What are you reading in 2025?

[Eyes of Nine]

In terms of "greatest" I feel like there are a couple of data sets and populations that you can pull together to try to figure this out. And note, this ebbs and flows, and if you have the data set, you could potentially look at a snapshot at any given "century" (or other time frame) and try to say who is greatest. And depending on who is asking, they could lend bias towards certain data to come to an answer of who is best, for them.

• Commercial success - in book publishing; but also in other media. Many dimensions here that we could take (box office, total streams, etc).
• Peer regard - both the blurb idea posted above; but also consider things like the Nebula or Edgar awards
• The academy - this can be explicit lists by prominent 'critics' and academics; as well as juried prizes like the LeGuin awards, Pulitzer, or Booker prize
• Popular regard - as measured by popular vote awards - Hugos or Emmas in romance.
• "Zeitgeist" by doing some analytics of google searches could yield some interesting data...

Just spitballing here. No real answer I don't think.

 

[John Lloyd1]

Final point today on this - really, the internet is made for my kind of shopping. I've got a list, just look it up on Amazon or Abe or Thrift or whatever. Spend my shekels or dinar, go on my way. But some of the books on my list I wouldn't pay more than $1 used for - most books published before 1980 for example, so that when it inevitably disappoints me for it's -isms, it won't hurt to recycle. And really, the purpose of my list is to have some boundaries around my book buying. And by boundaries, I mean my list is ~500 books long. And my to-read shelf of dead tree books is also roughly 300 books (and graphic novels and RPG books). It's all about the hunt, at the end of the day. And AMZ, ABE, etc don't provide any excitement in the hunt. And I also like to support local business, wherever I may be.

I've been using Booko to find the new and used books I'm interested in. It searches the various book sites and calculates delivery.

 

[Autumnal]

Egad. The middle of Kingdoms of Death, book #4 of the Sun Eater, has one of the most grueling passages I’ve read outside of horror fiction and non-fiction accounts of particularly brutal wars. I mean, it is about a war and being taken prisoner by very unpleasant aliens. But wow it takes a toll on the characters. There’s very little explicit grue in it, but Ruocchio is very good at capturing the emotional consequences. Knowing the narrator survives was sometimes a slender reed; I was reminded sometimes of the second half of Adam Nevill’s The Ritual, book and movie. Very much worth the effort, for me, but it was effort in a way the rest of the series so far hasn’t been. Now I’m past it and glad to be on to other things.

ETA: For someone who’s bought as many thousand books as I have, and read so many more thanks to public and academic libraries, I have surprising few strong opinions about shelving. Mostly I want good clear signs explaining how things are done in whatever place I’m currently in.

Son of ETA: that brutal sequence is followed by something as marvelous as the eucatastrophe in Demon in White. I remain satisfied.

 

[Cadence]

I certainly love the turn this conversation has gone!

My frustration with how bookstores organize their shelves stems from the fact that i enter the store with a list. And that list is most easily sorted alphabetically by author or title or both. Genre sorting is great (maybe) for this "browsing" thing people talk about; but genre sorting is also so arbitrary that I KNOW I have been in a bookstore that had a book on my list; but since they put it into historical fiction or literary fiction or whatever means I never saw the darn thing. Like now I know to look in literary fiction for Jonathan Carroll books. But in my ideal world, I would find the Jonathan Carroll books close to the PC Cast romance-urban-fantasy novels, and not so far away from Ramsey Campbell, John Dickson Carr, and Jack Chalker. That's the other thing. I like a lot of different genres of fiction. For me, I'm game to "browse" it all, cause I like it all, at least in theory.

