I am reading The House at Sea’s End by Elly Griffiths. A Ruth Galloway mystery. It was supposed to be a quick read, but got busy with some stuff, so going slowly.
What about all of you? What are you reading, or listening these days?
Note: So, I posted this last week, but for some issue with federation it didn’t actually sync. So, this will be another one and half week post.
The Ugly Renaissance by Alexander Lee
Tl;Dr all the artist and patrons of the Renaissance were pretty much deviants in every conceivable manner.
Is that fiction or non-fiction?
Non fiction
Seems like worth a read then. Would look forward to your review once you have finished it.
I was doing the audio book and stopped about halfway through. It was a very well layed out and explained narrative of the history of the Renaissance in Italy but the audio book format is just not good for a book this dense. There was too much information for me to keep track between all the various families and political factions and assists. When I have the time to read it I’ll go back to it but I need the ability to flip back a chapter or two easily for a refresher on who various people are.
Overall if you are interested in Renaissance history, politics, or art I would recommend the book but not the audio book. It got into a lot of detail on all the mid level players in a way I haven’t seen previously and does a good job of tying together the way politics influenced art and the daily life of artists and vice versa.
Thanks for the recommendation. Will add it to my list.
If you are interested in noon fiction my favorite is Too Big for A Single Mind by Tobias Hurter. It’s about the beginning of the atomic age with a heavy focus on the interpersonal relationships between all the physicists working on atomic and quantum theory at the being of the 20th century. There is no hard math and most of the concepts discussed are so foundational now that they are taught in high school so it is easy to follow the science. The audio book has fantastic narration as well.
Thanks, that sounds pretty interesting. Going to take a look.
I’m reading Alex Verus 5 tonight & tomorrow, and I intend to pick up the pace on Dead Beat because I should finally be getting Mercy Thompson 4 later this week. I moved recently and found a small local bookshop that specialises in fantasy, and immediately upon walking in I saw several series I’ve never been able to find in years. Bonus - they have a loyalty program, I’m going to be there a lot.
Edit: The extended Lightning Tree by Pat Rothfuss comes out tomorrow too iirc (I can’t remember what it’s called), that’s definitely on the list.
The narrow road between desires, eager to read that as well!
Oooh, that’s a dream. Wish I can find a nice local bookshop like that.
Mercy Thompson looks interesting. I already have few urban fantasy lined up after Dresden, can add this to the list too.
Is this the side-story of a character from his Wise Man’s Fear? I think I saw something about it, but I am ignoring Rothfuss’ work, until we can get something complete. 😀
Yeah, it’s a character from the framing story of the two main books, Wise Man’s Fear is the second. I think they’re still worth reading even if we’ll probably never see the series completed, it’s some really beautiful writing.
Side note, The Lies of Locke Lamora is my favourite book, and that’s another series that’ll probably never be finished. On the bright side I hated A Song of Ice and Fire 🤷♀️ I’m 400 pages into The Way of Kings which is my first Sanderson book, so at least I’ve got approximately 150 years of reading lined up while I wait.
Haha, that’s my problem too. Too many book and too little time. So why not read stories that are already finished? I don’t care if every single plot line is solved, but there should be some kind of ending at least.
As for Rothfuss, I follow his blog and like his style, so it’s possible I’ll just give up one day and get the books even if he doesn’t finish it.
Currently listening to [Psychokinetic] Eyeball Pulling by FreeID, narrated by Amanda Dolan through Audible.
Up next Tenacity by Dakota Krout, narrated by Luke Daniels through BookFunnel.
Ah, litRPG. How are you liking them? My experience with them has pretty much all been in web novels, with one exception of Cradle novels, or is that a different genre?
Honestly, it’s a pretty broad category. Overall enjoyable, but after so many I start looking for the unique aspects between them. Psychokinetic is fairly average so far, but I’m quite fond of Dakota Krout and the puns and terrible jokes.
Hey! I’m trying to have some discussion on @[email protected]
Cool, subscribed.
Though, in my personal opinion, instead of creating niche communities, if there is a bigger community that covers the topic, and is not very busy, it’s better to get the discussions going there, and only create a separate community when there is enough people and content. Or when there is too much other discussion overshadowing your discussion.
Not saying this because I am a mod here, but because there aren’t enough people here (on lemmy) yet, so having too many communities don’t always work well.
Just my two cents though.
Technically, Cradle and the preceding series to Dakota Krout’s Completionist Chronicles, Divine Dungeon, are in the cultivation genre rather than LitRPG. That said, the two are so closely related that they can often be interchangeable. The biggest differences would be that cultivation uses energy/essence to gain power while litRPGs use experience points to gain levels. I think cultivation books tend to have looser rules(principles maybe?) binding them whereas litRPGs have more rigid video game constraints/rulesets (although the best litRPGs lay out rules early on that allow for a great flexibility in how a player can operate within them).
