What are you reading in 2024?

[Eyes of Nine]

Ok, spent a lot of time at aforementioned book sale over the weekend. These Elephantmen were not on my list, but I've been curious about them for a while. $3 each, and below that the image of volume 1 with creator signatures!

And then a bunch of other books, including a poetry chapbook of Christina Rossetti's Goblin Market and other poems

 

[trappedslider]

I'm not allowed to go into book sells or book stores unaccompanied

 

[Ryujin]

I'm not allowed to go into book sells or book stores unaccompanied

I NEED AN ADULT!!!!

 

[Ralif Redhammer]

Finished Steven Barnes' Streetlethal. Great bit of cyberpunk fiction. Read Tom Muir's Orkney Folk Tales while I was on vacation. Also read a couple short stories by REH and PKD.

Now I'm starting to get into the Halloween season with HPL's The Dream Quest of Unknown Kadath (Ballantine Adult Fantasy edition).

 

[WayneLigon]

The Book That Wouldn't Burn - Mark Lawrence.
I really liked this one; certainly enough to go on to the rest of the trilogy. Not a standalone book by any means.

Livira was named after a tenacious weed, and it fits her. Born out in The Dust, the endless hardpan wasteland/desert that surrounds the distant city of Crath, she has known nothing but the long daily grind of pure survival. When her tiny village is destroyed by rampaging Sabbers, the ferocious wolf-men of the wastes, she winds up in the great city and, eventually, in The Library.

Meanwhile, Evan has lived his entire life in The Library, in a vast book-filled room with no escape. He and his siblings live due to crops grown around a fountain in the rooms center, watched over by the mysterious Soldier and Assistant. non-human constructs that seldom speak.

I do love a mystery-box book and this delivers. As we go on, drips and drabs appear that hint The Library is vaster and older than anyone can imagine. Good pacing also means there is still a lot of mystery to go even pages before the end, and the lead up to the next book.

 

[WayneLigon]

Finished Steven Barnes' Streetlethal. Great bit of cyberpunk fiction.

TIL that this is a series with three books. I read the first (the one with the white-washed cover) back in '83, thought it was cool, and never thought to look further.

 

[prabe]

The Book That Wouldn't Burn - Mark Lawrence.
I really liked this one; certainly enough to go on to the rest of the trilogy. Not a standalone book by any means.

Livira was named after a tenacious weed, and it fits her. Born out in The Dust, the endless hardpan wasteland/desert that surrounds the distant city of Crath, she has known nothing but the long daily grind of pure survival. When her tiny village is destroyed by rampaging Sabbers, the ferocious wolf-men of the wastes, she winds up in the great city and, eventually, in The Library.

Meanwhile, Evan has lived his entire life in The Library, in a vast book-filled room with no escape. He and his siblings live due to crops grown around a fountain in the rooms center, watched over by the mysterious Soldier and Assistant. non-human constructs that seldom speak.

I do love a mystery-box book and this delivers. As we go on, drips and drabs appear that hint The Library is vaster and older than anyone can imagine. Good pacing also means there is still a lot of mystery to go even pages before the end, and the lead up to the next book.

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Best I can tell, it has nothing in common with the book you read, but when I checked this book out of the library--after passing up The Book that Wouldn't Burn because the whole trilogy wasn't available--my wife had a moment of confusion when I checked this out:

It's a really good novel, though, one of the really good ones I've read this year.

 

[Ralif Redhammer]

TIL that this is a series with three books. I read the first (the one with the white-washed cover) back in '83, thought it was cool, and never thought to look further.

I discovered it pretty recently, when I was looking at Cyberpunk 2020's list of inspiring fiction. That white-washed cover is so bad; I got the book on Kindle specifically because it didn't have that cover.

 

[Eyes of Nine]

Final photo from the book sale, which ended Sunday.

The one that got away was a book I saw early on Sunday - the Silverlock sequel, The Moon's Silver Eating Daughter by John Myers Myers that I said - "I can wait" - but it was gone at the end.

Volunteers at the sale get to take home whatever books they want at the end. You can imagine, after 10 days of voracious book shoppers that there isn't much left of value. But I still found a few treasures.

I grabbed the Chalker and Foster books. I have a soft spot in my heart for the Humanx books (still own the GURPS supplement!), so thought I'd grab whatever of those were left. And I never read Flinx Transcendent. I don't think I have read any of the Flinx books published since 2000.

And then I've been thinking of doing some sort of Well World type setting. My dungeon-23 world was somewhat inspired by Well World. Chalker's stories are only so-so, but his world building in Well World was great.

Maybe by next year I will have read some of these

 

[overgeeked]

Just finished Konosuba Vol 1. The light novel comedy was a nice change of pace but it quickly soured as the isekai MC Kazuma continued to treat the other members of his party like trash. Felt very much like the author just threw in whatever he thought would be funny in the moment. There's a lot of comedic potential in Kazuma's companions. The LN has been developed a lot (manga, anime, video games, live action movie, etc), so there's clearly something there. I liked some of the beats or moments in the story, but I'm not sure this one's for me. That's mostly down the the MC being a jerk.

Anyone else read this series before? Does the MC calm down about being a nasty jerk?