What are you reading in 2025?

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

Carl Hiaasen's Fever Beach is his best novel in years, maybe a decade. Five stars.

Onto my re-read of Pratchett's Going Postal. Also reading The Mountain in the Sea, which is amazing.

EDIT: Looking over his bibliography, I'd say it's Hiaasen's best book since at least Star Island in 2010. But I think there's an argument to be made that it's his best since Native Tongue in 1991. Fever Beach is really good.

 

[prabe]

Carl Hiaasen's Fever Beach is his best novel in years, maybe a decade. Five stars.

Onto my re-read of Pratchett's Going Postal. Also reading The Mountain in the Sea, which is amazing.

EDIT: Looking over his bibliography, I'd say it's Hiaasen's best book since at least Star Island in 2010. But I think there's an argument to be made that it's his best since Native Tongue in 1991. Fever Beach is really good.

Well, that's going on my list to look for. Dunno that I'll buy a copy, but I might--I've been grabbing Hiaasen's novels from the library as I've come across ones I at least don't remember reading. I remember his early books being really good, and some of his most recent ones have been, but I remember a sense that there was a middle period that wasn't so good. (Though "wasn't so good" is relative, and even those middle books might well be plenty enjoyable.)

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

Well, that's going on my list to look for. Dunno that I'll buy a copy, but I might--I've been grabbing Hiaasen's novels from the library as I've come across ones I at least don't remember reading. I remember his early books being really good, and some of his most recent ones have been, but I remember a sense that there was a middle period that wasn't so good. (Though "wasn't so good" is relative, and even those middle books might well be plenty enjoyable.)

I think him retiring from the Miami Herald and no longer being face down in news of corruption and Florida Man nonsense took away a lot of his edge in his middle period. None of his recent books, as commercially successful as they may have been, have anything like Tourist Season's murder of a tourist by choking them to death with a rubber alligator.

Current national politics has him back and swinging his straight razor around again. (If you read his social media accounts, you can see his engagement rising at the same time as his wit starts sharpening again.)

 

[overgeeked]

I think him retiring from the Miami Herald and no longer being face down in news of corruption and Florida Man nonsense took away a lot of his edge in his middle period. None of his recent books, as commercially successful as they may have been, have anything like Tourist Season's murder of a tourist by choking them to death with a rubber alligator.

Current national politics has him back and swinging his straight razor around again. (If you read his social media account, you can see his engagement rising at the same time as his wit starts sharpening again.)

Stephen King is like that, to me at least. His best stuff was early on when he was hungry, drunk, or coked up. It's his later, more recent stuff that's seemingly turned to mush.