What are you reading in 2025?

[Sacrosanct]

Reading the most recent (and probably last) book by Terry Brooks: Galaphile. For context, I'm a huge fan of Brooks. I think he has been unfairly criticized for his career and have always really enjoyed his books.

But this one seems to be a miss. It just doesn't flow as well as his previous books. It's harder to feel engaged with the characters. The last time I talked with him last year, he did mention how it's harder to keep the mental game going needed to be a prolific author (he is 80+ years old), and after this book he has officially retired, using a ghost writer for more work.

 

[Belen]

Reading the most recent (and probably last) book by Terry Brooks: Galaphile. For context, I'm a huge fan of Brooks. I think he has been unfairly criticized for his career and have always really enjoyed his books.

But this one seems to be a miss. It just doesn't flow as well as his previous books. It's harder to feel engaged with the characters. The last time I talked with him last year, he did mention how it's harder to keep the mental game going needed to be a prolific author (he is 80+ years old), and after this book he has officially retired, using a ghost writer for more work.

He admitted he was slowing down and I get it. The man should retire. I wish he had not allowed the publisher to continue Shannara. Dawson is ok, but she is not Brooks. I will just consider the world done now.

 

[Kiyal]

"Rom-fantasy" has definitely had an upswing, and frankly I'm not that upset by it. Bookstores don't stock as much as they used to, and it IS harder to find something in a particular niche, but I regularly find really good books. Men don't read as much as they used to, and they don't read as much as women, so if the rom-fantasy niche gets prop up the fantasy genre as a whole for a bit, I'm fine with it. This sort of thing happens.

But then you're running into the whole chicken or the egg problem. Men don't read as much so we'll, publish less of interest to them, but now men aren't buying and reading books, so lets publish fewer books aimed at men since their not reading, anyway, now men are reading less...etc...etc...etc. You're just spiraling down an endless loop.

It's one thing to have romantasy listed under the sci-fi / fantasy section, which I wouldn't really say fits personally but hey whatever I guess. When romantasy books are the majority of books on the shelves or have covers that look like romance books you're probably losing a lot of the male audience not because they are not interested in reading but because the selection of books being published is not anything that appeals to them as an audience.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

It's one thing to have romantasy listed under the sci-fi / fantasy section, which I wouldn't really say fits personally

If it's got dragons and elves and orcs and stuff, isn't it fantasy? Plenty of fantasy has had sex in it. Fritz Leiber had Fafhrd and the Grey Mouser getting down with ghouls, rat-women, invisible flying people, etc.

 

[Nellisir]

But then you're running into the whole chicken or the egg problem. Men don't read as much so we'll, publish less of interest to them, but now men aren't buying and reading books, so lets publish fewer books aimed at men since their not reading, anyway, now men are reading less...etc...etc...etc. You're just spiraling down an endless loop.

It's one thing to have romantasy listed under the sci-fi / fantasy section, which I wouldn't really say fits personally but hey whatever I guess. When romantasy books are the majority of books on the shelves or have covers that look like romance books you're probably losing a lot of the male audience not because they are not interested in reading but because the selection of books being published is not anything that appeals to them as an audience.

Kinda seems like you're arguing that if men buy fewer books, the publishing industry should keep publishing the same quantities for them, but at a loss.

Anyway, They still publish books I enjoy, and I'm a man, so I assume that means they still publish books men enjoy. Sometimes I have to dig a little more, but there are a lot of books being published and fewer stores with less shelf space, so that makes sense.
SF wasn't exactly known for appealing to the "female audience" before the 2000s, yet somehow they've managed to move into it. Men aren't "frozen" out of sf & fantasy by any means.

And honestly, what is "fantasy aimed at men"? I got several hundred books from someone whose husband had died, and it's all military sf. I don't recognize half the authors, and I'm not all that interested in the books. So....which "men"? Conversely, I just today finished Nona the Ninth, part of the Locked Tomb series (probably a quartet now), which is almost always referred to as Lesbian Necromancers In Space. I avoided this series for ages because, eww, girl sf. Jokes on me, it's really, really good. It's not a one-trick pony; there's logic at play; and it's very well written.

