What are you reading in 2025?

The Salmon of Doubt is great. Enough good nuggets to suggest more good stuff was coming at the time of Douglas Adams' untimely death (it doesn't feel great being older than he was when he died!), while also explaining why it would have taken years or maybe never would have come out.

For a super-sized version of this, 42: The Wildly Improbable Ideas of Douglas Adams makes it clear that it was sort of amazing we got anything from Douglas at all.

Reading How to Stand Up to a Dictator by Maria Ressa, a Filipina investigative journalist and founder of Rappler writing about fighting online misinformation and the Duterte dictatorship in recent years.

What’s coincidentally interesting for me is the way she confirms and mirrors what Sarah Wynn-Williams wrote in Careless People (which I read last month) about Facebook’s near-total lack of ethics and oversight, especially in the Philippines (which has some of the highest levels of social media penetration in the world) and how the Duterte administration abused the hell out of that opportunity.

I have to read Necroscope for a podcast thing I do. I'm actually not looking forward to it, based on what i have read about the book.

Reading three webtoons/manhwa (online Korean comics) that have some similarities and which I’m quite enjoying. The theme is “protagonist has been reincarnated as a minor character in a fantasy JRPG and is desperately trying to keep the plot on track so that the world isn’t destroyed.”

• The Extra’s Academy Survival Guide: Our protagonist has been reincarnated as Ed Rothstaylor, the tutorial boss of a magic academy JRPG - kind of like Draco Malfoy if he was completely irrelevant after Harry beats him up in the first book. Ed therefore has to deal with having been disowned by his (evil) family and surviving in the school (where his reputation is terrible, of course) without any money, while having to constantly pull the plot back on track to keep everyone alive.
• Magic Academy’s Genius Blinker: This time, the reincarnation is as a minor character who has a terrible build - in a world of extremely powerful wizards and warriors, Baek Yuseol’s only talent is casting blink (well, he has a bit more control than that, but not much). He’s also in a weird situation where he’s basically in a JRPG based on a book, and there’s another reincarnator around who thinks she’s in the book, which has a different plot.
• I Killed the Main Player: When reborn as Corin Loque, a minor side NPC in yet another world-saving fantasy JRPG, our hero helps out Sihu, who’s been reincarnated as the destined hero. Too late, however, Corin realises that Sihu is a complete sociopath who doesn’t regard any of the NPCs as real. When given the chance, Corin does what the title implies and tries to save the world instead.

I'm now back on my steady diet of "Joe Ledger" books by Jonathan Maberry, the latest being #9, Dogs of War. The threat this time is autonomous robot dogs run by AI, running amok. It's as well done as the others, but I can't help but visualize Skippy, the robot dog from the original animated series of "The Tick," even though the WarDogs in this book aren't anything like him.



Johnathan

Last week I started next month's book club book, and wound up finishing it too, between it being a light read and taking a day off sick with a cold. After the Revolution by Robert Evans is a recent (2022) cyberpunk-esque book set mostly in 2070 Texas after the US has balkanized into several rival or outright warring states.

Our three perspective characters are Manny Sanchez, a fixer and former child refugee in the remains of Dallas giving tours to foreign war correspondents, Sasha, a secretly devout Christian high schooler who decides to flee her relatively cozy home in the AmFed (the closest successor to the old USA) for the most extreme of the Christian Nationalist factions (the Heavenly Kingdom, more fundamentalist than the United Christian States), and Roland, an absurdly cyber-enhanced retired veteran and special forces operative, who became a leftist revolutionary before losing much of his memory to various injuries. Ultraviolent and full of drug use, largely an adventure story but gets into elements of the need to belong and for people to build intentional communities in search of meaning and happiness. With a sub-theme also of people dealing with trauma and PTSD.

Richards said:

I'm now back on my steady diet of "Joe Ledger" books by Jonathan Maberry, the latest being #9, Dogs of War. The threat this time is autonomous robot dogs run by AI, running amok. It's as well done as the others, but I can't help but visualize Skippy, the robot dog from the original animated series of "The Tick," even though the WarDogs in this book aren't anything like him.

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Conversely, that synopsis makes me think of my favorite episode of Black Mirror.

I recently finished Harry Turtledove's Twice As Dead, an LA private eye story in a fantasy world. The book was a gift, but otherwise, I probably wouldn't have finished it.

The worldbuilding is, at best, what the average DM here does in their home campaign. For every clever bit -- the weird Mesopotamian temple-looking industrial building we all pass on the freeway and say "what the heck is that?" is used to good effect -- there's a dumb bit, like Angels Flight being an actual angel that will fly people up and down Bunker Hill in return for a coin.

Where Turtledove gets into more trouble, in my opinion, is trying to go Walter Mosley and tell the story from the POV of a passing Black man who fought in the equivalent of this world's World War II. Turtledove is a 75 year old White guy and a lot of his thoughts about LA's Black community are well-meant, but kind of cringeworthy. And, as mentioned, he's setting himself up for comparisons with Walter Mosley, which is an insane choice on his part.

So, it's fine, but the entire time I was reading it, I was keenly aware it was delaying me reading the new Carl Hiaasen novel which, so far, is his best in years. Strongly recommended.

Finally started Playing at the World 2E Volume 1. It's pretty good so far. Definitely an easier read than 1E. I do like the extra resources and citations Peterson is including this go around. Not that 1E lacked citations or resources, only he's since found more and has reworked the book to reflect that. Hopefully he has included more about David Wesely and Dave Arneson.

Also started Delta Green: Through a Glass, Darkly. It's an interesting read so far. Still early days and it's mostly ramp up. Definitely feels like the X-Files with the horror turned up to 11 as the game generally works. Which makes sense given the author of the novel is Dennis Detwiller, the main author of the Delta Green RPG.

Might have to drop Your Brain's Not Broken as the author has decided to turn preachy and religious in the second half of the book. It's really too bad. The info and insights prior to that sudden turn were really useful. It's been a few weeks since I tried to push through. I'm hoping it's a temporary slip rather than a complete bait-and-switch.

Whizbang Dustyboots said:

So, it's fine, but the entire time I was reading it, I was keenly aware it was delaying me reading the new Carl Hiaasen novel which, so far, is his best in years. Strongly recommended.

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I have recently rediscovered Hiaasen, and he's been on a roll, lately.