What are you reading in 2024?

[The Soloist]

Out of curiosity, are audiobooks any easier for you?

I could try that while I clean the house.

 

[prabe]

Audiobooks send me to sleep in 15 minutes.

I worked recording them. I cannot listen to them for pleasure. It's a me thing, and my own mental block--it's not a judgment on them or the people who listen to them.

 

[Parmandur]

When I was in my teens I used to get through a book a day. These days its more like two a month.

I read the first 8 Wheel of Time books in a week when I was 15 (the whole series at the time). Wind and Truth took me four days. To be a teenager...

 

[Eyes of Nine]

I worked recording them. I cannot listen to them for pleasure. It's a me thing, and my own mental block--it's not a judgment on them or the people who listen to them.

It is funny when you work in an area others derive enjoyment from. I can't shop at a comic and game store without analyzing how things are displayed, noting stale inventory, paying attention to how staff engage (or more often, don't engage) with customers, etc.

It's true what they say about sausage getting made, at least to some degree

 

[Autumnal]

I could try that while I clean the house. A

I’m a big fan, particularly for anything with a lot of names and other words that aren’t English, to hear them pronounced right. But some people’s brains just refuse to deal with it. Just one of those things.

 

[prabe]

It is funny when you work in an area others derive enjoyment from. I can't shop at a comic and game store without analyzing how things are displayed, noting stale inventory, paying attention to how staff engage (or more often, don't engage) with customers, etc.

It's true what they say about sausage getting made, at least to some degree

Yeah, there's that. In my case it's that I spent so much with that as work that I can't do it for fun. I have similar problems with podcasts, and I've never spent any time making those--but just listening to someone talk in my headphones ... it needs to be something I'm really interested in.

 

[Pedantic]

I'm finally sitting down with The Red Knight, by Miles Cameron, which is the genre pseudonym for Christian Cameron. I was not particularly sold by the descriptions of the series, and found myself here after reading the author's bibliography in reverse publication order. His Against All Gods trilogy was really compelling, and I'm very glad it got me to try his sci-fi, Arcana Imperii, which is probably my favorite of his works.

I'm quite surprised I don't hear more about Cameron, he does an impressive job of balancing a historical viewpoint full of little details of dress and weaponry and politics with interesting characters that are pointedly humanized and relatable. The Red Knight so far is shaping up to be longer and maybe a little more self indulgent than his later works, but I'm enjoying watching it spin up.

 

[ad&d wilderness encounter]

I'm gonna have a go at Joyce's Ulysses. I'm probs also gonna work through some Appendix N stuff.

 

[WolfByte]

Filling in some gaps with The Worm Ouroboros (sadder than I expected), Jurgen (funnier than I expected), and Quag Keep (unfortunately, not as good as I expected).

 

[WolfByte]

Finally finished A Brief History of Time, the editing of which just gets worse toward the end of the book. (There's an "its" in the one of the last chapters that doesn't appear to refer to anything Hawking has mentioned for several pages. I finally gave up on trying to figure out what he was referring to.)

I guess I'm glad I read it for some vestigial nerd cred, but it was 99% stuff I've read in the (written much later) Astrophysics for People in a Hurry by Neal deGrasse Tyson. I recommend the latter book instead for someone who wants a crash course in contemporary astrophysics.

You may also enjoy "A Short History of Nearly Everything" by American-British author Bill Bryson.