Welcome back after the holidays! Hope you had a good time, and your new year is starting well!
I didn’t get much time to read, so still reading The Hero of Ages by Brandon Sanderson. Third and final book the of Mistborn series (first era).
What about all of you? What have you been reading or listening to lately?
There’s a Midyear Bingo check-in post, do take a look. Even if you haven’t started this year’s Book Bingo, you can still join, as there are still 6 months remaining!
For details, you can checkout the initial Book Bingo, and it’s Recommendation Post . Links are also present in our community sidebar.
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I’m reading Mistborn finally, and I’m enjoying it. I made a new years promise to read the nook books I paid for and never touched, or got one chapter in and quit. They’ve just been sitting there for a decade. Next up is Hell: A Novel.
Ah, the books I have paid for but never touched… I would recommend (as I often do) to not force yourself to read everything in backlog before getting anything else, if something else catch your fancy, you should take a break from your backlog, otherwise it can cause a burn out.
For the last few years I have doing a ‘big read’ of something over the course of each year - War and Peace, In Search of Lost Time, Finnegans Wake and, in 2024, Romance of the Three Kingdoms. There is some enduringly memorable material in each of those, and reading them has been quite an experience but I have decided to take a break from that format of reading and just have a year of SF in 2025 - catching up on some that I have long meant to read, starting with Dan Simmons’ Hyperion. Just finished the Scholar’s Tale so far and am thoroughly hooked.
Otherwise, I am most of the way through Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner - which I believe was recommended in this community a while back - which is notable if for no other reason than it includes the first use of the term infangthief that I have encountered since reading 1066 And All That in my teens. And also a recent Doctor Who audionovel The Lord of Misrule by Paul Morris, which is an enjoyably nostalgic tale featuring some beloved characters (as read by Jon Culshaw), but overall nothing exceptional so far.
Oh, I think you mentioned that previously. I was looking forward to what you start this year, but you shouldn’t force yourself, better to take a break then get burned out.
How did you like Hyperion? I have seen it mentioned a lot but never got around to reading it.
First time reading/hearing the word “infangthief”, TIL!
It proved to be a busy week, so I have not quite finished either Hyperion or Confessions…. However, I would definitely recommend Hyperion. Each section is better than the previous, taking in a great range of genres and telling some very human tales against some excellent worldbuilding.
Confessions is a curiosity, and probably not for everyone, but I am glad to have (almost) read it.
Just finishing up a re-read of The Dresden Files with Battle Ground. Damn, it’s punchy.
Then I’ll be on to some reading around the Cosmere ready to read Wind and Truth. Excited for that one!
Oooh, nice, I still have a few books to go in The Dresden Files, just hope he releases the next one soon.
I wouldn’t be surprised if we hear more soon and it’s published by end of year early next.
- fingers crossed *
My fiancée told me to read Dracula, so that’s what I’m reading now - between the 1st time she told me and now I’ve read the Green Mile and the Running Man, so I couldn’t postpone it any longer.
I’m listening to At the Mountains of Madness after having finished the Fall of Hyperion, as a break from Hyperion Cantos.
Hehe. Dracula is good. If you are having trouble with it, there’s also Dracula Daily - https://draculadaily.com/ . As the book is written as journal entries, they send you that day’s entry, it starts in May (I think) and finished in November.
I’m having a blast. The only problem that I have is that I realised I might want to listen to it as an audiobook.
Read the book, then listen to the audio book, then read it with Dracula Daily. Problem solved!
then watch all the movies
Oh yeah, forgot those!
Just bookmarking for recommendations. I should read more.
If you are looking for specific kind of books, you can start a thread for recommendations too.
Currently in the middle of Tress of the Emerald Sea. Just finished Task Force Hammer.
Stormlight book 5 just came out and I finished it about 2 weeks ago.
Reading a Finnish historian’s book based on his studies about slave trade in Eastern Europe, Finland and Karelia during the middle ages. No english title or translation, that I know of, but I’ll try to translate it:
Korpela, Jukka. 2014. Idän orjakauppa keskiajalla - Ihmisryöstöt Suomesta ja Karjalasta. SKS, Helsinki.
