booknook | RIP (Read In Progress) Wednesday

From:

quillpunk

i'm still reading The Hobbit, and have also started reading The Disabled Tyran'ts Beloved Pet Fish vol. 3

From:

aflaminghalo

Dark Continent: Europe's Twentieth Century - Mark Mazower. Right now I'm in the early half that's about how messy politics was in the 30s and everyone seemed depserate for some strain of authoritarianism. It's pretty depressing, ngl.

From:

rekishi

The Dispossessed by Ursula K. Le Guin. It's slow progress, because there's stuff to think about there.

From:

asphaltcowgrrl

Just downloaded Prairie Fires: The American Dreams of Laura Ingalls Wilder by Caroline Fraser this morning.

From:

peppermintfables

Just started Light from Uncommon Stars by Ryka Aoki. I got it at a Christmas book exchange and know truly nothing about it, but I like it so far.

From:

skye_writer

Rereading Rogue Protocol (The Murderbot Diaries #3) by Martha Wells. Not making great progress at the moment; this is my least favorite Murderbot book, and that's probably what's slowing me down.

From:

screechfox

Non-fiction, Winters in the World: A Journey through the Anglo-Saxon Year by Eleanor Parker, which I'm really enjoying. Fiction, Swanfolk by Kristín Ómarsdóttir, which I'm having a strange time with, but I'm intrigued enough that I'll finish it. I'm also reading 100 Queer Poems, a poem or two at a time.

I'm listening to a serialised audio adaptation of Carmilla as it comes out, which is more-or-less an audiobook, so that might count too!

I enjoyed Invisible Cities last week; I'm looking forward to revisiting it in a year or two's time, I think it'll be nice to go on that journey again. I also ended up reading Translation State after all, and enjoyed that too!

From:

vriddy

Been having a really good time with Godkiller by Hannah Kaner and the Tainted Cup by Robert Jackson Bennet, really happy with these fantasy books that included kickass heroins, various disabilities, and queer characters. Hoping to read Godkiller's sequel next!

From:

dirty_diana

The Spellshop by Sarah Beth Durst. Basically a woman used to life in the big city goes back home to a small town and meets a (male) hottie, except it's a generic-ish fantasy setting and her best friend is a magic talking plant. I like it, though I am noodling deeper thoughts on this sort of romantasy that's half cozy shenanigans and half a whole fantasy dystopia happening in the background.

From:

dirty_diana

Hmm I keep sending Godkiller back to the library queue, I should read it at some point.

From:

petrea_mitchell

Finished The Golem and the Jinni. Great beginning, great ending, but I feel like it could have been 100 pages shorter somewhere in the middle and not lost anything essential.

Now I've switched back to nonfiction: Master Slave Husband Wife, about the real-life escape of an enslaved couple in 1848, and further events in their lives.

From:

haunted_cherries

Currently reading Most Ardently and will be starting Several People are Typing once I'm done!!

From:

peaceful_sands

I’m about halfway through ‘The Empire of Gold’ by SA Chakraborty and loving it, just started ‘The Guardians’ by John Grisham not far enough in to comment yet and about two-thirds of the way through ‘Nausicaa of the Valley of the Winds’.

From:

peaceful_sands

I enjoyed The Golem and the Djinni but like you, I think it could have been edited to keep the pace moving in the middle.

From:

dancesontrains

Just started 'The Once and Future King' by T.H. White. I've read the first part of it before - 'The Sword In The Stone', which was made into an animated Disney movie several decades ago - but not since I was a child myself. Wart was just turned into a merlin by Merlyn as one of his lessons.

Also starting the recent 'The Flash' comics by Simon Spurrier. They aren't quite working for me so far - the tone feels dark and the style feels like a copy of Grant Morrison.

Edited Date: 2025-02-26 10:27 pm (UTC)

From:

peaceful_sands

I read it not long ago - definitely thought prompting.

From:

matsushima

I'm currently reading Crap: A History of Cheap Stuff in America and The Secret History of Bigfoot: Field Notes on a North American Monster - both of which I learned about from the American Hysteria podcast.

From:

pauraque

One of my favorites of hers!

From:

pauraque

I am still reading the Indigenous horror anthology Never Whistle at Night. After this I think I need to take a break from short story collections because they take me absolutely forever. I need a certain minimum amount of time to process a story I've read no matter how long it is, so a book with 20 stories in it may take me 20 times as long to think about as a book with one story in it.

From:

pedanther

Sea Wrack and Changewind, a collection of short stories by Sharon Lee sharing a setting with her Carousel novels. A lot of them aren't quite working for me, which isn't a knock on the quality of the writing but more to do with it being nearly a decade since I last read the novels (I hadn't realised it was so long) and not remembering all of the details that the stories assume I'll have readily to hand.

From:

volkameria

Currently reading Death by Dumpling, a cozy mystery focusing on a Taiwanese-American woman. It hits the right vibe that A Pie to Die For didn't quite get, so I'm enjoying it immensely.

I'm also slowly going through Artificial Condition, the second Murderbot book; The Familiar Stranger, a Christian book on how to think about the supernatural on a day to day basis; and Animal Farm.

From:

dark_phoenix54

"I'll Be Waiting", by Kelley Armstrong. A ghost/horror/mystery story. Only a few pages in, so I have no idea how I'll like it.

From:

cornerofmadness

I'm on the same two books. I'm going like a snail on both Disco Witches of Fire Island and Silent are the Dead

From:

valoise

For a current research project on food during WWI I read War Cook Book by Mary Sweeny and Linda Purnell. The authors were on the faculty of the Home Economics Department of the University of Kentucky so, while the recipes came from a wide variety of government and commercial sources, they were tweaked and improved in the test kitchens there.

I'd seen a lot of recs for Lost Ark Dreaming by Suyi Davies Okungbowa. The story takes place in a residential tower built in the Atlantic off the coast of a flooded Lagos, Nigeria. Okungbowa's writing pulled me. The blend of sf and the supernatural was balanced in a way that kept me turning pages. This is going on my Hugo Novella nomination list this year.

From:

angelcage

Kraken by China Miéville. The first time I've read him since high school, when I read Perdido Street Station. I remember it being good but the way he described things genuinely making me nauseous. His writing style still has shades of that, but so far not so much as I remember. We'll see if things get murkier as I go along.

From:

tozka

I just finished Cheap Heat in Lily Mayne's Goliaths of Wrestling paranormal romance comedy series, which I wrote about a bit on my journal here. I'm starting the next book in the series, False Comeback.

From:

tozka

Yay, Murderbot!

From:

earlymorningechoes

I'm rereading The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet for comfort and hope reasons.

From:

givemeyourhonor

Peach Blossom Debt gets more and more interesting as it goes along. The debt part is pretty literal as it talks a lot about the different "debts" you can owe people, positive and negative.

War and Peace went back to the war again and got boring. I don't know what else to say about it. I thought the part where Mary dodged the bullet of getting married to Anatole was great though.

Bastian became much more crazy. This guy is trolling his evil dad by building an exact copy of his mansion. Also I love Odette so much. I'm rooting for her.

From:

elizalavelle

Excellent choice! I loved that book, I hope it hits for you too :)

From:

elizalavelle

I'm slowly working my way through The Woman Who Would Be King: Hatshepsut's Rise to Power in Ancient Egypt by
Kara Cooney.

I also just started The Lost Story by Meg Shaffer and can already tell I'm about to devour this book. I was hooked right away.