RIP (Read In Progress) Wednesday

[spiralsheep]

When you're bookish then every day is "reading Wednesday".

What are you reading?

Comments

[spiralsheep]

Finished book 72, a non-fiction history / historiography, Inventing the Renaissance, by Ada Palmer, 4/5.
Quote: "I've looked through one of Galileo's telescopes, it's in Florence, and realizing it's less powerful than the plastic Hamburglar binoculars I once got in a McDonald's Happy Meal filled me with new awe that a cunning mind armed with the right questions can get a long, long way with simple tools."

00. DNF fantasy short stories.

Finished book 73, an adult graphic novel, Thirsty Mermaids, by Kat Leyh, 4.5/5.
In search of booze, a found-family pod of three merfolk take their fun and friendship to the human seaside, or rather shoreside, where they discover dreadful human inventions such as "capitalism" and "jobs". They also discover they can't just go back to being mermaids. This story is very much about the diverse friends they make along the way, lol.

[vriddy]

Finished The Thief by Megan Whalen Turner and enjoyed it a ridiculous amount, it was a very quick read for me and super satisfying! Eagerly waiting to get my hands onto the next book in the series :D

[pauraque]

Currently reading More Than Words: How to Think About Writing in the Age of AI by John Warner, which is what it says on the tin. I think I pretty much agree with all his opinions on this topic (basically: what generative AI does isn't "writing" and can't replace what human writers do for many reasons, and if it can do the kind of writing assignments that are taught in school then that means we're teaching writing all wrong) so I'm trying to read it with an eye to how he's presenting his arguments and imagining how persuasive they might be for people who don't already agree with him. Only halfway through the book so no final assessment yet.

[stonepicnicking_okapi]

Mother-Son book club book is Dear Mr. Henshaw by Beverly Clearly. I am doing a re-read of The Mirror Crack'd by Agatha Christie. Audiobooks are The last House on Needless Street by Catriona Ward and The Cat Who Saved Books by Sosuke Natsukawa. I'm trying to fill the non-human POV square on my book bingo. And for fun, I am reading Your Guide to Not Getting Murdered in a Quaint English Village

[petrea_mitchell]

Finally finished Cunning Folk: Life in the Era of Practical Magic last week and put it in the donation pile.

It's hard to put my finger on why exactly it was so hard for me to get through. I learned some things from it, but something about the way it was arranged, moving randomly from an anecdote at one point in time to an anecdote in a completely different century, just made it hard to absorb, I think. Hopefully this copy will find its way to someone who can appreciate it better.

Currently reading Thyme Travellers: An Anthology of Palestinian Speculative Fiction, possibly not the best choice for a week which is turning out to be highly stressful on both home and work fronts.

[screechfox]

Trying to break out of a reading dry spell that I was in over May and June. I just finished Sea of Tranquility by Emily St. John Mandel, which was a nice little time travel story, and I'm about to start The Once and Future Sex by Eleanor Janega, a non-fiction book about womanhood in medieval times.

[white_aster]

here's what I've finished lately.

- Cold Eternity by S.A. Barnes - I liked this! I liked Dead Silence (great vibes) and HaTEd Ghost Station (because so much of it didn't make sense to me, plotwise). I felt this was also in the "fun creepy vibes" category. The resolution was kind of simple, but hey, solid space horror.

- Into the Broken Lands by Tanya Huff - I...am glad I read this. Unsure if I "liked" it, but it was kind of a strange book. Imagine...Murderbot in a fantasy setting, with mages who broke part of the world and left it a reality-challenged wasteland, but not before they left behind a lot of very powerful mage-engineered devices, including some humanoid engineered "weapons". That was the part I liked, because it did have some interesting (though kind of overwrought) things to say about defining personhood, and the "weapon" got much more POV than it usually does (Murderbot notwithstanding). There was also one of the most delicately done and interesting corruption arcs I've ever seen done, and that got it up out of 2-star territory for me, but overall it sat around 3 or 3.5. I felt it touched on things I liked but consistently didn't quite hit the beats square enough to get to 4 stars. It wasn't helped by having a very, very annoying set of characters that I hated having to see so much of.

