What are you reading in 2024?

Clint_L · Apr 3, 2024

Before starting on some of these recommendations, I'm reading Joan Didion's essay collection, Where I'm From. I teach the film Lady Bird, and apparently this was one of Gerwig's inspirations. It's good.

Autumnal · Apr 3, 2024

Piranesi, Susanna Clarke. Yeah, I know, but I got distracted right after starting it four years ago and just now got back to it. It is, course, as great as pretty much everyone has been saying ever since it appeared.

Clint_L · Apr 3, 2024

Just started Jules Verne's 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea. I think I read the Classics Illustrated version or something when I was a kid, but I know the story more from pop culture. I'm finding it pretty dull. Super expository, with that old school hard sci-fi thing where the author is really excited to explain how water pressure works, at length, or to list different undersea species for a page. There's a lot of time given to discussing how Nemo can replicate various surface foods with nautical equivalents (cetacean milk! Also, you'll never find the word "cetacean" used more often in a novel). Respect for its importance in the history of sci-fi, but it's not exactly a scintillating read.

I do like that one of the main characters is Quebecois - that's a rarity in non-Canadian fiction. But the character is a bit of a dolt.

Autumnal · Apr 3, 2024

Which translation? The one from the Naval Institute Press is a light year better than all others in English.

Wofano Wotanto · Apr 3, 2024

Clint_L said:
(cetacean milk! Also, you'll never find the word "cetacean" used more often in a novel)

Dubious. Alan Dean Foster's Cachalot gives it a run for its money.

Clint_L said:
Respect for its importance in the history of sci-fi, but it's not exactly a scintillating read.

I've read a moderate amount of Verne's translated work. It's pretty much all like this one IME. Just different writing styles and expectations in the era, I think.

Autumnal said:
The one from the Naval Institute Press is a light year better than all others in English.

It's certainly the best I've read, and worth a look if you want to read what Verne actually wrote instead of the botch job translations that came before - which are about as accurate as the Disney film, and less entertaining to boot. Worth a link to it even.

But it's still Verne writing, and his style is not what I'd call scintillating either.

prabe · Apr 3, 2024

My last week has been kinda weird. A brother-in-law I didn't know well died abruptly of a heart attack, so we had a funeral to go to, and I haven't been able to dive back into my (approximately) nightly reading as easily as I hoped after the long vacation. And I have more in-laws visiting in a week or two, so there are things that need done around the house. Oh, well.

Eyes of Nine · Apr 3, 2024

I bailed out of Princess of Mars after 2 chapters/20 pages. For dead tree book fetishists like me, trigger warning photo behind spoiler

I knew Edgar Rice Burrough’s John Carter A Princess of Mars was “of its time” - but it’s really really racist. I guess I am privileged enough to have forgotten that John Carter’s a former Confederate soldier. And in the first 2 chapters, which take place on Earth, John Carter’s attitude towards the Native Americans who have taken his colleague (“a polished southern gentleman”) is horrible - he uses the term “savage” at least 3 times over the course of 2 pages.

20 pages in, and I’ve got 10 of the 11 books - I’m assuming the racism continues throughout. And that John Carter never critically looks at his own role in the Civil War as a soldier defending the institution of chattel slavery. Also, John Carter is the poster boy for "White Savior" archetype - blech

There are plenty of these out in the world if people want to seek them out - but I won't assist them in finding it. So goodbye John Carter books

Now at least they'll participate in carbon capture as my local landfill will turn paper and other organics into mulch/soil

I will also say that I should have known - pre-1980 books continue to disappoint from a racism/sexism/colonialism/etc standpoint. I don't have the time left in my life to force myself to read books "of their time". So many other good books in the world for me to read.

Eyes of Nine · Apr 3, 2024

prabe said:
My last week has been kinda weird. A brother-in-law I didn't know well died abruptly of a heart attack, so we had a funeral to go to, and I haven't been able to dive back into my (approximately) nightly reading as easily as I hoped after the long vacation. And I have more in-laws visiting in a week or two, so there are things that need done around the house. Oh, well.

While you didn't know them well, the impact on your wider family is probably significant. Sorry for you and your family's loss

prabe · Apr 3, 2024

Eyes of Nine said:
While you didn't know them well, the impact on your wider family is probably significant. Sorry for you and your family's loss

Thank you. In some ways I wish I'd gotten to know Pete better, had a chance to see past the scarred exterior and see what all his close friends and dear ones saw; but my wife's relationship with her stepsisters is ... complicated, for reasons that are very off-topic for this thread, and probably this site.

Autumnal · Apr 3, 2024

Eyes of Nine said:
I bailed out of Princess of Mars after 2 chapters/20 pages.

worth noting that Jack Norris and his crew on the Modiphius John Carter game did a brilliant job flensing the crap off. The racism, the sexism, all that hit the floor and got hosed off, leaving behind a great pulp setting that has room for everyone, and shows them in action.