What are you reading in 2023?

I just finished "The Main Enemy" which is an account of the end of the cold war seen through the CIA and KGB agents that saw it end. Very enlightening, especially the stuff about Aimes.

Just finished "Sakuru: The Circle" by Todd Downing. OK, I don't get a lot of chance to read these days, but had hours waiting for, then on planes

Good '80s style cyberpunk, set in San Francisco, that the author recently updated prior to publishing.

EDIT - Really can't spell

Ryujin said:

Just finished "Sakuka: The Circle" by Todd Downing. OK, I don't get a lot of chance to read these days, but had hours waiting for, then on planes

Good '80s style cyberpunk, set in San Francisco, that the author recently updated prior to publishing.

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The first two Todd Downings I found were a football coach, then a Choctaw author who died in 1974 and seemed to write mostly mysteries
Sakuka the Circle did not lead to any satisfactory results

Because I'm always interested in 80's style cyberbpunk that isn't cringe from today's standards. Hard to find

Eyes of Nine said:

As usual, the adjectives I’m left with after reading one of his more recent novels is breezy - fun - aligned-with-my-politics.

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I mean don't mean to be down on Scalzi but yeah that definitely seems to apply a lot, and at this point I've stopped reading his books because they just don't have enough to say, and even their SF ideas tend to be, well, not novel - c.f. The Kaiju Preservation Society, where like, it had precisely two interrelated ideas which it seemed to think were novel but both were kind of close to an SF novel I read in the 1990s. That's not to say it was not enjoyable, it was a fast read which flowed well, was structured well, made sense (more than a lot of "lost world, strange creatures" SF/thrillers), but it was just a little bit too twee and cutesy, with some fun but VERY Whedon-esque dialogue. Nobody can tell me that style has died out, it's just people don't usually call it by its true name when authors/writers they like use it - we even got multiple "THAT JUST HAPPENED!!!!!" < soyface > type scenes which I had to grit my teeth through.

I kind of wish he'd write something genuinely dark and scary, and drop the twee and quips for a while - which wasn't really a thing back in say, Old Man's War (at least the ones I read) - because I think he'd be great at it. Maybe he already has and I just haven't come across it. Kaiju kept seeming like it was going to be actually scary or tense, and then he'd just absolutely undermine that with quips and THAT JUST HAPPENED!!!!! stuff.

I really want to like it, but I just wish there was a bit more to it.

I've been reading a lot less than usual lately due to podcast and thanks to my blasted brother, anime, filling the same time spaces, but I did finish Hell Bent by Leigh Bardugo, the second one of her Alex Stern books which was, I think a considerable improvement on the first one, at least for my money. It's still about a young woman who can see, speak to and use ghosts, who is studying at Yale, but only on sufferance (she's far too poor to go there) because she's working for magical secret society, but it's got a bit more energy, in part because it has less backstory to explain and more story to tell. Bardugo herself went to Yale and it shows, because she loves the place as a place perhaps just a little too much, but she was also in a secret society, and wow she paints those in an extremely negative light, so I guess there's a degree of give and take, and also doesn't shy away from highlighting Yale's grim past with slavery and so on.

Anyway I enjoyed it quite a lot of a sort of genuinely kind of creepy occult adventure novel. Much as I've enjoyed her later Grishaverse stuff, I'd kind of like to see more stuff from Bardugo along these lines.

Eyes of Nine said:

The first two Todd Downings I found were a football coach, then a Choctaw author who died in 1974 and seemed to write mostly mysteries
Sakuka the Circle did not lead to any satisfactory results

Because I'm always interested in 80's style cyberbpunk that isn't cringe from today's standards. Hard to find

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Try searching on Amazon. You should find his books there. Todd is a friend and, if I remember what he said correctly, he started writing "Sakuru" maybe 25 years ago...?

EDIT - I probably should have led with my connection, by way of full disclosure, but my personal credo is as follows:

If you truly enjoyed art that a friend has done, share it.
If you didn't enjoy it remain silent, so as not to screw with their confidence

Edit Again - Spelling (DUH!)

Just finished up The Black Hawks by David Wragg, and Easy Money: Cryptocurrency, Casino Capitalism, and the Golden Age of Fraud by Ben McKenzie and Jacob Silverman. Both were good, and the latter covers a lot of Sam Bankman-Fried's activities so it was interesting to finish that up and then hear about his trial.

