What are you reading in 2024?

[Wofano Wotanto]

I've searched the web for some kind of flexible book cover padding to soften the sound of impact, but no luck so far.

Bedside throw rug? Spare pillow? Leave your bathrobe flumped on the floor at the likely impact site? If your cat refuses to sleep in the bed you bought for them, use it as a book catcher instead? The kitty-bed that is, not the kitty.

 

[Wofano Wotanto]

For me, Gaiman can be a tricky author — stylistically, I feel like he's quite good, but I've often felt that his work is slight. It's exceedingly readable and often very enjoyable, but sometimes there's no there there.

Nothing wrong with a good popcorn read. I agree he tends to be slightly overhyped as far as deep, sophisticated writing goes, especially in the comics community where the bar for that can be very low indeed.

 

[Wofano Wotanto]

Finished Ngaio Marsh's Death At the Bar, which I believe leaves me with just three of her books left to read for the first time. This is the the fourth "new" (as in unfamiliar) one I've plowed through in a row, the third one where the solution was obvious from very early on, and the third where the killer was (gasp) someone who had a previous conviction for a crime. And the other newbie was, predictably, a case of the social outcast and "designing woman" being the killer, because it certainly couldn't be the British gentry like every other suspect.

I'd been fairly neutral about her mysteries before this, but getting a concentrated dose of just plain bad books has really lowered my opinion of her quite a lot. It's not even a matter of them being a phase, with these four being written over a period spanning more than forty years. She's simply bad at telegraphing the murderer based on their background/social class and too prone to skimping on making her mystery mysterious.

Marsh often got compared favorably to Christie in the old days when both were more relevant, but I just don't see it. When Aggie botched a plotline (which certainly happened) it wasn't often because the killer stood out in a crowd, and her detectives generally had enough personality to at least make it a satisfactory read regardless.

 

[Richards]

I finished Artemis, which was a better than average read but still my least favorite of the three Andy Weir has written. (I'd rank them Project Hail Mary as best, then The Martian, then Artemis.) And now I've started a novel that turns out to be a sequel to a novel I haven't read before, but the first page seems to pretty much catch you up to speed. Apparently in the first novel, Breed, a rich family is having trouble having kids so they pay for an experimental treatment that does allow them to have kids (the wife gives birth to twins, a boy and a girl), but then they degenerate into savage beasts and are killed, the young children being separated and put into foster care. This second novel, Brood, by Chase Novak, is about the dead mother's sister getting custody of the twins, who are apparently afraid to eat because they don't want to hit puberty because that's when the monstrous genetic defect, if it was passed on to them, will strike, turning them into savage, bestial killers like their parents. So it seems like it might have been best had I read the first novel first, but so far I don't feel like I'm missing anything. If I enjoy this book (so far so good, several chapters in), I may try to hunt up the first in the series.

Johnathan

 

[Alzrius]

I polished off Ben Thompson's Badass: Ultimate Deathmatch, the third and final of the Badass books of which I've spoken before, about a week ago.

It was a fun read, largely because Thompson not only returns to purely historical materials in this one, but because he changes the focus to specific incidents of combat rather than particular individuals. This strikes me as dovetailing very well with his style, as it's far easier to present a particular fight as being badass than a particular individual; I don't think it's a coincidence that this book is roughly the length of the previous two combined.

Up next, I'm pulling Nassim Taleb's The Black Swan off the shelf again. I started reading it thirteen years ago, but never finished due to starting a new job. As such, I'm going to start from the beginning here; hopefully this time I'll be able to read it through to completion.

 

[HaroldTheHobbit]

Bedside throw rug? Spare pillow? Leave your bathrobe flumped on the floor at the likely impact site? If your cat refuses to sleep in the bed you bought for them, use it as a book catcher instead? The kitty-bed that is, not the kitty.

I don't know about your partner, but my wife responds very negatively to clothes and stuff thrown beside the bed. So I still keep an eye out for the foam book cover.

 

[Old Fezziwig]

I don't know about your partner, but my wife responds very negatively to clothes and stuff thrown beside the bed. So I still keep an eye out for the foam book cover.

It's probably not thick enough, but here's a felt book cover. I did check to see if there was a book leash or book tether but got bupkus in terms of useful results.

 

[Wofano Wotanto]

I don't know about your partner, but my wife responds very negatively to clothes and stuff thrown beside the bed. So I still keep an eye out for the foam book cover.

If it's only there when she's asleep and you're staying up reading I fail to see how she'd even know, much less object.

The fact that she'll tolerate reading in bed in the first place suggests she's super-tolerant in the first place. Never slept with anyone who wouldn't have kicked me to the couch for even thinking about it, and I wouldn't have blamed them if I had.

 

[HaroldTheHobbit]

If it's only there when she's asleep and you're staying up reading I fail to see how she'd even know, much less object.

The fact that she'll tolerate reading in bed in the first place suggests she's super-tolerant in the first place. Never slept with anyone who wouldn't have kicked me to the couch for even thinking about it, and I wouldn't have blamed them if I had.

So you suggest that I put dampening material on the floor beside the bed when she has fallen asleep, just in case I drop the book, then rise before her to remove the incriminating evidence? Since she usually wake before me, that also means I have to find a silent alarm that wake me before her, then manage to go back to sleep (without reading of course). Sorry, but that is not a workable method.

As to reading in bed, she does it too, but put her books away in an orderly fashion before sleeping.

 

[overgeeked]

So you suggest that I put dampening material on the floor beside the bed when she has fallen asleep, just in case I drop the book, then rise before her to remove the incriminating evidence? Since she usually wake before me, that also means I have to find a silent alarm that wake me before her, then manage to go back to sleep (without reading of course). Sorry, but that is not a workable method.

As to reading in bed, she does it too, but put her books away in an orderly fashion before sleeping.

Or just put down the dampening material and explain why it's there.