute For Psykical Research, of which her older brother was a member before he disappeared.

Not sure where he's going with it yet, but it is interestingly written and paced.

Well, I finished this over the weekend.  It did not end up where I thought it was going to, but it was an interesting read.  Most of the plot threads got picked up, though there were a few items or events that just sort of disappeared from the narrative without explanation.

Overall it was an interesting and entertaining read, though it was a bit slow through the second act.  The third act heated up substantially.  I wouldn't read it again (I say that about most books) but I am glad I read it the first time.

Also read this:

Graphic novel, compiling all 3 issues of a short comic series.

Holly Black is a sometimes-young-adult author, and this was definitely on the YA end of the scale.  A reasonably interesting take on the intersection of the faerie and human worlds, it's a teenager identity crisis story.

The story was good enough, though Ms. Black is apparently quite the little scenester, since most of her characters are too.  I was not impressed by the artwork, though it was serviceable.  Overall worth the 2-3 hours it took to read it.

I've read some of her adult fiction and it was solid, but as mentioned above, her characters are definitely drawn from the way she imagines herself to be.

My local library has a pretty good collection of Elmore Leonard's books, and I've been working my way through them over the last couple months.  I've been concentrating on his crime mysteries, will get to his westerns later.

Currently reading The Expanse VI - Babylon's Ashes.

I'm working my way through this series, one every fourth or fifth book I read.

I've liked the series very much so far, but I was a little disappointed with the previous one, Nemesis Games.  At the risk of spoilers, I'm highly irritated by the Belters' temper tantrum and related characters.  In fact I'm kind of tired of the whole Belter shtick, with the patois, the attitude, etc.  That is obviously continued and amplified in this current book.

I guess it was necessary in order to inject some major new conflict into the system, but I am enjoying it less than previous story arcs.

In reply to Wally (Forum Supporter) :

Downloading on Audio as I type. Thanks. Looks like a good listen!

Just finished the audiobook "skin tight" by Carl Hiassen. It was pretty good! Very good character development, and a weird silly plot. It was a bit slapstick at times, but that worked well enough. I'll check out his other works soon.

The review above was a few days late. In that time I finished another audiobook, albeit a shorter one.

Death of a Citizen, by Donald Hamilton. It was pretty zany. Maybe a bit over the top, maybe a bit too Mission Impossible, but neat and an unexpected plot.

Dug out some old classic SF and fantasy paperbacks from my dim past, currently reading my third collection of Randall Garret stories - if you don't know Lord Darcy, they are fun.  Probably go through some old Asimov and Heinlein soon, maybe LeGuin.  Recently read a couple of Robert Crais mysteries, will read more of his.

Duke said:

Currently reading:  The Tusks of Extinction by Ray Nayler.  It has an odd, but interesting premise, and a strong environmentalist / conservationalist slant.  It's very short - hardly more than a novella - but, frankly, if he gets the story done in 100 pages, why write 300?  I admire the brevity.

Released in January of '24, it's the author's second book.  His debut was The Mountain In The Sea, which I have not read.

 

 I read The Mountain In The Sea and liked it. Also has a environmentalist slant. I liked it enough that I'll read The Tusks of Extinction.