What are you reading in 2025?

[SkidAce]

What I'm seeing with my friends is that now 100% of us have been "taken out" by Book 3, 4 or 5 (Wind and Truth is 5) of Stormlight. No-one I know is continuing to read Stormlight. Whereas like, almost everyone I know who reads fantasy novels (which is surprisingly large number of people) read the books 1 & 2, and most of them made it to 3. 3 was where it really got obvious how much was just waffling on about nothing, and I genuinely felt like Sanderson was wasting my time, which is something I'm almost never experienced with an author.

It's sad because whilst his earlier books have some digressions, some repetition and some oddities, they're not just blather or waffle or meta-wank. It's a little horrifying to compare it to say Gene Wolfe's Book of The New Sun, which is also 1200-ish pages. I'm sure Sanderson would strongly agree that Wolfe is far better writer (he's weirdly humble for a man who can't be edited, which makes me think "Yes men" is the problem more than him), but even ignoring stuff like the quality of prose (incomparably higher with Wolfe), the sheer density of ideas, thoughts, and meaning in The Book of The New Sun is probably 50x (no joke) that of Stormlight 3.

Yeah, Sanderson (Mistborn, Warbreaker) was an example of good books and good details that I always reccomended.

I also bailed after Book 2 of Stormlight.

Much sadness.

 

[Eyes of Nine]

This year I'm hooked on The Ministry for the Future by Kim Stanley Robinson, the eco theme is seriously intense.

On my list, he's a great hard SF writer.

Also reading The Broken Earth by N.K. Jemisin, the worldbuilding is sick and the plot’s lit. Can’t wait to dig into more new stuff

Lucky to be reading it for the first time, and your characterization of it is 110% correct, imo

 

[Eyes of Nine]

To Turn Back Time, by S.M. Stirling. This is practically perfect nerd-nip. Four American grad students and a professor, all specialists in Roman history, are zapped without preparation from a slightly alternate 2032 to the spot that will become Vienna but in AD 165 is Roman frontier. They also have a literal ton of supplies, but the local who recruited them died in transit - they left literally the same second a fusion bomb went off over Vienna as part of a global thermonuclear war breaking out. So here they are.

What’s great is that they are all nerds. They read Lest Darkness Falls when younger; they’ve seen Gladiator and Conan movies from a 2029 adaptation of Stirling’s Blood of the Serpent back to Arnie’s movie take. They have good values and make sensible plans, and run into interesting complications and failures. They find the past in accordance with a bunch of cool scholarship, and fun differences between the realities and the best guesses. This is a book about my people and I am glad. It’s the first of a trilogy and I expect to enjoy them all.

Is this related to SM Stirling's Nantucket series?

 

[Eyes of Nine]

So while I was traveling, I finished Ursula K LeGuin's third Earthsea book, The Farthest Shore. I remember as a callow youth not liking it. I felt like it was too sad. But this time reading it, I took a much different message away. That in spite of things looking really bleak, you keep going, applying your wisdom as necessary, and using your strength as necessary, and having a good ally always. Recommend, of course. Ordered the omnibus "all the Earthsea stuff" volume with the Charles Vess illustrations from the library, as they didn't have Tehanu as a standalone. Looking forward to it.

 

[overgeeked]

With the impending completion of the DC Heroes RPG Kickstarter I’m digging through my old books. I remember a few complaints about the system, but the edge has faded. It’s a fantastic system that still holds up. Can’t wait to see what the shiny new box looks like.

 

[Autumnal]

Is this related to SM Stirling's Nantucket series?

No, it’s its own thing. It’s a different twenty-first century, and a different historical milieu.

 

[Retros_x]

I decided to go back to my childhood and re-read the Discworld novels by Terry Pratchett

This is a plan I had for a longer time too! Loved Pratchett in my childhood/teenage years. But because of my age I read the books in German translation which were passable, but I definitely want to re-read them in Pratchetts original words.

3 was where it really got obvious how much was just waffling on about nothing, and I genuinely felt like Sanderson was wasting my time, which is something I'm almost never experienced with an author.

It's sad because whilst his earlier books have some digressions, some repetition and some oddities, they're not just blather or waffle or meta-wank. It's a little horrifying to compare it to say Gene Wolfe's Book of The New Sun, which is also 1200-ish pages. I'm sure Sanderson would strongly agree that Wolfe is far better writer (he's weirdly humble for a man who can't be edited, which makes me think "Yes men" is the problem more than him), but even ignoring stuff like the quality of prose (incomparably higher with Wolfe), the sheer density of ideas, thoughts, and meaning in The Book of The New Sun is probably 50x (no joke) that of Stormlight 3.

Ok, I didn't know it gets so bad! I think I was in a lot of Sanderson fan spaces on reddit and YT, hearing now that so many gave up after book 3 is a bit disheartening. And I have Gene Wolfe for a long time on my TBR, maybe I just read that instead haha

 

[trappedslider]

Is this related to SM Stirling's Nantucket series?

No, the Nantucket series is however tied to the Emberverse series.

 

[Mannahnin]

I just finished reading Fritz Leiber's Swords and Deviltry, and came away suitably impressed.

Notwithstanding the exceptionally short stories that I read last year, this was my first read-through of The Twain's exploits (though they're never called that in this book), despite being familiar with them, Lankhmar, and Nehwon, mostly through their presentations in various old D&D products. Having read through Leiber's own writing at last, I find myself having a much better appreciation for the characters.

Agreed on basically all counts. Like with Moorcock's Elric stories, IMO the best way to go with these is publication/real-world chronological order. Deviltry isn't peak, but it's still quite good.

I was on vacation too and read two books by John le Carre, "A Murder for Quality" and "The Spy who came in from the Cold".
The former was a disappointment after the really intriguing first Smiley novel "Call for the Dead". I think the author described the book humble in his reflections 50 years later something like " a bad mystery with decent satire about the English school system. I think that is a fair assessment. The best part of the book is the author dunking on the school system in this afterword once again, this time as an old man in modern times. Its great.

"The Spy..." was absolutely fantastic! It increased the already bleak and oppressing atmosphere of the first Smily book and it delivers such a great narrative about the start of institutional bureacratic manipulation, betrayal of morality, muddling of ideologies in the early cold war. I loved the disillusioned main character Leamas and his personal revenge. I also absolutely loved the brutal and dark twist and the ambigous ending. There are hints and implications about the truth of Smileys last words and the last events happening but it is nowhere stated explicitly. Smiley is only a background character behind the scenes here, but he got sooooo intriguing as a character to me. The prose is great too, brief and precise but stimulating and evocative at the same time. The characterization is subtle and masterful. This is 100% my jam and I am so excited now for the rest of le Carres bibliography.

I think Spy is the only one of his I've read; I remember selecting it by happenstance and being really impressed with it. That was years ago and I haven't gotten back to le Carre, but it stuck with me.

 

[Old Fezziwig]

Just finished Samuel Arbesman's The Magic of Code. Arbesman is an engaging and enthusiastic writer, but the book felt somewhat superficial -- he throws a lot of ideas at the readers and never quite develops them to any meaningful degree. It had the feel of a TED talk , not an uninteresting one, but it's still not what I'm looking for in a book. It had the vibe of some of the books that came out of blogs during the mid to late aughts, and Arbesman's admission that the book came out of some of his newsletters suggests a similar development process here. Oh well.