Currently reading "The Kaiju Preservation Society" by John Scalzi. Lightweight, humorous sci-fi. Just recently finished "The Gentleman of Moscow" by Amor Towles, which is lovely storytelling if you enjoy character building. KPS is definitely a much different feel.
Depending on what you like to read, I would recommend both - but for different reasons.
this post was submitted on 02 Jul 2023
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I loved Scalzi's Old man war series. Good entertaining sci fi, with some interesting questions to ponder under the stories.
Currently reading "The Kaiju Preservation Society" by John Scalzi.
This was a fun read. I enjoyed it enough to put Red Shirts on my reading list, just have not gotten around to it yet. If you want to stick with the Kaiju genre, Project Nemesis by Jeremy Robinson had a similar vibe.
I'll have to check it out. Thanks!
I really enjoyed Scalzi's Interdependency series. Definitely light compared to some (and there were arcs/characters I would have liked to see develop a bit more), but it's a decent enough ride.
I just finished KPS and loved it! It was fun in a "this entire thing is fucking ridiculous" sort of way that Scalzi (and the book itself) fully acknowledges.
"I lift things" started infiltrating my spoken phrases without me realizing it and I was like "wtf‽" when I realized.
Have you checked out "Fuzzy Nation", "Red Shirts", or the "Lock In" series? All fun stories by Scalzi in similar veins (Lock In is a bit more serious, but not like The Interdependency).
I have!
I've yet to find anything Scalzi has written that I'm not a fan of.
Another less known gem is Agent To The Stars ... Had me laughing in a way usually reserved for re-reads of The HitchHikers Guide To The Galaxy!
Seveneves by Neal Stephenson. Hard sci fi. I like it a lot. I would highly recommend it.
Might have to give it another go. Loved the first 2/3, but remember hating the last bit. Seems I was alone in that, though.
The last bit was jarring for me. I still love that book, but it felt like two separate novels back-to-back.
Had a need to be silly for a bit so I decided to re-read both The Zombie Survival Guide (Max Brooks) and The Zombie Combat Manual (Roger Ma). Been a long time and guess it's time to 'brush up on the basics' lmao.
I just finished Heart of Darkness. Wow, what a dark and wild ride. I also rewatched Apocalypse Now and it's amazing as ever, and much better now that I've read the source material. Side note, but the Theatrical Edition is so much better than redux it's not even funny.
I've also been reading Anne of Green Gables, when I need something a bit brighter. I'm not going to lie though. After Heart of Darkness, it feels a bit unimportant and I'm losing steam with it a bit.
I'm also rereading Watership Down. I might take a break from this to focus on Anne of Green Gables. I love Watership Down, but two kids books at the same time is a bit much.
For my next serious read, I'm probably going to pick up some Hesse. I have Narcissus and Goldmund, or Beneath the Wheel, excited for both.
The Name of the Wind by Patrick Rothfuss. I'm maybe a quarter or a third of the way through it and I quite like it! It's been a slow-go mostly just because I'm not good at dedicating time to read. I recently got the audio book to make more progress while driving.
American Prometheus, the Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer, by Kai Bird and Martin J. Sherwin.
I wanted to check it out before the movie comes out, and I highly recommend it for a very in depth view of his life.
I also recently finished On the Origin of Time, by Thomas Hertog, which I also recommend. It's about Stephen Hawking's final ideas and theories, told by one of his closest proteges. There are some incredible ideas in this book that I had never heard of before, and I'm a cosmology nerd.
On my nightstand:
The Wandering Earth, by Liu Cixin (author of the famous Three Body Problem trilogy), hard(-ish) sci-fi.
It's a collection of short stories named after the first story, Wandering Earth. I'm still only in the very beginning of the first story but it already introduces some really interesting ideas which is what I loved about the Three Body Problem. So I'm sure I'll like the rest. If you liked TBP, I'd definitely recommend.
On my phone:
Hyperion, by Dan Simmons, 1989, sci-fi/space opera(?)
Does it need introducing?
Anyway, since I don't read on my phone all that much and usually only in short bursts (meaning I usually read each page at least twice), for the past month, maybe even more, I've been slowly getting through the first chapter (The Priest's Tale) but once it got to the cruciform thing, I had to finish that chapter in one sitting. Now I started the second chapter, The Soldier's Tale, and can't wait for being mind blown again. Already got amused by this:
There were tales of cadets receiving fatal wounds in the OCS:HTN sims and being pulled dead from their immersion creches.
