Books

• Still going with across-the-year reading of Finnegans Wake. Nearing the end of part 3, which seems to be interpreted at the "ideal future", and soon moving on to part 4: "the actual future". The Wellington & Napoleon & Tristan & Iseult & Osiris & Set -ishness of it all continues to mystify just over the understandizon. At the moment, I think that Crime and Punishment is going to be next year's big read.
• Finished Happy Endings by Paul Cornell - the 50th in the Doctor Who Virgin New Adventures series and a cameo-filled celebration of this series so far wrapped around Benny's wedding. An easy read, but too many cameos overall.
• Reading GodEngine by Craig Hinton - the 51st in the same series, and an interesting (so far) dive into Ice Warrior culture.
• On hold until I have finished the above Flashman's Waterloo by Robert Brightwell. Quatre Bras is out of the way in this entertaining and well-researched prequel series and Waterloo itself is in the offing. However, I want to finish the the DW novel, since that is a natural pause in that series, before immersing in this again.

And after those I am planning to read Adam Biles' Beasts of England - a Brexit-parody sequel to Orwell's Animal Farm released a few weeks back and then Sandra Newman's Julia - her alternate take on 1984. They seem a good pairing.

I finally finished (my 3rd read of) Gravity's Rainbow. So now I can focus on some non-fiction that I was trying to read at the same time as GR (that never works). Those would be: Seeing That Frees by Rob Burbea (a book on meditation and buddhist stuff), and Gödel Escher Bach by Douglas Hofstadter. I have loads of fiction to get to after this, but want to clear the stack of "same time" books first.

I'm nearing the end of Ship of Magic by Robin Hobb.

I really liked the Assassin trilogy, and this one is off to a great start for the Liveship series.

But damn, if she doesn't give her characters the short end of the stick in pretty much every case.

Daevabad trilogy is solid. A nice change on the usual sword and sorcery stuff.

Dresden series is also good on audio. James Marsters does a good job.

The Stars Now Unclaimed. The story is decent but the dialogue is pretty crappy. Seems like I’m always scrounging for sci fi with good characters that can carry concept and story.

Presently rereading Small Gods and occasionally listening to The Light Fantastic by Terry Pratchett.

Maeve Fly by CJ Leede - very dark humor but set in the happiest place on earth. After that I'll pick up a horror novel, it's that time of year.

This week I finished A Stroke of the Pen by Pratchett and Excession by Banks, I then started Inversions also by Banks as the next part of my Culture re read. I haven't read some of the books in that series for several decades so its been great to revisit them. I have been doing that a lot the last couple of years as last year I reread all of Pterrys books and earlier this year I reread all of Tolkiens books.

Excession is good but it struggles to keep the competing story elements tied together in a deep and meaningful way, they just sort of exist next to each other in the same part of space time. I prefer others in the series and its one of my least favorite Culture books. I prefer Inversions, its one of his more subtle books, almost a non culture, culture book, as if Iain Banks wrote it not Iain M. Banks.

A Stroke of the Pen really is for only hardcore PTerry fans who are completionists who want to see how he developed as a writer as it collects stories found that he published under pseudonym in local newspapers. I found it quite short., but obviously they can only publish what was already there so its hardly a serious complaint. I enjoyed reading it and appreciated the huge amount of effort went into the detective work finding these lost stories from the local newspaper archives. One strictly for fans of PTerry.

The Sunlit Man by Brandon Sanderson. I'm loving all of the connections to the wider world and the technological advancements.

Cosmos by Carl Sagan. It's like poetry, mirror to the society, full of history and science.

Just started black company by Glen Cook, also picked up a mistborn box set I'll either read after black company, instead of black company if i lose interest, or at the same time of my bookclub starts again

Because Ahsoka didn't make much sense and the best part was Admiral Thrawn, I decided to listen to the audiobook Thrawn trilogy and I'm about 60% through book one.

It's... interesting.

It's got sound effects and music which generally add to the Star-Warsiness of it, but sometimes they can overpower the audio, especially when it's the steady thrum of the ship.

The writing isn't that great, either. It sounds a lot like the Warrior Cats novels my kid loves. But it's Star Wars so I wasn't expecting Shakespeare. It's a bit goofy, especially the names, but again it's Star Wars.

The narrator also does a good impression of Luke Skywalker, C3PO, and Han Solo, and a passable Leia and Lando. But their voice when reading the Wookiee whose speech impediment lets him speak basic is laughably bad. And that character does a lot of talking.

So far, I give it a 7/21.3.

I absolutely loved the Daevabad trilogy! Enjoy!

Currently, I’m making my way (quite slowly, I might add) through The Dark Forest (sequel to The Three Body Problem). It’s interesting, but I don’t have a lot of time to read right now, so have been reading just one small section each morning.

I’m also listening to Bad Cree while I work, and loving it so far! Nice and creepy, good for October.

Oh, and I’m halfway through Everyone Knows Your Mother Is A Witch, which is the story of Johannes Kepler’s mother, who was brought up on charges of being a witch in the 1600’s.