What book(s) are you reading?

[Bebpo]

House of Windows by John Langan (The Fisherman, lit-horror short story collections).

Finished up John Langan's first book from 2009. Like The Fisherman and his short stories, it's very much a high-lit book. A haunted house story where the two main characters are English Professors. It's pretty lengthy and a good deal ambiguous, and falls much further on the lit genre side than the horror genre side, but in exchange you get a very well written book with well developed interesting characters. It's creepy at parts, but it's more a drama about relationships, family, etc... that has some creepypasta mixed in.

I wouldn't say it's one of my favorite horror books, but it was worth the page count and always enjoyable to read thanks to Langan's excellent writing. Very good 3/4 book. I'll definitely check out the couple of remaining short story collections of Langan's that I haven't read at some point. I very much enjoy his output.

[Bebpo]

The Frugal Wizard's Guide to Medieval England - Sanderon's 2nd standalone book in his four book kickstarter project.

I...really liked this one. It was closer to Scalzi's Kaiju Preservation Society than Sanderson's Cosmere universe stuff. Was a fun isekai mashup of sci-fi and fantasy told in first person through an amnesiac MC figuring out who they were. Lots of fun stuff. Between the first Skyward book and this, I'm starting to feel that Sanderson writes better without the weight of like 15 books/novellas of Cosmere world lore that everything has to fit into and slowly advance.

So of course, it seems like most Sanderson/Cosmere fans don't like this one

[benjipwns]

This is fine (and long) but there are some strange things about it. The title is very misleading, as it's not about any of this, it's a biography of three people somewhat related to the Plessy case and covers their lives since birth including their romances, careers, etc. The entire thing is a prelude to the Supreme Court case which takes place entirely in the last chapter and quickly covers over the decision on a couple pages. Then it ends immediately. Also strange is the guy seems to have used very few secondary sources at all, he instead went to the archives and read diary entries and newspaper articles to construct his narrative with almost no content from what anyone else has published about this. Maybe it's because he's a journalist instead of a historian but it is a bit odd, though he didn't make too many historical errors just a couple that I recall. He especially enjoys making "images of how location were" that he footnotes by noting that he "synthesized" them from reading newspaper articles from the time, which okay, whatever you tell yourself buddy.

[benjipwns]

Not necessarily terrible but there's some things about this, the biggest one is that the guy (writer of Forrest Gump) read only a handful of biographies about the three and then abridged them into this. Which is fine I guess but a bit odd for a book. He also organizes each chapter by person, which again is fine but the way he does it is that he redescribes events in each chapter. So for example he talks about things that led to the Boston Tea Party and how Hamilton reacted. Then he does it again for Adams and again for Jefferson, could have just mentioned the event again! Lastly it has a number of temporal oddities, my favorite is that George Washington leaves Philadelphia for Boston on July 3rd. He then spends some pages describing events that happen as Washington travels before Washington arrives in Boston on July 2nd. Now, we know George Washington was a time traveler who could also move faster than light, but he never gets into how Washington solved the resulting time paradox.

[HardcoreRetro]

The Malazan Book of the Fallen is on Humble Bundle. Like 18 dollars for all the Steven Erikson books. Pretty good deal if you're a digital reader.

[Bebpo]

The Malazan Book of the Fallen is on Humble Bundle. Like 18 dollars for all the Steven Erikson books. Pretty good deal if you're a digital reader.

Yeah, I want to read Malazan and that's a steal.

But...I don't like reading big books digitally. I'm more ok with digital for short stuff, but with larger books I'm going to spend weeks/months on I prefer the physical book.

[benjipwns]

Liked this a lot, but I've got some problems AND NOW YOU'RE GONNA HEAR ABOUT EM. First, the book is supposed to be about the supposedly timeless wisdom of the classical era that the Founders tapped into but the entire book is framed as the authors personal existential crisis about Donald Trump winning in 2016. Along these lines the final chapter is about what we can do to stop Trump which is even worse than that part. (Even more so by the fact that the book came out after Trump lost in 2020.) The author spent 300 pages on how brilliant the Founders were and then says they were so stupid they would shocked and appalled at modern politicians and society for its self-serving focus on personal or factional benefit. Buddy, did you even read any of the shit you wrote let alone the sources you used? He makes a list of ten things we can do against Trump but two of them contradict, #2 says the state needs to suppress freedom of speech, press and assembly to the point that any organization of individuals needs to be outlawed and the corporate form to be abolished entirely since the Founders wouldn't have recognized it even though it was a central component of common law for centuries and two of the four in the book were actual trained lawyers and a third simply did not pass the bar. As if this was not bad enough then #8 says that in the time of Trump's evil ways we need to defend freedom of speech and press more than ever before. Pal, buddy, friend, you just said the state needs to suppress it and borderline totally. Lastly, he uses "First Peoples" for Native Americans, cites a source that does not at all remotely speak for all of them to justify this as he claims, is ahistorical and erases their tribal individualities, which I bring up mostly because he erases actual tribe names to insert First Peoples. The founding generation understood the tribes were separate and distinct rather than a homogenous "Indigenous" and this was important to basically all their dealings with them. (Something the author comes close to accidentally stumbling upon when he mentions the different ways the French and British treated them and how it determined what side they fought on in the numerous wars.) Tribes today absolutely do not consider themselves to be one large demographic group outside of the shared (yet still distinct, look at how the different tribes in different locations were treated) experience, they even less did back then.

Amusingly, in the preface of the next book I'm reading the author muses about the insatiable modern need for historians to engage in presentism to show they're on the right side of history and that he won't be doing it so suck it up.

[Bebpo]

Finished Discworld #8 - Guards!Guards! - Fun book. It's very much divided into two halves with the first being the evil brotherhood summoning a dragon plot and the watch, second half being terror dragon king, and the first half is the better and more fun for sure, but the ending/epilogue are great and overall it's solid and the Watch characters are great.

I read Men at Arms a few years back before starting this Discworld read, and I think I liked that one better. Will re-read it when I get to it in sequence.

So far, I'd rank the first 8 books:

Pyramids > Equal Rites > Mort > The Light Fantastic > Wyrd Sisters > Guards!Guards! > Colour of Magic > Sorcery.

I guess next up is Eric/Moving Pictures/Reaper Man. Looking forward to Reaper Man, don't know anything about the Death books after Mort.

[Bebpo]

Finished Arc of Scythe #2 - Thunderhead by Neil Shusterman.

Was entertaining, YA but read well and quickly, but wtf this is the worst cliffhanger ending I've seen in a book. Guess I need to read the final book next.

[team filler]

about to start reading dune for the first time

[Bebpo]

A Profound Waste of Time #2 - Great issue, though I think the first one was better. What mostly stands out about APWOT vs. other zines is most of the articles are very game developers or industry people, vs. zines where the articles are mostly written by players and journalists. Just gives it a different feel.

Discworld #9 - Eric - The novella sized one about the dorky demonologist kid and his three genie wishes and the demons of hell. Cute story, fun and quick read. Nothing really stood out, but wasn't bad either. Just a fun novella. The parrot was fun. Next up is Moving Pictures...

[Bebpo]

Also had one of my favorite Death gags so far

[at the end of the universe and all things]
“Have you seen anybody?”
YES.
“Who?”
EVERYONE.
Astfgl sighed. “I mean anyone recently.”