Asklemmy

Do audiobooks count?

Leviathan Falls by James S. A. Corey. It's the final book in The Expanse series. Really got hooked on it. I haven't made time to find another book since then though 🤔

Last book I finished? The Dragon Reborn. Currently reading? The Princess Diaries.

I just finished Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson. Great book, that not only coined terms like "avatar" and "metaverse" (for better or worse), but is also really well written. It somehow manages to find a tone that is consistent for the dystopian worldbuilding, the silly and self-aware things that happen in the world, and the philosophical aspect dealing with culture, religion and free will. Highly recommend!

Last finished was Acceptance by Jeff Vandermeer. Currently reading Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir.

The iRobot series by Asimov. Going into Foundation now.

hemingway's debut the sun also rises, i went in blind and didn't expect it to be about bull fighting. i enjoyed the vibe of the 1920s travel through spain and france, the aimless plot and the character interactions.

i learned that bullfighting is terrible and cringed at the casual anti-semitism all over the book

Old Man's War by John Scalzi - not high literature by any means, but a fun read nonetheless. Currently reading the sequel, The Ghost Brigades, which is equally as fun :)

Piranesi by Susanna Clarke, and I hated it.

It takes a very cool premise, then fills it with incongruences and predictable twists that you understand chapters ahead of the protagonist. Then it all ends up being (SPOILERS AHEAD) a "humans used to literally talk to nature, modern society bad" mumbojumbo with some kind of unexplained multiverse in it.

Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir. I keep starting some books after this one but I can't seem to finish anything.

The Lies of Locke Lamora by Scott Lynch -- a really fun heist-y story set in an engaging and well-crafted fantasy world

Last book on paper: D&D 5th edition Player Handbook (German edition)

Last novel on paper: Frank Herbert - Dune

Last audiobook: P. Djèlí Clark - A Master of Djinn

Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin

The Broken Earth Trilogy by NK Jemisin. Fantastic and heartbreaking. It's kind of a crossover in science fiction and fantasy, set in a world that experiences apocalyptic levels of climate and geological change every few hundred years. Jemisin does excellent world building and a very admirable job of writing parts of the narrative in second person in a way that seems seamless/not gimmicky. Highly recommended.

Yumi and the nightmare painter by Brandon Sanderson. (very good)

Last series I finished was Malazan Book of the Fallen by Steven Erikson. (probably the best fantasy series I've ever read)

Current read: The God is Not Willing by Steven Erikson

Upgrade by Blake Crouch. Great book.

"Greenlights" - Mathew McConaughey, surprisingly good. Currently reading 'Look to Windward' by Iain M. Banks

The Burning Land by Bernard Cornwell. It's book 5 in the last kingdom series that the TV show is based off of. I love the time period.

All but my life by Gerda Weissmann Klein.

An amazing autobiography of a lady who survived WW2 and Nazis. It was very emotional and it felt like she was paying homage to all the little things that contributed to her survival.I would highly recommend.

1984 (nineteen-eightyfour) from George Orwell. Currently reading nothing but news.

Napoleon: A Life, really well written biography that reads like a novel highly recommended!

Most recently finished: The Twisted Ones by T. Kingfisher - an enjoyable, but not exceptional, folk horror.

Currently in the middle of: Finnegans Wake, Children of Time by Adrian Tchaikovsky, Flashman and Madison's War by Robert Brightwell, and a collection of Para Handy tales by Neil Munro.

“Toll The Hounds” by Steven Erikson, it’s book 8 in The Malazan Book of the Fallen series.

Women, Race and Class by Angela Davis.

Reading some of the history that gets left out elsewhere. Did you know that before the end of the Civil War lynching was primarily used to terrorize white abolitionists? After the Civil War during reconstruction, during Jim Crow, white supremacists needed to find a reason to terrorize and control the black community so the myth of the black man as rapist was woven into public discourse. It was the most convenient excuse to find a reason to violently punish and control black people who in whatever way challenged or violated the status quo. Accusations of even inappropriate forwardness were enough to justifying hanging. But the real reason would be that some black person or family started a business, sought education or became empowered in some way, challenging the white supremacist social hierarchy - and were lynched for it.

Dune

Recently finished the seond book in Ken MacLeod's Lightspeed Trilogy, Beyond the Reach of Earth. Nice SF series with some interesting takes on the complexities of FTL travel, First Contact, global politics, and more.

The last book I read was one of Jack Reacher novel series. Truth be told, I need to restart that reading for enjoyment habit.

I read The Violin Conspiracy by Brendan Slocumb and it was fantastic

Raft by Stephen Baxter. Part of the Xeelee sequence series.

Currently on book 2: Timelike Infinity and I'm liking it quite a bit.

I just finished The Faceless Old Woman Who Secretly Lives in Your Home by Joseph Fink and Jeffrey Cranor. I've kind of half-followed Welcome to Night Vale for years and enjoyed all the books so far.

I'm currently reading House of Leaves. This is my second attempt, after making it about halfway a few years ago. It's a great book, but a challenging read because it's dense and shifts context frequently. I find that the context-switching adds to the unsettling feel that the book is going for, but it's definitely not for everyone.

Why We Sleep by Matthew Walker. Unsurprisingly, I've become more conscious of my bedtime, but one small diagram was significant to me— having small periods where you wake up every 3 hours or so was a normal part of sleep. Since then, I've become less stressed over the quality of sleep I was getting, which then improved my sleep quality...

Just finished reading Waybound, the 12th and final book in the Cradle series by Will Wight.

It was called “Drunk” and was about human’s history with inebriates with an emphasis on alcohol. For a book on booze it was incredibly dry and while the author made some decent points he tended to just repeat them over and over again.

I’ve been on a memoir kick. Specifically women celebrities. I just finished Mean Baby by Selma Blair and it was good. I’m about to start Hello Molly by Molly Shannon.

Oryx & Crake - solid start to a Margaret Atwater series. Lots of world building and exposition. Looking forward to continuing the series. Currently reading Fairy Tale by Stephen King

I just finished Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro. It was okay, though I don't think it lived up to the hype for me. I actually preferred Klara and the Sun to this one, though still worth a read.