What are you reading in 2025?

[cbwjm]

I'm starting on the foundation series by Asimov. I'm starting with prelude to foundation before moving onto the trilogy. I've been loving the tv adaptation so finally getting around to reading the books.

Actually, I'm also checking reading orders and the recommendation is to start with the original trilogy before the prequels, so I might put down prelude and move on to foundation first.

 

[gban007]

I'm starting on the foundation series by Asimov. I'm starting with prelude to foundation before moving onto the trilogy. I've been loving the tv adaptation so finally getting around to reading the books.

Actually, I'm also checking reading orders and the recommendation is to start with the original trilogy before the prequels, so I might put down prelude and move on to foundation first.

The prequels do have potential to spoil some items from the original trilogy.

 

[Autumnal]

The Sword Defiant by Gareth Hanrahan.

He’s great, and has been for a long time. This books and its sequels are in my queue.

 

[Old Fezziwig]

I just finished Slow Horses, Mick Herron's first Slough House novel. I watched snippets of the show while my wife watched it, but I didn't pay a tremendous amount of attention. My impression was that Gary Oldman's Jackson Lamb was kind of like a black hole pulling everything in the show towards him. And I know that later novels in the series have a similar tendency -- one piece I read felt that the later novels position Lamb as heroic rather than as an awful but effective goblin. I can see how that'd happen. Herron's never having as much fun as he is when he's writing Lamb. The rest of the characters are kind of thinly drawn, and there seems to be a resistance on Herron's part at getting to know too many of his other characters too well. It could be an intentional move on his part -- most of the characters aren't particularly self-aware and many of them are in some form of denial about how things have come to be as they are (they're not great at taking responsibility, which is what separates them from Lamb, who appears to at least be decent at that). But I'll reserve judgment on that for now and see how his writing develops in future novels. On the whole, it was fun, what I might call a smart beach read (almost like Arturo Perez-Reverte's Captain Alatriste, maybe?). Herron takes things seriously but holds them lightly.

 

[JEB]

Finished Ray Bradbury's The Martian Chronicles, a collection of short stories and vignettes about the human colonization of Mars, standing right on the line between science fiction and fantasy. The version I read was the 1997 edition, which advanced the timeline 31 years (since the original 1999-2026 timespan was about to become alternate history); removed one story ("Way in the Middle of the Air"); and added two more ("The Fire Balloons" and "The Wilderness"). Despite the attempted update, these stories still read like products of the 1940s and 1950s, with many tropes and social mores to match. (Women are barely a presence, for example.) Yet they're still compelling reads: often melancholy in nature, with painfully human characters (even the ones that aren't human). Some of Bradbury's best work can be found in here, so definitely worth a read if you like classic science fiction.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

Finished Ray Bradbury's The Martian Chronicles, a collection of short stories and vignettes about the human colonization of Mars, standing right on the line between science fiction and fantasy. The version I read was the 1997 edition, which advanced the timeline 31 years (since the original 1999-2026 timespan was about to become alternate history); removed one story ("Way in the Middle of the Air"); and added two more ("The Fire Balloons" and "The Wilderness"). Despite the attempted update, these stories still read like products of the 1940s and 1950s, with many tropes and social mores to match. (Women are barely a presence, for example.) Yet they're still compelling reads: often melancholy in nature, with painfully human characters (even the ones that aren't human). Some of Bradbury's best work can be found in here, so definitely worth a read if you like classic science fiction.

I remember liking the TV miniseries as a kid which, yeah, was super melancholy.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

I remember liking the TV miniseries as a kid which, yeah, was super melancholy.

I remember watching that too. Don’t recall it ever being repeated.

 

[jian]

I just finished Slow Horses, Mick Herron's first Slough House novel. I watched snippets of the show while my wife watched it, but I didn't pay a tremendous amount of attention. My impression was that Gary Oldman's Jackson Lamb was kind of like a black hole pulling everything in the show towards him. And I know that later novels in the series have a similar tendency -- one piece I read felt that the later novels position Lamb as heroic rather than as an awful but effective goblin. I can see how that'd happen. Herron's never having as much fun as he is when he's writing Lamb. The rest of the characters are kind of thinly drawn, and there seems to be a resistance on Herron's part at getting to know too many of his other characters too well. It could be an intentional move on his part -- most of the characters aren't particularly self-aware and many of them are in some form of denial about how things have come to be as they are (they're not great at taking responsibility, which is what separates them from Lamb, who appears to at least be decent at that). But I'll reserve judgment on that for now and see how his writing develops in future novels. On the whole, it was fun, what I might call a smart beach read (almost like Arturo Perez-Reverte's Captain Alatriste, maybe?). Herron takes things seriously but holds them lightly.

I do think (after 4 books and 4 series) the writing in the series is greatly improved from the books. And a large part of this is Lamb, who is honestly a white middle-aged man’s power fantasy (much more competent than everyone else especially the younger and better looking River*, gets to insult everyone around him with impunity as well as fart, be sexist and racist and homophobic, and generally act like the last 50 years never happened, which is a bit odd for a guy who actually came of age in the 80s and 90s) in the books. He’s an arrogant, selfish tosser and terrible leader who shows little sign of caring for his team but is always brutally competent when he has to be. In the series, that’s quite softened - much of the performative stuff is still there but he genuinely cares about his team and supports them, and it’s also shown how much Lamb’s life choices have broken him over the years and made him a much less functional person in some ways. Not surprisingly, Gary Oldman does a fantastic job with all this.

*About 90% of River Cartwright’s narrative function in the books is to make middle aged men look good. In the series, this is much less the case, though he’s still an idiot.

 

[Jeremy E Grenemyer]

As of right now I am starting this big honking thing. I bought it on the recommendation of Forgotten Realms author Phil Athans.

 

[prabe]

As of right now I am starting this big honking thing. I bought it on the recommendation of Forgotten Realms author Phil Athans.

Good luck!