What are you reading in 2024?

[Richards]

Finally finished You Don't Want to Know (it was okay, if overly long), and finally get to start Jeffery Deaver's Hunting Time, the latest Colton Shaw thriller - this is the guy who makes a living on rewards for finding missing persons.

Johnathan

 

[overgeeked]

Finished another Mushoku Tensei (14) and on to the next one (15). As much of a sex pest as Rudy was at the start of the series, he’s really matured and I’ve gotta say this is becoming one of my favorite casts of characters, worlds, and series. I’m more than halfway through and I really don’t want the ride to end. Might have to start looking at the spinoffs to see what to read next by the author. I really hope there’s an encyclopedia or something on the world and magic system. Would love to play in that sandbox.

 

[Old Fezziwig]

I completed A Burglar's Guide to the City by Geoff Manaugh last night. It's a fun read and brisk, but it's kind of one note in terms of its main point about burglars and architecture. And Manaugh's point of view is kind of complicated — he seems to admire burglars' ingenuity and the creative ways they move through architectural space, but he often seems to forget that they're burglars. He addresses this a little bit in the last chapter, but it's kind of too little, too late.

I've started William White's Tabletop RPG Design in Theory and Practice at the Forge, 2001–2012: Designs and Discussions, and it's good so far, but we'll see how much I can get through before I lose access (it's a rental, and I've got until 5 April to finish it).

 

[Eyes of Nine]

Local online bookseller passed away recently. Family selling off collection. Got the below haul for $5 total. I know recently else-when I was bagging on old White guy fiction like Edgar Rice Burroughs. But come on, 10 of the 11 volumes of Barsoom, all with the same trade dress and those covers by Gino D'Achille? I had to! The rest fill out my growing collection of Nebula/Hugo/World Fantasy award nominees/winners; as well as a couple sweet poetry books.

 

[Wofano Wotanto]

That was the Barsoom run I more or less started reading on way back in the day (supplemented by the rest of my grandfather's hand-me-down ERB stuff, Doc Smith's Lensman and Skylark, and the first Tom Swift Jr. series). Gino's cover art will forever define the setting's "look" for me.

If you don't have a copy already, grabbing a copy of the 1976 printing of A Guide To Barsoom rounds things out to an even dozen quite nicely. I had to buy that one myself, too new for gramps.

 

[Hriston]

Back in January, I finished reading The House of the Wolfings (1889) by William Morris. It was a somewhat arduous read because I had to take my time with the passages in verse to get as much value out of them as I could, but it was rewarding for the emotional impact of the book. Notable for D&D and fantasy fans is the extensive use of the term fighting-men as well as the use of Mirkwood as the name of the forest surrounding "the Mark", the homeland of an idealized Gothic people.

 

[overgeeked]

Finished another pair of Mushoku Tensei novels, 15 and 16. Now it’s on to 17. Things have gotten seriously weird in the last few novels. I didn’t think it was possible to like the series more, but I do. What a wild ride. I hope the author can stick the landing. I wish there were more. Going to need to find another series to obsess over soon.

 

[Ralif Redhammer]

I finished reading Lumley's The Clock of Dreams. I enjoyed it much more than The Transition of Titus Crow, being set in the Dreamlands, and having much more of a sense of urgency, threat, and action. It feels quite a bit like a Call of Cthulhu campaign.

Now I'm re-reading Fritz Leiber's Swords and Deviltry. It's been too long.

Back in January, I finished reading The House of the Wolfings (1889) by William Morris. It was a somewhat arduous read because I had to take my time with the passages in verse to get as much value out of them as I could, but it was rewarding for the emotional impact of the book. Notable for D&D and fantasy fans is the extensive use of the term fighting-men as well as the use of Mirkwood as the name of the forest surrounding "the Mark", the homeland of an idealized Gothic people.

I've struggled with William Morris' writing. But his influence is undeniable.

 

[Autumnal]

Bloom, by Wil McCarthy, a 1999 novel of life in the outer solar system after a nanotech catastrophe wipes out everyone closer to the sun than the asteroids are. It and Permutation City are about the only stories I can think of with emulated brains that run much slower than human brains, and remains are darned good read.

Rogue Protocol, the third of Martha Wells’ Murderbot novellas. As before, warm and frequently funny, especially in audio. The reader’s choice of voice for general-purpose robot Miki had me in tears of laughter at various points. There is a heartbreaking loss in the final chapter, and I’ll have to see what comes next.

 

[prabe]

After being away from books for nearly two weeks (and a day to recover some) I have my last three books: Since We Fell by Dennis Lehane, a crime novel with the instigating event about halfway through it, with an air of grifter romance that reminded me of "Until Gwen" (the first of Lehane's novels that I've read to do so); The Weight by Andrew Vachss, a somewhat grittier crime novel, about a darker criminal world, but still some romance and at least the hint of an upbeat ending; Rivers of Gold by Adam Dunn, a noirish crime novel set in what was the near future and is now a recent past that never came to be, in some ways darker than the other two novels, at least in the sense that the problems in the novel are well beyond the protagonists' ability to address.