So... If you die in the Matrix, you die in real life too. Is that where they got that idea from? :) It's always fun reading through old sci-fi classics and finding likely inspiration for newer stuff or even inventing something that everyone else then uses later. Asimov's Foundation was all like this, so many things that eg. Star Wars straight up copied (eg. Trantor/Coruscant).
Halfway through book 2 of The Hyperion Cantos by Dan Simmons
My friend described it as a "scifi version of the Canterbury Tales" and I am loving it so far!
Leviathan Falls
James S. A. Corey / Daniel Abraham and Ty Franck
Science Fiction / Space Opera
I'm about half way in and enjoying it so far.
As for recommending it ... well, it's book 9 in a series that also includes a ton of short stories. I'd definitely recommend the series, but wouldn't recommend starting here!
I'd also highly recommend the show since it was a fantastic bit of story telling and thee authors (mostly Ty from what I gather) were involved and had writing input on.
Quick series summary stolen from Wikipedia and edited to not give overall spoilers:
The Expanse is set in a future in which humanity has colonized much of the Solar System, but does not have interstellar travel. The G-force exerted during acceleration when travelling across the Solar System is debilitating without the use of special drugs. In the asteroid belt and beyond, tensions are rising between Earth's United Nations, Mars, and the outer planets. The residents of the outer planets have developed a creole language due to their physical isolation from Earth and Mars. The series initially takes place in the Solar System, using many real locations such as Ceres and Eros in the asteroid belt, several moons of Jupiter, with Ganymede and Europa the most developed, and small science bases as far out as Phoebe around Saturn and Titania around Uranus, as well as well-established domed and underground settlements on Mars and the Moon.
Also - as a sidenote: Not really sold on Bookwyrm being a replacement for Goodreads, but I hope it becomes one!
Loved the series as a whole! Books 7-9 might be my favorite of the 9!
Pratchett battle of the nouns (sorry of the title is inaccurate, I have a German copy). It's about little gnome guys living a hidden life in a mall
Sounds like the book Truckers, the first in the Bromeliad trilogy.
GNU PTerry.
Neuromancer by William Gibson. I guess I must have missed reading most of his books for a very long time despite the topics being of interest to me.
Great book. I do love the world he creates, it still holds up even now. His other books are just as good. I wish there were more cyberpunk books, I do love that genre.
Since Brandon Sanderson's Secret Project #3 came out on Saturday morning (Yumi and the Nightmare Painter) that's what I'm reading for the next week.
Inglorious Empire by Shashi Tharoor. A friend of mine turned me onto the book, Tharoor does a really good job of laying out how exactly the British Empire decimated in the indian region's economy through its brutal rule
Finished book 4 of Murderbot Diaries and eagerly moved on to book 5, and am about 44% done with that. I expect I'll be reading book 6 by tomorrow at some point. They're by Martha Wells and they're sci-fi, but very light fun reads. She tells very tight stories with excellent characters and pacing.
I just finished Wind, Sand and Stars by Antoine de Saint-Exupery. It's an autobiographical piece from the Author of Little Prince about his days flying between the wars.
https://bookwyrm.social/book/196242/s/wind-sand-and-stars
I'm just about to move onto Femina by Janina Remirez. Which is a history of the world told through the eyes of the deliberately women left out of it. I'm looking forward to it, it sounds excellent. Filling a much needed gap in the popular understanding of women's role in history.
I loved "Wind, Sand, and Stars", It somehow made me cherish the "Little Prince" more.
Just started the last Witcher book (The Lady of the Lake) by Andrzej Sapkowski. Far better than the show, although I do think I enjoyed the earlier books more than the later ones.
Understanding Comics by Scott McCloud
It's a comic that breaks down and analyzes comics as a medium, from how it manages closure, to the abstractions it presents, to how time is depicted spatially.
Very good so far, gives me a window into the deeper artistic world of a medium I care for. Would heartily recommend if you care to assess comics and manga mechanically.
That sounds awesome. I'll definitely add it to my, far too long, reading list.
Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrel. probably my favorite depiction of the fey/elves.
What book is currently on your nightstand?
The Last Watch
Who is the author?
J.S. Dewes
What genre?
Scifi
How do you like it?
Not sure, yet. I just started it last night. But I hear it is great.
Would you recommend it to others?
I'll let you know in next week's thread. 😁
Sci-fi book Stargate SG-1 Sacrifice Moon by Julie Fortune. And I like it so far it's written fairly well. At least well enough to satisfy my craving for new Stargate stories.
