What are you reading in 2024?

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

In addition to reading Thief of Time and Locke Llamora, I'm also working my way through Knock #4. While occasionally the theory stuff crawls up its own butt a bit -- but less so than happens on the forums here at times -- it's overall a pretty wonderful and largely systemless magazine.

The pre-LotR Hobbit as its own setting article makes me want to start a new campaign at a time when I don't need that in my life.

 

[Autumnal]

I find the appeal of LitRPG to be a real puzzle, myself. Glad for folks who like it, but it baffles me.

Me too. I’ve tried four times with highly rated and recommended books. None entertained me.

For a couple of years, Booktube luminary Criminolly has hosted an event called Garbaugust, including the reading of some trashy books in August. This year he added a mini-event, Wasted Weekend, halfway through the year.


I am reading a Space 1999 novel inexplicably acquired along the way. It is sometimes delightful and good Starforged fodder. (It’s Earthfall, by E.C. Tubb, and he reworks the premise a bit to make it slightly less ludicrous. He makes up for it by bringing ‘50s-‘70s social science to bear on crew dynamics.) it is suitably trashy. Back to regular reading when it’s done, which won’t take long.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

A Space: 1999 novel must be completely baffling to younger generations.

 

[Autumnal]

Heck, it’s nearly baffling to me, and I’m 58.

 

[dragoner]

I have read a bunch, also other stuff by Tubb. Tubb was a mainstay of the circular rack by the checkout, I read an interview where he said some he wrote in a week. That sort of adventure fiction, is probably still around, just not in print.

 

[Autumnal]

Yeah, a lot of it has moved to Kindle, which doesn’t have to put up with distributors’ ideas about how to use their shelf space.

 

[dragoner]

Like harlequin romances, except now with vampires!

 

[overgeeked]

I have read a bunch, also other stuff by Tubb. Tubb was a mainstay of the circular rack by the checkout, I read an interview where he said some he wrote in a week. That sort of adventure fiction, is probably still around, just not in print.

Yeah, a lot of it has moved to Kindle, which doesn’t have to put up with distributors’ ideas about how to use their shelf space.

Yep. Anywhere people can self-publish ebooks, you’ll find stuff that harkens back to the the fiction of yesteryear.

 

[Mad_Jack]

So far I've read Steven Erickson's WIllful Child (yes, an over-the-top Star Trek parody from the guy that wrote the Malazan Books of the Fallen series, lol)...

And I'm mostly done with The Midnight Ride by Ben Mezrich, in which the true-crime author turns to fiction - Boston gets its own DaVinci Code/National Treasure treatment as a paroled thief, a card-counting girl from MIT and an arrogant history professor race against both the FBI and a shadowy secret society to discover how the famous 1990 Gardner Museum Heist is linked to Paul Revere and the American Revolution.

Both of them have been quick enjoyable light reads, and worth checking out if you need a time-killer to read during lunch or waiting for an appointment, etc.

 

[Wofano Wotanto]

(It’s Earthfall, by E.C. Tubb, and he reworks the premise a bit to make it slightly less ludicrous. He makes up for it by bringing ‘50s-‘70s social science to bear on crew dynamics.)

If wiki's to be believed that one got revised in 2002 (something he did with a number of his novels - revisions for more modern audiences). Did you get that one or the 1977 version? Wonder what the differences were.

Me, I'm mostly grinding through the online Astounding archive this year. Up into to 1941 now, ran into the two Bullard of the Space Patrol short stories that never got collected, which was a nice prize. They aren't as quite as good as the rest of the series (which is a nostalgic childhood memory for me) so I guess I can see why they were left out - particularly Devil's Powder, which is about drug-smuggling. The original Bullard collection was put together by some youth organization that thought the stories were uplifting moral fare for our nation's children, IIRC, so mentioning even fictional drugs was a no-no. Honestly vaguely surprising Brimstone Bill made it in now that I think about it. Using a con artist with a hell-and-damnation routine to keep Bullard's crew from getting picked clean by the local dives and rigged gambling joints and sex workers while on leave seems like it should have set off some alarm bells too.