What are you reading right now?

AnOminous said:
I haven't read those Stainless Steel Rat books since I was a tweenager but I loved them at the time, and of course Harrison's other works included the one that entered the public lexicon as "SOYLENT GREEN IS PEOPLE!"

Bill, the Galactic Hero is also great. It's a military parody. I think it was accused of being ripped off from some similar Russian novel, but I think the consensus is they were both just describing the same truths from experience.

It's possible he wrote a bad book (he wrote a LOT of books) but even his worst that I've read were okay, and even the okay ones were hilarious.

Harlan Ellison is currently having tea time with God and giving him advice, I hope.
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If I see Harrison/Ellison on the cheap, I'll grab them. Already have Dangerous Visions/Again, Dangerous Visions.

Got a nice batch by trading in old grade school chapter books for store credit at a used bookstore. Picked up a buncha stuff including Pohl's Gateway, Belgariad Omnibus Volumes 1+2, The Reluctant King omnibus (de camp), and a smattering of stuff by Loren Eisely, Lloyd Biggle Jr., Stephen Donaldson, Gordon Dickson, James Brunner, and I finally found a hardcover copy of Lost Horizons. I had enough of those kiddie books to trade in for all this.

Always knew those copies of goosebumps and etc. would be useful again someday.

also snagged a Jack Vance Demon Princes omnibus for like half the price it normally goes for.

I think the authors I'm keeping an eye out for in the wild at this point are Jack Vance and Alfred Bester. Currently reading I Am Vampire.
 
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Finished reading Hans Staden book. Jesus that was amazing, imagine people in the year 1550 reading all those stories and descriptions of the people in the new world. And since it is set in my own country, I know what he wrote was true (and see how words we use to this day had origins with the natives).

I already got more texts and books with the same idea of retelling their travels to the new world.

My next read is something different tho, greek myth:

JASON AND THE GOLDEN FLEECE (THE ARGONAUTICA)
 
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Finished I am Legend by Matheson along with most of the short stories in the book that accompany this edition of I am Legend. Good shit. Also finished Jack Vance's first Dying Earth novel. Also fun.

Found Farmer's World of Tiers vol 1+2, Poul Anderson's Conan, Asimov's The Gods Themselves, and Lem's Solaris+other works all in a goodwill bookstore. Might slide Asimov and Solaris up my reading list this summer.

I'm really hoping to find Simak's City/Werewolf Principle books in a used bookstore. Preferably hardcovers.
 
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Started reading Knausgaard’s current trilogy (or are there four books?). Expectations were low because My struggle bored me to death, but man, this is good stuff. Finished The Morning Star in two days and immediately trotted down to the bookstore and got the next two novels. Halfway through The Wolves of Eternity now.

It’s just nice to read something contemporary that isn’t filtered through current sensibilities. The characters are complex and self contradictory like real humans. They think about death a whole lot. They listen to Whitesnake. The world is going to end, or something. It’s all good.

I’ll just admit it, I’m gay for Knausgaard now.
 
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My mom gave me the book Astor by Anderson Cooper and Katherine Howe a while back. I don't know why. I've never expressed any interest in learning about the Astor family. She's always had a crush on Cooper, but I can't stand him, and she knows that. I'm a dutiful son, though, and since it was a gift from my mom, I'm duty-bound to read it.

Some of it is surprisingly interesting. The family patriarch, John Jacob Astor, led an interesting life. He lived the quintessential American dream, arriving here from Germany with nothing but a few flutes to sell and becoming insanely wealthy with hard work, ambition, and ruthless business acumen. Most of his descendants were spoiled rich cunts and fuckups, which can be interesting.

I hate the informal style of modern writing. Fragments galore. (There are shitloads of needless parentheticals that don't need to be in parentheses, because modern writers have no clue what a parenthetical is supposed to be.) There are also references to Starbucks and cell phones, because modern readers won't want to learn about the 18th century if you don't mention current things, I guess. There's a stereotype about how modern female writers can never get to the fucking point, and every article they write has to be bookended by a personal story about them getting coffee or growing up in rural Georgia or whatever. Astor is plagued by that shit. The introduction opens with a story about the time a young Anderson Cooper -- whose mother was a Vanderbilt, he's quick to remind you -- met with Brooke Astor for like five seconds in a restaurant. The chapter about Caroline Astor, the queen bee of Gilded Age high society, begins and ends with a mostly fictionalized frame story about the reporter who wrote the final newspaper article about her looking at paintings in her house.

