What are you reading in 2023?

[Eyes of Nine]

I'll wait for your review, but based on the reviews, it seems like it's shallow in parts and deep in others.

Finished it, 10/10 would recommend.

Her thesis:

The trajectory of the internet has made it so it is nearly impossible to separate the work from the biography - you just can know so much about a creator. At the end of the day, our patriarchal structures of society reward men who abandon their families and social norms as long as they are "geniuses"; capitalism is what makes it each consumer's responsibility to buy or not buy a given creator's work - when in fact it's the system that's at fault (just like climate change and recycling/buying electric car/etc etc etc). Because we know so much about each creator, and each creator is embedded in the patriarchal capitalist framework, it is inevitable that all creative [men] will be discovered to be monsters in some way.

Can we fight the patriarchy and soul-crushing capitalism? Well of course AND WE SHOULD - but performatively not buying Miles/Woody/Roman/Ernest/Pablo's works is not the way to do that. If you love their work - enjoy their work. We all love someone who is flawed - because all of us are human - by definition we are flawed. Why should we expect our creators to be any different?

That's basically her message.
I also loved her memoirist vulnerability and the details of her struggles to balance being a mother and being a creator.

 

[Ryujin]

Sort of, but not really. I've read a bunch of pulps and hero pulps before, including some Doc Savage and The Shadow, and I'm currently working my way through both of those titles from issue #1 to the end...or as far as I get. While it's true that nuance isn't the strong suit of the pulps, especially the hero pulps, my problem here isn't nuance.

My problem is the overly perfect protagonist re: Doc Savage and the...I dunno...Mary Sue fan-fiction quality of the start to this particular issue. Page after page after page of "oh my goodness, Doc Savage is just so perfectly perfect...he's the bestest ever at everything." Blerg.

Take The Shadow as a counter example. In the first four issues he's been shot several times, stabbed, put into death traps, pushes himself while hurt to save others, etc. The author goes out of his way to ratchet up the tension even though we all know the character survives and triumphs. The Shadow is still superhuman but more grounded through failures and getting hurt, etc. Doc Savage seems to be non-stop "I'm so awesome" from the author.

I get where you're coming from. I was more talking about the specific "strong, smart man" sub-genre, than Pulps in general.

Most recently I got my Pulp fix (specifically a sort of Deiselpunk) from novels written by a friend that are based in an alternate history post-WWI world. The number of times that his protagonist is dragging his butt around while having a useless arm and several bullets in him is rather staggering.

(Not to mention that he kills off a character named after me in a most Monty Pythoneque way, in the final book of the series, made me read through the lot.)

 

[Old Fezziwig]

Finally finished Children of Ruin by Adrian Tchaikovsky. It feels a lot like Children of Time in some ways, less in others. Where it gets to, at the end, is satisfying, but it was a bit of a slog to get there, feeling sometimes too familiar and at other times tiresome (the communication style of the octopuses and the parasite were a bit much sometimes, both in terms of style and content). I'm going to take a break before hopping into the third book, I think.

 

[Nellisir]

(re)Read Damnation Alley by Roger Zelazny.

 

[ichabod]

(re)Read Damnation Alley by Roger Zelazny.

I did not realize that movie was based on a book. I will have to check it out.

 

[ichabod]

Finished The Fifth Season. Damn that was brutal. Well written, with good characters and world building, but brutal.

Next up is the Dinosaur Lords by Victor Milan. It was recommended by one of my players, who is really into dinosaurs.

 

[Ralif Redhammer]

I finished Weis and Hickman's Dragons of Fate. Definitely an improvement over the first book. Heck, I found myself even not hating Raistlin as much as I used to!

I also read Walter Jon Williams' Solip:System. Short, fast, and very dark cyberpunk.

Now I'm reading Amparo Ortiz's Blazewrath Games.

 

[Velderan]

I finished Weis and Hickman's Dragons of Fate. Definitely an improvement over the first book. Heck, I found myself even not hating Raistlin as much as I used to!

Good to hear, I'm going to start that this weekend.

Aside from that, picked up a copy of Game Wizards since it's been recommended enough times here.

 

[HaroldTheHobbit]

Found Jack Vance’s Durdane trilogy while idling through some book cases in the attic. I’ve just finished rereading the short books, and remembered why I love Vance style so much. Good stuff!

 

[Ralif Redhammer]

Good to hear, I'm going to start that this weekend.

Enjoy!

Aside from that, picked up a copy of Game Wizards since it's been recommended enough times here.

The Game Wizards is an impressive read. As always, Peterson's research is hard to beat.