What are you reading in 2023?

[overgeeked]

Finished The Bourne Identity last night. My wife had rewatched the movies recently, and I thought I'd take a hack at the novel. It was far more melodramatic than I expected, and I was caught unawares by the opening newspaper articles about Carlos the Jackal. It's not a bad novel, and the action sequences are well written, showing its age only occasionally.

Yeah, that article threw me when I read it, too. You'd think they'd update the year as time goes on.

 

[Ralif Redhammer]

I finished reading Stephen King's Skeleton Crew. Stories like The Mist and The Raft are just as heavy-hitting and fearsome on paper as the big screen. The last story, The Reach, was surprisingly sweet and affecting.

Now I'm reading Clark Ashton Smith's Xiccarph. It's the last of the Ballantine Adult Fantasy releases of his that I've not read.

 

[dragoner]

Reading Embers of War by Gareth Powell.

 

[Nellisir]

I finished reading Stephen King's Skeleton Crew. Stories like The Mist and The Raft are just as heavy-hitting and fearsome on paper as the big screen.

Often more so, in my experience.

 

[Nellisir]

I was feeling a little burned out on something, so I've started both Sister Pelagia and the Red Cockerel, by Boris Akunin; and A Medieval Life: Cecilia Penifader of Brigstock, c. 1295-1344, by Judith M. Bennett. I WANT to start running a D&D campaign again, but I keep getting sidetracked (avoidance behavior) and I've been trying to combat a raging desire to do a nice chart of travel/road encounters. That aren't all monsters. Which made me wonder about medieval travel. And medieval lives. And this was lying around. It's a...reconstruction? Extrapolation? Exploration? of Cecelia's life via surviving manorial records (which are actually quite abundant apparently, despite the fact she didn't write) as a "normal" medieval peasant of her time and place. (There's a few paragraphs about how she's not "typical", and peasants are different all over the place so typical is a bad word, but she was pretty much just ordinary for being an unmarried peasant woman who had some property.)

I don't know where I got it; I tend to pick up books about medieval life and toss them on the shelf or pile and pull them out occasionally when I can't sleep. Someone did a bunch of underlining in it.

Oh, I'm also selectively rereading past issues of NOD, from John Stater.

 

[Ralif Redhammer]

Often more so, in my experience.

At its best, his writing just triggers this lizard brain primal fear in the reader. I caught myself holding my breath, heart pounding on multiple occasions while reading Skeleton Crew.

 

[Hriston]

I just read The King of the Golden River by John Ruskin, and I’ve started reading The House of the Wolfings by William Morris.

ETA: I read KotGR because Wikipedia mentions it as predating the works of George MacDonald, considered the beginning of modern fantasy. It's more fairy tale than fantasy in my view. It reminded me a bit of the fairy tales of Oscar Wilde and somewhat of the "Oz" books of L. Frank Baum. I think it also seems to deliberately emulate some of Grimms' Fairy Tales in many respects.

 

[Clint_L]

Reading the second Mickey 7 novel. They’re okay: fast paced sci fi with minimal character development. Fun reads, definitely not thinkers.

 

[Richards]

I'm now reading Shivering World by Kathy Tyers. A woman with a lethal genetic deficiency lands on a planet being terraformed, where there are rumored to be illegal genegeneers who might be able to cure her. But her mother is a high-up official in the organization designed to hunt down illegal genegeneers, so of course they don't trust her. There was also a stowaway on board the spacecraft she took to the planet Goddard, a rich kid with deformities of his own, fleeing from his family who wants to have him plastic surgeoned into a respectable appearance, and he's afraid of the procedures. I'm sure these plotlines will merge together before too long. In any case, so far it's been an interesting read.

Johnathan

 

[Ralif Redhammer]

I finished reading CAS' Xiccarph. Great stuff, as always, though more of a hodgepodge than previous Ballantine Adult Fantasy volumes of his. The Vaults of Yoh-Vombis still sends chills down my spine. It feels very much like a precursor to Alien. Finishing it also makes me really wish the line had gotten to the proposed Averoigne collection.

Now I'm reading Jack Williamson's Darker Than You Think.