What are you reading in 2024?

[Ralif Redhammer]

I've picked Clive Barker's Imajica back up after putting it down in October. I'm torn. There's nothing wrong with it, save for a sense that it gives the lie to the old saw about no good book being too long and no bad book being too short. It's defintely good (sometimes great), and I have no beef with long novels (I was a Victorianist in grad school), but holy cats — it's real long and real dense. It's the literary equivalent of it's not the years, but the miles.

I adore Imajica (to the point that the second tattoo I got was an armband based on the symbols of the first edition cover). But its many pages are packed, absolutely.

 

[Zaukrie]

Babel, which is on sale in ebook format right now.

 

[Eyes of Nine]

Babel, which is on sale in ebook format right now.

Controversy

What’s Up With Babel and the Hugos?

Update 1/22: R.F. Kuang’s statement about Babel’s disqualification, on Bluesky. There’s a new controversy with this last year’s Hugo Awards, involving, among other things, a…

whatever.scalzi.com

 

[Zaukrie]

Controversy

What’s Up With Babel and the Hugos?

Update 1/22: R.F. Kuang’s statement about Babel’s disqualification, on Bluesky. There’s a new controversy with this last year’s Hugo Awards, involving, among other things, a…

whatever.scalzi.com

Ya, that's why I bought it

 

[Thomas Shey]

I personally think I agree with the people who suggest if the country hosting WorldCon is going to get soggy on a given year, do the Hugos at NASFIC that year instead.

 

[Eyes of Nine]

I personally think I agree with the people who suggest if the country hosting WorldCon is going to get soggy on a given year, do the Hugos at NASFIC that year instead.

Uganda is coming up in a couple of years. Their human rights record is shaky at best.

Also, personal opinion I think there should be a standing Hugo non-profit that is tied to the WorldCons in some way, but is not managed by the actual WorldCon volunteers

 

[Eyes of Nine]

Also finished Children of Time (first book in the series of the same name) - wow
If I didn't have a bunch of other fiction books lined up, I'd jump onto book 2 right away... Soon though. I expect to finish the series this year for sure

 

[thullgrim]

First 6 Dresden Files books down. 7-12 up next. Reading in Kindle app via iPad since my wife stole my Paperwhite.

 

[Richards]

I finished Malice and decided I needed a break from my pile of Lisa Jackson thrillers for awhile. So I started up The Accidental Vampire by Lynsey Sands. I'm about 120 pages in (I was reading it on a plane), and it's already got me hooked on the series. Apparently this one is book #7 in her series of vampire novels featuring Argeneau, a vampire who was born in 230 B.C. and now serves as an enforcer of vampire law. The most interesting take: vampires are the result of Atlantean nanobots in the bloodstream, which are powered on blood and "fix" the vampire's shortcomings like disease and aging. But all of the vampire "tropes" - no reflections in mirrors, dislike of holy symbols, can't go out in sunlight, having to sleep in a coffin - none of that's true. The "accidental vampire" is a 62-year-old woman who was turned into a vampire 5 years ago and wasn't properly trained by her vampire sire (she claims she doesn't have one - she has no memory of how she became a vampire), and she now looks like she did when she was 25 and has no idea of what vampire laws she's breaking, like "don't feed on mortals" (she has occasionally in the past) and "don't let mortals know about vampires" (everybody in her small Canadian town knows she's a vampire, but they're all cool with it). So now Argeneau has to try to unravel her story and figure out how to save her from the vampire leadership, who will probably want her killed for her transgressions. (In vampire law as in mortal law, ignorance of the law is no excuse.)

Anyway, pretty interesting take. I have two more books in the series ("Vampire, Interrupted" and "Born to Bite") that I'll probably read next, before going back to my ever-decreasing pile of Lisa Jackson thrillers. (She's a good writer, but she tends to repeat herself over and over in the same novel an awful lot, to the point her books could probably be dozens of pages shorter if she'd just trust the reader not to need reminding about certain plot points over and over by having the hero internally agonize over them all the time.)

Johnathan

 

[prabe]

Last three books: The Fifth Heart by Dan Simmons, a book by an author I've been a fan of since the 1980s, an interesting novel where reality seems to be malleable in face of fiction, another of Simmons' novels playing on the margins of known and knowable history; Bridge of Birds by Barry Hughart, a novel set in a fantastic ancient China, probably its understanding of China is a little dated though it's still at least mostly respectful, a narrative voice that is a pure joy to read; Small Mercies by Dennis Lehane; a brutal and beautiful book about vengeance and pain and bigotry and violence in 1974 Boston, grim as hell but daring to hope a little.