Korpela, Jukka. 2014. Eastern slave trade in the middle ages - Abduction of people from Finland and Karelia. SKS, Helsinki.
I have always heard about African slave trades, not much about slave trades in Eastern Europe. Should look up something on the topic.
There’s also a lot of other materiel written about Roman and Southern European slave trade during roman times and after the post-roman collapse in the so called dark ages.
Humans have been kinda the worst for most of history, pretty much everywhere.
They aren’t very great right now either.
If you count graphic novels, I’m currently making my way through Sandman.
We definitely do.
It has been on my wishlist for a long time. How are you enjoying it?
Only about halfway through, but it’s been fantastic so far.
Just picked up a copy of 1984. Read it in high school, but it seemed like a good time to reread it.
It seems like time is always getting better for 1984.
So I put down “Death Mask” about half way through. It’s not that I disliked it, but I found it getting a chore to read it. I might come back to it later.
I picked up Dennis E Taylor’s “We are legion (we are Bob)” after, and just finished reading it. I read it almost in one session, so pretty good in my opinion. Besides this, I guess I was also due for a slight genre change.
Eat That Frog! by Brian Tracy
I’ve found it hard to get past the first few chapters as I’m actually trying to implement the advice. Planning the day the night before and constantly asking the question “Am I doing the most important task to achieve my goals?” during productive hours has been life-changing in actually making progress towards my projects, but also rather stressful. Perhaps I’m in the minority, but I procrastinate a lot by doing busywork- organization, cleaning, responding to lower priority inquiries, researching tangential things to the task at hand, etc. It’s been a difficult habit to break
That’s interesting. I am kind of similar and have been trying to break my habit of procrastination. Let me know how it goes, specially when you finish the book.
The Exiled Fleet by JS Dewes. Really fun scifi and I dove into The Exiled Fleet immediately after finishing the first book, The Last Watch.
Just looked it up, it looks interesting.
Reading a couple things at the moment.
Wrapped up Wind and Truth by Brandon Sanderson a few weeks back. Before that I had been rereading Stormlight in it’s entirety now that I have nearly caught up with the Cosmere (outside of White Sand and the secret projects besides Sunlit).
I didn’t finish that reread and am smack in the middle of Oathbringer, which might be my favorite of the Stormlight novels.
Additionally just 10 minutes ago I finished Demon Copperhead, which was really quite fantastic in my eyes. I have family from Appalachia - my parents left the area in the late 90’s after moving to a city in the late 80’s. So it brought back a lot of memories of grandparent visits and trailer parks and gorgeous nature. And also all the burned out wrecked homes you can see if you ever drive around.
Other than Stormlight Archives, I am at same place in Cosmere with you, well also The Rithamist, but I am going to ignore that for now, will read when the sequel is coming out.
I know some folks swear that Rithamist is Sanderson’s best work and I am hesitant to try it.
I’ve tried Yumi a couple times, but haven’t been able to get into. I am excited to read Tress, however.
Been reading Bernoulli’s Fallacy, both fascinating and disturbing… Glad I got into it.
If you like that, I’d recommend E.T. Jaynes’ Probability Theory: The Logic of Science (which Clayton repeatedly praises) next. Bernoulli’s Fallacy is good as at exposing the theoretical and historical flaws of conventional statistics, but Jaynes’ book is a more thorough overview of Bayesian statistics.
Thanks I’ll check out a summary see if it floats my boat.
I’m re-reading my way through the early Essalieyan novels by Michelle West, to refresh before I read the latest book. It’s definitely scratching my epic fantasy itch. I’m so glad she moved to Patreon and self-publishing instead of giving up on finishing the story!
That’s a looong series. What happened with publishing?
I’m not entirely sure–the publisher for this series may have decided that it wasn’t popular enough to bring in new readers and was unwilling to publish this last arc to conclude it. I remember when I found the Patreon the author started, the first post I saw (possibly the intro?) talked about how she had struggled to try to provide an entry point into the larger series when she started the first new book, and that it was a bit of a relief not to have to worry about that anymore. If someone’s supporting the Patreon at this point, they’ve either read or intend to read the rest of the series anyway.
Yeah, publishers often want multiple entry way in a large series, otherwise you don’t get new readers with each book, or at least not as much.
