What are you reading right now?

Finished "All The Ugly And Wonderful Things" by Bryn Greenwood for the third time.

The best way I can describe this book is it's like watching a burning train about to crash into an orphanage, watching said crash unfold in slow motion, and then watching as those who survived try and pick up the pieces that remain.

I remember going into it not knowing too much about what actually happens, and I found myself absolutely enthralled. The subject matter is something I find absolutely reprehensible, but the whole thing is written with such nuance and depth that you can at least understand why certain characters do certain things and act the way they do. It's something I find myself coming back to. Particularly when I'm going someplace by airplane.
 
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"Slaughterhouse-Five: a graphic novel adaptation"
Edit: "The Man From The Train": a crime analysis of a serial killer of German Origin and is supposedly also the Villisca Axe Murderer. I heard of the book from the YouTuber Bedtime Stories, found the book in my library and checked it out.
 
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Maybe I'm late to the party here, but has anyone here read Salinger's "Nine Stories"? What an incredible collection of stories. I now see why he has such a rabid fanbase.

Miguel Serrano said:
The Count Of Monte Cristo
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I hope you enjoy it. I was disappointed by it. Much of the first third of the book is great, but then it degenerates into the sort of stuff you hope you're not going to get when you open a 19th-century novel: tiresome, meandering tangents and boring scenes of aristocrats introducing themselves to one another in drawing rooms. There's even a scene where star-crossed lovers talk through a fence. The good bits are often really good, though.
 
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Finished Tomorrow War.

Currently reading Rampage
MacArthur, Yamashita, and the Battle of Manila. It follows the Philippine campaign from the POV of General MacArthur and Yamashita during the Philippine Campaign of WW2. It also gives a lot of the local guerillas credit for throwing a wrench into the military regime. It's really interesting shit.
 
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Reading Colour of Magic, the first Discworld book.
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Shit's whimsy as hell, love the humor and all the weird worldbuiling, I would have had a blast reading this stuff as a child. I'm also in love with the cover art of all of these books, its what picked my interest at first.
 
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I've decided to work on my /lit/ bona fides and read Infinite Jest. I'm about 160 pages in. I haven't read every end note (fuck that filmography one that's 4 pages long of citations) but I have read most of them cited up to this point. I really like it so far. DFW's vocabulary is fantastic. His prose is just delightful to read, despite its length.

Edit: As of December 9th, 2021 I have completed reading Infinite Jest. Very excellent work, I will definitely be rereading this in the future.
 
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David Brown said:
I haven't read every end note (fuck that filmography one that's 4 pages long of citations) but I have read most of them cited up to this point.
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Just make sure you read the endnote about S. Johnson. For my money it's the funniest part in the book. Ken Erdedy's introductory chapter is also one of my favorite bits.
 
Kim, by Rudyard Kipling. Kipling is one of my favorite English authors and Kim is one of my favorite of his works. The whole thing is just a love letter to Empire-era India which manages to make even the shit parts of it seem charming and romantic. On the other hand it's a surprisingly hard book to recommend just because the plot wanders around as the characters do. Is it a travelogue, a coming of age story, a spy thriller, a meditation on faith and religion? It's harder to recommend a book that doesn't fit neatly into a single genre category.
 
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Reading "Battle Royale" by Koushun Takami. Expected Zoomers default dancing on corpses of other zoomers. Well, I will finish it anyway, I guess.
 
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Wild Swans by Jung Chang. Fascinating book, follows a Chinese family over 3 generations. The author's parents were members of the Communist Party and I'm currently reading through the part where Mao decides to enact his ingenious plan to get all the peasants to make steel and shortly after throw the country into a devestating famine.
 
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I'm on the third book of the Neapolitan Novels by Elena Ferrante and am head over heels with her writing style.

Although I wish I'd have made some breaks between each book, because it's very densely written information-wise and can become exhausting if read one after another.
 
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I picked up a copy of Henry Cavell's Shogan because I wanted to read something set in Japan with a Western perspective but not weebish. Generally, I'm enjoying it. Enough to keep pushing through, at least.

EDIT: JAMES CLAVELL! Not Henry Cavell. I'm retarded...
 
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The first and second time I read this book I admit I wasn't prepared for the amount of dense inner monologues. It is certainly not the easiest entry point for Stanisłav Lem but, if you are tired of the state of current science fiction, this is possibly the furthest you could ask for. Also there's a character that specifically showcases the stale point of science fiction in the late 40s pulp era.
 
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In about 2 weeks I burned through the last three Legend of the Galactic Heroes novels. A lot of big stuff went on and it was mostly everything going downhill for everyone and then it ended. All in all it was a really good series and I would definitely recommend it. A bit more of an epilogue would have been interesting, not really focusing on characters but the state of everything as a whole. I might watch the show but that seems like a commitment.
 
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