What are you reading in 2025?

[prabe]

I finished reading Cameron Reed's The Fortunate Fall. That was a book so good that I was left struggling what to read next. It had so many layers to it, and one heck of an ending.

I eventually decided on Philip K. Dick's Flow My Tears, the Policeman Said for my next read. You have to follow greatness up with either more greatness, or schlock. Anything in-between just won't do.

While I see what you're saying at the end, I care much less than you seem to about whether the book I read tonight will be as good as the book I read last night. But I grab a lot of books from the library, based mostly on what grabs me at the moment; while I want every book I grab to be really good, there are various shades of less-awesome that inevitably happen.

That said, there have been times when a book probably did seem worse than it was to me, because the previous book had been so excellent.

 

[Mannahnin]

Finally finished Gary Alan Fine's Shared Fantasy, which closes with some more dense sociology, where the beginning and middle of the book have more relatable ethnography of gamers and amusing anecdotes. Still, even through the end there are still interesting historical insights into gamer culture of the late 70s and early 80s, including an important dynamic at the time between younger gamers (whence we got the term "munchkin") and older gamers with greater social status.

I've resumed full speed on Bowling Alone, this month's book (my first pick) for the book club I joined this Spring.

 

[prabe]

Finally finished Gary Alan Fine's Shared Fantasy, which closes with some more dense sociology, where the beginning and middle of the book have more relatable ethnography of gamers and amusing anecdotes. Still, even through the end there are still interesting historical insights into gamer culture of the late 70s and early 80s, including an important dynamic at the time between younger gamers (whence we got the term "munchkin") and older gamers with greater social status.

I've resumed full speed on Bowling Alone, this month's book (my first pick) for the book club I joined this Spring.

IIRC Bowling Alone is a decade or two old at this point, and I'm wondering A) how its observations hold up and B) whether they're potentially relevant to TRPGs as they move away from being a shared in-person thing. I should possibly see about checking it out from the library to see for myself, but I rarely make it out of the fiction, there.

 

[Ralif Redhammer]

While I see what you're saying at the end, I care much less than you seem to about whether the book I read tonight will be as good as the book I read last night. But I grab a lot of books from the library, based mostly on what grabs me at the moment; while I want every book I grab to be really good, there are various shades of less-awesome that inevitably happen.

That said, there have been times when a book probably did seem worse than it was to me, because the previous book had been so excellent.

I normally am not that way, but every once in a while, I read a book that is so profoundly good, that I feel pressure as to what I want to read next. Normally, I'll gleefully move between modes and levels of quality. I can enjoy Lin Carter as much as Dostoyevsky (even if the latter is certainly the better writer).

Finally finished Gary Alan Fine's Shared Fantasy, which closes with some more dense sociology, where the beginning and middle of the book have more relatable ethnography of gamers and amusing anecdotes. Still, even through the end there are still interesting historical insights into gamer culture of the late 70s and early 80s, including an important dynamic at the time between younger gamers (whence we got the term "munchkin") and older gamers with greater social status.

For all that it's an academic work, and as far as I know the first published academic work on gaming, Shared Fantasy is quite readable.

 

[overgeeked]

I normally am not that way, but every once in a while, I read a book that is so profoundly good, that I feel pressure as to what I want to read next. Normally, I'll gleefully move between modes and levels of quality. I can enjoy Lin Carter as much as Dostoyevsky (even if the latter is certainly the better writer).

Eh. At least Lin's stuff has something resembling pacing and a plot. To me that's the only real mark of a good writer. Writing the most beautiful sentences known to humanity is irrelevant if the story isn't engaging enough on its own to keep the reader awake.

 

[Mannahnin]

IIRC Bowling Alone is a decade or two old at this point, and I'm wondering A) how its observations hold up and B) whether they're potentially relevant to TRPGs as they move away from being a shared in-person thing. I should possibly see about checking it out from the library to see for myself, but I rarely make it out of the fiction, there.

25 years old(!), and I've got the 20th anniversary revised and updated edition. I'll try to check in here with some thoughts mid-stream.

 

[Ralif Redhammer]

Eh. At least Lin's stuff has something resembling pacing and a plot. To me that's the only real mark of a good writer. Writing the most beautiful sentences known to humanity is irrelevant if the story isn't engaging enough on its own to keep the reader awake.

Lin Carter has the pacing of a Formula 1 Race! But I think it's important to note that he was a fan, and it shines through in his writing. It's not only that if he wanted more stories in a certain vein, he went and wrote them. But if you look at the Ballantine Adult Fantasy series, he proved that he was enormously well-read, had great taste.

 

[jian]

Have now read James (it's a quick but deep read) by Percival Everett and it is fantastic. So much there about American mythology and history, expanding on what he said in Erasure but going back to the origins of race relations in the US, as it were. Highly recommended.

Have nearly finished Dan Slott's run on Silver Surfer, which is probably the thing he's done I like most, to my surprise (the second is probably Spidey/Human Torch). It takes a simple idea - what if the Silver Surfer were the Doctor - and really runs with it. It's also well worth it for the visual of the Surfer playing poker against the Grandmaster with his cards reflected in his face.

 

[Richards]

I finished Extinction and while it was good, it had a plot twist I saw coming 200 or so pages before the reveal. But now I'm starting a novel by Poppy Kuroki called Gate to Kagoshima. It involves a young Japanese woman in the present day who accidentally gets sent back 128 years earlier, at the dawn of the Satsuma Rebellion. There she meets up with her own ancestors and falls in love with a samurai (I hope he's not a relative!), and has to decide whether to use her knowledge about what will happen in their future to change events.

I'm not normally a romance novel reader, but this one had me sold at "time travel" and "samurai." I'll gladly accept the romance aspects as the price of admission.

Johnathan

 

[Voadam]

Just finished the 2e Monstrous Arcana I Tyrant book on beholders which I had been reading bits and pieces of on my lunch breaks. I find the magic items to give them more humanoid features aesthetically displeasing but overall a fun deep dive expanded book of a bunch of lore on fun aberrations. The poster is pretty neat as well. I do like how there are several good alternative lore options on D&D's favorite floating eyeballs, I Tyrant is fairly standard AD&D with the whole family of beholder kin and the 2e Monster Mythology gods, I like that 2e Spelljammer has their various internal genocidal wars of purity among their fleets of variations as a big theme, the 3e OGL d20 Guide to Beholders has them as projections of eldritch horrors of the void, and 5e has the cool nightmare genesis that can tie into the spelljammer purity wars.

Also a little while ago I finished the 15th Girl Genius graphic novel and the series continues to be fun with its mad scientist-alt European noble politics-romance-comedy stylings and great Foglio art.

Not really feeling a lot of desire to read novels in my free time currently, although I do want to finish my friend Yin Leong's Geomancer series (I am part way through the third one The Corpse Ritual), particularly since a new one of hers just came out. Modern Feng Shui channeling demon hunter with Chinese folklore monsters in D.C. (Corpse Ritual is about hopping vampires) is fun but I read so much for my work and so much news that I am kind of tapped out of bandwidth for reading novels in my free time right now. The occasional relatively quick graphic novel and TV/movies are providing my story stuff.