What are you reading right now?

Just got caught up on JKR's detective novels (The Ink Black Heart and The Running Grave). Massive doorstoppers but light reading nonetheless. These two books featured munchies and cults, which are pretty much my favorite types of cows.

Internet speak in the IBH was surprisingly bearable, I usually can't stand that sort of thing in books. I think she missed a tick by making the fictional cartoon series the murder revolves around a grimdark edgy one, everyone knows the real psychotic fanbases gather around the fluffy love-and-friendship cartoons. I also can't stand the romance subplots in this series but the ultra long and detailed mystery plots are enough to make me stick around.

Farmholio said:
Has anyone ever read The Black Company series by Glen Cook?
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Great series. Though I think the first arc is the peak, there are still some excellent moments in the later books. If you want something with a similar military fantasy vibe when you're finished, I recommend the Malazan series by Steven Erikson.
 
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Jonah Hill poster said:
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I had wanted to read Hagakure: The Book of the Samurai for years but had never managed to get around to doing it. Though, now that Sam Hyde mentioned it on his recent talk show that he did almost a week ago, now I have no excuse.
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I highly recommend it, especially if you feel like delving more into the history of Yamamoto because it makes the book even more potent as a piece of philosophy.
If you've read Book Of Five Rings it will be similar, but the differences between Mushahi's and Yamamoto's take on Bushido are sometimes really at odds, so I'd read both if you haven't already.
 
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I finished Iron Coffins and while the second half drags on his description of loss, military failure, chaos and attempts to escape the allied POW camps in the third act was riveting.

Last 4th of Max Brooks "World War Z". As a boy I was infatuated with zombies and his earlier Zombie Survival guide yet knowing about World War Z and even hearing about the movie adaption, I never read it. Saw a video review of the movie and decided to read the book finally. It's shockingly, especially that it's my own youth, very of its time. A lot of focus on worries and ideals from the Iraq War and a neocon sophmoric idea of China. But despite being a little sentimentalist and recycling similar themes through its many POVs its a nice little book.

Split now between finishing the Brothers Karamasov or starting back on an academic work, Coronation Rites by Reginald Wooley. I liked Brothers a lot but lost the physical copy at a bus station two years ago, I'd probably start it all over again.
 
Halfway through Blood Meridian. A good read, well written, but if I'm being honest I do find it to be slightly over hyped. Many sections are extremely repetitive, especially when the author decides to describe the unforgiving desert landscape over and over, every other chapter. It's enjoyable, like I said, and there's still plenty of book left, but I find it to be inferior to the last McCarthy novel I read, Child of God. I guess Blood Meridian feels bloated while Child of God was lean and trim.
 
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I'm revisiting the Great Brain series by John D Fitzgerald for the first time since my childhood.

They hold up surprisingly well and it's nice to read about small town culture from the late 19th century.
 
Farmholio said:
Has anyone ever read The Black Company series by Glen Cook?

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I've just entered the third story arc, the Glittering Stone series. In all honesty, it's far from my favorite fantasy series, but it's certainly good enough to make me want to finish it. Pretty unchallenging read, very basic prose written in first person (mostly). Questionable usage of modern sounding English language, but really it takes place in an alternate universe so whatever. I discovered it because I watched (or at least listened to) mredders123's long retrospective reviews about the Myth series by Bungie.


Turns out Bungie ripped off a bunch of stuff from the first books of The Black Company. When mredders123 alluded to the series being (to paraphrase) "morally gray", I was intrigued. Can't say the series quite lives up to that appellation. Additionally, Bungie didn't actually take much of the literary substance from The Black Company, but rather lots of superficial details, which are pretty obvious when you know what you're looking for (Soulcatcher -> Soulblighter; The Taken -> The Fallen (Lords); etc). Honestly, Bungie's apocalyptic take is very different and I'd argue potentially more interesting.

That said, The Black Company is still fun, and I'm glad I found out about it. I like the vibe you get... not to spoil anything but the gist is like, you're in a D&D 3.5 edition setting with absolutely bullshit broken spellcasters running the show, and it's from the POV of a pitiful martial class character trying to make it through his day, with all the mundane concerns that come with it, peppered with some strange and disturbing encounters with the supernatural. Just don't expect particularly complex morality. It's not totally braindead good vs. evil but it ends up pretty close to black and white most of the time when you boil it down.
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I was planning on starting the series after I finish up what I'm reading now, a lot of people have recommended it to me in the past and the last time I gave it a shot I kept getting interrupted by other stuff so I feel like I haven't given it a fair shake.

