Books

Currently reading The Radium Girls. It's going a bit slow since there are so many names to keep up with, but it's really interesting nonetheless.

• Finished Hyperion - excellent tale all round and I am impressed with Simmons' breadth of styles within the each of the pilgrim's tales. To me, the open ending was perfect and since there seem to be some division around the later books and they way that they resolve the mystery, I will leave it there for now. I may return to the other ones at some time though.
• Finished Project Hail Mary - which has a lot in common with Dennis E. Taylor's Bobiverse books in overall approach. I suppose that they could be termed 'procedural' SF, with the focus being on the resolution of successive problems. Intellectually rewarding, but with limited emotional engagement, I found. It was certainly entertaining, and I enjoyed the worldbuilding but, between this and the Bobiverse, I far preferred the latter.
• (Re)Started Consider Phlebas - I had started this a few years back, but put it aside for some reason and never resumed. I can just about recall the overall scenes, but none of the detail. I have never read any of the other Culture tales and am eager to get to grips with these books. So far it is taking a while to develop, but I only started it a couple of evenings ago.

I've been going through the nights watch series of discworld books, I need a funny distraction from all this bullshit in the real world.

Their commentary on the common person thinking a king will fix everything is too fitting though, especially now...

I’m about done with Character Limit, it’s about Musk’s takeover of Twitter. It’s super fascinating, an absolute page-turner. If that whole shitshow remotely piques your interest I’d recommend it.

Finished the Bobiverse series. It was a nice read, but I don't think the last one leaves room for another book in this series. I'm gonna start "all systems red" by Martha Wells next, see how that goes. I'm not to sure about the novella format though, I like doing a little longer with a story.

Cleveland, William L., and Martin Bunton. A History of the Modern Middle East (Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press, c. 2016), 6th edition

Nicholas Riasanovsky and Mark Steinberg, A History of Russia (Oxford University Press, 2019), ninth edition

Gatrell, Peter. Russia’s First World War: A Social and Economic History. London: Pearson Educated, 2005.

Booker T. Washington, Up From Slavery

Karl Marx, The Poverty of Philosophy

All except the last one are for school and I have not finished them but I they are much less dry than I expected.

Finally read Animal Farm. My takeaway was that any form of government eventually devolves to corruption. Despite having read the last lines in the past, was surprised when it ended.

About to finish A Short, Sharp Shock by Kim Stanley Robinson. It's a bit surreal, not sure where it's going, but it's a quick novella.

Love his writing, but damn, the Mars trilogy burnt me out on geography. I have a fair vocabulary, but Robinson must have majored in the subject.

I have these on tap if anyone cares to comment. Guy on reddit shared his Gdrive ebooks with me years ago, these sounded interesting.

Read Eifelheim a couple of times, downloaded it because I don't have a good copy. It's a fascinating look at how crash-landed and ill aliens are treated in Medieval Germany. The author is sometimes a little heavy-handed with the, "did you know this was the origin of this belief\word\thing\whatever?!" But yeah, I did not know those things and it was a great learning experience.

Children of memory by Adrian Tchaikovsky about 75% of the way through. What if jumping spiders and octopodes and slime mold and ravens evolved Human level intellect 9/10 series would recommend again.

Got a batch of W40k books. Finished "Brutal Kunning", working on "Da Big Dakka" right now. Orks are brutal, hilarious, and almost philosophical at times, and I'm enjoying the stories from their perspective because they're the only ones really enjoying their lives in 40k (besides the poor grots...)

Just finished Grant and Sherman: The Friendship That Won The Civil War.

Puts into perspective the brilliance of both men, and how utterly prickly Sherman was.

Reading right now „Déjà Dead“ from Kathy Reichs. It‘s so good that i already dreamed of it last night … but it was a nightmare xD

I'm currently reading Planetary Omnibus, one of my absolute favorite graphic novels ever, before starting The Dragon Reborn, the third book in The Wheel of Time series, by Robert Jordan.

The Wheel of Time is a bit curious to me. Even though the books are long, they feel a bit too dense, meaning it feels like there's constantly something happening with no breathers, and new characters and concepts are constantly being introduced. I'd love if Jordan took a bit more time to paint the picture, so to speak. No wonder I've forgotten almost all of it in a few decades. But despite all that, I've really liked reading the books so far. I might finish this series yet.

I'm about 600 hours in on https://wanderinginn.com/. Just started book 8. Really enjoying the series. I still have hundreds of hours left in the series. I started reading it years ago and went to the audiobook. Feels pretty good.

Now I know how people feel like with their soap operas 😆.

I have been reading Anathema by Neal Stephenson. I'm about a fourth of the way through and it's been great. I've read two or three of his other books which I've really enjoyed. Cryptonomicon became one of my favorite books. But so far this has been up there as something that may top that, it's been pretty good so far. I hope it ends well.

I'm listening to "the light of all that falls" which is the third book in this trilogy by James Islington.

It's an interesting fiction with a couple of good magic systems, there's a lot of world building to take in, tons of places, characters, the concept of watching each other's memories, seeing into the post and future. Can be a bit hard to follow at times but it's engaging enough

Currently half way through Morningstar, third book of Red Rising by Pierce Brown. I think I'll have it finished roughly a week from now and then move on to the fourth book. Still enjoying the series, and it's nice to be able to talk to my wife about it as she's on Lightbringer. There's quite a bit of overlap with what we read, but she tends towards cozier books than I do, and I'll listen to stuff like the darkstar trilogy which I think she wouldn't enjoy at all

I am still reading Words of Radiance by Brandon Sanderson (Stormlight book 2). I'm about 3/4 of the way through and enjoying it immensely. However everything I've read so far feels like set up, which is a little frustrating because mistborn did not have this feel to it.

I try to read books without knowing anything going in; just the title and author. I just finished Piranesi and The Sparrow, which were both good and benefitted from knowing nothing. I grabbed The Witches are Coming off my pile because some more fantasy sounded good. Definitely a bit of whiplash coming off some dark sci-fi, expecting some lighter Pratchett-esque witches, and getting a collection of non-fiction feminist humor essays. It's a good read, but I really set myself up for disappointment.

I was really happy with the mistborn era 2 books! I loved the original trilogy and hated the idea of the second era books, but when I actually read them I was blown away and now am an avid Cosmere reader.

I just recently finished Green Mars, book 2 of Kim Stanley Robinson's Mars trilogy. Really interesting series. It has a peculiar narrative that makes it feel like the planet or the civilization of the planet as a whole is the driving force of the narrative and the characters are secondary. I didnt really find myself attached to the characters in the first novel but by the end of the second one they had grown on me quite a bit.

I also finished re-reading Dawn by Octavia E Butler. I'll re-read the other two books in the series soon but needed a break because that book is a bit heavy emotionally. Just very bleak in some ways. Super good though, and very provoking.

I also also am casually re-listening to Steven Brand's narration of Anthony Ryan's "Raven's Shadow" trilogy which is really cool.

Finished Sandman and Joyce's Dubliners.

Restarting Beelzebub's Tales to His Grandson after setting it down over a decade ago. Usually I can just pick up a book I paused right where I left off, but I completely forgot what any of those made-up words meant.