What are you reading in 2025?

[WayneLigon]

I enjoyed all three of these. One more than the others.

The Book That Broke The World - book 2 in the Library Trilogy - Mark Lawrence
AKA The Consequences of Our Actions in Book One. Loved it; we get more of our heroes doing cool heroic things and we begin to pick apart the time-twisting narrative that has gone before. There might be a little too much spent on the background of the new ganar characters, but I think it's needed to understand what's been happening behind the scenes all this time.

Grave Empire - (The Great Silence book 1) - by Richard Swan.
A sequel series to the Empire of The Wolf series, which I loved. Anyone looking for sly asides and beloved character cameos from the previous series will be disappointed, at least so far. This is 200+ years later. The world-shaking events of the previous trilogy have faded into hearsay and myth, as the resurgent Sovan Empire is undergoing the first swell of it's Industrial Revolution. Gunpowder and cannon are the new weapons of war. Magic is all but forgotten until a new threat rears it's head, and suddenly the joke embassy of the mer-people (the mer-people are only vaguely aware they even have an embassy at the Imperial Capitol) becomes critical as the mer-people are the only one who have held on to their magic all this time.

The Raven Scholar (Eternal Path Trilogy #1) by Antonia Hodgson
I can't be objective about this book - it's the finest fantasy novel I've ever read. It's made me cry, it's so, so good. It is a gigantic layered novel with a dozen characters and yet her craft is so deft that you never forget any of them or wonder 'wait, who is this dude again?'. Plot and character and worldbuilding mesh together so utterly seamlessly that it's breathtaking.

Thousands of years ago, a cataclysm wiped out most of the world, leaving our empire surrounded by empty seas and poisoned lands, the human race adrift on this island of sanity and calm. The Eight Guardians put things to right, allowing them to live here. The Guardians have had to return seven times to save mankind from itself. The Eighth time, they will wipe out everything and start over.

The reign of the Emperor is coming to it's end, as he must abdicate after a maximum 24 years on the throne. Seventeen years ago there was an attempted coup, which failed. Now, those chickens are coming home to roost as the time of the Festival draws near. Each of the great houses aligned with one of the eight Guardians will choose a candidate that will compete in a series of fights and trials to become the new emperor.

Our main heroine is Neema Kraa, a humble and despised girl from the slums of Scartown who has become a scholar in the great library-temple of the Raven. She has nevertheless risen to be the Emperor's High Scholar, scorned even by her own people. Now, her time is coming to an end as well, as surely the new Emperor will bring in his or her own people, and she's looking forward to taking a teaching position in some small town where she can finally, finally get some reading done.

Things Do Not Go As Planned. Murder mystery combined with high court intrigue - you had me there, book. And then you did so, so much more.

 

[Autumnal]

One of my favorite things for audiobooks in the history of places and times where there are a lot of names I don’t know to pronounce. That may suggest leads.

 

[Zaukrie]

The Baker's Boy (Book of Words)

 

[Eyes of Nine]

Tombs of Atuan, also very good.
Third and final volume (I think) of graphic novels Once Upon a Time at the End of the World. This one featuring people roughly my age, but a hell of a lot more banged up - it being the end of the world and everything. It says a lot about how love means one thing when young, and another when old, and $h!t has happened and words have been said. I'd recommend the whole series, but probably only on discount in some way.

 

[jian]

Just finished Bad Company by Megan Greenwell, which is an excellent piece of reporting on the effects of private equity in four US sectors - retail, healthcare, journalism, and residential property. Greenwell does a very good job of telling the story of one example of each from the point of view of one key person over time. The story about healthcare (about the decline of a rural hospital in Riverton, Wyoming) struck a particularly personal note with me, since I was once closely involved in the cutting of hospital services in the U.K. under government austerity, but of course the picture in US healthcare under private equity is much worse, as noted by Dr Glaucomflecken among others.

The story about residential property is the most disheartening, and the one with nothing resembling a happy ending (and bear in mind that the “happy ending” for retail - the example is Toys’R’Us - is private equity getting out of retail because it’s no longer profitable). Needless to say, the main point is that private equity shouldn’t be allowed to buy or run anything in the US, but also that they can’t be stopped from doing so and that the issue is mainly a generational one - private equity is driven by the need to deliver 10-20% annual growth for its shareholders, which are most commonly pension funds, and pension funds need those profits because they’re mostly massively in deficit, and so the system essentially sacrifices the health, housing, and employment of the young to ensure the old have enough funds in retirement.

 

[Eyes of Nine]

Just finished Bad Company by Megan Greenwell, which is an excellent piece of reporting on the effects of private equity in four US sectors - retail, healthcare, journalism, and residential property. Greenwell does a very good job of telling the story of one example of each from the point of view of one key person over time. The story about healthcare (about the decline of a rural hospital in Riverton, Wyoming) struck a particularly personal note with me, since I was once closely involved in the cutting of hospital services in the U.K. under government austerity, but of course the picture in US healthcare under private equity is much worse, as noted by Dr Glaucomflecken among others.

The story about residential property is the most disheartening, and the one with nothing resembling a happy ending (and bear in mind that the “happy ending” for retail - the example is Toys’R’Us - is private equity getting out of retail because it’s no longer profitable). Needless to say, the main point is that private equity shouldn’t be allowed to buy or run anything in the US, but also that they can’t be stopped from doing so and that the issue is mainly a generational one - private equity is driven by the need to deliver 10-20% annual growth for its shareholders, which are most commonly pension funds, and pension funds need those profits because they’re mostly massively in deficit, and so the system essentially sacrifices the health, housing, and employment of the young to ensure the old have enough funds in retirement.

Private capital is capitalism metastasized, full stop.

 

[jian]

Private capital is capitalism metastasized, full stop.

Yes. It’s not the only part that is actively destructive - arguably having any publicly traded companies controlling any major sector prioritises profit seeking over all other outcomes in their decision making, and also makes it possible to have billionaires who have disproportionate power and influence while being incentivised to have zero empathy for everyone else - but it’s a pretty important one.

According to Bad Company, more than half of all pension funds are significantly invested in private equity and about 60% of private equity shareholders by weight are pension funds; and almost half of all privately owned residential property for rent in the US is owned by private equity.

A common theme in the “happy endings” in Bad Company is representatives of the various sectors affected (retail employees, patients, doctors, journalists, residential tenants etc) meeting with pension fund boards and persuading them to disinvest from private equity or pressuring those companies to be better owners. However, this usually means the private equity firms just leave those sectors - which is good, but the sectors are still wrecked by their recent ownership and will take a long time to recover if at all - and the pension funds still have massive deficits they can’t make up.

 

[Autumnal]

Okay okay okay. Everyone who’s been telling me since 1995 that I needed to be reading Robin Hobb’s Realm of the Elderlings serieses: please form a line to my right for your chance to tell me “I told you so”, or any other single sentence of related meaning with a maximum of one subordinate clause. Wow.

 

[Eyes of Nine]

Okay okay okay. Everyone who’s been telling me since 1995 that I needed to be reading Robin Hobb’s Realm of the Elderlings serieses: please form a line to my right for your chance to tell me “I told you so”, or any other single sentence of related meaning with a maximum of one subordinate clause. Wow.

"... ONE OF US, ONE OF US, ONE OF US..."

 

[Paul Farquhar]

One of my favorite things for audiobooks in the history of places and times where there are a lot of names I don’t know to pronounce. That may suggest leads.

I have noticed that audiobook readers sometimes pronounce things wrong themselves though.