What are you reading in 2024?

[Old Fezziwig]

Is my memory correct that those Dispatcher stories are only available as ebooks? I'm pretty sure I haven't seen them on the library shelves, at least.

I think they were audio books first, so they might be available as audio books at the library. Zachary Quinto was the reader, IIRC.

 

[Clint_L]

I finished Holly by Stephen King this evening. At this point, King is King. This is minor King, but it's enjoyable. There are places where his ear for dialogue lets him down particularly badly, but there are also parts of the book that I would have been happy to linger in indefinitely (the Olivia Kingsbury chapters are joyful). I also had a sense that he was playing with an idea more than he usually does — or perhaps was more successful from a craft standpoint than he usually is? Anyhow, I was a bit bummed when the book ended. I would've been happy to spend more time with Holly.

I've enjoyed that character, but have yet to read that one. I'll add it to the list on your recommendation. If I don't like it, it's your fault!

 

[Autumnal]

Is my memory correct that those Dispatcher stories are only available as ebooks? I'm pretty sure I haven't seen them on the library shelves, at least.

I think they were audio books first, so they might be available as audio books at the library. Zachary Quinto was the reader, IIRC.

Old Fezziwig is right all around.

 

[Richards]

I finished Holly by Stephen King this evening. At this point, King is King. This is minor King, but it's enjoyable. There are places where his ear for dialogue lets him down particularly badly, but there are also parts of the book that I would have been happy to linger in indefinitely (the Olivia Kingsbury chapters are joyful). I also had a sense that he was playing with an idea more than he usually does — or perhaps was more successful from a craft standpoint than he usually is? Anyhow, I was a bit bummed when the book ended. I would've been happy to spend more time with Holly.

I love that character and have just been waiting for Holly to come out in paperback.

Johnathan

 

[Richards]

I'm now reading a Destroyer title I picked up online: #94 - Feeding Frenzy, by Warren Murphy and Richard Sapir. It's apparently about edible bugs being put on the market, and causing a bunch of deaths - kind of topical since the media's been running a lot of "bugs are actually good for you" stories again in an attempt to get us Americans over the idea that bugs are not food. In any case, I figured some light reading about America's secret assassin and the North Korean Master of Sinanju who's trained him to be the (second) deadliest man in the world would be a nice filler between the "kids turning into monsters" book I just finished and the three-part "hivemind spider apocalypse" series I'll be starting immediately afterward.

Johnathan

 

[prabe]

I'm now reading a Destroyer title I picked up online: #94 - Feeding Frenzy, by Warren Murphy and Richard Sapir. It's apparently about edible bugs being put on the market, and causing a bunch of deaths - kind of topical since the media's been running a lot of "bugs are actually good for you" stories again in an attempt to get us Americans over the idea that bugs are not food. In any case, I figured some light reading about America's secret assassin and the North Korean Master of Sinanju who's trained him to be the (second) deadliest man in the world would be a nice filler between the "kids turning into monsters" book I just finished and the three-part "hivemind spider apocalypse" series I'll be starting immediately afterward.

Johnathan

There was a stretch when the primary ghostwriter for that series was dropping all sorts of Lovecraftian Easter eggs into the novels. I adapted a few of them as audio drama, and they were more entertaining than most of the other novels I adapted (if occasionally kinda problematic).

 

[Mannahnin]

Finished The Song of Achilles last night. It was beautiful and moving.

 

[Bedrockgames]

Have been reading a bit of Gothic Fiction. Started with Going back to Frankenstein and The House of Seven Gables. Just read Castle of Otranto (which is a surprisingly fast read). Then shifted gears and read a history book on the Wood Island Lighthouse the other day

 

[Alzrius]

I just finished reading Robin D. Laws' 40 Years of Gen Con, which was published in 2007 by Atlas Games.

Having been on a years-long kick to read as much nonfiction about our hobby as I could, I started this one several months ago, putting it down for some time right around its halfway point before finally picking it back up and finishing it. While I suspect it says more about me than the book, I found it fatiguing to get through, not because its contents were uninteresting, but because it was difficult to be drawn in by what was essentially a series of random anecdotes.

Now, to be fair, they were absolutely entertaining anecdotes, but I want to stress that (other than the opening blurbs at the start of each chapter) this entire book is photographs and anecdotes, with short testimonials given by various industry notables on a variety of Gen Con-related topics (and sometimes on wider industry topics, albeit in the guise of how they affected Gen Con), moving forward chronologically. It's the sort of thing that strikes me as fun to read in short blurbs, but not something you'd sit down and read for 168 pages at a stretch, or even a series of shorter stretches.

Of course, given that I found it much faster to read when I got to the parts of the book that covered years when I'd been attending Gen Con, I might be full of crap, so your mileage may vary. And also, there were several very interesting tidbits to be found here. For instance:

• Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman came up with the name for their character Dalamar the Dark from a guy they met at Gen Con whose actual name was Dalamar. They liked his name so much they used it in their novels. Tracy Hickman wondered if, in hindsight, they ruined that guy's life.
• TSR president Lorraine Williams apparently loved the (short-lived) Gen Con pre-opening tradition of employees from other companies "assaulting" the TSR castle (i.e. the large castle-shaped exhibit they had in the center of the dealer hall) with Nerf weapons. She regularly took part in it, finding it to be a blast. (This is, I'll note, the one and only anecdote I've ever found of Lorraine Williams being involved in any sort of game-play during her time at TSR.)
• Not being a Legend of the Five Rings player, I had no knowledge of the Day of Thunder that happened at the L5R tournament at Gen Con in 1997. It was apparently quite the event for that setting, but what I found shocking was that it was essentially a player-directed metaplot, which progressed in a way that shocked the story developer at AEG at the time (since the two finalists, while they still played an exhibition game, previously announced their intention not to fight so that their characters could join forces against a common enemy). For those familiar with The Gamers: Hands of Fate (aka the third Gamers movie), this is almost exactly the same backdrop that the film makes use of, right down to having their "final tournament" take place at Gen Con.

 

[Ryujin]

• Not being a Legend of the Five Rings player, I had no knowledge of the Day of Thunder that happened at the L5R tournament at Gen Con in 1997. It was apparently quite the event for that setting, but what I found shocking was that it was essentially a player-directed metaplot, which progressed in a way that shocked the story developer at AEG at the time (since the two finalists, while they still played an exhibition game, previously announced their intention not to fight so that their characters could join forces against a common enemy). For those familiar with The Gamers: Hands of Fate (aka the third Gamers movie), this is almost exactly the same backdrop that the film makes use of, right down to having their "final tournament" take place at Gen Con.

I don't know if you were aware of this but both Matt Vancil and Nathan Rice are huge L5R guys and Matt actually did draw from his L5R experience, including the concept of the players shaping the world, when writing "Hands of Fate."