What are you reading in 2024?

[Eyes of Nine]

Oh, those! Read them when I was a kid, they were in the local library. I had noticed they were hard to come by these days. They were very good: space adventures aimed at older children, but with better science (although as you would expect some has changed since time of writing).

I liked the ones I read, back in the day - although not sure which ones they were beyond the first

 

[Paul Farquhar]

I liked the ones I read, back in the day - although not sure which ones they were beyond the first

They were alll solar planet themed, e.g Lucky Starr and the Rings of Saturn, there wasn’t one for Earth, and I don’t think there was Pluto, even though it was a planet at the time of writing. Thus seven stories in total.

 

[overgeeked]

Finished The Shadow #8. The Black Master. Published March 1, 1932.

In this yarn New York City is rocked by a series of bomb attacks with no known motivation. As the story progresses we're introduced to the various characters tasked with investigating the crime, including Harry Vincent, agent of The Shadow. This one had the opposite problem from the last, the secret mastermind behind the attacks was obvious from about 1/3 of the way through. Not in that there was a shift from whodunnit to why or how rather the writer overplayed his hand. At the end we discover that The Shadow knew almost from the start, because of course he did. Despite that it was still a good read.

 

[Ralif Redhammer]

I finished Milan's The Cybernetic Samurai. While the lurid cover and back blurb make it seem like you're going to get a story of a literal cybernetic samurai, what follows is a story of AI and corporate warfare.

Now I'm reading Steven Barnes' Streetlethal.

 

[Clint_L]

I re-read Stephenson's Snow Crash, which I hadn't read since it came out decades ago, and it held up: still fun as hell. Finished Brubaker's Friday series - amazing, and I really hope he revisits those characters. Been catching up on some of William Gibson's more recent work after re-reading the Sprawl trilogy earlier this year. It's good, but doesn't have the same lightning in a bottle.

The most interesting novel I've read over the past little bit is Viet Thanh Nguyen's The Sympathizer, after there was some discussion about adding to our reading list for L&L12. It's pretty great, but also a bit of a hard read, with its sustained stream of consciousness style - very much a critic's book. Not one I'm super keen to give to students as (A) I don't think most will actually read it, and (B) there is some very explicit sexual violence. It's an impressive book, though.

 

[Clint_L]

Also, not sure if I mentioned Django Wexler's How to Become the Dark Lord and Die Trying. It's great fun, kind of like a raunchier Terry Pratchett.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

Underway on The Night Watch in my Discworld reread.

Coming off of The Bright Sword, anything would be a step down, but this is arguably Pratchett's best Discworld novel (although probably also the one that most relies on readers having read others in the series, ironically) and it's as good as I remember. I'm probably unusual in that I like the Lancre Witches and Unseen University more than the Watch, but this is just firing on all cylinders.

 

[Mallus]

I just finished reading Bank's The Player of Games for the first time and am now rereading Noon's Vurt. Think I'll tackle rereading Gene Wolfe's Book of the New Sun after that.

 

[Wofano Wotanto]

Re-reading Forever War, with an eye toward Forever Free afterward. Not sure if I'll bother with Forever Peace or not, we'll see after I finish the actual (intensely weird) sequel book. Holding up as well as expected so far, big surprise. To make a cliched comparison, Forever War is a lot less boring than re-reading Starship Troopers was.

 

[John Lloyd1]

Just finished reading Asimov & Silverberg's Nightfall. It was meeh. Didn't seem to be going anywhere plot wise, ordinary characters and the idea that most people would go crazy (in bad stereotyped way) after suddenly seeing the stars for the first time in two thousand years didn't work over a novel.