I am also readying the fantasy book Yumi and the Nightmare Painter by Brandon Sanderson. And so far it's great! But I just started this one so it's hard to really say much right now
Still trudging ever so slowly through Crossroads of Twilight. I've barely been reading lately, hopefully I can find the willpower to finish it out so I can move on to the next books which I've heard get more interesting.
Listening to To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf while I do chores. It's literature so I have to listen to it since there's no plot, really, and it's all thoughts inside people's heads, so far all on the same day.
Just finished book 2 in the Seraphina series, Shadow Scale, by Rachel Hartman. I almost didn't finish it because for most of the book the main character didn't have anything going in her favor and the relentless piling on of bad news made me anxious.
I've got to finish the other stories in Stories of Your Life and Others, by Ted Chiang, because I got it to read "Story of Your Life" after reading a thread on Kbin about the movie Arrival (which I had really enjoyed by apparently hadn't understood fully).
Finishing off Ken Follett's A Column of Fire before I launch in to John Lewis-Stempel's Meadowland.
I just finished re-listening to CJ Archer's Glass and Steele series on audiobook. From another post:
This one is an awesome mesh of different settings and genres blended really well together. It's Wild West outlaws coming to Victorian era England for a fantasy epic styled coming into the light of magic, where magicians who have hidden themselves for fear of prosecution from the craft guilds come into the light. The mysteries don't ignore the magic elements, but don't use them as a crutch and stay broadly true to the era, and the take on magic is unique and interesting. You really want to read this from book 1.
I highly recommend it. I'll go into the two Glass Library books out so far next for audiobooks. It's set 25-30 years later, and has started to raise its own intriguing exploration of her unique magic setup. (Her After the Rift series is also enjoyable in a more traditional fantasy setting.)
But, this week is vacation, which means I have time to read ebooks, and I'm generally in a different story with audio and visual reading. I restarted Brandon Sanderson's Stormlight Archive series yesterday. I've read the first book and part of the second in the past before getting distracted, and I really enjoyed what I read. I also really think the introductory assassin's powers could make for a pretty compelling video game, though implementing it in an enjoyable way might take a little finesse. I find the really big epics with a lot of characters take longer sessions with a little more focus to engage with, so a week with minimal interruptions is perfect, and hopefully I'll be able to get further this time.
I'm enjoying a little non-fiction at present. The Secret Life of Fungi: Discoveries from a Hidden World by Aliya Whiteley. Last year I started hiking, and as a resulted started falling in love with mosses, lichen, and fungi. Once I get interested in something, I desire all the knowledge. Possibly an ADHD thing. The book is a wonder, such a relaxed style of writing. Not academic and with no flow, like some non-fiction books can be. The knowledge just flows from every sentence, and it has made me walk further and get out much more. It really has given be a boost. The book is simply so engaging. I have caught my partner reading it, and devouring it. She is not even interested in fungi at all.
Right now I'm reading Out by Natsuo Kirino, it's pretty good so far but I haven't gotten too far into it.
The prose is very good, especially the description of menial work and living while poor, and it's really remarkable how the author can make you sympathize with a truly snotty and judgemental main character.
I haven't really got to the meat of the story yet so I'm hoping it gets a bit more fast-paced.
Currently Heaven & Hell by Bart Ehrman about where the concepts of heaven and hell actually came from - surprisingly, they're not really mentioned in the Bible.
Some stuff about Greek and Roman philosophy and I'm imagining later in the book it'll get into his the Church retconned Hell into Christianity which is what I'm looking forward to finding out!
I'm finishing up "Summer Reading" by Jenn McKinlay, about an out of work chef who visits family on Martha's Vineyard to chaperone her 14 year old half brother while the parents are away for the summer. She is dyslexic and ends up falling for a local librarian. Very much a summer "beach read" type book and so far really entertaining. I love Jenn's cozy mysteries and just started reading her stand-alone contemporaries. I love her characters and the humor she adds to all her books.
Next up is The 5 Years Before You Retire by Emily Guy Birken, a retirement planning book. Have to get my ducks in a row for retirement in a few years!
About to finish The word for world is forest, by Ursula K. LeGuin
It's sci-fi, about the clash between Earth colonizers on a world covered by a forest and the people already living there.
Beautifully written and super short. She's able to show a lot in basically 100 pages
So I cannot recommend it enough! She's just so good at depicting other societies and putting and anthropological point of view
Check The left hand of darkness too if this caught your interest
About to finish The word for world is forest, by Ursula K. LeGuin.
Sounds interesting. Is this a standalone or the first in a series? Or, should I read any of her other books before this one?
They are part of cycle but they are independent stories
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