What are you reading in 2025?

[Retros_x]

I've read "The Compound" by Aisling Rawle, a debut novel about a reality show in a miserable, doomed world - so our real world? Or near future? It is never completely revealed what is going on in the fictional world of this book, because it all plays in the shooting location and the contestants of the reality show are not allowed to talk about their former "real" life.

This was an interesting emotional experience - I thought for the most time of reading this book that it would have no emotional impact on me. The clean, concise prose, the characters we know almost nothing about and only witness their actions, everything. But the eerie subtle worldbuilding created a strong atmosphere and the last chapters left me weirdly depressed. Its not that something overly tragic happens, but I guess thats the point of it.

The compound is like our burning world, it doesn't go out in a bang, but slowly everybody leaves it until it is empty, silent and dead. Possible next sentient beings will see the remains of of us wondering what the hell we did here and why did naughty word up so much, being convinced they will do better next time, similar how the protagonist Lily thought she would do better than previous contestants.

The protagonists think they finally have an easy life, getting all the luxuries they always wanted without work, but don't realize that they work hard for it and are not actually free. They are dependent on the whims of the producers of the show, who force them to do humiliating tasks and set them up against each other. Similar to in our world where the population of the industry nations think they are free and can consume whatever they want. But in reality they are humiliated and betted against each other by the rich and powerful, forced to sacrifice their life time as workforce for the rich, never experiencing true freedom and being novacained by the bliss of consumerism, although that never lasts long. Or they give up, in reality as in the ficional novel.

There is a third option of course: Stand up against the norm, against the men in power, try to change the rules, the system, start a revolution. Change the course of history. But the hypothesis of the author seems to be quite bleak and depressing: Never one of the characters even think of turning against the producers of the show - Humans will never actually learn, history repeats itself and we are doomed to slowly dying out.

The book is advertised as "Love Island meets Lord of the Flies". I think it fits, but add even more cynicsm and bleakness to it.

 

[Alzrius]

I just finished reading Timothy Zahn's 2017 novel Star Wars: Thrawn.

Those who've noticed my prior mentions about how I've fallen out of love with Star Wars, and that I had no particular affection for the original novel where Thrawn appeared, might be surprised by my having chosen this for reading material.

If that's the case, then I suspect that it's because I've done a bad job of explaining how I came to those opinions. To make things short and sweet, it's because most recent Star Wars projects (i.e. the sequel trilogy and almost everything that's come after it) haven't felt very engaging to me, whereas Zahn's Heir to the Empire felt (to borrow a quote from someone else's review) like a good science fiction novel but not a particularly good Star Wars novel.

This one, however, feels better in that regard.

At the risk of making this more about me than about the book, I think that Star Wars works at its best when it sticks to its original operatic tenor. While that necessarily rules out certain kinds of stories, I think that's worthwhile; maintaining a coherent identity, in my mind, necessitates not trying to be all things to all people. Even when spread across different instances of media, I'm of the opinion that trying to make something be different things runs the risk of diluting it more than broadening its appeal (though I'll admit there are techniques for ameliorating this).

What I think makes this book work is that, unlike Heir to the Empire, there's an operatic theme to it. In this story, which follows the course of Thrawn's rise to prominence within the ranks of the Galactic Empire, there's a sense of...not tragedy, but almost fatalism, that follows the course of events. While Thrawn himself isn't given to bouts of melancholy, his presentation is one that can be characterized as "detached." Having a brilliant tactical mind, with no concern for politics or ideology, and seemingly no ambition but to do his absolute best at whatever he's engaged with, Thrawn's seeming lack of emotion evokes the idea of a tragic character without actually making him into one.

Of course, this doesn't precisely match his presentation in Rebels (which I generally liked) or in Ahsoka (which I didn't), but the cynic in me can't help but ascribe at least part of that to his having a different narrative role there. While Thrawn's talents stand on their own, his hyper-competence is thrown into stark relief by his being surrounded by people who are more focused on politics, ideology, or simple bigotry; this is a character for whom "not carrying the idiot ball" is a superpower.

But that's easier to pull off when you're the protagonist of the media in question, as Thrawn in here.

Contrast that with his appearances in Rebels and Ahsoka, where the script needs him to lose tactical engagements against characters who are his tactical inferiors. That's much harder to pull off, and part of why I think this novel succeeds more than Thrawn's appearances in other media; in that regard, Zahn is writing the character on a metaphorical "easy mode."

On a tangential note, it took me far longer than it should have to realize that this novel is, in many ways, a prequel to Rebels. That's largely because I don't see Thrawn as a Rebels-specific character, and had completely forgotten the character of Arihnda Pryce, who's a major secondary character here. Chalk that one up to my having put most things Star Wars-related out of my mind, I suppose.

Still, I liked this enough that I wouldn't be averse to reading the sequel novel, Star Wars: Alliances, which deals with Thrawn's working relationship with Darth Vader.

I may not be a fan of Star Wars anymore, but I'll admit that I get goosebumps at the idea of an entire book about those two working together.

 

[Autumnal]

Neat stuff, @Alzrius - I love the level of self-reflection going on, and aim for it myself.

I got an ice bucket of bad news this week and am overhauling my reading plans to match. There’s a thing called a calcium score test, a CAT scan that measures the level of plaques in your coronary arteries. It produces a number on a somewhat open-ended scale. 0 is best. 100-300 means elevated risk of coronary artery disease and cardiac trouble. 400+ means you’re there, and it can go up over a thousand. I turned out to be at 1135, which puts me in the 99th percentile.

