What are you reading in 2022?


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Finally got back to Slaughterhouse Five

I'm clearly not smart enough to understand why it is so important.

Devoured two thirds of A Wizard of Earthsea in no time last night. Guess I need to find the rest of them ....

The Books of Earthsea: The Complete Illustrated Edition is beautiful.


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Much more likely to try to find used copies of paperbacks at this point I'm my life. But those do look nice

I had those of the first three... but then this came out and Charles Vess is one of my favorite artists :)
I completely understand the used copies (I'm eternally thankful for my wifes paperback swap account).
 

I recently read The Death of the Necromancer (Ile-Rein book 2); The Wizard Hunters, and The Ships of Air (Fall of Ile-Rein books 1&2) by Martha Wells. I really love Martha Wells' writing.

I thought I had The Element of Fire (Ile-Rein 1), but apparently I don't; and Gate of Gods, book 3 in the Fall trilogy, is EXPENSIVE. I'm probably going to go the library route, though I'd rather have actual copies. Ugh.
So I just found used copies through alibris for reasonable prices, all from the same place. Now to wait 3-13 days. :)

I went over to a friend's house, and his wife & I were both talking about how much FUN Murderbot was, and how this reviewer had f'ed up by gendering Murderbot in a review. Good times.
 
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I finished reading John Shirley's Eclipse Penumbra. It's sometimes shockingly prescient. It's set in 2021 and there's NATO-Russian conflict, the rise of evangelical far-right movements, deepfakes, militarized police forces, even reference to a fascist leader named "Le Pen" in Europe. The space colony was off, and certainly these ideas are all taken to extremes beyond what we actually are seeing. But for a book published in 1988, it's fascinating (and sharply entertaining) stuff.

Now I'm reading Edgar Rice Burroughs' Tanar of Pellucidar.
 


I'm reading The Expanse series to my wife at bedtime. We're currently on book 3 - Abaddon's Gate.
 

Reading Josephine Tey's second Inspector Grant book "A Shilling for Candles". There are a few spots when reading where it feels like something is missing (a word? a phrase? some connection?), but then there are other times the writing is spectacular. Sometimes it's a description of the scenery and sometimes a sketch of a personality. The middle of chapter 8 also stuck out to me:

Any big spoilers are revealed pretty early on in the story, but probably best to skip it if there's a chance you're going to read this classic detective fiction from the mid-1930s:

In the below, Grant is from Scotland Yard, Chris Clay is a murdered actress, and the man beside him is the husband (5th child of a duke or somesuch). There has been no description of the events at the funeral before now:

As they turned the corner Grant caught sight of the news-sellers' posters. CLAY FUNERAL: UNPRECEDENTED SCENES. TEN WOMEN FAINT. LONDON'S FAREWELL TO CLAY. And (the Sentinel) CLAY'S LAST AUDIENCE.

Grant's foot came down on the accelerator.

"It was unbelievably ghastly," said the man beside him, quietly.

"Yes, I can imagine."

"Those women. I think the end of our greatness as a race must be very near. We came through the war well, but perhaps the effort was too great. It left us--epileptic. Great shocks do, sometimes." He was silent a moment, evidently seeing it all again in his mind's eye. "I've seen machine guns turned on troops in the open--in China--and rebelled against the slaughter. But I would have seen that sub-human mass of hysteria riddled this morning with more joy than I can describe to you. Not because it was--Chris, but because they made me ashamed of being human, of belonging to the same species."

"I had hoped that at that early hour there would be very little demonstration. I know the police were counting on that."

"We counted on it too. That is why we chose that hour. Now that I've seen with my own eyes, I know that nothing could have prevented it. The people are insane."

He paused, and gave an unamused laugh. "She never did like people much. It was because she found people--disappointing that she left her money as she did. Her fans this morning have vindicated her judgment."
 
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