RIP (Read In Progress) Wednesday

[silversea]

What are you reading (or not reading)?

Also reminding people about the 2025 October Review-a-Thon!

Comments

[silversea]

My reading slump's been improving and I finished Automatic Noodle by Annalee Newitz, although I didn't love it. I think cozy sff without much stakes just aren't my thing at all.

My library hold for Shorefall by Robert Jackson Bennett finally came in, so I'll start that soon.

[zenigotchas]

Halfway through the final chapter of Beyond Good And Evil!!!!

[volkameria]

I finished The Enchanted Greenhouse by Sarah Beth Durst and, much like the previous novel in the series, it was very sweet, very vibes focused, and did not need a third act. I think she greatly improved on the characterization, though!

Started Everyone is Lying to You which is marketed as a tradwife influencer inspired thriller. I'm really enjoying it so far!

[mxroboto]

Finished Nevil Shute's On the Beach yesterday, absolutely adored it. Marked it on my library bingo sheet that was due last week under "beachy summer read," which is funny to me since it's not the sort of book they had in mind for that square at all. Gonna have to snag my own copy at some point.

Currently on my first readthrough of Richard Siken's Crush (planning to do at least two, poetry takes a while to get through my skull and this is delicious).

Up next is Samantha Sotto Yambao's Water Moon, I know nothing about it, just picked it up on my way out because the cover was pretty and my favorite librarian said he heard great things about it.

[isis]

I'm laughing at your first paragraph. Yeah, On the Beach is definitely not a "beach read"! (I read it years ago, in college, when my father told me he was going through all of Nevil Shute's work and enjoying it, and I picked this one because, hey, a beach! Joke's on me. But I really loved it as well, and now I'm thinking maybe I should reread it.)

(btw if you like the "people steadfastly living their lives in the face of encroaching apocalypse" genre you might enjoy the Canadian movie Last Night.)

[mxroboto]

ahaha I'm so glad you got a kick out of it! Luckily I went into it knowing exactly what was up, I can't imagine going into it expecting something cheerful ahaha

Okay, looking into Last Night, oh my god thank you so much for the rec. Library didn't have it, so I found it via other means. Y2K? Sandra Oh?? David Cronenberg?!?! Hello here I am. I know what I'm doing Saturday night!!

[valoise]

On the Beach - so unlike the kind of violence infused end of the world stuff movies portray and such a good exploration of how ordinary people face the inevitable.

[mxroboto]

You're right, it's very unusual in that aspect! I wonder how much of that is influenced by the tiny tiny cast mostly in rural settings, or Shute's very uhhh dehumanizing opinions of the poor. But I truly love the deeply ordinary conversations (what will we plant here? let's go boat racing!) that dance around the impending death. Just drips with subtext. Anytime their anxieties briefly align and they can talk about it directly feels like making eye contact in a crowd. Ahh!! Such a good book.

[pauraque]

My Le Guin re-read project has made it to The Wind's Twelve Quarters, her first short story collection. It's been a long time since I've read it and it's interesting what stuck with me and what didn't. I remembered some of her author's notes more than the stories they accompanied! I think this was the first time I got a sense of her as an author who was open about critiquing her own past work and admitting she didn't always get things right.

[spiralsheep]

I love Le Guin's short stories. And she did improve over time, from an already good beginning, so I'm glad she knew that.

[dark_phoenix54]

Just started "The Dead of Winter" by Sarah Clegg, about some of the more horrific folklore surrounding the dark of the year.

[pedanther]

I've just finished A Tale of Two Cities. I enjoyed Dickens' narrative voice and a lot of the characters, but felt that some of the bits that were probably supposed to be most dramatic didn't really land for me.

And now I'm just starting Ghost Empire by Richard Fidler, which is non-fiction: an account of the rise and fall of Constantinople interwoven with a visit to present-day Istanbul.

[phantomtomato]

I’m just about halfway through Alan Hollinghurst’s The Line of Beauty. It is indeed beautiful(ly written), though the protagonist is currently striking me as a slightly more annoying version of the narrator in Edmund White’s The Beautiful Room is Empty.