Right now I'm reading Children of Memory, the third and latest in the Children of Time series. Children of Time is a fantastic book, tries it's best to stay in the lanes of "hard science fiction" then nudges things so more fantastical elements can happen. Children of Ruin was also a fun book, had a bunch of horror elements to it and as a whole wasn't quite as good as Children of Time but still worthwhile. This third one is fantastic though, really just pulling on the other two books to present new ideas in a fun way. Highly recommend.
 
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I'm 53 chapters into Moby Dick now.

The pace has picked up. We got some whaling action. Read a really good chapter today about how whalers relate to all the other sorts of sailors, and how whalers are just always somehow on the bottom of the sailor social hierarchy. Even pirates feel superior to whalers, which is pretty funny.
 
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Running back CHAOS: Charles Manson, the CIA, and the Secret History of the Sixties. I am a conspiracy sperg so this kind of shit was right up my alley. It admittedly starts to taper off in the back half once O'Neil openly states his conclusion. Not that I think he's wrong. You just lose some of the intrigue.
 
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Broken Talisman said:
Running back CHAOS: Charles Manson, the CIA, and the Secret History of the Sixties. I am a conspiracy sperg so this kind of shit was right up my alley. It admittedly starts to taper off in the back half once O'Neil openly states his conclusion. Not that I think he's wrong. You just lose some of the intrigue.
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That was a good read, but I don't remember it well enough to discuss. I think I'll reread it, I'm at the end of a biography of Wyatt Earp.
 
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About halfway through "The American War in Afghanistan" by Carter Malkasian. It's a great read so far, and a pretty nonbiased history on the war.
 
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Hoof said:
read quite a bit lately. I'll start with the most interesting and work my way down.

The Fisherman by John Langan. A good read if you're a fan of HP Lovecraft. Sort of written in his genre, but much less dry. Ultimately it's just Pet Cemetery with a Lovecraft skin. I liked it a lot more than Pet Cemetery, though I also don't share the same opinion of King as his mainstream appeal does. It was easy to breeze through and I felt it was a better version of an already existing novel.

I started Between Two Fires. really only got a 100 pages in, but I'm enjoying it so far.

Also started Mother Night by Kurt Vonnegut. Not where I'd start if you've never read Vonnegut, but if you have and enjoyed him, it's a quick read.

I read Lessons in Chemistry by Bonnie Garmus. Not something I would usually read, but it's interesting to see what's popular. I would say most KF users should just check out the Apple TV series, it's probably not for you.
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I liked the Fisherman, read it a few years ago. Check out Laird Barron if you have not for books in a similar vein.

Currently reading The Circle series by Ted Dekker - four books that are a kind of Christian fantasy. It was a bit slow at first, but picked up and is fairly entertaining.
 
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Flowers for Algernon. Had to read the short story in 8th grade and it's stuck with me for all these years. So now I'm reading the full novel for the first time. I remember the story being heartbreaking and I cry easily at sad stuff so I'm expecting this to be a tearjerker. :( Really enjoying it so far--surprisingly, since I usually find classic literature very dull.
I hear there's also a movie based on it? Maybe I will watch it afterwards.
 
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Book 4 of the Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, when he speaks about the relations between colonies and their host nations is the most intriguing to me.
 
Gaear Grimsrud said:
I'm 53 chapters into Moby Dick now.

The pace has picked up. We got some whaling action. Read a really good chapter today about how whalers relate to all the other sorts of sailors, and how whalers are just always somehow on the bottom of the sailor social hierarchy. Even pirates feel superior to whalers, which is pretty funny.
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I actually finished that last year and treated myself to John Huston's Adaptation. QueeQueg is probably my favorite character.
 
I'm reading probably the most niche book in my entire life because the Combat Codes books are so far aimed at the demographic of martial arts nerds who are also sci-fi/fantasy nerds. It's actually pretty cool, I'm halfway through the first book and it's like Ender's Game with the Battle School team shit, and Kengan Ashura with the people fighting to settle disputes between entities up to and including nations. They actually just beat the fuck out of each other in really good detail and accuracy if you know what he's talking about, it's pretty hype.
And they're literally Knights, they are people genetically engineered and raised from birth to fight coming from all over the place in this wack-ass dystopia including the Underground child-fighting slavery rings because fuck it why not Alex Pereira came from the fucking jungle who gives a shit fucking fight bro.
So far, would recommend Combat Codes.
 
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Gaear Grimsrud said:
I'm 53 chapters into Moby Dick now.

The pace has picked up. We got some whaling action. Read a really good chapter today about how whalers relate to all the other sorts of sailors, and how whalers are just always somehow on the bottom of the sailor social hierarchy. Even pirates feel superior to whalers, which is pretty funny.
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Just finished a book and was about to pick this up, but however many hundreds pages of self-reflective hyped-up slop isn't appealing. Is it good or 'good'?
 
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