Speaking on both, I think the a lot of people gravitate towards the power fantasy of the genres which has led to them being oversaturated with a lot of sub-par series. There’s some good gems in there. Cradle is pretty good, I didn’t get super far in the series but I respect it. I do think Dakota Krout writes the best series in Divine Dungeon and Completionist Chronicles, although you do have to accept the puns, and that all of the main protagonists have very transactional personalities. The Life Reset series has an interesting premise and town management. If you want straight video gaming, I think Ascend Online is pretty good at capturing the best parts of the MMORPG grind, or there’s Awaken Online if you need to embrace your inner edge-lord.
Cradle is great once you get past book 2. Completionist is one of the best besides the super cringe opening and just like divine dungeon the further it goes the quality seems to be dipping.
I’ve really enjoyed the Ripple System it’s probably of the same quality as the completionist chronicles.
It almost feels like a one off, but Jake’s Magical Market was a pretty fun time as well. The scaling gets out of hand pretty quickly.
I agree with “lots of sub-par series”, which is kind of why I have gravitated away from these. I will look into the recommendation you have shared though. Thanks!
I’m listening to Alex Verus 4 right now, and loving it. I like any series with an interesting magic system, and I really like the idea of adepts versus mages (single powerful spells versus versatility within one type of magic).
I read that a couple of weeks ago and just now finished the fifth, damn these two books were good! If the rest of the series keeps it up I think it’ll be my new favourite.
Reading Angelmaker by Nick Harkaway. I love the humor in his writing style, but it does make the non action parts a bit slower reading. I’m also listening through Nona the Ninth, the third book in the Locked Tomb by Tamsyn Muir. Moira Quirk’s narration makes this such a delight. Only drawback is waiting for my book club to catch up so I can read more.
Oooh, Harkaway is a son of Le Carré, nice!
There isn’t much info about The Locked Tomb on wikipedia, but from what I have read it seems interesting. Going to check it out.
Locked Tomb has its own wiki on fandom, but if you’re planning on reading it I’d steer clear, as it’s a pretty spoilerable series.
I have added it to my wishlist, but knowing me and backlog, it is going to take a few years before I even start it. 😀
Sounds about right. By the time I take a book off the TBR it feels like I’ve added 10 more.
My partner and I are about a third of the way through Frank Herbert’s ‘God Emperor or Dune’. It’s getting really good!
I haven’t started it quiiite yet per se but I’ve picked up Osamu Tezuka’s ‘One Hundred Stories’, a period samurai manga retelling of Faust.
Reading through all Dune books?
One Hundred Stories sounds interesting, will look it up.
We are! I actually got him so into the series he finished well ahead of me lol. But now we are listening through together as we fall asleep :D One Hundred Tales has been a lot of fun, it’s very Tezuka and having watched Pluto recently it’s scratching that very specific itch lol
Reading: The Hobbit
Listening to: I Robot
Next up (listen): Zoe is too drunk for this dystopia
Nice list! Both are great books.
“Zoe is too drunk for this dystopia” sounds like a fun book, just looked it up, it’s by the guy that wrote John Dies at the End. I remember hearing about it when the book was released and adding it to my wishlist, just realised it has been about 16 years… and I still haven’t gotten the book. I think about time I got my hands on it.
The “John dies” series is pretty good. If you do the audio books, be aware they changed narrators then changed back, just mentioning it. The Zoe Ashe, series is similar but deals with futuristic stuff not paranormal. Both are ice cream, just different flavors.
Ah, cool. I am terrible with multi-tasking, so don’t listen to audio books. To fully enjoy them I’ll have to stop doing everything and just listen to the books with, and if I do that I’ll most probably either get bored or fall asleep. 😀
City of mirrors. Best one of the three, I think.
And the only one I don’t have… Was hoping the get the final book before starting the series.
The Gulag Archipelago by Aleksandr I. Solzhenitsyn
I’m reading Walkable City by Jeff Speck, it’s about urban planning. I started reading it when my school gave us a speech to present and I chose Future of Transportation, and I wanted to show how much we could improve mobility while being feasible and ecologically friendly. The future of transportation could be so much more than self-driving electric cars…
Other than that, I’m also reading Chimpanzee Politics by the primatologist Frans de Waal, after reading his other book “Are We Smart Enough To Know How Smart Animals Are?”.