[stonepicnicking_okapi]

I am reading Even Dogs in the Wild which is #20 in the Inspector Rebus series by Ian Rankin.

[spiralsheep]

81. Perspectives, by Laurent Binet (translated by Sam Taylor), 3.5/5.
A murder mystery novel set in Florence in the 1550s and using historical people as characters. I like the epistolary format and wide variety of correspondents. I especially enjoyed the conspiracy of idealistic artists against pragmatic politicians (and am not even miffed that the historians were all supporting the politicians). Also, Binet managed to pull off the only funny joke about the French military surrendering, and the person he chose to deliver it was the best possible choice.

Current reading quote: "Maybe no one understands smallness better than a child. Maybe no one is more invested in scale. Certainly my friend was old enough to grapple with what is and what isn't. We start early on the project of what is fleeting and what will stay."

[dhampyresa]

Binet managed to pull off the only funny joke about the French military surrendering, and the person he chose to deliver it was the best possible choice.

I am very curious!

[spiralsheep]

You could read the novel! ;-P

Explaining humour always ruins it, especially humour that relies on context!

Still reading? Okay. It's the same old joke about the French army surrendering which isn't funny in, for example, the awful contexts of the First or Second World Wars. But it is funny set in a period when the French army was one of very few global superpowers (only two in Europe - the other was Spain, obv) and had invaded their neighbours the Italian states in support of a terrible warmongering pope, because it's allowable to target powerful people as the butt of humour. Binet also puts the joke into the mouth of The Worst Character (in the novel but also a horrible person in real history) because (1) it's usually the worst people who say things like "cheese eating surrender monkeys" and (2) it gives Binet plausible deniability to defend himself against any reader who still doesn't think the joke is funny even in this context. And now I have ruined Binet's nuanced humour by explaining it! The joke is dead, long live the joke! XD

[spiralsheep]

I should also add that all the "French" people in Perspectives were born in the Italian states, e.g. Catherine de' Medici.

[inchoatewords]

I finished _The Shores of Light_ by Edmund Wilson. Wilson was a literary critic who wrote for magazines like New Republic and Vanity Fair, and this is a volume of his various essays from the 1920s and 30s. Most of the articles concern select books or authors, but there are also some of his views on current politics and other arts, such as the theatre.

It's interesting to see who were the "It Kids" then and whether we still even read them (he was an early champion of Hemingway, Fitzgerald, and Henry Miller), who are more niche these days but still might be read (John Dos Passos, some of Thornton Wilder's earlier work), and who have faded into obscurity (Ring Lardner).

I find Wilson quite readable, so I ended up reading this cover to cover, but you can easily dip in and out depending on interest.

I'm now reading _The Night Watchman_ by Louise Erdrich. This is my selection for my work DEI book club. I won't be there to run the meeting so I have to read it a little earlier to come up with some questions to help out my colleague who's subbing in for me.

[valoise]

Just got back from Worldcon and I had lots of time to read during travel - I had a long 2-day train journey on the way back. Still working on the Murderbot Diaries I finished Network Effect and Fugitive Telemetry in time for the convention where Martha Wells was one of the Guests of Honor.

During the train trip I read The Mercy of Gods by James S. A. Corey, their first book in a new series. It sets of a very complex universe with a seemingly endless set of very different aliens. I liked it okay, but didn't love any of the characters, it was obviously setting things up for a long series.

[dualscreen]

Just finished the first Sherlock Holmes novel, A Study in Scarlet! Something fun about reading old classics is seeing just how good they really are. The second half abruptly shifting to the Mormon Migration hit me way out of left field, but it rapidly compelled me even more than the first half with all of its detecting. I'm excited to continue reading more of the series.

[bluapapilio]

Yay, hope you have fun!

[pauraque]

Something fun about reading old classics is seeing just how good they really are

Yes, I love this too!

[bluapapilio]

I recently finished The Very Secret Society of Irregular Witches and loved it, then I started on Shroud (Tchaikovsky), not sure how I feel about it yet but it's interesting enough.