Wolfram stout
Hero
I just finished Abbadon's Gate (Expanse Book 3). It was good, and in my opinion had a better flow than the first two.
What are you reading in 2025?
- Thread starter Elodan
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Autumnal
Bruce Baugh, Writer of Fortune
So…this is interesting. It begins very innocuously. It doesn’t stay there. Share your favorite snippets.
www.thebooksinorder.com
Horus Heresy Books In Reading Order | Full List Updated 2025
Horus Heresy Books in Order/ Horus Heresy Books List - Yes, you are right! If you want to take the entire enjoyment of the Horus Heresy Books in Order then
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overgeeked
Open-World Sandbox
They really get better at writing and working together as the series goes on. I'm still somewhere in the middle of the series. My wife just finished the last book in the series in the last month or so. She really enjoyed them all. I've enjoyed all of them that I've read. Door stoppers, especially a series of them, are particularly hard for me to read.
I just bought the audiobook. Having only watched the first season, there's a lot I hope to discover as I read (er, listen).
overgeeked
Open-World Sandbox
I never managed to watch much of the show. We had both read the first few books when the show dropped so were excited to see how they did. We watched the first episode but never the second.
Ralif Redhammer
Legend
I just finished re-reading Count Zero. It's been about ten years since I last read it, and while I used to think it wasn't as prescient as Neuromancer, time has proven it just as.
“And, for an instant, she stared directly into those soft blue eyes and knew, with an instinctive mammalian certainty, that the exceedingly rich were no longer even remotely human.”
Now I'm reading the Cyberfunk! anthology, edited by Milton J. Davis.
“And, for an instant, she stared directly into those soft blue eyes and knew, with an instinctive mammalian certainty, that the exceedingly rich were no longer even remotely human.”
Now I'm reading the Cyberfunk! anthology, edited by Milton J. Davis.
Alzrius
The EN World kitten
I just finished reading a 1999 reprint of Ernest Ingersoll's 1928 book, Dragons and Dragon Lore.
I had a hard time getting into this one at first. Part of the reason for that was because, perhaps because I'd been reading several more recently-written books with an anthropological focus, I expected this to be a rigorous treatise on the development on dragons in human myth. In that regard, I was half-right; Ingersoll covers a lot of ground where dragons (and similar serpent-monsters) appear in human myth, though I won't go so far as to call this comprehensive.
However, his scholarship about the origins and spread of dragon stories was more speculative than I'd expected. He leans heavily into inference, often to the point of assumption, about how these tales spread. We're told, for instance, about the presence of draconic deities and monsters in some of the earliest myths from Sumeria; it's then presumed that these are the source of nagas and similar snake monsters in Indian folklore, totally on the basis that the former are older than the latter and so must have been exported eastward as a byproduct of trade and emigration. That may very well be true, but here the presumption seems to be sufficient to declare it so.
The other thing which made it difficult for me to get into this book was its...let's say "parochial" view towards Asian cultures. To give an example of this, here's an excerpt of the opening from chapter four:
Maximum. Cringe.
I enjoy reading a lot of old books, especially nonfiction, because I think that the past has a great deal to teach us, and that even the mistakes, the ignorances, and even the prejudices of our ancestors can be informative. But that doesn't make things like the above any easier to read, let alone try and extract something valuable from.
Having said that, I'll reiterate that there is worthwhile information here. Ingersoll's insights about the dragon (outside of its Christianized context, where it's representative of sin in general and Satan in particular) as being repeatedly associated with water across myriad cultures—from the watery chaos of Tiamat to the rain-bringing dragons of Chinese myth to Japan's Ryūjin—is interesting to consider. Likewise the consideration of how the legend of Saint George has spread across Europe, to the point where the English people appropriated it to being a local myth instead of one that happened on the other side of the continent. There's a lot of interesting material in here (heck, I'd never heard of the Golden Legend before it was casually mentioned in this text) if the antiquated tenor of its text can be overlooked.
All of which is to say that I don't think the time I spent reading this was wasted, but this isn't the book I'd hand someone if I were trying to convince them of the value in reading old books.
I had a hard time getting into this one at first. Part of the reason for that was because, perhaps because I'd been reading several more recently-written books with an anthropological focus, I expected this to be a rigorous treatise on the development on dragons in human myth. In that regard, I was half-right; Ingersoll covers a lot of ground where dragons (and similar serpent-monsters) appear in human myth, though I won't go so far as to call this comprehensive.
However, his scholarship about the origins and spread of dragon stories was more speculative than I'd expected. He leans heavily into inference, often to the point of assumption, about how these tales spread. We're told, for instance, about the presence of draconic deities and monsters in some of the earliest myths from Sumeria; it's then presumed that these are the source of nagas and similar snake monsters in Indian folklore, totally on the basis that the former are older than the latter and so must have been exported eastward as a byproduct of trade and emigration. That may very well be true, but here the presumption seems to be sufficient to declare it so.
The other thing which made it difficult for me to get into this book was its...let's say "parochial" view towards Asian cultures. To give an example of this, here's an excerpt of the opening from chapter four:
"Today, when one hears the word 'dragon' one's mind almost inevitably pictures the fantastic figure embroidered in red and gold thread on some gorgeous Chinese garment, or winding its clouded way about the lustrous curves of a Japanese vase. To Western eyes it is hardly more than a quaint conventionalized ornament, but to Orientals, let me repeat, it is an embodiment of all the significance of natural history and ancient philosophy—the natural and supreme symbol of their race and culture. Again, the Western man looks on the dragon as something as mythical as the Man in the Moon, but the great mass of people in China, Tibet, and Korea, at least, believe in the lung (its ancient name) as now alive, active and numerous—believe in it with as firm and simple a faith as our infants put in the existence of Santa Claus, or the Ojibway in his Thunder Bird, or you and I in the law of gravitation."
Maximum. Cringe.
I enjoy reading a lot of old books, especially nonfiction, because I think that the past has a great deal to teach us, and that even the mistakes, the ignorances, and even the prejudices of our ancestors can be informative. But that doesn't make things like the above any easier to read, let alone try and extract something valuable from.
Having said that, I'll reiterate that there is worthwhile information here. Ingersoll's insights about the dragon (outside of its Christianized context, where it's representative of sin in general and Satan in particular) as being repeatedly associated with water across myriad cultures—from the watery chaos of Tiamat to the rain-bringing dragons of Chinese myth to Japan's Ryūjin—is interesting to consider. Likewise the consideration of how the legend of Saint George has spread across Europe, to the point where the English people appropriated it to being a local myth instead of one that happened on the other side of the continent. There's a lot of interesting material in here (heck, I'd never heard of the Golden Legend before it was casually mentioned in this text) if the antiquated tenor of its text can be overlooked.
All of which is to say that I don't think the time I spent reading this was wasted, but this isn't the book I'd hand someone if I were trying to convince them of the value in reading old books.
Last edited:
Ralif Redhammer
Legend
Parable of the Sower is one of the most terrifyingly prophetic books I've ever read. Haunting and powerful.
That sort of Orientalism is all over books of the late 19th century to the early 20th. Lots of Ballantine Adult Fantasy and pulp works are redolent with it. And frequently, written by people that had never stepped outside of "The West." Some do manage to rise above it and deliver poetic, lyrical, and exciting works. But others use the trappings of racially-charged mysticism in place of any depth, and that is so painful to read.
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