What are you reading in 2024?

[Eyes of Nine]

Finished Edgar Pangborn's Hugo-nominated Davy.

Davy (novel) - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

It's what they call a "bildungsroman", or basically a wandering coming of age novel. Great world-building, engaging protagonist. Not much of what one would call a plot - which I think is typical of this type of book. Quite sexually spicy, and women characters however were mostly seen as sexual foils for the MC. That said, they also had a bunch of agency, and were quite differentiated and given their own internal lives - at least to the extent that a mostly adolescent male's first-person narrative can provide.

I do wish that maps had become a think by that point, the post-apocalyptic references to places like Nuin (I think that was Boston), Levannon (like, the Albany area?) and others were tantalizing, but I couldn't quite figure out where they were.

3.5 out of 5 stars (ah, I'm just going to give it 7 out 10 stars!), but I don't feel like I ever need to read it again.

 

[Arnie_Wan_Kenobi]

Finished Edgar Pangborn's Hugo-nominated Davy.

Davy (novel) - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

It's what they call a "bildungsroman", or basically a wandering coming of age novel. Great world-building, engaging protagonist. Not much of what one would call a plot - which I think is typical of this type of book. Quite sexually spicy, and women characters however were mostly seen as sexual foils for the MC. That said, they also had a bunch of agency, and were quite differentiated and given their own internal lives - at least to the extent that a mostly adolescent male's first-person narrative can provide. (snip)

Sounds like a suggestion to add to my "The Next 'Catcher in the Rye'" Essay prompt. (Basically, my students need to find a coming of age story, read it, compare its tenets against "Catcher" and argue for it as a replacement for "Catcher" in the curriculum. For kids who get stuck or don't know where to find a book like that, I give options.)

Aside from all of the Rivers of London series (need to check our the new novella), this has been the year of the TTRPG read. I just cracked "Moria: Through the Doors of Durin" back open.

 

[overgeeked]

That said, it's worth underlining that the series is, as its core, a very black comedy, mostly around how much Ainz is willing to countenance his extremely evil underlings' misinterpretations of what he wants in his attempts to save face in front of them.

Yeah. I picked up on that. Maybe the later fights will feel earned. The early ones did not. But that really didn't factor into things. It made sense given the story.

On a fun note, if you stick with the series, you'll quickly start to notice where its informed by D&D 3.X, mostly in terms of the spell system (though there are differences) and certain assumptions about various types of monsters (e.g. undead are inherently immune to mind-affecting effects, etc.).

I can't think of a more anti-recommendation than that. I really dislike 3X and I have zero interest in LitRPG. The undead and mental effects was mentioned a few times in Vol 1.

I never did read the light novels for these, but I remember watching the anime a good thirty years or so ago. It was fun stuff. There was a meme back then, to the tune of "Record of Lodoss War is what every D&D campaign wants to be; Slayers is what every D&D campaign eventually turns into."

That's the line that got me to remember Slayers existed. I'd heard about it years ago but never read it.

 

[CharlesWallace]

Sounds like a suggestion to add to my "The Next 'Catcher in the Rye'" Essay prompt. (Basically, my students need to find a coming of age story, read it, compare its tenets against "Catcher" and argue for it as a replacement for "Catcher" in the curriculum. For kids who get stuck or don't know where to find a book like that, I give options.)

Aside from all of the Rivers of London series (need to check our the new novella), this has been the year of the TTRPG read. I just cracked "Moria: Through the Doors of Durin" back open.

Random question- I love Catcher in the Rye so much, but the view I see online is mostly negative (whiny kid or something).

Do you think it’s a good book?

 

[overgeeked]

Random question- I love Catcher in the Rye so much, but the view I see online is mostly negative (whiny kid or something).

Do you think it’s a good book?

Not the poster you're asking, but yes, I think it's a good book.

I think the negativity mostly comes from people being forced to read it in school. That tends to make people hate reading and hate those books in particular.

 

[Eyes of Nine]

Random question- I love Catcher in the Rye so much, but the view I see online is mostly negative (whiny kid or something).

Do you think it’s a good book?

