What are you reading in 2025?

[prabe]

It's been just over a year since I read Jemisin's The City We Became and The World We Make, and just under a year since I read Harrow's The Ten Thousand Doors of January, but I'm mostly just poking around in the local public libraries. I read Bester's The Demolished Man about the same time, and those novels are ... in the same tier. I probably have narrower tastes than Bruce, but I'm still having no problem finding entertaining SF to read when my moods swing that way.

ETA: What I read this past February, as an illustration, behind a spoiler so people don't have to see it if they don't want.

Spoiler: My February

So, I read The Ten Thousand Doors of January this past February. All the books I read that month that I'd unreservedly recommend (presuming I felt someone's tastes aligned, of course):

Razzmatazz by Christopher Moore
The Ten Thousand Doors of January by Alix E. Harrow
The Bouncer by David Gordon
World Gone By by Dennis Lehane
A Dark Matter by Peter Straub
Black River Orchard by Chuck Wendig
Blacktop Wasteland by S. A. Cosby
American by Day by Derek B. Miller
The Hard Stuff by David Gordon
Kaiju Preservation Society by John Scalzi

Now, that was, looking back, a very good reading month, and only a couple of those books are even arguably SF, but I still think it indicates pretty hard there's good stuff out there.

 

[Autumnal]

@prabe , that’s a lotta good reading.

I have not found a single book at B&N worth buying in over a year. I use B&N to look for new authors as I like to browse physical books.

Let’s see what kinds of things I got in 2024. Setting aside the horror unless you do want me to talk about that…

A whole mess of the Diving Universe series by Kristine Kathryn Rusch, from 2009 to 2024 with more to come.

A mess of recent Adrian Tchaikovsky, who kept putting out great work while I wasn’t looking.

Sisters of the Forsaken Stars, Lina Rather’s sequel to the amazing Sisters of the Infinite Black. These stories of nuns in space in a living starship, in the midst of the consequences of a precious generation’s war, feel like something C.L. Moore or Leigh Brackett or Zenna Henderson might have written, full of love for love and respect and duty and the will to heal what’s been broken. I read, and love, a lot of dark stories about dark hearts, but I’ve got space for the rest of the story as well.

Jews Versus Aliens. Rich Dansky told me I should read it. So I did. Stories range from the coming to the tragic and are pretty much all good.

Lost Federetions, by A.J. Black. An oral history of twists and turns in the Star Trek franchise from the beginning to the 2020s.

Accessing The Future: A Disability-Themed Anthology of Science Fiction. As it says. I’m a gimp. I need escape and inspiration. Thus has both. Recommended even for the healthy.

Several Neal Asher books from the last 5-10 years. I’ve become a fan.

Cahokia Jazz, by Francis Spufford. First rate alternate history noir where the greatest native city of North America survived and flourished.

Gene Wolfe’s Book of the New Sun: A Chapter Guide, by Michael Andre-Druissi. What it sounds like. I have a New Sun reread in my new future.

The last couple books by Gareth Hanrahan, because I got a support my bros in da biz, and because he just keeps getting better and better.

Recent books by T. Kingfisher, for similar reasons.

The new Von Bel editions by Michael Moorcock. Some of my favorites of his.

The Saint of Bright Doors, by Vajra Chandrasekera. Haven’t read this yet, but a lot of Hugo winners have pleased me in recent years.

Red Sonja, by Gail Simone. To be read. Her comics work convinces me she has a really good of the sense of the character and I know she can write. I expect to be pleased.

The Rhast Saga, by Hank Lyne. These appear to be ye olde epic fantasy. I’m up for it.

And in audiobook:

The Dispatcher trilogy by John Scalzi. Awesome modern-day fantasy where people who are deliberately murdered nearly always return to life. The narrator is one of the people licensed to kill when, for example, difficult surgery goes awry and the patient is about to do. An executed patient will return to life and can be treated again. And so on. I think Scalzi at his best at novella length, which these are.

Eversion, by Alastair Reynolds. The ship’s doctor runs into strange stuff on a troubled expedition in the 1800s. And the 1900s. And the future. I really liked this.

So, like I said. Lotta good work, even allowing that some of these are from recent years like 2022 rather than 2024 strictly speaking.

 

[prabe]

Cahokia Jazz, by Francis Spufford. First rate alternate history noir where the greatest native city of North America survived and flourished.

There are some others where our tastes differ (though my experiences are not from last year, for whatever that's worth) but this was one of my favorites of the books I read last year. Just a beautiful novel, which I did not read in February. (As it turns out, I read it in April.)

 

[gban007]

Just finished my run of the Horus Heresy novels end of last year, so haven't got as many definite plans this year. Just finished Absolution by Jeff Vandermeer, and started Blindsight by Peter Watts. Also currently making my way through first Gortek and Felix omnibus by William King. Beyond that not sure, though thanks to various humble bundles and ebook sales I have quite a lot of books to read

 

[gban007]

Oh two omnibuses I am planning on getting and reading this year are the two Dark Coil omnibuses by Peter Fehervari coming out.

 

[Autumnal]

Oh two omnibuses I am planning on getting and reading this year are the two Dark Coil omnibuses by Peter Fehervari coming out.

OMG. This is such welcome news. Thank you!

@prabe , have you read Spufford’s earlier Red Plenty? It’s part novel, part historical exposition in the failure of the Soviet 1960s effort to develop a computer model of their whole economy. It was the subject of a book event at crookedtimber.org (linked in the right hand sidebar), with him responding to a lot of good review and critique.

 

[prabe]

@prabe , have you read Spufford’s earlier Red Plenty? It’s part novel, part historical exposition in the failure of the Soviet 1960s effort to develop a computer model of their whole economy. It was the subject of a book event at crookedtimber.org (linked in the right hand sidebar), with him responding to a lot of good review and critique.

Cahokia Jazz is the first, and so far only, book of Spufford's I've read (I saw a little preview thing about it not long after my wife and I spent much of our anniversary trip looking at places like Hopewell and Effigy Mounds, and I kinda felt the thunk as it hit me, I was clearly targeted) but I'll be keeping an eye out more, now.

 

[jdrakeh]

Cairn 2e (Player's and Warden's guides), RuneScape Kingdoms core rulebook, Dragonslayer core rulebook).

 

[Richards]

I just finished Michael Reaves' The Shattered World and am now beginning its sequel, The Burning Realm. The first one was as entertaining as I recall it to have been when I first read it some 40 years or so ago, and I can't wait to see what happens next.

Johnathan

 

[Old Fezziwig]

In a surfeit of ambition, I started reading Les Miserables at the end of November. I am enjoying it, but I am still reading Les Miserables.

Because man does not live on Hugo alone, I started The Bright Sword by Lev Grossman. I enjoyed The Magicians and its sequels and am a sucker for Arthurian deconstruction (Lavie Tidhar's By Force Alone was great!), but it was Peter Sagal's description of it that sold me: "...among its many virtues is the retelling of King Arthur for Gen X: it’s about people who show up right after the good times ended." And, boy, do I feel that description.