What are you reading in 2024?

[Eyes of Nine]

Read Jupiter Jones vol 1 Secret of Terror Castle. Breezed through it. Fun stuff. No sexism or racism. Also no non-white, hetero, male characters except Jupiter's aunt and a classmate who also happens to be an intern at Alfred Hitchcock's office.

It was fun like I remembered it to be - I especially loved the clubhouse in the junkyard. Definitely a gameable premise also - I wonder how easy this would be to run in Kids on Bikes...

 

[prabe]

Read Jupiter Jones vol 1 Secret of Terror Castle. Breezed through it. Fun stuff. No sexism or racism. Also no non-white, hetero, male characters except Jupiter's aunt and a classmate who also happens to be an intern at Alfred Hitchcock's office.

It was fun like I remembered it to be - I especially loved the clubhouse in the junkyard. Definitely a gameable premise also - I wonder how easy this would be to run in Kids on Bikes...

It does seem plausible as a gaming premise. Obviously, you might want a somewhat more diverse character list, but you could spin it off as connected to people on the Ghost-to-Ghost Hookup.

Spoiler: Also, that's the book I was reminded of

That's the book with the infrasonic (ultra-low-freq) stuff that makes people scared to the point of panicking, right? In the SFnal book I read, someone built one of those to resonate an entire space liner, with extraordinarily bad results.

 

[overgeeked]

Another Mushoku Tensei down. As much as I love the setting and characters, and most of the story, the writing style is starting to grate. I’m skimming more and more. The POV is deep first person. We’re in the main character’s head the majority of the time, though occasionally there will be chapters from other POVs. For some reason the main character, Rudy, has started taking long walks through the story thus far and diving even deeper into reflecting on things…while in the middle of a conversation or an action scene. He’ll just retreat into his own thoughts for a few pages at a time while talking to someone about life changing events or while literally fighting for his life. I don’t mind that kind of reflection in quieter moments, but it’s incredibly jarring when it happens all the time.

 

[Old Fezziwig]

My Kindle died right as I was starting The Longest Minute, so I picked up a physical book that I had started but not finished, The Moral Basis of a Backward Society by Edward C. Banfield. (This is the riveting non-fiction that lives in my nightstand.) It's about the pseudonymous town of Montegrano in Basilicata in southern Italy and how the townspeople engage with each other and their motivations for doing the things they do, which all comes down to a system that Banfield calls amoral familism, which loosely boils down to looking out for number one, where number one is the nuclear family. It was interesting, but kind of a depressing read. Entirely too familiar in too many ways.

 

[Autumnal]

The Early Middle Ages by Philip Dalleader, a Great Courses lecture series. Pretty good. Lots of good information, and some comparisons well worth thinking about. But the prof’s humor isn’t as funny to me as it was to him, and he had some odd mannerisms that made it sound like he was periodically gasping for breath or sighing. Worth my while, especially for the syllabus PDF thst comes with most Great Courses entries in Audible, but I’m unlikely to seek this guy out for more.

Howls from the Dark Ages, edited by P.L. McMillan and Solomon Forse. Also pretty good. As the title suggests, this is a collection of horror stories set in medieval times. Nearly all are set in Europe, though one takes place somewhere in Mesoamerica and another in China. Mostly the demons or something like them, though not all. The stories range from distinctly original to well-crafted uses of familiar elements to reasonably satisfying. None are less than satisfactory and several all excellent. I don’t generally do any ranking, but this is a great example of what I’d give a B+ to if I did the kind of thing. Good reading if you’re interested in the subject, no new entries in my pantheon of favorites.

All the Fiends of Hell by Adam Nevill. Now this is a new entry in my pantheon of favorites. I’ve been a Nevill fan since The Ritual, and this is (I think) his best yet. It starts with a night of red light and ringing bells, and everyone on Earth who can called outside and sucked up into the sky. The only people who survive are those who couldn’t response: the disabled, those unconscious or too ill to understand what happened, people in jail, and so on. Things get worse for them.

The protagonist is a very ordinary forty-something guy who hose life has been contracting in failure for a long time. Severe flu had him clobbered on the red night, and remains a problem whenever he tries to exert himself heavily. Soon he encounters two children who survived the same way, and whose parents were taken. He tries to do the right thing by them, but it’s hard.

I got genuinely scared several times while reading this, and I seldom get that from horror stories these days. I also got marvelous feelings of sadness, as if Nevill were saying, “I’m sorry to have to tell you this, but here’s what happened…” Thsts one of things I most read for horror for, and am always glad to encounter it.

The whole thing was just immensely satisfying. Best horror I’ve read this year, one of the best in several years.

Oh, and if you’re one of those rare souls who read Nevill’s volume of stories without characters, Wyrd and Other Derelictions, then: yes. This novel does build on imagery in “Hold the World In My Arms for Three Days and All Will Be Changed”.

