What are you reading in 2025?

[Autumnal]

Tynion really is amazing.

The Cold Vanish by Jon Billman could have been a five-star read but isn’t. It’s about people who vanish in the wilderness. A lot of people do - many thousands a year, in the US and Canada - and there’s no centralized records on them. Billman writes for magazines like Outdoors and Bicycling, and built this book around essays he’s done in the subject. A lot of it is fascinating and well-done.

But he indulges his favorites. He lets a guy who works with bloodhounds go on a lot about how much other tracking dogs suck and don’t work, in flat-out contradiction to the facts. The father of a missing adult son, the man he spends most time with, spends a lot of time in dangerous denial of some day to day realities, and throughout there’s a lot of idolizing people who dump their lives in a whim and go off to do something else. Some work very hard at helping others despite personal costs, and I respect that, but others need someone to staple them down for a bit.

Recommended with significant reservations.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

Tynion really is amazing.

The Cold Vanish by Jon Billman could have been a five-star read but isn’t. It’s about people who vanish in the wilderness. A lot of people do - many thousands a year, in the US and Canada - and there’s no centralized records on them. Billman writes for magazines like Outdoors and Bicycling, and built this book around essays he’s done in the subject. A lot of it is fascinating and well-done.

But he indulges his favorites. He lets a guy who works with bloodhounds go on a lot about how much other tracking dogs suck and don’t work, in flat-out contradiction to the facts. The father of a missing adult son, the man he spends most time with, spends a lot of time in dangerous denial of some day to day realities, and throughout there’s a lot of idolizing people who dump their lives in a whim and go off to do something else. Some work very hard at helping others despite personal costs, and I respect that, but others need someone to staple them down for a bit.

Recommended with significant reservations.

If you like this, you probably would enjoy Desert Oracle -- the magazine, the resulting book and the radio show/podcast. I just listened to the audiobook of the book recently -- I love Layne's voice and it would be weird to read it without that -- and really enjoyed it. A+ version of his content.

On Amazon, there are people who find it's too political because the Mojave Desert enthusiast is mad at government folks who want to open up the desert to mining and exploitation, which raises questions for me about what sort of book they thought they were picking up.

Environmentalism, UFO/cryptid/conspiracy theory (the fun kind), weird tales, desert rat stuff.

 

[Autumnal]

I’ll check that out, thanks.

 

[Clint_L]

Finally reading Atonement. I kinda thought I had already read it because it was all over the place a few decades ago. But I have a student starting their extended essay on it so I decided to re-read and…nope. Hadn’t read it previously.

I’m pretty far into it and it’s really leaning into a very British version of the metatextual postmodernism that was very much in trend at the turn of the century. I’m not usually a huge fan. Sadly, Atonement does not look to be one of the exceptions.

 

[Eyes of Nine]

Just finished another one that apparently I started way back in May of 2024. For Dan Abnett fans, this is a graphic novel written by Abnett and art by I.N.J Culbard, who apparently frequently collaborate together, altough this is the first Culbard work I’ve read.

It’s a fat volume, collecting the three sub-graphic novels into one meaty tome some 480 pps long. If you like funny-animal clean line comics in the style of say Usagi Yojimbo, set in post-war England (not sure if it’s post WWI or WWII, I’m not good with costumes and technology like that) this might speak to you. If you like inscrutable aliens who aren’t actually the antagonists because humans (with dog, pig, cat, civet, fox, etc heads) are perfectly capable of being monsters themselves thank you very much, you might like this. Characters are kind of the classic tropey types (PTSD soldier, frustrated writer, brave rustic youth) but they work well enough here.

I’d give it a 4 or 4.5, towards the higher end if you like Abnett.

https://www.amazon.com/Wilds-End-Book-One/dp/1608861597/

 

[Mannahnin]

Made a start on Poul Anderson's There Will be Time. So far a good read, though I've just started chapter 3, an Ambrose Bierce-style list of snarky political definitions, and one or two disappointing reactionary sentiments got my hackles up a bit. Though the snark is mostly aimed in all directions.

Finished this up. The reactionary bit was brief and didn't impact the book substantially. At only 176 pages it's a relatively brief yarn, but has enough time for some time traveling intrigue and a little philosophizing.

Next up, for book club I'm starting Robert Evans' After the Revolution, which is a couple of hundred pages longer and only three years old. It's still sci-fi, with some classic cyberpunk tropes already showing up in the first chapter which made me think Evans has to be around my age, but he's substantially younger.

 

[Old Fezziwig]

I literally just now a moment ago finished Replay by Ken Grimwood, which I picked up because of @Eyes of Nine and @Autumnal's comments on it last month. I'm very grateful to have read it.

 

[Autumnal]

Glad it worked for you! It’s such a thing.

 

[jian]

Just finished Blood Over Bright Haven by M L Wang (AKA Maya Lin Wang). I don’t know how I happened upon it - maybe a Kindle deal? - but it’s very good and very well written for an early novel (Wang has written four other books but not anything like this, I think).

Sciona Freyman is the first woman to become an academic researcher in the magitech city of Tiran, which is protected from a magical disease called the Blight which has devastated the country around the city and caused the local inhabitants, known as the Kwen, to seek refuge in Tiran and become an exploited underclass of immigrant labourers. Thomil, a Kwen whom we actually meet first fleeing to the city a few years before the main events of the novel, becomes her lab assistant.

The twist is predictable but still horribly well executed, and what really impressed me is how Wang wrote everyone’s reaction, from Sciona and Thomil to Sciona’s cousin (really quite harrowing and relevant) and mentor, to the whole city. That was very well done and really makes the book worth reading. Highly recommended.