Have been pretty busy last couple of weeks, so still reading Shadows of Self by Brandon Sanderson. Book 2 of second era of Mistborn.
Also started Wandering Inn, have read a few chapters, and while interesting, I am not a big fan of the main character. Maybe I have read too many (web) novels that I can’t understand when people don’t act like typical isekai protagonist, but still…
The world building is interesting, want to know more about what’s happening. Will probably try to read at least the first volume and then decide whether I want to continue or not.
What about all of you? What have you been reading or listening to lately?
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For details, you can checkout the initial Book Bingo, and it’s Recommendation Post . Links are also present in our community sidebar.
I’m reading The Time Machine rn, quite fun and short. I like the old writing style.
I’m just about done with Ghost Story from Jim Butcher. While it’s a really good story, Changes is a really tough act to follow, so this one is always a bit less exciting than I want it to be.
While we’re working on sleep training our 5-month old, I’ve also started reading Pokemon: The Origin of Species fanfic. It’s very impressively written, and I’m really enjoying it so far.
I still have 2-3 books I want to read before my next Dresden novel (Changes), but your comment is making me want to read it ASAP.
It’s definitely one of my favorites in the series (I think my absolute favorite thus far has to go to Dead Beat), but it’s also really intense - pretty much non-stop adrenaline through the whole book. I hope you enjoy it!
I just finished Bunny by Mona Awad. What a trip, it was the closest a book could come to watching a David Lynch movie, right down to the “creature does intense satire of industry thing they’ve clearly experienced” trope.
Just started Left Hand of Darkness. So far it’s fun.
Last week, I read The Lies of the Ajungo by Moses Ose Utomi, and now I’m reading the sequel, The Truth of the Aleke. These are both African-inspired fable-like fantasy novellas about teenagers saving oppressed desert cities. Obviously, I enjoyed the first well enough to read the second, but I think they would have been better listed as YA, as both volumes feature not-so-subtle lessons about the bad guys and predictable plot twists that might have seemed fresher/more relevant to that audience.
(Sidenote: if you’re doing book bingo and need a quick disability rep. hard mode, The Truth of the Aleke is only ~100 pages, and seems to work as a standalone so far.)
Oooh, I do need that bingo square, but even without that, books, specially fantasy about other culture are always interesting.
Thanks for the recommendation.
Finished Martha Wells’ Murderbot Diaries series, which were great. I still think it’s a pity that it’s mostly novella’s though. Have since read the first two books of the “old man’s war” series by John Scalzi, and I’m on the third chapter of the third one “the last colony”. So still in a SF binge.
I just got first three books of Old Man’s War. Haven’t started them yet though. Will do it soon-ish.
Just finishing up Roman and Local Citizenship in the Long 2nd Century CE. It’s taken me almost two weeks. Not because the material is poorly written, or not interesting; it’s absolutely fascinating. But I converted it from a PDF to an EPUB, and the formatting is so utterly fucked that my reading speed is slowed to a crawl.
If you enjoy fantasy Rome, have you checked out Jim Butcher’s Codex Alera yet? It started as a bet between two writers arguing whether good writing or novel concepts were more important. Jim Butcher came down on the good writing side and to prove it asked the other author to give him a tired writing trope and they chose the “lost Roman legion” trope. And then Pokémon got added in somehow to the challenge too.
It’s really good
Roadwork by Stephen King
Speaking of Sanderson, listening to the audiobook of Tress of the Emerald Sea. I haven’t read any other Cosmere and wanted to try out a standalone book to see if I liked the worldbuilding. Really liking it so far, even though it’s closer to a YA book than what I understand the rest of the series to be.
It does something interesting in the narration, wondering if anyone else has seen this before. It’s standard third-person narration to start, and then the narrator is revealed to be someone in the story, and uses first person sometimes when talking about themselves. I couldn’t think of any other books I’ve read that did that, thought it was a cute trick.
Yeah, these standalone books are pretty good, and they take much lighter tone than the usual Cosmere.
You can try different series in Cosmere and read them as standalone. There is one character that makes an appearance in all his books, but other than that each series is kind of standalone.
Is that how you get meme material for !roughromanmemes@lemmy.world? How often do you think of the Roman Empire?
I assume this is aimed at me XD
Is that how you get meme material for !roughromanmemes@lemmy.world?
No, mostly I just steal memes from elsewhere. I’m generally too lazy to make memes myself.
How often do you think of the Roman Empire?
Every day, unironically. Not every hour, but definitely multiple times every day. It’s my fascination.
If I’m not thinking about Rome, I’m thinking about Roman-derived concepts. I fancy myself a writer, so I spend a lot of time in my own headspace - but that just means it’s time for FANTASY Rome!
When I’m well enough to take walks, I think about general historical issues and how they connect through the ages… and since my core of knowledge centers around Rome, Rome almost always features at some point during the train of thought. I might consider WW1 packaged rations, Civil War hardtack, and starvation in the Revolutionary War, but I’ll also think about the prominence of meat and bread in the diet of Roman legionaries. When I think about the application of advanced concepts with primitive techniques, post-apocalyptic style, my thoughts often flit to Roman methods of engineering and organization.
Sometimes, it’s just something simple, a flash of daydream qualia, like connecting the sound of my footsteps to the stamping march of a Roman Legion, or the gentle click of my cane to the walking stick of a Roman traveler along the via munita, or the smell of my pancakes to a streetside thermopolium serving honey flatcakes on a holiday.
Whoops yeah, responded to the wrong comment 🤦 Thanks for answering! Have you written any historical fiction? Makes me think of that Rome, Sweet Rome thing from Reddit a while back that had a big moment and then disappeared into the bowels of Hollywood or something.
Nah, historical fiction would require more academic rigor than I’m willing to put in, at least for something that I’d be satisfied with. I’d never get over describing the wrong kind of house or class relations or public attitudes. It’d haunt me every night of my life. Fantasy is my home.
Just finished Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, next up: Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire. Was debating about continuing the HP franchise, or pivoting to LOTR. Chose to continue HP.
Oooh nice! First read? Or a re-read? It has been years since I read the books. They were one of the starting fantasy I read.
LOTR is very different from HP, both are pretty great though, so have fun!
Reread :)
I’m lately trying to learn more about European history. Currently I’m reading Weimar, by Heinrich August Winkler
Any specially good book that you would like to recommend?
I read Blood and Iron by Katja Hoyer before I started Weimar, which is a very brief beginner friendly account of the years before the first world war and the Weimar republic. It’s a good introduction to set the stage for the ultimately failed first German republic.
The Weimar book is much more thorough, going into a lot more detail and nuance, which I feel is worth it for one of the most interesting and defining times in modern history. Definitely worth a read, though I’m not sure if it’s been translated to English.
Finished “The Rising Sun” earlier today and jumped right into “Judgement at Tokyo”. I do audiobooks non-fiction.
However, I read fiction, and I’m working on “The Tatami Galaxy” right now.
I finished Endurance: Shackleton’s Incredunle Voyage by Alfred Lansing. It was a well written account but the story really made me dislike Shackleton.
I also read Edgedancer by Brandon Sanderson, a novella in the Stormlight Archive universe. Now I’m on Oathbringer (Stormlight book 3). Only just started but already enjoying it immensely. I feel like with where book 2 left off, this will be the book where I really start to see payoff of everything that’s been built up.
Currently rereading Mary Tyler Moorehawk by Dave Baker