It was one of the two summer reads given to me before 9th grade (I was 14 that summer). The other book assigned that summer was A Separate Peace, which is a good book. But man, Catcher in the Rye is all time classic material. My mind was blown, I didn't even know books could be written like that and then also assigned in school. Nowadays, that type of writing and communication is old hat (TikTok is like 100 billion 45-second video Holden Caufeld outbursts), but JD Salinger is who paved the way. I haven't read it within the past 10 years, but I did read it in the mid 2010's and felt it still held up.

 

[Eyes of Nine]

About to read volume 9 in Alice in Borderland, an isekai manga. Final volume. We'll see how it goes and if the author sticks the landing.

Also on the prose side, started eading Martha Wells' Witch King. It was nominated for three of the major awards in our neck of the woods (Hugo, Nebula, World Fantasy) - but didn't win any of them...

 

[Parmandur]

Random question- I love Catcher in the Rye so much, but the view I see online is mostly negative (whiny kid or something).

Do you think it’s a good book?

I think it is a fantastic book, but I can also see why a lot of teenagers forced to read might think it comes across as phoney.

 

[Alzrius]

I just finished the webtoon manhwa adaptation of Solo Leveling.

Although I'd actually read some of this years ago, when it was recommended to me by a friend of mine (who's younger than me, and so is more in touch with what's popular), I got back into it recently because of how incredibly good the anime (which just came out) is. Given that the series' webtoon adaptation (it was originally a web novel) concluded a few years ago, it was nice to be able to read it through to the end.

My take on the series is that this lends further credence to an idea I've come to believe in, which is that how original a story is matters less than how well it's told. There are no new ideas to be found in Solo Leveling (and quite often their inspiration is obvious to the point of being glaring), but the presentation is nevertheless pretty badass. That's good, because the story has comparatively little to recommend it otherwise; this is a series that is focused on doing exactly one thing, and does it quite well.

I confess that it's somewhat interesting to compare the manhwa to the anime in that regard. Putting the two side-by-side, you can see where the latter has worked to fill things out that the former gave less emphasis to. For instance, several supporting characters are given more screen time in the anime, even if only to help flesh out the rest of the world. That said, props are due to the animators and the people in charge of the background music for the superb job they did making sure that those aspects properly play up the tenor of the original work.

On a personal note, I found my interest waning as the final battle neared, but I can't blame that on the series itself, simply because I've found that to be the case with multiple action series that I've read; for some reason I get bored around 90% of the way through, and have to push myself to finish it, seemingly regardless of the quality of the material. That doesn't always happen, but often enough that I've noticed the pattern. It's an odd quirk of mine, apparently.

 

[Clint_L]

Random question- I love Catcher in the Rye so much, but the view I see online is mostly negative (whiny kid or something).

Do you think it’s a good book?

As someone who has taught Catcher in the Rye, I feel that it is a great book, very much of its time, hugely culturally significant, and your characterization of its critics as "whiny kids" has a lot to do with why many younger readers might dislike it. Especially when wielded by an old Gen-Xer like me, you have to be careful not to be "adult-splaining" teenagers to, well, teenagers.

Especially when the book is from a different time. Like, not all teenagers are troubled, wealthy, white, private school boys from 1940s Manhattan who panic when they see an F-bomb. I really love Salinger's writing, what little he published, but the guy was a mess with a very idiosyncratic view of the world. Catcher in the Rye did help invent the concept of the teenager in a significant way, though. For good and, often, bad.

I can see why actual teens would be resentful.

Edit: when I have taught it, I have done so in the context of an entire unit on the teenager industrial complex, situating it in the rise of teen-oriented media of the mid-20th century that was frequently exploitative. That one book contributed greatly to our ongoing conception of teens as a distinct and problematic demographic. We study how teenagers didn't really exist until the 20th century, and all of the baggage that the term has acquired over the past century.

I don't think you can really understand that book unless you study it in the context of the rise of public education, which essentially forced the creation of teenage culture, the rise of mass media that responded to and contributed to the codification of that culture, and the economic boom in the United States that made adolescents a coveted market.

So in Catcher in the Rye you see a phenomenally successful (in the sense of being phenomenally popular and influential) attempt by an adult to understand and codify a newly emergent cultural phenomenon, the American white male teenager.

But also a very successful novel with a compellingly written and memorable protagonist.