What are you reading in 2025?

Read Foxglove Summer by Ben Aaronovitch (the fifth book in the Rivers of London series) while on a quick trip back east. I thought it was a huge improvement over Broken Homes and appreciated the Herefordshire setting, though the climax was once again wrapped up somewhat abruptly: Peter's bargain with the Queen of the Fae is undone hastily and somewhat unsatisfyingly in mad rush to the end of the book. As far as plotting goes, I didn't think it was grossly unfair, just done entirely too quickly. A nice, light read for travel, and I'm looking forward to The Hanging Tree, but for now I'm off to finish a few unfinished books, starting with Iain Banks's The Player of Games.
 

log in or register to remove this ad

I'm now reading the 10th in Jonathan Maberry's "Joe Ledger" series, Deep Silence. This one deals with he and his team stopping terrorists that can trigger earthquakes and volcanoes. It's also apparently the last of the series, although Joe Ledger appears in a sequel series in which his Delta Force-type special ops force goes international. I may have to pick those up eventually, but I think I'm going to move on to something different for a bit first.

Johnathan
 


Currently reading "Dr. Sleep" after starting my Stephen King readthrough with "The Shining" and "Carrie". At the moment not really a scary book, although it has some creepy moments, but more a contemplative story about guilt, recovery, generational trauma.

I think after 2,5 books what surprises me most is Kings ability as storyteller in terms of characterization and world building. I admit I underestimated his ability as a writer and my bias probably stems from watching too many bad or mediocre adaptions of his work.

Interestingly I see a lot of similarities to Brandon Sanderson: Incredible high output and writing discipline, close contact to their fandom, always open for new marketing techniques (King was one of the first ebook pioneers), very popular and bestselling - but not that great with the critics (although that changed for King in his later career and the same is true for Sanderson), huge pagecount per book, slow pacing etc.

But at least at the moment I prefer King over Sanderson by a large margin. I think their biggest difference is: Sanderson is an architect, King is a gardener - to borrow G.R.R.Martins terms. Sanderson is focussed on plotting and IMO is a slave to his plots while King focusses on a core idea and characterization and let his story evolve naturally. Sanderson delivers great plot twists and finales while feeling to me very artificially. King feels very naturally and his stories feel "lived in", but appereantly due to his critics he often don't stick the landing (I found them not as spectacular as Sandersons endings, but still satisfying enough).

Also both have often a bit eventless middle part in their book - but in King it is still fun to me, due to his characterizations and prose. Meanwhile Sanderson has often some very boring parts in the middle for my taste.

But it is very fun to read both of these authors and compare them a bit. I also finally started "The Way of the Kings" by Sanderson and will fully focus on it once I am done with "Dr. Sleep". The first chapters are intriguing and already seem to me like a big improvement over the first works of Sanderson.
 

Interestingly I see a lot of similarities to Brandon Sanderson: Incredible high output and writing discipline, close contact to their fandom, always open for new marketing techniques (King was one of the first ebook pioneers), very popular and bestselling - but not that great with the critics (although that changed for King in his later career and the same is true for Sanderson), huge pagecount per book, slow pacing etc.
King also experimented with a serial novel, releasing a section every month for 6 months. I worked part time in a bookstore then, and it was fun/cool, but not a really big selling point for most people. I bought comics too so the monthly thing wasn't a big adjustment. (The book was a little thing called The Green Mile, btw. I hear they made a movie out of it ;) )

I SHOULD still have those, but I can't recall where, so maybe not.

A big part of Stephen King's ability/appeal/gift/skill, IMO, is his effortless writing. It's EASY to read his work. It flows smoothly, and just carries you along. I think that's also why he's routinely put down - a lot of snobs think literature should be hard to read, and reading his stuff isn't hard.
 

The book was a little thing called The Green Mile, btw. I hear they made a movie out of it
This btw was also fascinating and one of the reasons I did start reading King. While I stated in my previous post that my anti-King bias was rooted in mediocre King adaptions, what I didnt know: I was also watching some great King adaptions, I just did not know they were based on books by King! Mainly "The Green Mile", "Shawshank Redemption" and "Stand by Me" - I do love all three movies and never knew they were based on stories by Stephen King. When I realized this I put King on my TBR.
 

Nerd Alert: I am in the middle of reading not one, not two, but three books about Doctor Who:

TARDIS Eruditorum, volume 4: Tom Baker and the Hinchcliffe Years, by Philip Sandifer
Running Through Corridors, volume 1: The 60s, by Robert Shearman and Toby Hadoke
Time and Relative Dissertations in Space, edited by David Butler.

I would also be reading About Time 4 (Seasons 12-14, 2nd edition), but I've decided I should wait until I have a job to spring for that one.

Also:

All-Star Superman, by Grant Morrison, Frank Quitely, and Jamie Grant - I hear the new Superman movie draws some inspiration from it, and somehow I never got around to reading it when it came out.

Do/Design/Why beauty is key to everything, by Alan Moore (not the comic book writer).

Various ongoing comics:
DC: Creature Commandos, JSA, the new Martian Manhunter series
Marvel: TVA, Infinity Watch, the new Amazing Spider-man series
IDW: the Star Trek: Lore War crossover

Whew! I'm tired!
 
Last edited:


This btw was also fascinating and one of the reasons I did start reading King. While I stated in my previous post that my anti-King bias was rooted in mediocre King adaptions, what I didnt know: I was also watching some great King adaptions, I just did not know they were based on books by King! Mainly "The Green Mile", "Shawshank Redemption" and "Stand by Me" - I do love all three movies and never knew they were based on stories by Stephen King. When I realized this I put King on my TBR.
Yeah, many King adaptations to the screen have been meh at best. I think there's a few reasons:
  • He's a prolific and popular writer who has had a LOT of adaptations
  • The horror movie genre wasn't a high-end, high-quality genre for a long time (but see below for early films that were well done and had a budget above $2000)
  • I think he's pretty open to licensing out film/tv rights. I've repeatedly heard he licenses short stories to film students for a dollar.
  • A lot of the adaptations have gotten lost in the mists of time. Firestarter, Pet Semetary, Carrie, Christine, The Shining, Cujo, Misery....
  • I think the tv adaptations have almost all been suck. Anyone else watch The Langoliers?
My undergrad college time got weird towards the end, and I ended up doing a last-minute internship in Bangor at a local theatre for a couple months. It was pretty awful and boring, and only slightly livened by the fact I spent the first two weeks living four doors down from Mr. King and his somewhat famous front gate. (Afterwards I moved to different lodgings. Looking back, I was probably clinically depressed during the whole period, but that was only just starting to be a thing on people's radar.)

I read a lot of King as a teenager. Really liked Carrie, Christine, and Firestarter. Plus the short story collections. They tasted just like ladyfingers....
 


Pets & Sidekicks

Remove ads

Top