What are you reading in 2022?

[Mad_Jack]

Just finished reading a couple of books...

Finally killed off Past Tense, one of the Jack Reacher books by Lee Child - I usually like them, but this one was kind of dull. left off reading it in the middle and it took me a long time before I got motivated to finish it. I've got the next one in the series on the unread pile, and it seems like it'll be more interesting.

I liked Good Me, Bad Me by Ali Land - the author is a career mental health nurse working with troubled teens, so her novel about a teenaged girl whose mother is a notorious serious killer is well-grounded in realism. The main character turns her mother in to the cops after years of abuse, but after being sent to live with a new family, with a new name, and at a new school, she begins to wonder just how much like her mother she really is... By the middle of the book it's fairly obvious how it's going to end, but it's an enjoyable read.

Now going to reread Thieftaker by D. B. Jackson - Boston, ten years before the revolutionary War. Ethan Kaille is a conjurer in a place and time where it's not exactly illegal to use magic but doing something flashy in public can still get you burned as a witch. He makes his living as a thieftaker, hired to retrieve people's stolen goods, but not a very good living - his business rival is a woman who has dozens of men, money and social connections, and she "allows" him to work in her town, letting him take the cases that she can't be bothered with. In some ways, it's kind of your standard noir "down-on-his-luck private eye gets dragged into a high-society mystery" story, but the setting and the addition of magic makes it interesting. Apparently there are other books in the series, so one of these days I'll have to see if I can find them.

 

[dragoner]

Just finished the Algebraist by Banks, I think I might read Destiny's Road by Niven next.

 

[Mallus]

I polished off Scalzi’s The Kaiju Preservation Society in 3 days. Charming fluff. I figure I’ll blow through a few more books with named swords or spaceships before I have another go at (a long book by) Nabokov again.

 

[Eyes of Nine]

I haven't read it yet, but I'm glad to hear that it's also good. I was a bit nervous about the way the first book ended.

Yep. I've heard that there's quite a few different series that take place in on Discworld and some standalone books (like Small Gods). I've heard good things about the series that focuses around Death. Would that be a good place to go next if I enjoy Small Gods?

I personally like the Mort (Death) books the best; followed by the Rincewind books. But I think I like the Rincewind books because he was the first main character I encountered. I started at the beginning in the early 90's , when there were only a few books out yet. I actually fell off the wagon at some point around book 20; and haven't finished the series. (Same thing happend to me for the Expanse series). I hope to get back and finish them all someday. But it might require I start at the beginning again. If only other author's weren't coming out with new good stuff too!

 

[Eyes of Nine]

I'm reading two different books and getting into them very differently. I'm about a quarter of the way through each.

I'm reading The Three-Body Problem by Liu Cixin. It's a Hugo winner and I've been recommended it from several directions, but I'm finding it very hard to care about the main character. The whole plot so far seems to be more intellectual and not moving me at all on the emotional level.

I'm also reading The Traitor Baru Cormorant by Seth Dickinson. This has had the opposite effect. I was immediately drawn in by the main character, enjoyed the world building (though it's not particularly fresh, it is flavorful and supports the story well), and I care about what happens. The main character has strengtcomplehs and flaws and does things that work and things that don't and others in the book have agency, not just the protagonist and an antagonist. I'm not sure I can identify a singular antagonist or cabal of them to be told the truth.

The first book is translated, so there might be cultural subtleties and tropes I'm missing. Both have solid prose, there's no exquisitely crafted wordsmithing from either pulling me in. (Patrick Rothfuss, get off your backside!)

It really is the emotional connection - caring about the PoV character and the plot.

I'm going to keep soldiering on with Three-Body Problem - it's not bad, just not as engaging. But it has far to go before I pick it up with as much relish as Baru.

Your description of 3Body Problem (3BP) sounds very similar to mine. I finished it, and I can see why people liked it. I'll be interested in your feedback when you're done...

