What book did you read last and what book are you currently reading? Would you recommend either of those books?
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Last book: The Apothecary Diaries 6 by Natsu Hyūga
Current book: The Magic Engineer by L.E. Modesitt Jr
The Apothecary Diaries series has been pretty good so far. Enough quirky characters and situations to not get to dark, but some definite darkness so it doesn't get to sweet.
The Magic Engineer is the third in The Saga of Recluse series. Overall I enjoy Modesitt, but it also is clearly a cheap paperback fantasy from the 90s. It's fun tracking down these second hand and they are fun reads. However, I enjoyed the first 3 books in his Imager series more.
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Last book: Doctor Sleep by Stephen King
Current book: Absolution by Jeff Vandermeer
Doctor Sleep was good, it's been a long time since I read The Shining but this was a good follow-up. The movie is pretty decent too, but as always not as good as the book.
Absolution is the fourth book in Vandermeer's Southern Reach series. It's a challenging read, as are the other books but not bad so far. I don't think this is what I was expecting from a fourth book, but I'm not disappointed.
I read the Southern Reach books a few years ago in the lead up to the movie coming out, and found them pretty confusing really, but still a good read. They probably bear another read-through.
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Last book: "Last Call" by Tim Powers. It's great. Poker and archetypes. Big inspiration for Unknown Armies, which I loved.
Current: Medusa's web, also by Powers. Not sure if I'm into it yet but it's got some of his signature weirdness
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Last book: Children of ruin. I didnt really like this one, while i was in awe of the brilliance of Children of time.
Currently reading a non-fiction book called The genius of birds.
I already knew from direct experience how smart birds are, including ones that people perceive as dumb, like pigeons.
But this book really gives a different perspective in how birds are complex creatures that adapt to their environments in intelligent ways, and how other birds will instantly copy these novel ways. -
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Last book: Perfume: The story of a murderer by Patrick Süskind. I ravaged through it quite fast and enjoyed the descriptive writing style immensely. It's supposedly a book with many intresting layers, but I loved as a novel about world of smell.
Currently: Though I tend to read several at the time depending on my mood, my main book is Breaking together: A freedom-loving response to collapse by Jem Bendell. I work with environmental stuff and I feel like we are past the point where ecological modernisation is a answer to all of our woes. It is well-written book and you can download it for free.
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Last book: This is How You Lose the Time War - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/This_Is_How_You_Lose_the_Time_War
It was good. I don't normally like love-stories, but this was poetically written. A lot of fun sci-fi and beautiful imagery.Current book: Little Brother - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Little_Brother_(Doctorow_novel)
Lots of fun hacking and rebellion against an increasingly authoritarian government, very much inspired by 9-11. It's a fun Young Adult Novel so far. -
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Last book : the wheel of time (#5) by R. Jordan. I don't really recommend. I mean the story's great but the way the characters are written is dull and sexist (men saying that women are mysteries, women complaining about how men are dumb and other ridiculous clichés), it feels like following people that are somewhat the worse of both teens and boomers, it takes me out of the book every single time. I prefer the king killer chronicles (P. Rothfuss) although we're still waiting for the last book.
Current book : Trapped (C. Lackberg and H Fexeus) it is a great polar, with nice twists, I recommend!
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Last book : the wheel of time (#5) by R. Jordan. I don't really recommend. I mean the story's great but the way the characters are written is dull and sexist (men saying that women are mysteries, women complaining about how men are dumb and other ridiculous clichés), it feels like following people that are somewhat the worse of both teens and boomers, it takes me out of the book every single time. I prefer the king killer chronicles (P. Rothfuss) although we're still waiting for the last book.
Current book : Trapped (C. Lackberg and H Fexeus) it is a great polar, with nice twists, I recommend!
I could only just get through Name of the Wind many years ago. As I was reading it something just felt off and was bothering me massively, I then came to the realisation that the main character (Kvothe) was just too perfect. His flaws were the world around him, not himself, and really the only fault that could be considered was that he was so good at everything he would do too much and get burnt out.
Is the second book better, and would you say it's worth reading given the third one is nowhere in sight?
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Last book: The Hero of Ages (Mistborn) by Brandon Sanderson
Current book: Wind and Truth (Stormlight Archive) by Brandon Sanderson
I would 1000% recommend these books and other Cosmere books to anyone that enjoys fantasy but with the caveat of being aware of the Sanderlanche. Pretty much every book this guy writes takes time building everything up so it can feel quite slow, but then towards the end you get your avalanche of action, quick story progression, and answers to questions you get throughout the books.
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I could only just get through Name of the Wind many years ago. As I was reading it something just felt off and was bothering me massively, I then came to the realisation that the main character (Kvothe) was just too perfect. His flaws were the world around him, not himself, and really the only fault that could be considered was that he was so good at everything he would do too much and get burnt out.
Is the second book better, and would you say it's worth reading given the third one is nowhere in sight?
That's interesting. I didn't feel that way so I'm probably not the best to say whether it changes in book 2. It probably doesn't as both felt like a fairly coherent story with an homogeneous approach. Anyone else felt that Kvothe was too perfect and would be able to enlighten us about whether it gets better in book 2?
If you like heroes that make mistakes and aren't perfect (which completely makes sense btw) maybe you'd enjoy the Dresden files by J. Butcher (low urban fantasy in which you follow a mage in Chicago).
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Last book: The Hundred Years' War on Palestine by Rashid Khalidi
This book is really informative if you want to learn the history of the Palestinian struggle for liberations. It makes an effort to recognize its successes and its faults as well as how they can do better. Fantastic book but it will break your heart. I had to read it pretty slowly because I could only stomach so many pages a day.
