What are you reading in 2025?

I’m past halfway through The Darkness That Comes Before and I’ve got a two-part reaction to get off my chest.

Part 1. The story is overall interesting and I’m continuing to read with satisfaction. Overall,!I find the aristocrats less interesting - they’re more typical, with clear inspirations from the Julio-Claudians, the Hapsburg, and others. There’s a matter of fastness about just how messed up dynasty tend to be that kind of refreshing: if chivalry is the stories made up to make knights happy (and it is), this is much more the reality of what those guys were doing before and after story time.

On the whole,!though, I find the lower-ranking characters more personable and sympathetic. I imagine a bunch of these folks are doomed. But we’ll see.

The worldbuilding has a lot to commend it, but here’s the other reaction I have.

Part 2. This is not a complaint about Bakker at all, but about a bunch of his fans. People, get some damn clues. Bakker is indeed very good. But he is not a successor to Suetonius and Thucydides. If you’ve never seen a world like this, you need to read some history the way Bakker clearly has. And while Bakker is very good…if you don’t know The Dragon Waiting and The School of Night, you need to meet John M. Ford, and so on for Gene Wolfe, and a bunch of others.

I do realize this is horribly arrogant. But I get buggles by little circles of enthusiasm. Like I said, not the author’s fault.

Dupe nuked.

Just finished Strong Female Character by Fern Brady. It’s a memoir of her life as an undiagnosed autistic woman. Time in a mental hospital, time as a stripper, and time on Taskmaster. If you want a bit of insight into Fern Brady or autism, this is the book for you. Short, quick read that’s well written in a nice conversational style. Lots of seemingly random jumps in time and space.

I’m taking a few days off - the general site level of irony and cynicism got me down, and I need my emotions free for other things. I expect to be back before the end of the year for wrap-up thoughts and seeing what the rest of y’all got up to.

Autumnal said:

I’m taking a few days off - the general site level of irony and cynicism got me down, and I need my emotions free for other things. I expect to be back before the end of the year for wrap-up thoughts and seeing what the rest of y’all got up to.

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Best of luck, mate, have a great few days off and look after yourself.

My mother sent me a novel my cousin wrote set in Armenia during the war with Azerbaijan in the 90s. It's called Mountains on Fire. It's pretty good so far. (I am most of the way through.)

Autumnal said:

I’m taking a few days off - the general site level of irony and cynicism got me down, and I need my emotions free for other things. I expect to be back before the end of the year for wrap-up thoughts and seeing what the rest of y’all got up to.

Click to expand...

Take care, man, hear from you in a while.

While trying to find a reasonable priced copy of the textbook Characteristics of Games (George Skaff Elias, Richard Garfield & K. Robert Gutschera) on the back of a talk referencing it that left me very interested, I ran into Games: Agency As Art by C. Thi Nguyen and I have never been more immediately hooked by a nonfiction book.

Nguyen, in the introduction alone, has more completely and correctly laid out what games are, are for, and how we should evaluate them than any other work in the field I've read.

Have now read Pet Semetary and Salems Lot.
Pet Semetary starts a bit slower, with events and tension building up to the climax, that is some respects ends abruptly with a bit of ambiguity. Is a lot more about grief and what it can do to people, that about evil as such - the evil here feels more incidental to help drive the former, with I would argue no real antagonist, just people making poor but understandable decisions when grieving.
I also felt sorry for the cat, with a question around whether it was evil as such, or just reacting to how treated.

Salems Lot more of a typical horror story as such, a different spin on Dracula. Also has some ideas that sre expanded on more with IT (e.g. children vs adult experience of and acceptance of the supernatural). Ultimately i find the ending interesting in how much the protagonists achieve, highlighted by short story One More for the Road (included in version I have). The version i have also included Jerusalems Lot, which just adds more questions if same place as in Salems Lot.

Overall though I enjoyed both, Pet Semetary grew creepier as it went, while Salems Lot was a bit more action horror, and less creepy, especially once past certain point.

IT still my favourite I think, with the Stand close behind (very different stories though), and one think I think i prefer with these two is that it goes straight into bad things happening, rather than the slower openings that Salems Lot and Pet Semetary have.

I think Pet Semetary is the better book but 'Salem's Lot gets a lot of affection from me just because it leads to one of my favorite moments of all King's writing, toward the end of The Dark Tower.