RIP (Read In Progress) Wednesday

[quillpunk]

It is once more Wednesday. What are you reading? 👀

Comments

[quillpunk]

Currently reading Tristan Strong Punches a Hole in the Sky by Kwame Mbalia (I need to finish this today, the library loan expires tomorrow!), I'm about 50% through and it's fun so far! :D Also He Who Fights with Monsters (Book 1) by Shirtaloon/Travis Deverell. So far Jason (MC) is, aside from his familiar, only fighting against monsters. I assumed he'd fight with them, as allies, based on the title but maybe I misunderstood, lol. Anyway, it's also a fun read so far! And also also, still slowly chipping away at Peter Cabot Gets Lost by Cat Sebastian, m/m historical romance.

[enchantedsleeper]

Oh, I started reading Tristan Strong but didn't hit my groove with it - I should pick it up again!

[starfleetbrat]

Reading Quarter Share (Golden Age of the Solar Clipper, #1) by Nathan Lowell which I would call cozy sci-fi. I'm about 12 chapters in and its been pretty low stakes and a bit of found family and generally just kind of chill. Im enjoying it a lot.

[quillpunk]

Glad you're having fun! Good luck with the rest of the book :D

[blueshiftofdeath]

I'm reading Stolen Focus by Johann Hari. So far so good!

[vriddy]

It's starting!! >:D

[blueshiftofdeath]

😆 :D <3

[enchantedsleeper]

I've been working my way through the Discworld City Watch books (re-reading) and I've just started Jingo. I keep meaning to also start something new but I'm lazy about it. I have so many good graphic novels waiting...

[white_aster]

I need to get back into the Watch. :D I tried Pratchett when I was Too Young to Get It, and tried the Watch series last year and LOVED it.

[enchantedsleeper]

That's interesting, because I often wish I had got into Terry Pratchett earlier in life (there was no shortage of opportunity!) but there's a chance I might have bounced off it, too.

As it was, I finally started Discworld in 2021 after a lot of indecisiveness about Where to Start, and read the City Watch books because they were said to have great character development. Definitely don't regret that as an intro to the series; it's excellent. But then I didn't really read more Discworld books until this year when I read Small Gods and then Going Postal as part of a buddy read with friends, and then checked out Making Money on my own. I will probably do Raising Steam once I finish the Watch re-read!

I recommend Going Postal et al if you like the City Watch books, they're a good set to go onto afterwards :D

[white_aster]

I probably tried when I was....well...in the single digits. It came off as being "not serious" to me then, because I just didn't catch the incisive parody happening because I'd not yet seen enough of the world. :P

I also picked the Watch books to try again, because it seemed like A) I'd like Vimes, B) it was a relatively self-contained intro, and C) folks with a-little-but-not-much power trying to help those with even less is one of my jams. :D

And I've heard good things about Going Postal! Thanks for the rec. I suspect that I will definitely be coming at the rest of Discworld from the "bureaucracy/infrastructure" angles, same as you.

[ebaths]

I’m reading Freddy’s Book by John Gardner. It’s a book-within-a-book; the frame story really captured me, but the book-within has been less gripping.

I picked it up from a Little Free Library! The cover/title interested me, and the pull quote from an Ursula K. Le Guin review on the back solidified my interest. We’ll see if I can get through it alright XD

[sixbeforelunch]

They Do It With Mirrors by Agatha Christie. It's a Miss Marple novel. I haven't read it before, but I'm sure I saw an adaptation at some point. Can't remember how it ends, though. I'm about 2/3 of the way through, and enjoying it for the most part, excepting the casual racism that keeps popping up.

[svgurl]

I read that one fairly recently (sometime in the past year). I enjoyed it too but as an adult, I'm definitely becoming more aware of the casual racism (and antisemitism) that rears its head in these golden age mysteries. Some of Agatha Christie's books are more blatant than others. :\

[peaked]

So close to finishing Such Sharp Teeth by Rachel Harrison. Still enjoying it!

Reading the Dance of Dragons in Fire and Blood by GRRM. Got up to the section I wanted to read to… and now I think I'm going to mark it as read because I can't be bothered reading on. (I forgot how the world was neck-deep in misogyny. :/)

Think I will start my Six of Crows by Leigh Bardugo reread tonight!

[wearing_tearing]

Currently almost done with Welcome to the Hyunam-Dong Bookshop by Hwang Bo-reum! This has been such a cozy and amazing read. I'm reading it via ebook, but am already looking into buying a physical copy so I can annotate it.

Also started The Diablo's Curse by Gabe Cole Novoa! The first two chapters were excellent and I can't wait for the weekend so I can really dive into my reading :D

[einhornmaedchen]

(Hello, I am new! :))
I am currently reading "Gestohlene Vergangenheit" ("Stolen Past"), the second volume in a series of historical novels taking place in the age of Vikings. The main character is a woman called Linea who has been made ruler of a Norwegian village and is heading out to discover new shores. The author is called Smilla Johansson and she's from Germany. Sadly, I don't think the books have been translated yet :(

They are very well-written and exciting, even for someone like me who has never been particularly interested in vikings.

[white_aster]

Welcome! :) Ok, a book about a Viking lady going to sea sounds awesome. :)

[einhornmaedchen]

Thank you :)

It is awesome indeed, there's a third one coming out soon and I cannot wait. I really do hope it'll eventually be translated so people in other countries can participate in the awesomeness.

[white_aster]

I DID finish Four Lost Cities by Annalee Newitz, which was good nonfiction about "abandoned" ancient metropolises. I read books like that for insights into how different cultures arrange themselves, and this book did a good job of that. It did suffer from the usual archaeology problem of them just...not knowing exactly what had happened because there were no written records, but still...interesting read.

Now I am reading The Tainted Cup by Robert Jackson Bennett,(uuuuuh fantasy Sherlockian mystery in a world that's a cross between Standard Eurocentric Medieval, Morrowind, and Pacific Rim? I've yet to figure out if I'm going to find the main detectives boring and wish that the setting had some different main characters) and Armageddon Science: The Science of Mass Destruction by Brian Clegg (nonfiction about various weapons of mass destruction and apocalypse scenarios.) The former came up on my library loans, and the second is an actual physical book from my bookshelf that I picked up because watching the Fallout TV show gave me End of the World on the brain. So far Armageddon Science is ok, but he lost points for starting with the DUMBEST and least plausible armageddon scenario: that the LHC would create weird runaway quantum effects that destroy the universe. >_> Not sure what he or his editors were thinking, there. But now we're into nuclear bombs, which is more of what I'm wanting. :D

I gave up on Children of Time by Adrian Tchaikovsky. I usually self-select better and don't DNF things, but this was the first of his books I'd read, and he's just not the sort of writer that I enjoy overmuch. Very creative worldbuilding, very nice hardish science, but...gosh, I got about 17% in and there wasn't yet a character I knew enough about to care what happened to them. And that's just a deathknell for me: I need good characterization. And my loan was expiring, and it was SO LONG of a book, and I was reading reviews and heard how there was a lot of churn in characters and I just...decided to part ways with it.

[svgurl]

I just started The Strangler Vine by M.J. Carter, a mystery set in British ruled India about a former soldier and a secret political agent who team up to track down a missing writer. So far, it's interesting. :)