- The Teller of Small Fortunes by Julie Leong. I liked this a lot. Cozy, but not too cozy in my view: there was tension and problems and emotions and yes, everything worked out, but that's why I'm over reading cozy anyway, so I felt that was fine.

- The Wonder Engine by T. Kingfisher. Solid ending to this duology, though it felt very slow for most of it. The ending was a banger, though, and raised it back up into solid 3.5 star territory for me.

Currently I'm reading Of Monsters and Mainframes by Barbara Truelove, and after a wobble at the start where I was kind of unsure if I was going to like the main AI character, it GRABBED me and I've loved it ever since.

[dualscreen]

Recently finished the english translation of Bambi by Felix Salten. An enjoyable little book, it definitely made me remember why I enjoy xenofiction so much and holds up nicely in the modern day. Way darker than I was expecting too.

[coffeepaws]

Wendy, Darling by A.C. Wise

[althea_valara]

Started listening to Martha Wells' Artificial Condition, which is the second book in the Murderbot Diaries series.

One of my library's book clubs last month read All Good People Here by Ashley Flowers, so I checked it out as I was planning on attending the discussion. Unfortunately life got in the way so I couldn't go, but I'm a few chapters into the book and am mostly enjoying it so far. It's definitely interesting! But what one of the characters is going to hit a little too close to home, so that was ouch. Anyway, I intend to go back to the book when I finish the second Murderbot, because I'm intrigued enough to see where the book takes the reader.

[valoise]

I really enjoyed The Incandescent by Emily Tesh. Set at a boarding school (with both an academic & magical curriculum) the book follows the Director of Magic who is trying to protect the school and its students from demonic incursion. I really liked this POV of the faculty instead of the students and I have put this book on my tentative list to nominate for the Hugos next year.

I had never heard of Adam Oyebanji but read a review of his novel Esperance and grabbed it when I saw it at the library. A detective novel with an sf twist follows a Chicago police detective and an otherworldy women in Bristol, England as they each try to catch the perpetrator of inexplicable murders. This one is also going on my tentative Hugo nomination list.

[pedanther]

On the non-fiction side, I've finished reading A Choice of Catastrophes and am now reading Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind by Yuval Noah Harari.

On the fiction side, I have a couple of books going.

I finally made a start on Tanith Lee's The Silver Metal Lover, which I've been actively not reading for 25 years because if I don't like it I'm going to have to finally admit that her adult fiction just doesn't work for me, despite how much I love some of her works for younger readers. It is, inconveniently, actually quite good, but the teenage protagonist reminds me uncomfortably of someone I used to be, and I put it down during a particularly stressful moment last week and haven't picked it up again.

Yesterday I decided to try Julian Rathbone's The Last English King, which is set around the time of the Norman Conquest of England. I'm not far enough into it yet to have formed any definite opinions.

[olivermoss]

Read Time to Shine by Rachel Reid, another m/m hockey romance by the person who wrote the Game Changers series. I liked it! On one hand I was sad to not have cameos from characters I knew or rely on the team names and continuity I learned, but it was probably a better book for being freed from the weight of all that canon. I am going to read her other book, but not immediately.

[cornerofmadness]

one of the arcs I have, I Need You to Read This (can't remember the author, too hot and tired to look it up) The main character is taking over an advice column and trying to solve the murder of the woman whose place she's taking

[quillpunk]

I'm reading Hero of the Imperium by Sandy Mitchell, the first Ciaphas Cain omnibus. It's only my second foray into Warhammer, and I'm greatly enjoying it so far! Ciaphas is a really fun, engaging character <3

[elizalavelle]

Just finished Elphie by Gregory Maguire and started The Berry Pickers by Amanda Peters.