Anyway, read what you want.

 

[overgeeked]

Kinda seems like you're arguing that if men buy fewer books, the publishing industry should keep publishing the same quantities for them, but at a loss.

Anyway, They still publish books I enjoy, and I'm a man, so I assume that means they still publish books men enjoy. Sometimes I have to dig a little more, but there are a lot of books being published and fewer stores with less shelf space, so that makes sense.

SF wasn't exactly known for appealing to the "female audience" before the 2000s, yet somehow they've managed to move into it. Men aren't "frozen" out of sf & fantasy by any means.

And honestly, what is "fantasy aimed at men"? I got several hundred books from someone whose husband had died, and it's all military sf. I don't recognize half the authors, and I'm not all that interested in the books. So....which "men"? Conversely, I just today finished Nona the Ninth, part of the Locked Tomb series (probably a quartet now), which is almost always referred to as Lesbian Necromancers In Space. I avoided this series for ages because, eww, girl sf. Jokes on me, it's really, really good. It's not a one-trick pony; there's logic at play; and it's very well written.

Anyway, read what you want.

Honestly it all reads like Sad Puppy "ew girls books" nonsense.

All it takes to find any kind of book suited to any kind of reader is about 5 minutes on Google.

 

[Belen]

Honestly it all reads like Sad Puppy "ew girls books" nonsense.

All it takes to find any kind of book suited to any kind of reader is about 5 minutes on Google.

People on ENW really focus on this one. The only place I have heard about this sad puppy mess is on this site.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

People on ENW really focus on this one. The only place I have heard about this sad puppy mess is on this site.

Well, you missed about five years of gross crap on the internet about 10 years ago then, luckily for you.

 

[Autumnal]

Let’s see, what do I have of note in my log…

I’m currently reading Empire of Silence, the first volume of Christopher Ruocchio’s Sun Eater series. Enjoying it a lot so far. Lots of great very far future ambience like the Book of the New Sun without being nearly as dense prose-wise as Wolfe, and lots of massive galactic empire vibe like Dune but with aliens and a general sense of vitality and possibility. Not ha-ha type fun, but thoughtful engaging type fun.

Wanderers by Chuck Wendig. I bailed after a third or so. None of the characters engaged me enough to want to find out what the story was going to turn out to be. Didn’t suck, just wasn’t for me - I’m a hard sell for another story focusing on small Midwestern towns, and at a time of such extreme stresses in real life I get more parochial in the absence of something wonderfully hookful for me in particular. Worth checking out if you’re up for a story of people inexplicably driven into a mindless wandering march. I may well come back to this sometime.

Owning the Unknown: A Science Fiction Writer Explores Atheism, Agnosticism, and The Idea of God by Robert Charles Wilson. Wilson has been one of my favorite sf writers since the ‘90s, in large measure for the warm humanistic element in his stories. That’s very much on display here. He advocates for metaphysical caution and for what he calls an intuitive atheism. He does it with none of the grudge-settling and self-righteous scumbagness that has made a lot of atheist discourse of recent times so annoying and unfun: he’s kind, gentle, very aware of himself as a fallible person who’s learning and growing, fair and considerate with others. One of those books that’s a pleasure to read whether you agree with any particular point or not.

 

[prabe]

Wanderers by Chuck Wendig. I bailed after a third or so. None of the characters engaged me enough to want to find out what the story was going to turn out to be. Didn’t suck, just wasn’t for me - I’m a hard sell for another story focusing on small Midwestern towns, and at a time of such extreme stresses in real life I get more parochial in the absence of something wonderfully hookful for me in particular. Worth checking out if you’re up for a story of people inexplicably driven into a mindless wandering march. I may well come back to this sometime.

I enjoyed Wanderers well enough, though I kinda wished I'd twigged from the cover copy that it was a riff on The Stand. I was actually impressed at his plague of choice, even though I worked it out like a hundred pages before the reveal.