What are you reading in 2025?

[Reynard]

I just started The Lost City of Z, and it has me thinking hard about pulp gaming.

 

[Parmandur]

Yes about his attitudes, no about his prose. The story I read kinda gallumphed unsubtly along on the prose level, and on the story level, and was soaked in bigotry. I can't say I'm interested in reading more.

Much like with Lovecraft (peas in a bigted pod), I cannot blame you for that. Because they are dead and the works don't benefit them, I feel fairly comfortable picking them up critically as historical artifacts. I would not let my 8 year old read them.

It helps with a lot of these to get hooked on it in one’s midteens, when one is stupid and gullible less experienced in the world and prose. Particularly if those midteens were several decades ago. There are modern authors who carry forward the core concepts but with more clues about various prejudices and assumptions.

Yes, Fantasy has improved massively. Even just in the past 20 years.

Howard's fight scenes remain vivid.

 

[prabe]

Much like with Lovecraft (peas in a bigted pod), I cannot blame you for that. Because they are dead and the works don't benefit them, I feel fairly comfortable picking them up critically as historical artifacts. I would not let my 8 year old read them.

Yes, Fantasy has improved massively. Even just in the past 20 years.

Howard's fight scenes remain vivid.

Fortunately it's possible to read at least a lot of Howard via the Gutenberg Project, so no one benefits, monetarily. The comparison to Lovecraft is apt, though the Spook of Providence has his charms--mostly an ability to change his authorial pitch, and some occasionally vivid imagery; to @Autumnal 's point, I was first exposed to Lovecraft himself when I was in college, though I'd read the occasional pastiche before then.

 

[Ralif Redhammer]

I recently reread Something Wicked This Way Comes and I was surprised how important Charles Halloway (Will's dad) was in/to the novel. Also, it hit a lot harder than when I read it in high school or college or thereabouts, possibly because I was still young enough then to look down on Jim and Will.

Charles Halloway's decision to accept himself, accept his age, resist temptation, was such a powerful moment. It's been almost 15 years since I last read Something Wicked This Way Comes. I really ought to revisit it. Likewise, my youth wasn't as far in the rearview mirror then.

There's that, and there's also the attitude the sociologist (I'm pretty sure it's the old guy, and I'm pretty sure he's a sociologist) expresses in The Stand (paraphrasing, probably): Man might have been created in God's image, but human societies seem to have been made in the image of His opposite number.

Stephen King can pair his sense of wonder with his abiding cynicism, that's for sure.

 

[prabe]

Charles Halloway's decision to accept himself, accept his age, resist temptation, was such a powerful moment. It's been almost 15 years since I last read Something Wicked This Way Comes. I really ought to revisit it. Likewise, my youth wasn't as far in the rearview mirror then.

I'm in my mid-50s now, and I first read it somewhere between late high school and dropping out of college after two + years. So, it had been something like thirty years for me. Obviously being that much older made Charles' acceptance of his age hit in ways it wouldn't have when I first read it.