What are you reading in 2025?

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

Back when I was working recording audiobooks, we recorded a book about Emily Dickinson that described her as "America's best and best-loved poet." My response was on the lines of "Best is arguable--the Brits do want to claim Eliot as their own, for instance--but America's best-loved poet is Giesel, by miles."

Maurice Sendak also edges out Dickinson nowadays, I'd say.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

.

 

[prabe]

Maurice Sendak also edges out Dickinson nowadays, I'd say.

As best-loved? Probably. As better ... well, if you've ever had the (mis)fortune to slog through a book of all her poems, you know her signal-to-noise ratio isn't all that great.

 

[Autumnal]

When you have to read too many Dickinson poems in short order, just sing them. The Yellow Rose of Texas, the Gilligan’s Island theme, Stairway to Heaven, whatever’s handy. The poems will still be themselves but you’ll be snickering at her expense and that’ll get you through.

 

[trappedslider]

When you have to read too many Dickinson poems in short order, just sing them. The Yellow Rose of Texas, the Gilligan’s Island theme, Stairway to Heaven, whatever’s handy. The poems will still be themselves but you’ll be snickering at her expense and that’ll get you through.

mouse over text: I learned from Achewood that since this poem is in ballad meter, it can be sung to the tune of Gilligan's Island. Since then, try as I might, I haven't ONCE been able to read it normally.

 

[prabe]

When you have to read too many Dickinson poems in short order, just sing them. The Yellow Rose of Texas, the Gilligan’s Island theme, Stairway to Heaven, whatever’s handy. The poems will still be themselves but you’ll be snickering at her expense and that’ll get you through.

Hymnic meter is a trap in the English language for hack poets, yes (lyricists arguably have an excuse).

 

[overgeeked]

Reading through a stack of new books. Mutual Aid by Dean Spade. This Nonviolent Stuff’ll Get You Killed by Charles E. Cobb Jr. How Nonviolence Protects the State by Peter Gelderloos. Jakarta Method by Vincent Bevins. And Conquest of Bread by Peter Kropotkin. I might be in a mood.

 

[trappedslider]

I might be in a mood.

I couldn't tell lol

 

[Mannahnin]

I'm still gradually (but enjoyably) working through Fine's Shared Fantasy.

I'm in the middle of a section of chapter 3 which talks about players and referees mediating and fighting for their own view of the fantasy, though things like cheating at dice rolls and arguing over the rules and referee decisions.

I knew that fudging was common back in the day, but the degree to which straight up cheating was endemic in the Minneapolis scene in '76-'79 per this account almost shocks me.

There's a quote from an interview which makes me wonder if it's the origin of the line about "a good DM only rolls the dice for the sound they make", which I've seen attributed to Gygax.

GAF: To what extent do you think the referees use the actual rolls they get?

Chuck: It's pretty much you just kind of swing your own way. You kind of roll the dice, but you're just doing it for the sound effects. [Personal interview]
-(SF, p104)

Oh, and there are multiple anecdotes in this section involving a dragon PC (as sanctioned by Gary in OD&D), both in discussing players arguing for re-rolls and changed results (when the dragon PC would have been killed), and in them arguing against a DM's ruling on dragons forcing morale checks on the party (because the player with the dragon PC argues that the other PCs would be more comfortable with dragons due to being used to him and him having helped them many times).

Crichton, as a writer, is pretty bad, actually. The movies based his work are better than the original novels. Some of which are pretty terrible (e.g. Timeline, a Doctor Who knockoff by someone who has never seen Doctor Who).

I think what happened was the Andromeda Strain was a great movie, more down to the direction than the plot. But after that Crichton acquired a reputation in Hollywood as a good author to make movies out of.

Right on. I haven't actually read him, except Jurassic Park when I was 11 or 12, which I don't remember as a book. I was surprised at how prolific he was and how many films were made of his books. Like, I had no idea The Great Train Robbery was him.

I loved Jurassic Park as an adolescent, but haven't revisited in a while. I remember it as better than the movie. (Edit: Well, the characters, anyway.)

I read The Andromeda Strain as an adult and was definitely impressed with the tension and atmosphere created. Maybe I've just not read enough to encounter the bad ones.

 

[jian]

Finished Lucky Loser. The chapters on The Apprentice were particularly illuminating.

Finished The Steel Seraglio by Mike, Linda, and Louise Carey. I was of course aware of Carey as a generally great writer (Lucifer, Felix Castor, The Girl with all the Gifts, Book of Koli, Once Was Willem etc) but this is the first time I've read a book co-written by him with his wife and daughter, who are accomplished writers in their own right, and I must say the book is much the better for it. The Steel Seraglio (called The City of Silk and Steel in the UK) is a wonderful, mythical, personal telling of the rise and fall of Bessa, a fictional fantasy Arabian city of tolerance, equality, peace, art, and trade. All the characters are wonderfully and sympathetically drawn, even the two main villains (who are quite similar to each other, deliberately), and I recommend it heartily.

The three Careys have written one other book together (The House of War and Witness) and I'll be reading that soon too.