Books

The Spy and the Traitor [Non Fiction] by Ben MacIntyre. It's the story of Oleg Gordievsky, a kgb agent who was working with MI6 during the height of the cold War.

I took a chance on it and was pleasantly surprised.

I finished Waybound by Will Wight yesterday. It was a great finish to the Cradle series.

Now I'm on Honor of the Queen by David Weber. I don't think I'll make it through more than about the first five of the Honor Harrington books. They start to transition into a more political series than "space ships go boom", so that's about where I stopped the last time.

Then I've got The Day of the Triffids on my slate, but we'll see if that holds.

I'm reading:

• 50 Years of text Games by Aaron Read
• More Boot Sector Games by Oscar Toledo

I'm finally reading Declare by Tim Powers. All I can say is holy shit I never knew how much I needed this book in my life.

Currently making my way through The Guns of August. It's pretty dense compared to what I usually read but something about the writing style makes each chapter fly by faster than expected!

Currently reading Baseball: an illustrated history. Quite a thick book so I'll probably be reading it for a while. It's a nice change of pace since the book I was reading last month was pop fiction

Number Ones by Tom Breihan

A history of the songs that made it to number one on the Billboard Hot 100 list. I'm really enjoying it!

I'm finishing up A Crown of Swords this evening.

I just finished The Deluge by Stephen Markley (all 900pp!)

It's basically a US-centric "narrative" of the 2030's, told from the PoV of about a dozen different characters, with the thread of climate change prominent throughout.

Really it's hard to describe it as good or bad, an enjoyable read etc. It is certainly well written, and characterisation is exceptionally good and detailed, but for me it was by turns scary, amusing, depressing, profoundly sad and wrenching in its humanity. I have no reason to doubt its accuracy based on the science.

It took me almost a month to read because I had to take breaks to get my "cognitive dissonance" recharged.

I would definitely recommend it.

It would make a good streaming series on Amazon Prime or Apple TV.

After a decade of literary fiction I'm going back to check on some more mainstream stuff. I'm reading The Dark Tower saga by Stephen King. Just starting the first book.

SS by Barış Pehlivan and Barış Terkoğlu. It's basically a book about Süleyman Soylu's crimes. It's indeed a heavy read, but I think the book does a good job with shedding light on who Soylu really is, so far (I'm at Chapter 5).

The Knights of Erador (The Echoes Saga: Book 7) by Philip C. Quaintrell (Kindle Edition)

Stand on Zanzibar - John Brunner

I'm just about to start Berg by Ann Quin, which seems to be about a man who stalks his dad and mistress through a seaside town. It looks really good from the first few pages.

Chuck Palahniuk - Consider This

The Journey to the West, translated by Anthony C. Yu. Given that it is 100 chapters long and I'm still at chapter 6 it's gonna take a long time for me to finish, so I'm thinking about reading another book alongside it.

Exhalation by Ted Chiang. About 3/4 through so far and really enjoying it. The scifi concepts are great and I like that it doesn't always have a black mirror, technology is going to kill us ending.

Just finished Iron Gold by Pierce Brown. It feels kind of like a "bridge book" where it wasn't all that great compared to the others in the series so far.

Now I'm off to Shards of the Earth by Adrian Tchaikovsky. I've started to read a lot of his stuff and I'm enjoying them all.

Bit of a strange pairing, but currently reading:

Schoolgirl by Osamu Dazai

Faster: How a Jewish Driver, an American Heiress, and a Legendary Car Beat Hitler's Best by Neal Bascomb

Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov

I have been reading The Mongol Storm: Making and Breaking Empires in the Medieval Near East by Nicholas Morton which I am really enjoying. Nicholas has a clear way of describing events and putting them into context without getting too dry with it. I am also reading A Vast Conspiracy: The inspiration for Impeachment by Jeffrey Toobin which I am a little over half way into, but I am considering just giving up. I have been pecking away at this book for probably 2 months now. It's just too long winded. I don't need to know every single conversation, meeting, plot, dinner that people had - I feel this would have made an incredible long-form article in something like the New Yorker but a multi hundred page book seems to be pushing it for me.

Currently reading The Winter Fortress by Neal Bascomb. It’s a good read so far!

Read This Book on a Silent Hill: Meditations that they won't tell you about

The Vanishing Hitchhiker by Jan Harold Brunvand. Recaptures the magic of Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark, but as an adult.

Victor Of Tuscon

I’m reading To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf, but only because my girlfriend told me to read from more modernist authors. I’m liking her prose despite the dry beginning, but I’ll see how it comes along over time.