There's an entire chapter about the gay scene in early 20th-century New York City. The only connection to the Astor family is that the bar in the Astor hotel was popular with gays, but the book dedicates an entire chapter to it. Most of the chapters are around 20 pages long, and the gay one is 16 pages. The long, disconnected aside about the New York gay scene, which has zero to do with the Astor family, occupies almost as much space in the book as the family patriarch who built their fortune. There's already a chapter about the Astor hotels, and it could've been an interesting historical footnote in that chapter, worthy of a paragraph or two. Cooper just had to drag it out to chapter length and include cringe-inducing descriptions about how exciting it was to make eyes with a guy across the bar, even though, I repeat, it has absolutely nothing to do with the Astor family themselves. Motherfucker, I'm presumably reading your biography called Astor because I'm interested in the history of the Astor family. If I wanted long descriptions of guys buttfucking in 1920s New York, I'd look for a book called East Coast Fisting Scene.

Overall, 1/10 so far. I wouldn't be reading this shit if it hadn't been a gift from my aging mother.
 
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ScurvyRat said:
You're a good son, @Shart Attack
My mother gifted me a book on the "sons of feminism" a while back and I can't bring myself to read it
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My parents spent many years foisting various volumes of affirmative thinking, positive reasoning, and similarly themed works upon me, but mercifully they've stopped that now. I appreciate the sentiment, but when I'm having a shitty day and I'm feeling depressed, the last thing I want to do is crack open my "gratitude journal" and read positive and uplifting quotations. I don't care how much glitter you dump on a turd it's still a fucking turd.
 
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glass_houses said:
I'm having a shitty day and I'm feeling depressed, the last thing I want to do is crack open my "gratitude journal" and read positive and uplifting quotations
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Usually for me its a cold beer and violent video games.
Your parents sound like dirty hippies.
Thankfully the "sons of feminism" book is mostly about young men coping and sneeding about how "feminism has ruined their lives"
I don't ascribe to victim mentality so I didn't get much out of it.
 
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Shart Attack said:
My mom gave me the book Astor by Anderson Cooper and Katherine Howe a while back. I don't know why. I've never expressed any interest in learning about the Astor family. She's always had a crush on Cooper, but I can't stand him, and she knows that. I'm a dutiful son, though, and since it was a gift from my mom, I'm duty-bound to read it.
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Oh yeah, my mom would always gift me books I had no intention of reading, or regretted doing so. I ended up gifting her book that seem like things she'd like but get weird halfway through. One was called "The Lighthouse" and is made to sound like a true story about the crew of a lighthouse disappearing one day and a journalist investigator talking to their widows to figure out what happened, but turned out to be complete nonsense cribbing from many stories about lighthouses, with the journalist at the end throwing all his papers in the air and saying that the ending didn't matter so might as well make it up.
 
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Re-reading Dr. Slump after a very long time, it was Akira Toriyama's mega-hit long before Dragon Ball came out but it took a long time for it to get an official U.S release. It's also been out of print for a while so I'm glad I got it when I did. When I first read it as a young dumb kid I don't think I appreciated how good his inking was or how good his cartooning in general was . Now as an adult artsperg I can really enjoy the artistry of this gag manga about a robot t0uching p0op.
 
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skjora said:
Been on a Jack Vance binge. I'd held off on reading "The Dying Earth" thinking it'd feel very dated, but fell completely in love with it. The prose is both fancy and cheeky in a very entertaining way. You'll get a sense of just how derivative a lot of other media inspired by it is.
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Seems Vance really needs more recognition. I love the style. I'm probably gonna finish Dying Earth, Emphyrio, and Demon Princes first, then see about acquiring Planet of Adventure or Lyonesse. Then I'll go for the other stuff like Dragon Masters.

Honestly a lot of the classic SF/F writers feel like they should be dated, but they aren't. Bester, Simak, Vance, Anderson, and all these guys are just plain fun to read.

Saw a copy of Octavia Butler's Xenogenesis in Hardcover with a DJ at a library bookstore, but wasn't sure if I wanted to grab it and add it to my personal library of things to read. I had to read Parable of the Sower for a class and wasn't that impressed.

Finished This Immortal by Zelazny. Good book, but I can see why it'd be off-putting to some people. Reading Glen Cook's The Black Company now. I like it so far, which means I'll be on the lookout for more Cook stuff. (Primarily the first trilogy. I'll probably spring for a copy of the hardcover or paperback omnibus editions down the line).