 

[Alzrius]

Having needed to give my brain a break after having read so much classical non-fiction, I recently polished off Ben Thompson's Badass: The Birth of a Legend.

This is the second book of the "Badass trilogy," which are themselves book compilations of entries from Thompson's website, www.badassoftheweek.com. While the first book (simply titled Badass) was about people who actually existed, Badass: The Birth of a Legend goes in the opposite direction, focusing on individuals whose existence ranges from "they were most likely mythical," such as Diomedes, to "if you think this person was real, seek professional help," such as Skeletor. All written in Thompson's characteristic hyperbole, which is where the real fun of each entry comes from.

And while most of these entries are for individuals whom I already knew about, there were several that I'd never heard of before. For instance, I wasn't aware of Princess Skuld, an actual half-drow necromancer from a centuries-old Norse saga. Likewise, I hadn't known about the purported all-female Russian-hating mercenary sniper squadron known as the White Tights, but I'm so glad I do now!

Fortunately for me, I bought all three Badass books as a set, so the next time I need to kick back and relax, I'll be ready to check out Badass: Ultimate Deathmatch.

 

[Nellisir]

Since I've been tripping over CJ Cherryh's works recently, I decided I'd go and reread some of it, so I grabbed the Chanur series when I was at the apartment and read Pride of Chanur.
Takeaways:

• Still like it a lot. Best representation of alien species in fiction out there, imo.
• Development of non-hani species mostly comes in other books. I'm still of the opinion that mahendo'sat are chimps, stsho are gazelles, hani are (obviously) lions, and kif are crocodiles. Knnn, tc'a, and chi don't map, which is fine.
• Stsho don't get a lot of interaction in this, but are described as having a predatory gaze at one point so maybe more like a crane or something. Non-confrontational ambush hunters.
• Realscience ftw
• Jumping can both increase & decrease speed but not at the same time
• I allowed more time to reread troublesome passages, like wtf was going on in combat, and my head hurts less as a result.
• It'd make an awesome movie, assuming you cast Matt Damon, aka The Guy That Needs Rescuing, as Tully.
• Knnn, man. What can you say except whalesong via piccolos and yodelling and theremin and teakettle and angry cat?

 

[Ralif Redhammer]

Since I've been tripping over CJ Cherryh's works recently, I decided I'd go and reread some of it, so I grabbed the Chanur series when I was at the apartment and read Pride of Chanur.
Takeaways:

• Still like it a lot. Best representation of alien species in fiction out there, imo.
• Development of non-hani species mostly comes in other books. I'm still of the opinion that mahendo'sat are chimps, stsho are gazelles, hani are (obviously) lions, and kif are crocodiles. Knnn, tc'a, and chi don't map, which is fine.
• Stsho don't get a lot of interaction in this, but are described as having a predatory gaze at one point so maybe more like a crane or something. Non-confrontational ambush hunters.
• Realscience ftw
• Jumping can both increase & decrease speed but not at the same time
• I allowed more time to reread troublesome passages, like wtf was going on in combat, and my head hurts less as a result.
• It'd make an awesome movie, assuming you cast Matt Damon, aka The Guy That Needs Rescuing, as Tully.
• Knnn, man. What can you say except whalesong via piccolos and yodelling and theremin and teakettle and angry cat?

My exposure to CJ Cherryh is mostly through her contributions to Thieves World. Which certainly are quality. In general, I think one of the qualities of Thieves World that gets overlooked is that it contains a high percentage of women-written Sword and Sorcery.

 

[Zaukrie]

going on a trip. Going to read Druid's Call and if I finish that, The Witch King by Wells.

Finished Druid's Call. Kind of fun, not great, but I liked it. Didn't start Witch King, as my phone died and I watched Aquamann two and I regret that decision greatly.

 

[Nellisir]

My exposure to CJ Cherryh is mostly through her contributions to Thieves World. Which certainly are quality. In general, I think one of the qualities of Thieves World that gets overlooked is that it contains a high percentage of women-written Sword and Sorcery.

One of the hallmarks of her sf is that alien species have alien impulses, emotions, or drives that never quite map onto human ones. We see the Chanur novels through the eyes of the hani, so they map very closely, but the kif (explored in later books) have no comprehension of affection, love, or friendship. They have other ways of relating status that have more to do with power and ability, and are instinctual to them, so navigating kif society and politics is fraught. The knnn, tc'a, and chi are methane-breathers - the knnn are extremely advanced but can't speak to the oxy-breathers and can barely speak to the tc'a, who in turn can barely speak to the oxy-breathers - so usually knnn just do whatever and you've got to adjust. No one knows what the deal with the chi are; they hang with the tc'a is about all that's known.

I'd recommend her stuff without question. I like her early fantasy and most of her sf, though the Foreigner series is like, insanely long (like 8 trilogies?). Also, be prepared, she doesn't like to let her protagonists sleep for some reason.