Current book: The Conquest of Mexico & The Conquest of Peru by William H. Prescott
I'm only 100 pages in and while it is good and most of the history holds up it has some faults. main fault is that the guy is kinda a white/euro supremacist by modern standards. He refers to many of the natives as barbarous and examines their worth by how "civilized" they were in one aspect or another. Does some pompous moralizing etc. I will give him that he doesn't necessarily attribute this to race and often refers to Spainish history as equally if not more barbarous, especially the inquisition. Credit where credit is due I guess. It was written in the 1840s so this is to be expected. Another flaw I'd like to mention is that the author tells the history as a sort of romantic narrative. Everything is heavily cited and like I said most of the history is accurate but due to the format he leans into the great man theory of history. Historical materialism was in its infancy at the time so he can't truly be blamed for this but his books must be read with an understanding of this limitation.
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Last book: The Hero of Ages (Mistborn) by Brandon Sanderson
Current book: Wind and Truth (Stormlight Archive) by Brandon Sanderson
I would 1000% recommend these books and other Cosmere books to anyone that enjoys fantasy but with the caveat of being aware of the Sanderlanche. Pretty much every book this guy writes takes time building everything up so it can feel quite slow, but then towards the end you get your avalanche of action, quick story progression, and answers to questions you get throughout the books.
I second this! Cosmere is a wonderful universe to get into! Here's a nice illustration I found online for the reading order:
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last: All Our Wrong Todays by Elan Mastai
Could not finish it. The story would not start, eventually I stopped caring.
Current: James Acaster's Classic Scrapes
Funny collection of stories that happened to him over the years. Very entertaining and funny.
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FYI, there is an instance that asks this every week!
But to answer your question,
My last read was Pachinko by Min Jin Lee. Its a historical fiction about a few generations of a Korean family. It was solid.
I'm currently on vacation and have been reading Everyone in My Family Has Killed Someone ... Picked it up since it was available and supposed to be an easy read... Which it is. Its just a whodunit. Idk how I feel about it yet.
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Last book I finished was Hail Mary by Andy Weir. Solid read, get it done before the movie comes out.
About to start the Kaiju Preservation Project by John Scalzi, no idea on that one yet, but Scalzi does good work in general.
Last one I can't reccomend is The Book of Elsewhere by China Miéville and Keanu Reeves. I'm a big fan of the BRZRKR comics so I jumped at the chance for a novel in that universe... aaand it's largely unreadable.
Project Hail Mary is one of my favorite audio books of all time! Second your rec!!
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Last: Pièrre Hadot, "Filosofie als een manier van leven" , the Dutch translation of "Qu'est-ce que la Philosophie Antique?" , or "What is Ancient Philosophy?"
Current: Caroline Criado Pérez, "Invisible Women"
I would definitely recommend Hadot for a clear overview and an interesting read on filosophical history. Invisible women is kind of a must-read to learn about the data gap in statistics of women.
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Last book: Human Phoenix, current one Human Man, both from an author with the handle "Refusenik". Human Man is basically the second part of Human Phoenix, kind of "coming of age" with a bit of mystery and scifi.
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Last book: The Hundred Years' War on Palestine by Rashid Khalidi
This book is really informative if you want to learn the history of the Palestinian struggle for liberations. It makes an effort to recognize its successes and its faults as well as how they can do better. Fantastic book but it will break your heart. I had to read it pretty slowly because I could only stomach so many pages a day.
Current book: The Conquest of Mexico & The Conquest of Peru by William H. Prescott
I'm only 100 pages in and while it is good and most of the history holds up it has some faults. main fault is that the guy is kinda a white/euro supremacist by modern standards. He refers to many of the natives as barbarous and examines their worth by how "civilized" they were in one aspect or another. Does some pompous moralizing etc. I will give him that he doesn't necessarily attribute this to race and often refers to Spainish history as equally if not more barbarous, especially the inquisition. Credit where credit is due I guess. It was written in the 1840s so this is to be expected. Another flaw I'd like to mention is that the author tells the history as a sort of romantic narrative. Everything is heavily cited and like I said most of the history is accurate but due to the format he leans into the great man theory of history. Historical materialism was in its infancy at the time so he can't truly be blamed for this but his books must be read with an understanding of this limitation.
the guy is kinda a white/euro supremacist by modern standards. He refers to many of the natives as barbarous and examines their worth by how "civilized" they were in one aspect or another. […] It was written in the 1840s so this is to be expected.
There's still people around saying that Native Americans deserved to be… displaced because they didn't use the land "properly".
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I am reading Moon Zappa's autobiography, I just finished 1000 Acres by Jane Smiley, which I REALLY recommend, and I'm also reading the collected Wendell Berry, Margaret Atwood's latest short story collection Babes In The Woods, and the book about the Toronto Gay Village murders. All very good, I am decidedly not into true crime but it happened close to me and one of my friends was part of the Village and they told the cops several times that people were going missing. I feel awful for all the victims, but especially for the very closeted religious ones whose wives and children got to find out their fathers were queer because they found parts of them in a planter, and the whole world got to find out too. It's not nice to posthumously out someone even under the circumstances when it will have such a profound effect on their families.
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Currently I'm not reading anything but listening to the Magnus protocol podcast (which I highly recommend, but you should start with the Magnus Archives). It's a horror podcast, where each episode a character is reading a horror story that happened to someone, and in the long run stuff starts to happen with the characters who are reading.
Before starting that I read some of the Dexter books, honestly? The TV show is WAAAAY better, the first book is very similar to the first season, but then it goes off the rails, to the point where there are supernatural entities in the books, not to mention the absolutely horrible Spanish from the author, in one book he a character realizes someone knows he's there because he gets a happy birthday card, except the card says "Feliz Navidad" (Merry Christmas).