I’m slow-reading a book about meditation (“Seeing That Frees” by Rob Burbea) – it’s not really one to just “get through”. And reading Godel Escher Bach by Douglas Hofstatder, but it’s not exactly light reading so that’s taking a while too. This weekend I was at a bookshop and was compelled to get a quickie just so I could feel some reading-dopamine, and so far it’s been great… In fact I’m already almost done with:
Ubik, by Philip K Dick
reading-dopamine are nice, but slow-read book that are helpful to you are also important. So take your time and enjoy.
I finished Look to Windward by Iain Banks, I enjoyed it and it’s ending particularly. Also read Tiffany Aching’s Guide to Being A Witch, which I also enjoyed. Very interested if Rhianna wants to make a go of more new stuff for Discworld.
Really looking forward to starting The End and the Death: Volume II by Abnet. I cannot believe I have been reading HH for this long and it is finally finishing, if you ignore the inevitable books that will still get shoehorned in later, like I will.
That’s good to hear about the Look to Windward. Your last post made it sound very bleak. I think your posts have convinced me to give The Culture another try.
Wow, didn’t know anyone was continuing Discworld, should check it out.
Well remembered! Yeah it gets a lot less bleak as Banks focuses more on other characters as the book progresses who do not have such a tragic back story. Player of Games is still my favorite of the series so far, I just love it when people go super saiyan after being pushed too far. If they could translate the game properly into something that would work on film it would make an amazing film.
I’m reading the transcripts of The Magnus Archives podcast, and Time To Orbit: Unknown by Derin Adala.
Struggling a bit with The Magnus Archives tbh. It’s a supernatural horror story with a really interesting premise but there’s a lot of really disgusting stuff that keeps happening that kinda messed with my head a bit. The rot, and meat, and infestations of it all are quite intense.
I’m halfway through now, and while I’m down to a few chapters a day now for the sake of my mental health (the gross stuff is gross trust me), I’m curious to know where everything ends up and how it all works/will work.Time To Orbit: Unknown is really fucking good. It’s a scifi mystery set on a colony ship full of future humans and very well done, I can’t say more without spoiling it and it’s not even finished yet either (new chapters are realeased every Sunday and Wednesday). I caught up last week and the anticipation I’m feeling waiting for new chapters is surprisingly fun.
Weren’t you listening to them before? Why did you switch to the transcripts?
Time to Orbit: Unknown sound interesting, going to look it up.
I was only just introduced to the Magnus Archives last month!
I’m reading the transcripts because I struggle with audio processing and sensitivity (basically words stop sounding like words if a noise hurts, and lately everything hurts).
The ““unofficial”” TMA transcripts on github are really good though!Time To Orbit is fantastic, there’s no way you won’t enjoy it. It’s moreish the way it unfolds.
Oh, you are not that other Magnus Archives person? I have forgotten their name. They are a big fan, and have mentioned it at least a couple of times.
I’ve been listening through my Alastair Reynolds audiobook collection since early October. Started with the Revelation Space trilogy and the other books in that universe, then Pushing Ice, Terminal World, and Century Rain. Forgot I had Glactic North on audio, so I’m halfway through that. Next up is a personal favorite: House of Suns.
All of them are read by the same narrator, so my internal monologue is now largely in the voice of John Lee.
Probably reading through the Revenger series next (they weren’t on-sale when I bought the first collection on Audible).
That sounds interesting, listening the books of an author by one narrator.
So, how do you like Alastair Reynolds work?
I am a big fan of hard sci-fi, and he does an excellent job of it without letting it cramp the story or limit the scope of human space colonization (those limits help make the story rather than constrain it). Plus, he has a whole series that’s basically space pirates (Revenger) so hard to go wrong with that haha.
Most of the stories are set 100 to 300 years after Star Trek takes place, but FTL travel is non-existent here. Things like inertial dampeners that are basically handwave plot devices in Trek are a huge deal in his stories (i.e. very experimental, of alien origin, and absolutely horrifying when they malfunction or are pushed beyond their “safe” limits).
Reynolds used to work for the European Space Agency, and he absolutely brings that to his stories and shows his work. One of the big (pun intended) areas he excels at is keeping the scale correct when parts of the story take place in-transit between various star systems.
Some critics complain he doesn’t end his stories very well, but I’ve only had issues with a couple (mostly because it seems like they were set up for a sequel that never came about).
Interesting. Thanks for the detailed response.
He is already on my wishlist, but this makes me even more interested in reading his work.
just finished the Olympian Affair by Jim Butcher.
very much enjoying the world building
Omg you just made my day! I read the Aeronaut’s Windlass not knowing that he’d taken a long hiatus, and was bummed at the thought that I might have to wait a few years or more for the next one (looking at you, Rothfuss and Martin). Gonna check now to see if my library has this one in stock.
released a novella in between the two of them as well which is definitely worth checking out and very relevant to the main plot
