RIP (Read In Progress) Wednesday

[quillpunk]

It's a new Wednesday!

What are you reading? 👀

Comments

[gloss]

I am halfway through the final book in Robin Hobb's Liveship Traders trilogy and I love everything about this series.

[quillpunk]

That's great! Good luck on the last bit :D

[wearing_tearing]

Yes!! All of Hobb's works in that universe are amaaaaaazing :'D

[sixbeforelunch]

I'm reading Becky Chambers' Monk and Robot duology. I finished A Psalm for the Wild-Built and I'm about a third of the way through A Prayer for the Crown-Shy. Like everything I've read by Chambers, I like them enough to keep reading, but I can't quite love them.

In theory I'm also reading King Leopold's Ghost by Adam Hochschild about King Leopold of Belgium and what he did in the Congo, but all I've read is the introduction and I haven't picked it up in a few days so we'll see where that one goes.

[quillpunk]

I remember really liking *A Psalm for the Wild-Built* but it didn't particularly stick in my head and didn't really give me a desire to read more of it.

I'm reading lots of things in theory, too. Good luck, whatever you decide to do!

[valoise]

The thing I liked best about the Monk and Robot series is how soothing and meditative it is. I read them up during the pandemic when I needed something calming.

[quillpunk]

*Gloam* by Lily Maybe, and the stuff I was reading last week; it's been slow on reading front lately, sigh.

[olivermoss]

I finished Mystery of the Blue Train by Agatha Christie. Glad I finished it, but I wouldn't consider it one of her best. The ending was a bit weird, with some very minor side characters getting some closure / epilogue, but not the more major ones.

I am reading Broken Bayou by Jennifer Moorhead because it was a book Amazon offered me for free and it's a well reviewed mystery. I want to find mysteries I like! Not sure if I'll like how this turns out, but it's well written so far.

[shipperslist]

I'm done with the main novel of Mr. Melancholy Wants To Live A Peaceful Life by Cyan Wings, there's only a couple of extra chapters left. It's about 376K long which, according to converters, is something like 800 pages. That's an accomplishment in about 2,5 weeks.

[quillpunk]

Oh, I've read a bit of that before, it was really fun! I should finish it at some point but I'd need to reread it from the start so it keeps sliding down my list, LOL.

And that is definitely a very chonky book, congrats on reading it so quickly! :D

[wearing_tearing]

I started rereading The Bone Season series by Samantha Shannon in the new Author's Preferred Text editions! I enjoyed Book 1 a loooot more with the revisions and Book 2, The Mime Order, has been pretty great so far--if a bit slow. I hope to finish it this weekend :D

[quillpunk]

Glad it's working so much better for you! Good luck on finishing :D

[wearing_tearing]

Thank you! I finished the second book and now am terrified to start the next one because... what if I don't like it as much slfjslfk

[quillpunk]

a valid worry OTL

[dornishviperx]

After finishing Nausea by Sartre last week, which took genuinely months for a couple different reasons (although I think it's a book I'll return to eventually), I decided to switch to something lighter and started reading Lloré sin consuelo sobre tu cuerpo eléctrico (I Cried Inconsolably over your Electric Body) by Eduardo Graells Garido. I bought it last week at a book fair, and it's very interesting so far. It's compilation of four sci-fi short stories, although one of the stories is the "main" one that takes up most of the page count, and it's called EL diario de Sofía (Sofía's Diary). I'm really enjoying it, the POV character has a really compelling voice, the problems she has feel really grounded and contemporary, and the author is including fictional documents and even illustrations in a way that feels very refreshing. I'm about a third of the way through that story, excited to see where it goes!

[greetingsfrommaars]

Year of the Tiger: An Activist's Life by Alice Wong! I haven't read many memoirs, so I'm not sure what's common, but I'm enjoying the way this one is a collection of articles/podcast transcripts/infographics. To me it feels kind of like reading a blog in physical form.

[skye_writer]

Just finished reading Neil Gaiman’s The Sandman, Volume 6: Fables and Reflections. Took me a while to get through it; I first tried reading it back in March and couldn’t get through it before the book was due back to the library. I think the anthology format (it’s basically a bunch of short stories, with a novella tucked in the middle) is what gave me so much trouble. I had trouble with Volume 3 as well, which has a similar format. That said, I really enjoyed several of the stories, especially “Three Septembers and a January”; I’m a sucker for all things Emperor Norton.

[wearing_tearing]

Congrats on getting through Volume 6!

[starfleetbrat]

Redshirts by John Scalzi - I'm only a couple of chapter in and so far its ok, but not hooking me in. I like John Scalzi as an author though (and I loooove star trek) so its possible I am just not in the mood for the book. I'll read another chapter and if I'm still not feeling it will come back to it at a later date.

[quillpunk]

I've tried that book before but didn't finish it, sigh. I also like Scalzi as an author, so it's probably worth another shot when the mood strikes. Letting go of a read that's not working at the moment is a good skill to have; sometimes things just aren't meshing now but they might mesh well later. However it pans out for you, I hope you have a good time! :D

[valoise]

I've just started At Ease: Stories I Tell to Friends by Dwight D. Eisenhower. When I worked as an archivist at the Eisenhower Presidential Library we'd refer to the book when people asked "What did Eisenhower think about . . ." but never actually sat down and read the whole thing. Just finished the chapter covering his years at West Point and it's striking how reflective he is on his faults as a young man.

Reading

[dialecticdreamer]

Home repairs have eaten nearly all of my reading time this week. Trying to drag myself through the last part of The Gulag Archipelago has sent me running into fanfiction-- so much that I don't bother to make note of stories less than 40k in any way.

However, I found "Roman Dusk" by Chelsea Quinn Yarbro, and digging into that has been an utter delight. There were words that I actually needed to find in a dictionary! That hasn't happened in fiction reading in YEARS!

[mulhollands]

The Goodbye Cat by Hiro Arikawa

[cindybug]

Just finished re-reading PC and Kristin Cast's "Marked". Can't decide whether these books are a "so bad it's good" or a "so bad it's bad" experience, but either way I can't seem to stop reading them...

[givemeyourhonor]

Almost finished with Sabriel and I'm going to start Abhorson. It's been fun, and I wish I'd read the series sooner.