 

[Nellisir]

Your description of 3Body Problem (3BP) sounds very similar to mine. I finished it, and I can see why people liked it. I'll be interested in your feedback when you're done...

I read it a few years back; same reaction. I just didn't care. No interest in revisiting it.

 

[dragoner]

I loved Three Body, though I think it really hits with the third novel; part of it is that Liu is a dry sort of hard SF writer, and that shows. I mean I liked his Ball Lightning as well, but I am sure it might not appeal to a western audience due to the ending is not as clearly good, though sometimes, a lot of times, we have to accept the ambivalence of life.

 

[Ralif Redhammer]

Gideon the Ninth is so darn good! Harrow the Ninth, likewise. It's perhaps more ambitious and more demanding of its readers. I'd recommend getting to it sooner rather than later. I had to wait for it to come out, and when it did I found myself stumbling in a few locations, because of how long it had been and the central conceit of the story.

After giving up halfway through the Golden Compass, I started Tamsyn Muir's Gideon the Ninth. I finished it in 5 days and loved it. Definitely one of the best fantasy books I've ever read.

Discworld is tops in my book. Ask six Discworld fans where the best starting place is and you'll likely get six different answers.

Next, I'm starting my first Discworld book. I've heard quite a few people say to start with Small Gods, so that's what I'm going to do.

I finished reading Cline's Ready Player Two. In some ways, it's more introspective a read than the first. The villain of the first book has a great quote: "Don’t you kids ever get tired of picking through the wreckage of a past generation’s nostalgia?" On the other hand, there are a couple things about the ending that didn't sit right with me.

Now I'm reading R.E. Howard's Lin Carter and L. Sprague De Camp's Conan the Buccaneer.

 

[Ralif Redhammer]

And done with Conan the Buccaneer. It was a quick read. While enjoyable, and at times pretty close to feeling like R.E. Howard, at other times it feels like an "uncanny valley Conan." Lines about Conan tearing up, or attributing his strength to the gods, some of his dialogue, just don't feel like the character.

Now I'm reading Frostflower and Thorn by Phyllis Ann Karr.

 

[Richards]

I finished up Area 51 and it was very good - action-packed throughout, with interesting characters and a very good understanding of the way the military works (not surprisingly, as the author is an ex-Special Forces guy writing under a pseudonym). It tied up a lot of UFO stuff - long, cigar-shaped craft, flying saucers, foo fighters - in a sensible way and had a nice backstory about what the aliens were really on about here on Earth. And while it's very obviously merely the first book in an ongoing series, it at least ties up enough of the present story that if you never read any of the subsequent books in the series it at least has a good ending, with the feeling that there's still plenty more story to come if you want to read more.

In any case, I'm going to be flying on a business trip next week, which means lots of reading on airplanes and at airports, so I'm starting up a fairly short novel and bringing along a much longer one, figuring the two ought to hold me for four days. The first one is a 1956 novel by John Christopher, No Blade of Grass, an eco-disaster science fiction novel of what happens when most of the grass and grain in the world dies out. As you might imagine, things start to devolve pretty fast when the food starts to run out.... But it's only 190 pages, so I doubt it'll last more than the trip there.

For the nights in the hotel room and the return legs home on Thursday, I'm bringing a 498-page book (with fairly small print) called Fire Bringer, by David Clement-Davies, that ought to hold me for a while. Believe it or not, it's a story about a deer - an anthropomorphic fantasy novel in the manner of Watership Down, only with deer instead of bunnies. It's quite unlike most anything else I've read (although Raptor Red by Robert T. Bakker is the story of a velociraptor's life I bought and read years ago, but who could resist a story with a dinosaur as the main character?), but it looks interesting so I thought I'd give it a try. And there's a bookstore near the place I'll be staying, so in a pinch I can always see what else is available. (Most of the Firefly novels I've bought were from that store.)

Johnathan