What are you reading in 2025?

[overgeeked]

Reading Cheech Marin's autobiography. That guy has lived through some stuff. Really interesting read so far and really funny at times. Also really messed up at times.

Finally got around to finishing this one.

It’s a really good read. Richard Marin, aka Cheech, is a good writer and storyteller. The first 1/2 to 2/3 of the book is more interesting and told with more energy than the rest. This just happens to correspond with his younger days and time as part of Cheech and Chong. The rest is serviceable, of course, but dry.

If you’re a fan it’s definitely worth the read.

 

[Eyes of Nine]

Just finished Ben Aaronovitch's Rivers of London "Whispers Underground" on a couple cross-country flights. Fun, I like the mystery mixed with Urban Fantasy. Characters are interesting, world building is pretty neat.

Good enough that I just ordered every other volume in the series from my friendly neighborhood library and plan to binge over next couple of weeks/month. Sadly, they don't have any of the recent novellas, so I'll need to seek those out otherwise.

 

[Eyes of Nine]

On another topic entirely, I wonder if anyone has approached Ada Palmer to create an RPG for the Terra Ignota books - I love that world. (Although not actually sure what PCs would do!)

 

[Hriston]

Finished reading The Story of the Glittering Plain by William Morris, continuing my tour of his fantasy works. I can see why JRR Tolkien preferred Morris's previous two books. This one was much lighter in tone and less naturalistic but a bit more fantastical. It was also shorter, and the edition I read, the 1894 Kelmscott Press second edition, had beautiful woodcut illustrations at the beginning of every chapter and used a gothic-looking Troy typeface, so it was a fun but ultimately unsatisfying read. Also, I'm not sure what socialist themes, if any, it was meant to explore. If they were indeed there, they flew right over my head.

I also read Maker of Gargoyles, a short story by Clark Ashton Smith. I'm convinced it's the reason the gargoyle was included as a monster in D&D. This one was really fun to read. You can see where that Gygaxian prose comes from.

 

[Autumnal]

On another topic entirely, I wonder if anyone has approached Ada Palmer to create an RPG for the Terra Ignota books - I love that world. (Although not actually sure what PCs would do!)

She’s not unaware of gaming, though I can’t remember if she plays. But she just keeps being really, really busy. Her book Inventing the Renaissance is kind of a spin-off of a research project that’s still ongoing, I think, which involves a lot of travel for on-site examinations and a lot of sophisticated work with gathered data while not on the road, and it’s not the only thing she does. If anyone does approach her, they should expect everything to take a long time.

 

[jian]

Finished The Stone Girl’s Story, another banger of a fantasy novel aimed at kids by Sarah Beth Durst. She is very good at these. It’s almost a science fiction story in that it’s about the role of sapient animated stone automata in a fantasy society, but it’s also about how we write our own stories and shouldn’t have them written by others who force their will on us.

 

[Eyes of Nine]

Ok, finished Tales of Earthsea, including the back matter setting info.
Whew. Feels like she's set the stage for the finish in Other Wind.
Got the big 1000 page tome again from the library, with the gorgeous Charles Vess illustrations.
Want to and don't want to finish this series, it's so darn good.

 

[Mannahnin]

Finished The Stone Girl’s Story, another banger of a fantasy novel aimed at kids by Sarah Beth Durst. She is very good at these. It’s almost a science fiction story in that it’s about the role of sapient animated stone automata in a fantasy society, but it’s also about how we write our own stories and shouldn’t have them written by others who force their will on us.

Reminds me of a theme from one of Pratchett's Discworld books.

Definitely a good message for kids.

Ok, finished Tales of Earthsea, including the back matter setting info.
Whew. Feels like she's set the stage for the finish in Other Wind.
Got the big 1000 page tome again from the library, with the gorgeous Charles Vess illustrations.
Want to and don't want to finish this series, it's so darn good.

I long for that Vess-illustrated edition.

 

[gnarlygninja]

I got my hands on The Olympian Affair, the second in Jim Butcher's Cinder Spires, and since it had been so long since I read The Aeronaut's Windlass I decided to reread it before moving to the second. My feelings about Windlass are basically teh same as I remember a decade ago, I enjoyed it but it is too long. After I felt like it would end there were still 200 pages. The second book was a pretty large step down imo. It had the decency to be shorter but felt much less focused and the cats, who were a real highlight of the first book, were just annoying in this one. I'm not sure I'll bother with a third book should it ever come out.

 

[jian]

Read Washington Black by Esi Edugyan, which I found out about from Disney+ of all places because the TV series adaptation is there. It’s an interesting adventure story and exploration of identity, slavery, and parenthood - our hero is a young slave boy from Barbados who is adopted and educated by Titch, an absent-minded English amateur scientist whom he ends up following to Virginia and the Arctic, before moving to Nova Scotia when he is abandoned. Recommended.