What are you reading in 2024?

[prabe]

I loved those as a kid - maybe I should try to get a bunch of them and breeze through them for nostalgia's sake...

I enjoyed them a lot, too. There are probably worse nostalgia trips to go on.

 

[trappedslider]

The pervious book I was reading just didn't keep my attention for any number of reasons so now i'm reading A Fever in the Heartland: The Ku Klux Klan's Plot to Take Over America, and the Woman Who Stopped Them by Timothy Egan

Spoiler

A historical thriller by the Pulitzer and National Book Award-winning author that tells the riveting story of the Klan's rise to power in the 1920s, the cunning con man who drove that rise, and the woman who stopped them.

The Roaring Twenties--the Jazz Age--has been characterized as a time of Gatsby frivolity. But it was also the height of the uniquely American hate group, the Ku Klux Klan. Their domain was not the old Confederacy, but the Heartland and the West. They hated Blacks, Jews, Catholics and immigrants in equal measure, and took radical steps to keep these people from the American promise. And the man who set in motion their takeover of great swaths of America was a charismatic charlatan named D.C. Stephenson.

Stephenson was a magnetic presence whose life story changed with every telling. Within two years of his arrival in Indiana, he’d become the Grand Dragon of the state and the architect of the strategy that brought the group out of the shadows – their message endorsed from the pulpits of local churches, spread at family picnics and town celebrations. Judges, prosecutors, ministers, governors and senators across the country all proudly proclaimed their membership. But at the peak of his influence, it was a seemingly powerless woman – Madge Oberholtzer – who would reveal his secret cruelties, and whose deathbed testimony finally brought the Klan to their knees.

​

 

[Autumnal]

Worth noting that Tom Swift Jr is himself a reboot. The original series, about his dad, is from 1910. Boggle at marvels of science!

Tom Swift - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

 

[Eyes of Nine]

Worth noting that Tom Swift Jr is himself a reboot. The original series, about his dad, is from 1910. Boggle at marvels of science!

Tom Swift - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

I got a bunch of Tom Swift Jr books a couple of years ago at a huge used book sale that benefits a local non-profit in town here. I think I paid $1 each They were going to throw them out at the end, so I rescued them

Tried to read one and was quite disappointed. Gave them all back. I may have even detailed it here on ENW

Edited to add: Ah yes, here's the thread https://www.enworld.org/threads/what-are-you-reading-in-2022.685060/page-24#post-8796573

Guess I didn't remember all the details.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

Sturgeon's Law is a universal constant. I suspect there was a lot of hot garbage being acted out in Greek amphitheaters back in the day.

 

[Richards]

I was on a courier run today, so I had plenty of time to finish Hunting Time by Jeffery Deaver, one of the best Colton Shaw novels he's written. Now I'm reading Tell Me by Lisa Jackson, about a woman who gets out of prison after 20 years for having killed her oldest daughter and trying to kill her two younger children - she's a universally hated individual, as the whole town thinks she did it, but it looks like she was innocent all along, and a reporter (who was friends with the slain daughter) is trying to get to the bottom of the story. So far, so good - I'm about 70 pages in.

Johnathan

 

[Wofano Wotanto]

Worth noting that Tom Swift Jr is himself a reboot. The original series, about his dad, is from 1910. Boggle at marvels of science!

Tom Swift - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

"Sequel" is more accurate than "reboot" for the first Junior series. There's some actual continuity (characters, background details, some of Senior's inventions) from his father's books, although the most problematic stuff is just plain not talked about at all. The other four Junior runs are all true reboots with no real connections to one another.

Note that my cautions about the first Tom Junior series apply one hundredfold to his father's books. The period racial stereotyping in particular is too much to suffer through for a rather tedious kid's book, and later books in the series are kind of appallingly gleeful about military inventions - as you might expect for a series written from 1910 to 1941. I've managed to force myself through a mere four of these things, and don't recommend reading any of it. The sole point of interest is the fact that Tom (not Senior yet) actually ages considerably throughout the series, starting off as a teenager living with his father to a married man from 1929 onward. To put it mildly, an protagonist aging (much less growing into an adult and starting a family) in one of these series is almost unheard of - they're almost invariably ageless and unchanging for as long as things last.

The first Tom Junior series (published from 1954 to 1971) made a point of Tom Jr. refusing to develop offensive weapons technologies, at least in theory (although what the Pentagon would do with repelatron tech is studiously ignored). Still had quite a lot of obvious Cold War influences, including helping (nonviolently) win the Space Race against the thinly-veiled dictatorships Brulgaria and Kranjovia.

I got a bunch of Tom Swift Jr books a couple of years ago at a huge used book sale that benefits a local non-profit in town here. I think I paid $1 each They were going to throw them out at the end, so I rescued them

Which series? Junior's had five so far. Thread link doesn't seem aimed at the post you were after.

 

[WayneLigon]

Finally got around to reading Shards of Honor, by Lois McMaster Bujold - first novel in the Vorkosigan series. I started with The Warrior's Apprentice many years ago but never got around to reading the first book in the series until this week. Now working on 'Barrayar'.

 

[Wofano Wotanto]

Finally got around to reading Shards of Honor, by Lois McMaster Bujold - first novel in the Vorkosigan series. I started with The Warrior's Apprentice many years ago but never got around to reading the first book in the series until this week. Now working on 'Barrayar'.

Enjoyed the early part of that series, although I really need to catch up with it. I've missed pretty much the whole second half at this point. Just finished a rather random re-read of Mirror Dance I found at a library sale and it held up okay. Prefer Miles as more central to the action, but IIRC this is pretty much Mark's sole chance to really dominate things and one book of him is tolerable - barely - in exchange for Miles having a rare major reversal in battle.

 

[overgeeked]

Finished another Mushoku Tensei and now I’m up to Vol 20. The characterization seems to be getting a little sloppy. The main character, Rudy, is doing a few things simply for plot reasons. It’s kinda disappointing, but the series as a whole is a great deep dive into one character’s mind. It’s an interesting if bumpy redemption story. Lots of “friends make you better” and “everyone gets a second chance” beats. It’s worth the read, I think, but I can absolutely see why people would instantly nope out.

I did some digging on the word count for these. The highest is ~81,000 the lowest is ~49,000 and the average is ~65,000. All told the series is slightly longer than the five published books of Game of Thrones. Both series sit around 1.7 million words.