I’m stuck in some very stressful circumstances that I can’t fix. So I have to reduce stress wherever I can. I’ve bailed out from the political venues I usually follow, and shelved a bunch of planned reading that could be significantly stressful in favor of stuff more likely to be enjoyable and relaxing. It’s an interesting exercise to evaluate my book backlog in this light.

 

[Alzrius]

Neat stuff, @Alzrius - I love the level of self-reflection going on, and aim for it myself.

I got an ice bucket of bad news this week and am overhauling my reading plans to match. There’s a thing called a calcium score test, a CAT scan that measures the level of plaques in your coronary arteries. It produces a number on a somewhat open-ended scale. 0 is best. 100-300 means elevated risk of coronary artery disease and cardiac trouble. 400+ means you’re there, and it can go up over a thousand. I turned out to be at 1135, which puts me in the 99th percentile.

I’m stuck in some very stressful circumstances that I can’t fix. So I have to reduce stress wherever I can. I’ve bailed out from the political venues I usually follow, and shelved a bunch of planned reading that could be significantly stressful in favor of stuff more likely to be enjoyable and relaxing. It’s an interesting exercise to evaluate my book backlog in this light.

Sorry to hear about your health problems! Good luck de-stressing (and I'm personally glad that doing so doesn't include ceasing to post here).

 

[Autumnal]

More or less gaming-related rambles are relaxing as long as I make sensible choices and maintain a useful-to-me ignore list.

 

[jian]

Just read The T in LGBT by Jamie Raines, a trans man from the UK, and found it very readable as well as useful for my work (as a GP; I have about a dozen trans patients, many of whom I referred initially to gender clinic, which is much more accessible here in Canada than I found so in the UK). I'd definitely recommend it for people who would like to know more about the experience of being trans.

 

[jian]

I've also read two books because we just watched live-action Disney films based on them. So this is sort of a review of the films as well as the books.

Candleshoe is a charming Jodie Foster film from 1976, where she plays an American delinquent (from one of those highly convincing multi-ethnic street urchin gangs you apparently got in LA in the 70s) who is recruited into a scheme to pretend to be the long-lost heir to Candleshoe, a manor in Warwickshire. Not because the Candleshoes have cash, but because there's a treasure hidden on the grounds. There's a lovely cast - Helen Hayes as the grandmother, David Niven as her faithful butler who also pretends to be other members of staff, and Leo McKern as the baddie.

The book it's based on, Christmas at Candleshoe by Michael Innes, is whimsically ghastly. You can see the ghost of a good story in there - Americans plan to buy a run-down old manor called Candleshoe which is defended by young evacuees and which has a treasure hidden in it (two Titians stolen from a brothel in the 18th century, don't ask) - but it basically makes no sense and has some very awkward assumptions. I congratulate the Disney writers for getting any kind of functional story out of it at all.

That Darn Cat is a lovely 1965 Disney film about a cat who's a witness to a kidnapping and the hapless FBI agent who is recruited by his owner into tracking down the kidnappers and the victim. It's based on the book Undercover Cat by Gordon and Mildred Gordon, who wrote thrillers together. Thankfully, the book and the film are much more similar, except swapping the ages of the two sisters who own the cat, mostly so that Hayley Mills gets to help the detective but not be his love interest (she's only 19 and that would be gross).

(There's a 1997 remake of the film which is apparently terrible.)

 

[Voadam]

Neat stuff, @Alzrius - I love the level of self-reflection going on, and aim for it myself.

I got an ice bucket of bad news this week and am overhauling my reading plans to match. There’s a thing called a calcium score test, a CAT scan that measures the level of plaques in your coronary arteries. It produces a number on a somewhat open-ended scale. 0 is best. 100-300 means elevated risk of coronary artery disease and cardiac trouble. 400+ means you’re there, and it can go up over a thousand. I turned out to be at 1135, which puts me in the 99th percentile.

I’m stuck in some very stressful circumstances that I can’t fix. So I have to reduce stress wherever I can. I’ve bailed out from the political venues I usually follow, and shelved a bunch of planned reading that could be significantly stressful in favor of stuff more likely to be enjoyable and relaxing. It’s an interesting exercise to evaluate my book backlog in this light.

Sorry to hear that. Triage and self care as priorities then. When I was going through some medical complications last year I cut down to just 40K short story anthologies and then the Dungeon Crawler Carl series and then Girl Genius graphic novels. Stuff that I had the bandwidth at the time to focus on and get some enjoyment out of while mostly focusing on getting through it and then recovering.

 

[Wolfram stout]

So I'm not the only one that gets stressed reading for pleasure? These multi 700 page books have about made me quit reading fiction for pleasure. But then I circle back to sci-fi and fantasy of the 60s-80s and feel better.

I am currently reading The Postman by Brian (inspired by the post apocalypse thread). 315 pages, from the library and the first 25% surprisingly optimistic.

 

[jian]

Neat stuff, @Alzrius - I love the level of self-reflection going on, and aim for it myself.

I got an ice bucket of bad news this week and am overhauling my reading plans to match. There’s a thing called a calcium score test, a CAT scan that measures the level of plaques in your coronary arteries. It produces a number on a somewhat open-ended scale. 0 is best. 100-300 means elevated risk of coronary artery disease and cardiac trouble. 400+ means you’re there, and it can go up over a thousand. I turned out to be at 1135, which puts me in the 99th percentile.

I’m stuck in some very stressful circumstances that I can’t fix. So I have to reduce stress wherever I can. I’ve bailed out from the political venues I usually follow, and shelved a bunch of planned reading that could be significantly stressful in favor of stuff more likely to be enjoyable and relaxing. It’s an interesting exercise to evaluate my book backlog in this light.

Very best of luck, mate, and hope things get better soon.