What are you reading in 2025?

[prabe]

I finished reading Cameron Reed's The Fortunate Fall. That was a book so good that I was left struggling what to read next. It had so many layers to it, and one heck of an ending.

I eventually decided on Philip K. Dick's Flow My Tears, the Policeman Said for my next read. You have to follow greatness up with either more greatness, or schlock. Anything in-between just won't do.

While I see what you're saying at the end, I care much less than you seem to about whether the book I read tonight will be as good as the book I read last night. But I grab a lot of books from the library, based mostly on what grabs me at the moment; while I want every book I grab to be really good, there are various shades of less-awesome that inevitably happen.

That said, there have been times when a book probably did seem worse than it was to me, because the previous book had been so excellent.

 

[Mannahnin]

Finally finished Gary Alan Fine's Shared Fantasy, which closes with some more dense sociology, where the beginning and middle of the book have more relatable ethnography of gamers and amusing anecdotes. Still, even through the end there are still interesting historical insights into gamer culture of the late 70s and early 80s, including an important dynamic at the time between younger gamers (whence we got the term "munchkin") and older gamers with greater social status.

I've resumed full speed on Bowling Alone, this month's book (my first pick) for the book club I joined this Spring.

 

[prabe]

Finally finished Gary Alan Fine's Shared Fantasy, which closes with some more dense sociology, where the beginning and middle of the book have more relatable ethnography of gamers and amusing anecdotes. Still, even through the end there are still interesting historical insights into gamer culture of the late 70s and early 80s, including an important dynamic at the time between younger gamers (whence we got the term "munchkin") and older gamers with greater social status.

I've resumed full speed on Bowling Alone, this month's book (my first pick) for the book club I joined this Spring.

IIRC Bowling Alone is a decade or two old at this point, and I'm wondering A) how its observations hold up and B) whether they're potentially relevant to TRPGs as they move away from being a shared in-person thing. I should possibly see about checking it out from the library to see for myself, but I rarely make it out of the fiction, there.

 

[Ralif Redhammer]

While I see what you're saying at the end, I care much less than you seem to about whether the book I read tonight will be as good as the book I read last night. But I grab a lot of books from the library, based mostly on what grabs me at the moment; while I want every book I grab to be really good, there are various shades of less-awesome that inevitably happen.

That said, there have been times when a book probably did seem worse than it was to me, because the previous book had been so excellent.

I normally am not that way, but every once in a while, I read a book that is so profoundly good, that I feel pressure as to what I want to read next. Normally, I'll gleefully move between modes and levels of quality. I can enjoy Lin Carter as much as Dostoyevsky (even if the latter is certainly the better writer).

Finally finished Gary Alan Fine's Shared Fantasy, which closes with some more dense sociology, where the beginning and middle of the book have more relatable ethnography of gamers and amusing anecdotes. Still, even through the end there are still interesting historical insights into gamer culture of the late 70s and early 80s, including an important dynamic at the time between younger gamers (whence we got the term "munchkin") and older gamers with greater social status.

For all that it's an academic work, and as far as I know the first published academic work on gaming, Shared Fantasy is quite readable.

 

[overgeeked]

I normally am not that way, but every once in a while, I read a book that is so profoundly good, that I feel pressure as to what I want to read next. Normally, I'll gleefully move between modes and levels of quality. I can enjoy Lin Carter as much as Dostoyevsky (even if the latter is certainly the better writer).

Eh. At least Lin's stuff has something resembling pacing and a plot. To me that's the only real mark of a good writer. Writing the most beautiful sentences known to humanity is irrelevant if the story isn't engaging enough on its own to keep the reader awake.