What are you reading in 2024?

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

Gritting my teeth and getting through the rest of the obsequious (and often inaccurate) Lore & Legends. Balancing it out with the much more enjoyable Red Seas Under Red Skies.

Also recently read Bill Watterson's The Mysteries, which I really enjoyed, but I know it would be a shock if I thought of Watterson as a comic strip artist who also does fine art, rather than as a fine artist who happened to get rich doing a cartoon. The art is lovely and the ideas are interesting, if intentionally ambiguous and challenging.

 

[Wofano Wotanto]

And I’m somewhere in between. While I agree with you re: modern sci-fi. I’d place pulp sci-fi a notch below my favorite era of sci-fi, the New Wave. I absolutely love the bug-eyed monsters, brass-bra babes, and square-jawed heroes of the pulps, and the comics they spawned, but nothing beats the absolute mindf#%@ that is New Wave. That stuff is my jam.

I'd rate the best New Wave very highly myself, it's a good era overall. Zelazny and Moorcock remain two of my favorite authors.

Truly old-school pulp is something I like a lot better now that I've read more of it, and from people other than big-name well-remembered authors, but it isn't my favorite era as whole by any means. It's just climbed my preference ladder more than I ever expected it to, and I can readily understand why many people wouldn't enjoy most of it. A lot of the stereotypes about the common writing styles of Golden Age scifi are accurate, and some folks will understandably find them to be a deal-killer. Me, I cut my teeth on hand-me-down Barsoom and Lensmen among other things, so I've been building up a tolerance for a long time now.

 

[Cadence]

Finished the second Wimsey book by Dorthy Sayers and started the third. Archie's narration in Nero Wolfe just pulls me along for the most part and they give a feeling of comfort. Ngaio Marsh's ability to write the first parts where it is characters we've never seen before is really good. The first few Sayers ones just don't have any oomph yet. I think I might google around and see what people recommend as the best one or two of hers before giving up and moving on to Christie or Allingham (neither of which I've read anything of yet).

In the mean time I'm reading the collected articles and stories in "The Archie Goodwin Files" that collects materials from the Wolfe Pack Gazette.

 

[prabe]

Last three books: The Kaiju Preservation Society by John Scalzi (yes, really--I read it before the discussion here about it), Scalzi beng Scalzi, a breezy quippy read about how humans will screw up alternate worlds if they find out about them; Unruly by David Mitchell, a flippant piss-take on the early-ish English monarchs; Mercury Pictures Presents by Anthony Morra, a Serious Novel that you can tell is a Serious Novel because it has a lot of arcs in which not much happens, readable but not great, more ambitious than good.

And now I go away for ten days, more or less without Internet. This is by choice, it's going to be pretty and fun, and I get to come back to the Dennis Lehane novel I was too tired to read last night.

 

[prabe]

Finished the second Wimsey book by Dorthy Sayers and started the third. Archie's narration in Nero Wolfe just pulls me along for the most part and they give a feeling of comfort. Ngaio Marsh's ability to write the first parts where it is characters we've never seen before is really good. The first few Sayers ones just don't have any oomph yet. I think I might google around and see what people recommend as the best one or two of hers before giving up and moving on to Christie or Allingham (neither of which I've read anything of yet).

In the mean time I'm reading the collected articles and stories in "The Archie Goodwin Files" that collects materials from the Wolfe Pack Gazette.

My wife is a big fan of the Nero Wolfe books, and she is, I think, working her way through the Wimsey novels (I think I understand her to have enjoyed the ones she's read more than you, which could be simple human variation). I suppose I'll have to read some of her Wolfe at some point, if I keep reading crime novels.

 

[Cadence]

My wife is a big fan of the Nero Wolfe books, and she is, I think, working her way through the Wimsey novels (I think I understand her to have enjoyed the ones she's read more than you, which could be simple human variation). I suppose I'll have to read some of her Wolfe at some point, if I keep reading crime novels.

It looks like she has a few that make the top 100 lists, so I will at least be sure to try some of those. And a few people recommend that reading them in order helps a bit. I know that is true of some of my favorite Wolfe ones - if you just read them by themselves you would miss a lot of what makes them stand out in the series in terms of the characters' lives.

If I had given up on some others early (like Tey), I never would have found some of my all time favorites (and not the one of hers that is often most highly rated).

 

[Wofano Wotanto]

I think I might google around and see what people recommend as the best one or two of hers

FWIW, I found her short stories generally superior to any of the novels, albeit not by a huge margin. There were several compilations, including one from the 1970s that included all the Lord Peter shorts.

Of the novels "Strong Poison" and "Have His Carcase" are arguably the best ones featuring Harriet Vane (I found the later "Gaudy Night" a dreadful slog), "Nine Tailors" is widely regarded seen as her best work (I slightly preferred "Carcase" but I like the way Harriet's written in it), and "Murder Must Advertise" is interesting because it draws on Sayers' experience working in commercial advertising, which makes it feel a little more real than usual.

Even at her best, Sayers is an author decidedly lacking in "oomph" IMO.

 

[Eyes of Nine]

moving on to Christie or Allingham (neither of which I've read anything of yet).

Recommend Christie vs Allingham. I read one Allingham (perhaps the first?) and I found the Albert Campion character to be a bit too silly. Have another on my shelf, but pretty far down

 

[Wofano Wotanto]

Recommend Christie vs Allingham. I read one Allingham (perhaps the first?) and I found the Albert Campion character to be a bit too silly. Have another on my shelf, but pretty far down

Seconded. I'd recommend sampling a few short stories featuring each of series characters before deciding what novel(s) to dig into. You can get a good idea of what Poirot or Marple or Tommy & Tuppence or Harley Quin (no relation to the Joker's former psychiatrist) are like and faster as well.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

The Tommy and Tuppence books by Christie are great. Fantastic time capsules of each period they appear in -- they start off as flapper detectives! -- and it's interesting to watch them age together through the decades. Underrated Agatha Christie franchise.