What are you reading in 2025?

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

The Salmon of Doubt is great. Enough good nuggets to suggest more good stuff was coming at the time of Douglas Adams' untimely death (it doesn't feel great being older than he was when he died!), while also explaining why it would have taken years or maybe never would have come out.

For a super-sized version of this, 42: The Wildly Improbable Ideas of Douglas Adams makes it clear that it was sort of amazing we got anything from Douglas at all.

 

[jian]

Reading How to Stand Up to a Dictator by Maria Ressa, a Filipina investigative journalist and founder of Rappler writing about fighting online misinformation and the Duterte dictatorship in recent years.

What’s coincidentally interesting for me is the way she confirms and mirrors what Sarah Wynn-Williams wrote in Careless People (which I read last month) about Facebook’s near-total lack of ethics and oversight, especially in the Philippines (which has some of the highest levels of social media penetration in the world) and how the Duterte administration abused the hell out of that opportunity.

 

[Reynard]

I have to read Necroscope for a podcast thing I do. I'm actually not looking forward to it, based on what i have read about the book.

 

[jian]

Reading three webtoons/manhwa (online Korean comics) that have some similarities and which I’m quite enjoying. The theme is “protagonist has been reincarnated as a minor character in a fantasy JRPG and is desperately trying to keep the plot on track so that the world isn’t destroyed.”

• The Extra’s Academy Survival Guide: Our protagonist has been reincarnated as Ed Rothstaylor, the tutorial boss of a magic academy JRPG - kind of like Draco Malfoy if he was completely irrelevant after Harry beats him up in the first book. Ed therefore has to deal with having been disowned by his (evil) family and surviving in the school (where his reputation is terrible, of course) without any money, while having to constantly pull the plot back on track to keep everyone alive.
• Magic Academy’s Genius Blinker: This time, the reincarnation is as a minor character who has a terrible build - in a world of extremely powerful wizards and warriors, Baek Yuseol’s only talent is casting blink (well, he has a bit more control than that, but not much). He’s also in a weird situation where he’s basically in a JRPG based on a book, and there’s another reincarnator around who thinks she’s in the book, which has a different plot.
• I Killed the Main Player: When reborn as Corin Loque, a minor side NPC in yet another world-saving fantasy JRPG, our hero helps out Sihu, who’s been reincarnated as the destined hero. Too late, however, Corin realises that Sihu is a complete sociopath who doesn’t regard any of the NPCs as real. When given the chance, Corin does what the title implies and tries to save the world instead.