Final point today on this - really, the internet is made for my kind of shopping. I've got a list, just look it up on Amazon or Abe or Thrift or whatever. Spend my shekels or dinar, go on my way. But some of the books on my list I wouldn't pay more than $1 used for - most books published before 1980 for example, so that when it inevitably disappoints me for it's -isms, it won't hurt to recycle. And really, the purpose of my list is to have some boundaries around my book buying. And by boundaries, I mean my list is ~500 books long. And my to-read shelf of dead tree books is also roughly 300 books (and graphic novels and RPG books). It's all about the hunt, at the end of the day. And AMZ, ABE, etc don't provide any excitement in the hunt. And I also like to support local business, wherever I may be.


It's so hilarious to me that "graphic novels" in Dewey decimal system in many public libraries are slotted into non-fiction over in the 741.59 area (great comic discussing the issue of graphic novels in Dewey. Note it's a pdf, so takes a bit of time to load, and may be terrible read on a phone).

For my imaginary bookstore that is good only for me (as I said upthread there) I would put graphic novels in their own section (same with RPGS, in a different section); but within the graphic novels section I'd alphabetize strictly by title. Again, Genre be damned as a fool's game. Conveniently, most superhero books start with the name of the superhero/supergroup in the title: "X Men Age of Apocalypse" "Batman Killing Joke". Maaaaybe the only exception I might make is for two things: Manga/Manhwa might be separate; and adult (as in p0@rn, not as it the same word meant in prose book publishing field) in it's own section. Which is good, as I have no adult graphic novels on my list so will make my searching much easier.

You're 100% right, you didn't ask about how I would organize my RPGs, but I'll tell you anyway . Strictly by brand in alphabetical order. In other words Dungeons & Dragons would be on the shelf near Dungeon World. World of Darkness near to World of Dungeons. Within system, Core books first, then all other books by title. "What about third party publishers?""What about system agnostic adventures?" "what about this, or that, or even the other thing?" I will answer future questions once someone gives me ~$200,000 to start my own bookstore, and it actually becomes relevant

I am picturing a matrix-esque bookstore where the shelves slide by to what you want - organized the way the user wants, to facilitate both easy finding and browsing.

 

[jian]

I am picturing a matrix-esque bookstore where the shelves slide by to what you want - organized the way the user wants, to facilitate both easy finding and browsing.

“Books. Lots of books. By John Scalzi.”

(Rush of air as bookshelves rush past and stop. Neo takes a book and flips through it.)

“Wait, was this written by AI? Gross.”

Agent Smith: Rude!

 

[Autumnal]

Scaling would only write with AI as a joke, as a fundraiser for a worthy cause, and might decline even then.

 

[jian]

Scaling would only write with AI as a joke, as a fundraiser for a worthy cause, and might decline even then.

Since it’s the Matrix I think the AI would just write in Scalzi’s style without asking his permission.

 

[jian]

Finished Court of Fives, the first of Kate Elliott's YA fantasy series set around playing a complicated game which feels rather like training for dungeon-diving (and amused me briefly because there was a game at my old school called Fives played in a court). It was much more engaging than I expected - there's a lot there about what it means to be conquered and mixed-race, about the effects of rewriting history for personal and cultural reasons. The setting is reminiscent of the Byzantine empire with its intrigues and brutal cynicism.

Am reading (at a friend's recommendation) a manhua called Kill the Male Lead to Become the Villainess, which is surprisingly charming for its premise - a support character in a computer RPG (wuxia theme) decides to kill the protagonist because he's just going to let her die in order to progress the plot otherwise. A bit like if in FF7 Aeris ganked Cloud so that she doesn't get fridged later.

Am also reading Lucky Loser, which is a more objective and less personal biography of Donald Trump than Too Much and Never Enough. It's so far doing a very readable job of covering his family, education, and early career. Let's just say the psychological and behavioural patterns are set early.

 

[Nellisir]

I think you are onto something if we feel like getting towards "what is great". Part of it is talent; but I think a larger part of it is how well known an author is in the cultural zeitgeist. For the late 20th century, there aren't many writers whose works are better known than King. Partially because of how many were made into movies. Maybe Michael Crichton...

Theodor Geisel has entered the chat....