What are you reading in 2022?

[Richards]

I picked up some more books at the library book sale, just in time for another week-long business trip. I'll be starting off with Most Likely to Die by Lisa Jackson, Wendy Corsi Straub, and Beverly Barton. It's about a high school reunion 20 years after a murder at the school, and the killer (who was never caught for the previous murder) is now after three other women attending the reunion. It's 453 pages long, but just in case that doesn't hold me (I've got two days in airports and on planes and four nights in a hotel ahead of me), I'm also bringing along Running Scared by Lisa Jackson, about a woman and her son (adopted as a baby under apparently less than legal methods) being hunted down by a madman intent upon killing them. That one's 512 pages long, so I should be good to go.

Johnathan

 

[pukunui]

I have finished re-reading The Fifth Elephant. I picked up on several more plot seeds for later books that I hadn't really noticed previously. There's a bit about the clacks going all the way through to Genua that got made into a major plot point in Going Postal, and some other plot points that made it into Thud! and the like.

That reminds me of the time I went and saw Pratchett speak live. Going Postal had just come out, and he did spend a bit of time talking about how some of his book ideas came out of seemingly random throwaway lines in previous books.

I've now started re-reading I Shall Wear Midnight.

 

[Zaukrie]

I have finished re-reading The Fifth Elephant. I picked up on several more plot seeds for later books that I hadn't really noticed previously. There's a bit about the clacks going all the way through to Genua that got made into a major plot point in Going Postal, and some other plot points that made it into Thud! and the like.

That reminds me of the time I went and saw Pratchett speak live. Going Postal had just come out, and he did spend a bit of time talking about how some of his book ideas came out of seemingly random throwaway lines in previous books.

I've now started re-reading I Shall Wear Midnight.

Great autocorrect on elephants......I haven't read the rest of the books yet, but that first one is great.

 

[Eyes of Nine]

Read the first volume of a manga last night, Alice in Borderland. Wow, very very reminiscent of the earlier Gantz. Not sure how many manga series there are of people getting whisked away from the modern world (Tokyo mostly) to a dystopian/post-apocalyptic hellscape, there to play mysterious games with total strangers - and lots of death, murder and other bad behavior on offer. But I guess that's a genre of fiction? And apparently one I'm into... I'll definitely read V2, but I'll take them one at a time.

This one doesn't have any monsters, at least there weren't any in V1. And maybe there's less s.e.x in it - which is ok for me also. And last but not least the art style is a lot more classically manga than Gantz was. I really like the Gantz art style, but the art in Alice serves fine.

Alice in Borderland - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

 

[Resayttan13]

I finished The Justice of Kings by Richard Swan.
A good start to this trilogy
I'm not a big fan of crime fiction (which slowed me down a bit in the first half), but I was intrigued by the characters and the story. The plot was well-paced and unpredictable. Another thing is Marvel and his comic books. It's amazing, especially Star Wars. Fantastic artwork and a decent story.

 

[Ralif Redhammer]

I finished R.E. Howard's Cthulhu... It's a mixed bag. Worms of the Earth is one of his greatest stories, and there are plenty of great spine-tingling stories aside from that.

There's also The Shadow of the Beast and Pigeons from Hell, both of which are hella racist. While that's part and parcel of many of REH's stories, I find the ones set in his then present-day often feel worse.

Now I'm reading Peter Straub's Shadowland. I bought a used copy of eBay and it makes me happy to see that it was once part of a bookmobile's collection.

 

[Richards]

Most Likely to Die had an interesting twist, in that it was written by three authors, each of which wrote about 150 pages detailing one of the three main characters. So one author starts the story about Character A, then the second author picks up the story, this time detailing Character B, and then the third author focuses on Character C as she brings the story to a close. And the three either have very similar writing styles or were purposefully trying to write in a similar fashion so there was no real change in style when the focus switched over to the next character. On the down side, I figured out who the killer was about halfway through the novel, including what traumatic event had initiated the desire to kill the three main characters. Oh well, it was still a good read.

Johnathan

 

[Ralif Redhammer]

I finished Peter Straub's Shadowland. A relatively simple premise contains a whole lot of depth. It speaks to the fears of youth, the loss of innocence. The contrasting of supernatural horror against that of societal structures, bullying, was effective.

Now I'm reading Brian Staveley's The Emperor's Blades.

 

[Zaukrie]

Finished Gideon the NInth. I had trouble keeping the characters straight at times.....Onto The Three Body Problem, which certainly doesn't start like I expected a SF book to start.

I enjoyed Gideon, but I'm not sure I loved it. Very well written. Very unique. But something was missing for me to make it great? It might have been that, like I said, I mixed up the characters (not our two protagonists) and had a hard time identifying with them? Also, something about the end seemed rushed, which is NOT how I felt in general (the pacing was too slow in the middle, maybe).

 

[Alzrius]

After some real-life interruptions, I've finished Michael Tresca's Evolution of Fantasy Role-Playing Games, turning now to Thom James Carter's They Came to Slay: The Queer Culture of D&D. I should note that, while it's likely because of how recently it was published, the only domestic way to get a copy of this (that I'm aware of) is via Amazon Kindle. Those who're interested in acquiring a print copy (as I was) will need to have it imported from England (I recommend Blackwell's).