What are you reading in 2024?

[JEB]

Finished a light read, Bumblebee & Me: Life as a G1 Transformer by Dan Gilvezan (the original voice of Bumblebee). Short, and admittedly padded on top of that (there's an appendix for a Transformers episode guide), but there are some fun anecdotes about Gilvezan's time working on the original cartoon. Probably won't do much for folks who aren't fans of the original Transformers, but pretty neat if you are.

 

[Ralif Redhammer]

It's very skippable, honestly. Llana will leave a much better taste in your mouth if you want to remember the series fondly.

That's what I'm getting from the discourse. As far as ERB goes, I'll probably get back to Pellucidar or start Amtor next.

Just like reading that last Tarzan book was for me - or the last Wolfe, the final Dumarest of Terra, or...well, lots of things, really. Gets more common as we get older and start outliving our authors, too. The fact that I've read my last new David Drake story is still pretty jarring.

I am very, very slowly working through Discworld, putting off the time when I have no more Discworld to read for the first time.

 

[Zaukrie]

I finished Babel: Or the Necessity of Violence: An Arcane History of the Oxford Translators' Revolution this afternoon. I found the prose charming and couldn't put it down. Robin Swift is a clever echo of the Dickensian orphan heroes, dialed up to eleven. He's clever and likable while being monstrously selfish and self-righteous. Unlike Pip or David Copperfield, I'm not entirely sure that he's grown by the end of the novel, and his certainty in the correctness of his actions at the end is unpleasant.

But I also found it to be enormously frustrating. Kuang's treatment of her conclusions is kind of facile, and I had a sense that she was kind of begging the question a bit. I agree with her premises, but found the conclusions jarring. She mirrors the isolation of the Babblers in her presentation of the setting to the audience (we're as removed from the outside world as they are), which is clever structurally but undermines the climax of the novel and some of the conclusions the characters come to. I'm assuming that this is in part because she's concerned with being too didactic or polemical or engaging in misery porn, but the book ends up feeling didactic and polemical because it mostly ends up just telling the audience that things are fubar. I don't think that's wrong, but it didn't work for me. My other quibble was that, for a novel set in 1830s England, there was a weird sense of modernity to the prose. One character refers to a "narco-military state" and another carries a "messenger bag," which both felt like very contemporary phrases.

Finally, I also felt like it was derivative — we've seen these sorts of stories before recently (there are echoes of Harry Potter, The Magicians, and Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell) and cynical — the violence of the conclusion is presented as inevitable. Which may be true, but is also very depressing. So many modern books and films suggest that there's no problem too large to be solved with sufficient explosives.

I struggled with the last forty or fifty pages. It felt rushed after so much slow story telling. Among other issues

 

[Wofano Wotanto]

I am very, very slowly working through Discworld, putting off the time when I have no more Discworld to read for the first time.

At least you've got a lot to work with there. Averaging one every couple of years ought to keep you going for a lifetime or so.

I'm contrarian enough to wish I'd saved Pratchett's early scifi for last, in part because I regard Strata and Dark Side of the Sun as some of his very best work and there was never going to be more like them even if he was still with us. Not as polished as his later stuff, but still gems.

Then again, I feel similarly about George RR Martin, whose largely forgotten scifi appeals to me far more than GoT ever did or will.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

I'm reading the Last Hero for the very first time, which is the only Discword story by Sir Terry that I know of that I've never read before. (Are there any Discworld short stories in the posthumous compilations?)

And it was clearly written before Alzheimer's started doing its dirty work to him, so it's a real treat. It's a lightweight book, but it's great to get something new to me from him. (Also, Discworld goes to space! Neat!)

 

[overgeeked]

I’m not a completionist, so there’s generally no drive to finish all the books in a series. I’ve read a few Tarzan books and Barsoom books, and I like the worlds, characters, and writing, but I have no real drive to read them all. Series I want to read all of are things like The Shadow and Doc Savage. Which is odd to me because they’re all pulp action-adventure stories.

I do want to finish Mushoku Tensei, but I’m running into resistance. I’m enjoying the later books far less than the earlier ones. This is mostly down to feeling like it’s filler.

 

[WayneLigon]

You ever read Glen Cook's Tower of Fear? The subject matter, tone and general situation are fairly similar, and as one of his rare standalone novels it's an interestingly concise story when compared to the Black Company or Dread Empire series. The epilog of the book is one of the most brutal "Ozymandius moments" I've ever read, but getting to that point is an enjoyably grim and twisty journey. Probably deserves to be better known, but with Cook (as with George RR Martin) the series tend to overwhelm the solo novels and short stories.

Interesting. Never heard of it before. I'll have to check it out when I can get it cheaper.

 

[Wofano Wotanto]

Series I want to read all of are things like The Shadow and Doc Savage. Which is odd to me because they’re all pulp action-adventure stories.

That's a project for sure. There's a lot out there for both of them, but at least you don't need to read them in any particular order to enjoy them. With some exceptions a lot of pulp "series" are more collections of stories about the same lead character(s) than what most modern series are, with little continuity between them to worry about.

 

[overgeeked]

That's a project for sure. There's a lot out there for both of them, but at least you don't need to read them in any particular order to enjoy them. With some exceptions a lot of pulp "series" are more collections of stories about the same lead character(s) than what most modern series are, with little continuity between them to worry about.

Yeah. Though there is a fair amount of character development at least through the early hero pulps as the writers establish the characters and get into their groove. Definitely episodic more than serial fiction. There are what...336 Shadow pulps and 206-9 Doc Savage pulps. To say nothing of The Spider, The Avenger, The Whisperer, Secret Agent X, Captain Future...on and on and on. That's several lifetimes worth of reading right there. At least for someone as slow as I am at reading.

 

[Wofano Wotanto]

That's several lifetimes worth of reading right there.

True that. At least the authors are deceased at this point. Just trying to keep up with one of the more prolific pulp writers would be a serious strain.

"What are you doing this afternoon?"
"Writing a novel."
"Oh. Well, what about tomorrow?"
"Writing another novel."