Now I am about a third of the way into Michio Kaku's Quantum Supremacy: How the Quantum Computer Revolution Will Change Everything and while he presents a few notions about quantum computing's potential impact that I had not considered, his writing is very repetitive. It feels like sections were separate, standalone postings at one point, as they emphasize and repeat points that were just made in the last 2 or 3 pages. I was also hoping that this would try to explain quantum computing in more detail than it does (it covers the core concept quite well in a broad, general way) but maybe that is beyond any general audience book.

I will probably pick up David Wragg's sequel, The Righteous, next.

Ryujin said:

Try searching on Amazon. You should find his books there. Todd is a friend and, if I remember what he said correctly, he started writing "Sakura" maybe 25 years ago...?

EDIT - I probably should have led with my connection, by way of full disclosure, but my personal credo is as follows:

If you truly enjoyed art that a friend has done, share it.
If you didn't enjoy it remain silent, so as not to screw with their confidence

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Nope, and this after I searched for "Sakura" instead of "Sakuka". Sorry to say, your friend's books are v hard to find. I wish him well

Ruin Explorer said:

I mean don't mean to be down on Scalzi but yeah that definitely seems to apply a lot, and at this point I've stopped reading his books because they just don't have enough to say, and even their SF ideas tend to be, well, not novel - c.f. The Kaiju Preservation Society, where like, it had precisely two interrelated ideas which it seemed to think were novel but both were kind of close to an SF novel I read in the 1990s. That's not to say it was not enjoyable, it was a fast read which flowed well, was structured well, made sense (more than a lot of "lost world, strange creatures" SF/thrillers), but it was just a little bit too twee and cutesy, with some fun but VERY Whedon-esque dialogue. Nobody can tell me that style has died out, it's just people don't usually call it by its true name when authors/writers they like use it - we even got multiple "THAT JUST HAPPENED!!!!!" < soyface > type scenes which I had to grit my teeth through.

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His books keep hitting the NYT best seller list, so it must be resonating with someone. I'd feel a bit cheated if I had paid the $26 for the book and finished it in a day

Ruin Explorer said:

I kind of wish he'd write something genuinely dark and scary, and drop the twee and quips for a while - which wasn't really a thing back in say, Old Man's War (at least the ones I read) - because I think he'd be great at it. Maybe he already has and I just haven't come across it. Kaiju kept seeming like it was going to be actually scary or tense, and then he'd just absolutely undermine that with quips and THAT JUST HAPPENED!!!!! stuff.

I really want to like it, but I just wish there was a bit more to it.

Click to expand...

Agree - I'd love for him to go back to OMW universe and maybe cut it out with as many quips as was in Interdependency. Or maybe this is his new metier, and I've got to just like it or lump it. On the flip side, the books do go fast so at least I didn't invest a lot of time in it

Ruin Explorer said:

I've been reading a lot less than usual lately due to podcast and thanks to my blasted brother, anime, filling the same time spaces, but I did finish Hell Bent by Leigh Bardugo, the second one of her Alex Stern books which was, I think a considerable improvement on the first one, at least for my money. It's still about a young woman who can see, speak to and use ghosts, who is studying at Yale, but only on sufferance (she's far too poor to go there) because she's working for magical secret society, but it's got a bit more energy, in part because it has less backstory to explain and more story to tell. Bardugo herself went to Yale and it shows, because she loves the place as a place perhaps just a little too much, but she was also in a secret society, and wow she paints those in an extremely negative light, so I guess there's a degree of give and take, and also doesn't shy away from highlighting Yale's grim past with slavery and so on.

Anyway I enjoyed it quite a lot of a sort of genuinely kind of creepy occult adventure novel. Much as I've enjoyed her later Grishaverse stuff, I'd kind of like to see more stuff from Bardugo along these lines.

Click to expand...

Haven't read any Bardugo, but she's on my list (as are so many, so so many)

Eyes of Nine said:

Nope, and this after I searched for "Sakura" instead of "Sakuka". Sorry to say, your friend's books are v hard to find. I wish him well
View attachment 324077

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Crap, missed the typo. Sorry about that. Did it twice now. Might not be available in your area? For some reason I can't find it on the Amazon US site, though I can find it easily in Canada. Odd, given that Todd is in Washington State. Here's a link:


The cover art looks remarkably like Keanu Reeves, however, apparently predates his Johnny Silverhand pics.

Eyes of Nine said:

Nope, and this after I searched for "Sakura" instead of "Sakuka". Sorry to say, your friend's books are v hard to find. I wish him well
View attachment 324077

Click to expand...

I was able to find it on Amazon UK by not searching the full name (which didn't work, only showing a single irrelevant book) but just on Todd Downing:


I can't guarantee I'll read it, but it is out there! Also it that Marcus from Babylon 5 on the cover?