What are you reading in 2023?

[Alzrius]

Having recently finished Shelly Mazzanoble and Greg Tito's Welcome to Dragon Talk, I'm now switching pace and reading Jackson Crawford's The Wanderer's Havamal. I chose that particular iteration out of several that were available on Amazon, and from what I can tell it was by far the right decision, not only reproducing the original Old Norse for each stanza, but also opening with a very insightful explanation as to how the English translation was made.

 

[Jeremy E Grenemyer]

Having finished the Imperial Radch series by Ann Leckie, I have moved on to Travel By Bullet, by John Scalzi.

Not gonna lie, I feel spoiled with great books to read.

 

[HawaiiSteveO]

Tress of the Emerald Sea by Brandon Sanderson
The ideas in his head … I don’t know how he does it . On vacation, about 1/3 if the way through and really enjoying it . Different vibe for sure , strong fairy tale take but real fun read so far !

 

[Ralif Redhammer]

I've always kind of felt like no great book is too long, and no terrible book is too short. There are the great masses in the middle where they're good or bad but too long or too short (agreed on the Daevabad Trilogy, @Croesus; it really meanders and lingers in some places), and there are some books that are great but wouldn't be improved by adding more — like, I don't feel like The Sun Also Rises would be improved by being 800 pages.

That is the truth - truly great books are the exact length they need to be. However, there have been books that have only been good or okay, and were held back by filler or tangents that the editor should have snipped out.

 

[Nellisir]

That is the truth - truly great books are the exact length they need to be. However, there have been books that have only been good or okay, and were held back by filler or tangents that the editor should have snipped out.

The later books in Stephen King's Gunslinger series could have used a very heavy editing. I think he and his editor were both a bit indulgent, given that he had been away from the series and writing in general for quite some time (and nearly died in that period). I distinctly remember thinking that they could each lose 100-pages or so without a problem. IMO.

 

[Old Fezziwig]

However, there have been books that have only been good or okay, and were held back by filler or tangents that the editor should have snipped out.

I always get itchy when I find out that an author's spouse is editing them. I might be wrong, but I think Harriet McDougal started editing Robert Jordan around Burning Desires of the Green Ajah Lord of Chaos, and that ninety-page prologue put me off the entire series. (I suppose whether she was editing him or not, the ninety-page prologue put me off the entire series.)

The later books in Stephen King's Gunslinger series could have used a very heavy editing. I think he and his editor were both a bit indulgent, given that he had been away from the series and writing in general for quite some time (and nearly died in that period). I distinctly remember thinking that they could each lose 100-pages or so without a problem. IMO.

This is probably right, though I sometimes (not always) feel like novels should be indulgent a little bit. There should be some space to breathe and linger in a novel. How much indulgence is a tricky question, though. Some authors bear a bit more leeway than others. I love King, but I'm not sure his prose justifies some of the indulgence, where I'd give more slack to Steven Erikson, who is more interesting to me when he's allowed space, even if his prose isn't necessarily better than King's. That said, I'm certain this is something of a personal pathology, as I was a graduate student in 19th century British lit previously.

 

[Ralif Redhammer]

The later books in Stephen King's Gunslinger series could have used a very heavy editing. I think he and his editor were both a bit indulgent, given that he had been away from the series and writing in general for quite some time (and nearly died in that period). I distinctly remember thinking that they could each lose 100-pages or so without a problem. IMO.

With very famous authors, yeah, it seems like no one wants to be the person to tell them to lop off this digression or that character or that arc for a tighter story.

I always get itchy when I find out that an author's spouse is editing them. I might be wrong, but I think Harriet McDougal started editing Robert Jordan around Burning Desires of the Green Ajah Lord of Chaos, and that ninety-page prologue put me off the entire series. (I suppose whether she was editing him or not, the ninety-page prologue put me off the entire series.)

The Wheel of Time Slog is a perfect example of a story's strength turning into a weakness, where the author's attention to characters and their internal states slows down the momentum of the story to a crawl.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

I just read "A Dead Djinn in Cairo" by P. Djèlí Clark and it was a delight. Steampunk (maybe? I can't keep up with all the *punk definitions) with magic and jinn returning to the Middle East in the late 19th century, turning an Egypt that was never ruled by the British into a world power and the hub of magical engineering. This novella is a murder mystery set in the early 20th century, with a djinn and an angel both turning up mysteriously dead.

I'll be picking up the rest of the series for sure.

 

[Ralif Redhammer]

I just read "A Dead Djinn in Cairo" by P. Djèlí Clark and it was a delight. Steampunk (maybe? I can't keep up with all the *punk definitions) with magic and jinn returning to the Middle East in the late 19th century, turning an Egypt that was never ruled by the British into a world power and the hub of magical engineering. This novella is a murder mystery set in the early 20th century, when djinn and an angel both turning up mysteriously dead.

I'll be picking up the rest of the series for sure.

I've loved everything I've read by him. Ring Shout was so good, very intense at times as one might imagine.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

I'm normally a heavy fantasy/SF reader and not a fan or crime or horror or the like but my brother was reading the Charlie Parker novels by John Connolly, and I was interested, so now I'm on book 8. They're pretty weird. They're basically the story of Charlie Parker, not the jazz musician, but an ex-NY detective turned PI, and his sidekicks, Louis and Angel (who are a gay couple, rather progressive for 1996), an ex-hitman and ex-burglar respectively, investigating various serial-killer-y crimes, but in all but one of the books so far there's a supernatural element, anywhere from relatively light where it could be hallucinated to really full-on Abrahamic stuff (esp. after book 4). The books themselves are a weird combination of classic American crime thriller, highly specific regional/historic stuff (particularly about parts of New England and the US, fascinating given the author is Irish and doesn't live in the US - though I believe he visits a lot), surprisingly nuanced discussions of certain issues relating to the crimes, gunfights (often involve fairly wacky guns), and the above supernatural elements, with a sort of "metaplot" about the main character.

I've got a whole bunch of books that I want to read, but it's very easy to just switch on the next Charlie Parker book on Audible, and there are like 20+ of them so I may be a while.

I did just get The Tyranny of Faith by Richard Swan, which is the sequel to The Justice of Kings, which was for my money the best fantasy novel of 2022, on Kindle so I will start on them probably tonight when I want something to read with my eyes not with my ears lol.