What are you reading in 2023?

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

Started Becky Chambers' The Galaxy and the Ground Within. She's really growing as a writer and has an impressive ability to write from perspectives that are alien enough to make you think, but human enough to let you empathize. Kind of like Adrian Tchaikovsky, but lighter?

Both Chambers' Wayfarers books and her other stuff are so, so good. She's a major talent and a must-buy for me at this point.

 

[Parmandur]

Listening to Andy Serkis fresh recording of the Silmarillion now. Great voice, great text.

 

[ichabod]

Both Chambers' Wayfarers books and her other stuff are so, so good. She's a major talent and a must-buy for me at this point.

I've got one of her books sitting in my to-read stack. I will prioritize it after finishing up my reread of Martha Well's stuff (just finishing up the Serpent Sea now).

 

[Clint_L]

I love the Murderbot books but haven't read any of Martha Wells's fantasy stuff. Is it good? I find a lot of fantasy kind of predictable.

 

[ichabod]

I love the Murderbot books but haven't read any of Martha Wells's fantasy stuff. Is it good?

I love it. I love all of her stuff. She's great at world building and characters. I got into her through The Death of the Necromancer, which is magic in a Victorian age in another world, clearly riffing off of Sherlock Holmes but from Moriarty's side (it's one of my favorite fantasy books of all time). It's part of a multi-generational series starting with Element of Fire (magic and musketeers) and ending with the Wizard Hunters trilogy (magic and World War I). Her Raksura series has shapeshifters as protagonists. I like Murderbot more than the Raksura protagonist Moon, but I like the Raksura series better than the Murderbot series. I also like her earlier books, City of Bones (Arabian post-apocalyptic anthropologists) and the Wheel of Time (Inspired by Angkor Wat, perhaps the least good of her fantasy work).

 

[Reynard]

I just finished "Livewired" by David Eagleman, my favorite neuroscientist. "Incognito" legit changed my life and "Livewired" has again shifted my perspective about the universe of meat inside our skulls.

 

[Ralif Redhammer]

Finished reading Jack Vance's autobiography. Wild to think that his last few books were written as his sight was failing. And it's easy to see the parallels between his time as a merchant seaman and Cugel's own voyages.

I also read Edgar Rice Burroughs' The Synthetic Men of Mars. For coming so late in the series, it's really good. I'm totally going to steal the out-of-control expanding vat thing for one of my games sometime.

Now I'm reading Frank Belknap Long's The Hounds of Tindalos.

 

[Eyes of Nine]

and the Wheel of Time (Inspired by Angkor Wat, perhaps the least good of her fantasy work).

Wait, it's really called the Wheel of Time? I wonder if Bob Jordan's estate is aware...

 

[Eyes of Nine]

Finished reading Jack Vance's autobiography. Wild to think that his last few books were written as his sight was failing. And it's easy to see the parallels between his time as a merchant seaman and Cugel's own voyages.

I also read Edgar Rice Burroughs' The Synthetic Men of Mars. For coming so late in the series, it's really good. I'm totally going to steal the out-of-control expanding vat thing for one of my games sometime.

Now I'm reading Frank Belknap Long's The Hounds of Tindalos.

I'm not so much a fan of dying earth fiction (although for whatever reason I read ALL of Viriconium ); but a Vance autobiography sounds intriguing. Is it This is Me, Jack Vance!?

 

[ichabod]

Wait, it's really called the Wheel of Time? I wonder if Bob Jordan's estate is aware...

No, I'm sorry. It Wheel of the Infinite.