What are you reading in 2025?

[Nellisir]

There’s good and bad popcorn, and cotton candy, whipped Jello, whatever. Very nearly anything can be done well or badly, and writing really good junk food escapism takes as much work as writing anything else really well, I think.

I did a creative writing major in college and my thesis was a collection of fantasy short stories. Small school with a big ego about its literary reputation (Hint: I refused to read American Psycho even though it was EVERYWHERE on my campus); no teachers who read fantasy. Finally, one said he didn't know about anything about the fantasy genre, but good writing was good writing and he'd do it.

I'm grateful to Roland Merullo every day.

(Also, I just watched some snippets of a video about him - clips of talks he's done, apparently - and you guys. You have NO idea how much thicker that Revere accent is in person, or was back then. "...a feelin' ah bein' whuahm..." Absolutely love it.)

 

[Parmandur]

David Hartwell argued that horror isn’t a genre, but a mode in which you can write any gene. Thus mysteries that are horror and mysteries that aren’t, sf that’s horror and sf that isn’t, and so on. Works for me.

I have in my head that there are genres of setting and genres of story. Hartwell's point, as you describe it, seems like a different way to express that idea. Hartwell was an excellent anthologist, as well as a superb critic (not reviewer, critic) and I'm happy to have somehow had a thought consistent with his.

Genre as we use it is more about marketers categorizing the readership than the text. Some people like the good puzzle of a mystery, some like the goosebumps raising emotions of horror, some like the passiona of romance, and some of us when presented with an absolutely bizarre hypothetical such as "imagine that there is an intergalactic civilization that is built on people snorting the poop of giant sand worms as a psychedelic to allow for FTL travel" respond with "do go on" instead of "what???"

That's why Fantasy and Science Fiction get shelved together, despite there being very different subject matter: the psychological profile of the readership is similar.

 

[Retros_x]

I mean medieval and pretty much every society before it everywhere was pretty terrible for most

I mean that depends whom you ask. The "dark age" is famously misrepresented in modern media. The peasants did not work more than us today (8-9 hours), but had MUCH more holidays, often for multiple weeks outside of hard-demanding timeframes like harvest. They did a lot of merrymaking, they died their clothes colorful, they did wash themselves.

Would I wanted to live back then? Of course not. We achieved so much medical and societal improvements that I don't want to miss. But the picture of "everything was terrible until the capitalist factory owners brought us luck and prosperity" is also not true and a strongly ideologically driven narrative.


@Parmandur I actually started Wheel of Time! I thought I give it a chance, and I do enjoy it. It feels very cozy to me right now in autumn, early winter and it scratches the "epic fantasy" itch that The Way of Kings failed to do for me a few months ago. The prose is not that masterful to me like you claimed, but also not bad as others did. I like the descriptive style that pulls me into the scene. I am still only 200 pages in the first book, but I do enjoy it at the moment!

 

[Alzrius]

I mean that depends whom you ask. The "dark age" is famously misrepresented in modern media. The peasants did not work more than us today (8-9 hours), but had MUCH more holidays, often for multiple weeks outside of hard-demanding timeframes like harvest. They did a lot of merrymaking, they died their clothes colorful, they did wash themselves.

There's an excellent series of essays about the life of medieval peasants by Bret Devereaux over on his blog, which I'm a big fan of.