My goal of reading 100 books this year is at 44/100. My reading list include's Pohl's Gateway, Anderson's Brain Wave, Cather's The Moonstone, and Zelazny's Lord of Light.
 
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Alexander Thaut said:
Reading Glen Cook's The Black Company now. I like it so far, which means I'll be on the lookout for more Cook stuff. (Primarily the first trilogy. I'll probably spring for a copy of the hardcover or paperback omnibus editions down the line).
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The Black Company and the Garrett Files are Cook's big works but you should check out The Swordbearer, which is an actually good deconstruction of the "chosen one with a magic sword" trope. Or The Dragon Never Sleeps if you want space opera.


Recently finished two more prepper/collapse novels: Our War by Craig DiLouie and Black Autumn by Jeff Kirkham.

Our War was more entertaining but in a "stare at the car crash" way. Plot follows four characters, an orphaned teenage brother and sister who end up on opposing sides of the American civil war, a UN aid worker investigating rumors about militias using child soldiers, and a local newspaper reporter. Not badly written but you can pinpoint the author's political views within the first ten pages: the right wing militiamen are all religious fanatics, racist sociopaths, or fat, middle-aged LARPers who are all constantly bickering, while the left wing militias are all brave and skilled and compassionate yet resolute fighters who all seamlessly work hand in hand. Also the happy ending is the surviving sibling (the girl, naturally) finding a loving foster family in Canada which is somehow completely unaffected by America turning into Syria circa 2014.

Black Autumn is a more standard prepper SHTF story except set in Salt Lake City so everyone is Mormon (this has no bearing on 99% of the story). It does the standard prepper story beats: introduce the characters in cursory fashion, introduce the prep bunker (or in this case a remote hilltop redoubt) in loving, lavish detail, then hurry up to get to the collapse. Wasn't a terrible read but it sticks to most of the standard SHTF story beats so it doesn't do a lot to distinguish itself. I did like the bit of almost metagaming by the ex-mil security guys who find out about the third act villains lawless hillbilly clan living out in the hills nearby and immediately hike over and poison their water supply. Climactic ending battle felt obligatory but at least somewhat realistic in how it played out with hundreds of barely trained civilians sloshing around the battlefield with a handful of fighters with actual training and comms trying to herd cats. Felt bad for the one normie suburban dad who was just trying his best to shoot deer and feed his family.
 
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Hugbox Kommissar said:
The Black Company and the Garrett Files are Cook's big works but you should check out The Swordbearer, which is an actually good deconstruction of the "chosen one with a magic sword" trope. Or The Dragon Never Sleeps if you want space opera.
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I'll probably just grab the Garrett files down the line. I like an e-reader, but it doesn't beat a real book most of the time.
 
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Just finished Blindsight and really enjoyed it. All the horrifying revelations about the nature of Rorschach, the Theseus mission and humanity's place in the universe were expertly done. I did a little bit of searching and found that Peter Watts put a bunch of the lore on his website. Web design is old school but somehow it worked better on my mobile browser. There's a 36 minute in-universe video on the discovery and resurrection of the vampire subspecies somewhere in here.


https://rifters.com/real/Blindsight.htm
 
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Agares said:
Just finished Blindsight and really enjoyed it. All the horrifying revelations about the nature of Rorschach, the Theseus mission and humanity's place in the universe were expertly done. I did a little bit of searching and found that Peter Watts put a bunch of the lore on his website. Web design is old school but somehow it worked better on my mobile browser. There's a 36 minute in-universe video on the discovery and resurrection of the vampire subspecies somewhere in here.


https://rifters.com/real/Blindsight.htm
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There’s a reason Watts is one of my favourite authors. You should also give his Sunflower series a try, it’s a collection of short stories and one novella about the crew of a ship that constructs stargates. There’s no FTL travel (apart from the stargates) in the setting, so the ship travels the galaxy at near-light speed operated by an AI, which periodically wakes the human crew from cryogenic suspension when they’re needed. It’s superb.
 
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Susanna said:
There’s a reason Watts is one of my favourite authors. You should also give his Sunflower series a try, it’s a collection of short stories and one novella about the crew of a ship that constructs stargates. There’s no FTL travel (apart from the stargates) in the setting, so the ship travels the galaxy at near-light speed operated by an AI, which periodically wakes the human crew from cryogenic suspension when they’re needed. It’s superb.
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I'll have to check it out. That sounds like an interesting concept for sure.

Also I got that video on the creation of vampires saved. It only worked on my mobile browser and not desktop for some reason but it's worth the watch. IDK if I could upload it here though.
 
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