What are you reading in 2024?

I finished re-reading Moon's Sheepfarmer's Daughter. It holds up well, all these years later. It's got a bit of The Black Company in its DNA, though it's much more low magic, not as grim and gritty.

Isn't that one basically T1?

I seem to recall that it was inspired by a Greyhawk campaign, but I wouldn't say any part of it felt like the Village of Hommlet specifically.
It's book 2, Divided Allegiance, that has the Hommlet analogue town of Brewersbridge and the moathouse-style adventure.

I've lost count of how many times I read those books. Years back Baen did a reprint of Sheepfarmer's Daughter with $1.99 paperbacks and I bought at least ten copies to give away and get people hooked.
 

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Last three books: The Manual of Detection by Jedidiah Berry: A waste of a good idea, really, too much noise and attempts at meaning and not enough actual story; The Demolished Man by Alfred Bester: Almost unfathomably good, there are reasons writers still hat-tip Bester; Auē by Becky Manawatu: Noir-ish crime tragedy set among the Māori, tragic and beautiful and difficult and powerful.
 

I've picked Clive Barker's Imajica back up after putting it down in October. I'm torn. There's nothing wrong with it, save for a sense that it gives the lie to the old saw about no good book being too long and no bad book being too short. It's defintely good (sometimes great), and I have no beef with long novels (I was a Victorianist in grad school), but holy cats — it's real long and real dense. It's the literary equivalent of it's not the years, but the miles.
 

I've picked Clive Barker's Imajica back up after putting it down in October. I'm torn. There's nothing wrong with it, save for a sense that it gives the lie to the old saw about no good book being too long and no bad book being too short. It's defintely good (sometimes great), and I have no beef with long novels (I was a Victorianist in grad school), but holy cats — it's real long and real dense. It's the literary equivalent of it's not the years, but the miles.
I remember reading Imajica back like when it just came out. Barker has started a lot of larger series he never really finished (and in many cases just kinda abandoned) alas.
 

I remember reading Imajica back like when it just came out. Barker has started a lot of larger series he never really finished (and in many cases just kinda abandoned) alas.
I feel like I remember reading that he's had some health issues? But I might be mistaken on that. Regardless, I'm kind of bummed that I'm only getting to him now.
 

I feel like I remember reading that he's had some health issues? But I might be mistaken on that. Regardless, I'm kind of bummed that I'm only getting to him now.
I think that's true, though his tendency to pick something up with big ambitions, then eventually pick something else up with big ambitions goes back a ways. There are some one-offs that at least don't have that problem, and even the stuff he trailed off on is mostly worth reading.
 

Last three books: The Manual of Detection by Jedidiah Berry: A waste of a good idea, really, too much noise and attempts at meaning and not enough actual story; The Demolished Man by Alfred Bester: Almost unfathomably good, there are reasons writers still hat-tip Bester; Auē by Becky Manawatu: Noir-ish crime tragedy set among the Māori, tragic and beautiful and difficult and powerful.

I'm still a little boggled no one has tried to make a mini-series out of The Demolished Man or The Stars My Destination.
 

I'm still a little boggled no one has tried to make a mini-series out of The Demolished Man or The Stars My Destination.
On the one hand, I agree; on the other, they'd be really difficult to film, I'd think--especially the synesthetic portions of Stars.
 



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