What are you reading now?

Currently reading The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet after reading To Be Taught, If Fortunate, which I really enjoyed. 

Re-reading this.

If you ever wondered about repressed memories, what a big (negative) role our notoriously poor memories play in the judicial system, or just how memory works, or doesn't,  you should read this book

I think I'll put this on my Christmas list. I was a big fan when I was a kid.

In reply to Ranger50 :

How is that?

In reply to Marjorie Suddard :

I'm 200 pages in out of 635... I just hope it isn't like The Stand where after 4 days on TV, I recognized stuff I read back in the first 200 pages. But so far it's pretty good with some unexpected twists.

Ranger50 said:

In reply to Marjorie Suddard :

I'm 200 pages in out of 635... I just hope it isn't like The Stand where after 4 days on TV, I recognized stuff I read back in the first 200 pages. But so far it's pretty good with some unexpected twists.

Doctor Sleep was enjoyable; it was just kind of... unnecessary?

There is a trope about how Earth is a deadly wasteland and humans are among the most dangerous creatures in the galaxy.

I started reading some stories on https://www.reddit.com/r/HFY/ and they play into this trope and are, overall, amusing. I don't think that they are up to modern sci-fi standards, but they most certainly pass the pulp sci-fi test.

 

I go all in on David Weber books, he's definitely my favorite author for a good sci-fi read, he's only let me down with one bad book.

This one is an interesting twist on time travel and parallel universes. 

In reply to JesseWolfe :

Does he only write in series?  I'm really tired of all the new genre authors writing in nothing but series.  Yes, it gives an author time to stretch out and do some universe building... but it's also lazy in some ways, because you don't have to keep inventing new characters and plot devices, and you can let the fans guide you by natural selection.  Plus, you're more likely to be generating product so you can move a book every quarter / 6 months / year than you are to be writing something because you have a burning idea in your head that you want to explore.  In fact, servicing the series fans may be preventing you from having any burning ideas.

And it's a PITA for new readers to pick up your stuff, if they have to start at Book One of the Whatever series, but all that's at hand are Books Three and Seven.

I recognize that series can be interesting and are the best way to make money.  But if you only write in series, I'm probably just not going to read your stuff.

Currently rereading William Gibson's Neuromancer, which I've read at least once.  But I want to read the rest of the Sprawl trilogy, Count Zero and Mona Lisa Overdrive, so I figured I better brush up on th original.  It's not long.

In reply to Duke :

Many of Weber's older books are singles, though this newer collaboration is his first book in many years that isn't in his Harrington series ( 20+ books ) or Safehold series ( 10 books).  So to answer your question, kinda, just not any of his newer books.

I read the [canoeing essay book, so I could learn how to come back and edited in spam here]

Armada, Ernest Cline. Clever and a smooth read. Same guy as Ready Player One

Currently on The Hero of Ages, the third Mistborn book from Brandon Sanderson. It is a great series. 

Before that it was the Reckoners series from him and then Skyward. The sequel to Skyward is out now so I will move on to that next. 

I really like Stephen King, I read a lot of his books. I also like historical books, for example, [going back and editing canoe links into posts].   I even wrote my own essay, and I took all the necessary information [from this canoe site], this is a great place where there is a lot of information on different topics.

In reply to Duke :

Seveneves was decent, but it feels like 1.5 books of a trilogy.

I went back to some Charles deLint to cleanse my palate after Fall

The Radium Girls: The Dark Story of America's Shining Women by Kate Moore - A fascinating nonfiction with the pacing of a novel. Hard to put down.

Just finished The Secret Lives of Color by Kassia St. Clair and Will My Cat Eat My Eyeballs? Big Questions from Tiny Mortals about Death by Caitlin Doughty - Both very charming and geeky in very different ways.

Next up on the book stack is Black Cloud by Eliot Kleinberg.

A Star Trek novel named Deep Domain.  Sci-fi plus marine biology. I'm in my happy place.

Very definitely NOT escape reading for me.  It's dredging up all kinds of memories through my life, ripping the scabs off, and pouring salt on them.  It's making some strange interactions with a parent, and with a former spouse, make a whole lot more sense. Some say this will bring healing, but so far I want to throw the book across the room.

In reply to SkinnyG :

It sounds tough.  Important things usually are.  I hope you find the strength to keep going and I hope it provides some improvement for you.

In reply to Brett_Murphy :

I've written one or two for there.  They were generally well received.  I stopped because reddit changed their terms and it wasnt clear what was meant by ownership of IP

Just finished binge reading the Terry Pratchett Discworld books about the Night Watch again. They were my favorites of all the Discworld series.

After being put off by being a giant series I started in on The Expanse books. A friend said I should try the first one and give it a shot. Wanted to read at least 2 before checking out the show.  First book got polished off in about 5 days. Certainly not in depth reading, easy to get through some pages.

"Cunningham ... the Passion ... the Cars ... the Legacy."

It's a spectacular two-volume album by Richard Harman that weighs about twenty pounds. Annie gave it to me for my birthday in December. We first saw this at The Revs Institute in Naples, FL, last year, and I told Annie that it looked like a spectacular book album. She remembered, and it became my birthday present. I'm almost through the first volume. Harman's prose is pretty good (although I do have my petty critisisms because he's a Brit and has that certain Brit writing style that I sometimes have problems with ... but that's just me). However, the period photos are spectacular. So I highly recommend this if you can find it. I think Annie bought one of the last original albums and paid dearly.

I should say that I've been a huge Cunningham car fan since I was about ten years old. That would have been the late fifties. I was very happy to meet car guy, author, and vintage racer Tom Cotter at Owls Head Transportation Museum in Maine in July, 2018, when he was showing his Cunningham C3 Vignale Coupe, a spectacular car. Bumper sticker: "It's Gotta Hemi" (sic). Then I saw him race it at Lime Rock a few weeks later.