What are you reading in 2025?

[Mannahnin]

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.

I saw an ad for the TV show and it looked interesting.

 

[Ralif Redhammer]

I finished reading Weiss' Retail Gangster: The Insane, Real-Life Story of Crazy Eddie. Oh man, I knew that the owner and other higher ups were sentenced for fraud, but I had no idea how endemic it was to the business. Just about every sort of fraud you could imagine, they committed.

If you don't remember Crazy Eddie, these were the sorts of commercials they aired. Jerry Carroll's manic patter lives rent-free in my brain to this day:


Now I'm reading Lisa Mason's Cyberweb, the sequel to Arachne.

 

[Reynard]

I just started Thunderstruck by Erik Larson. I have not read a Larson book in a while; I really love the way he writes narrative non-fiction. Devil in the White City is good, of course, but my favorite book by him is In The Garden of Beasts.

The turn of the 20th century is a really interesting time, and I prefer the Edwardian to Victorian timeframe when it comes to the rise of both science and spiritualism.

 

[Eyes of Nine]

I just started Thunderstruck by Erik Larson.

My brain is dumb, this is all I can think of:

 

[jian]

Read Brigands & Breadknives by Travis Baldree, the third in the Legends & Lattes series, and this one is actually a continuation of events in previous books. Our protagonist is Fern, a ratling bookseller who befriended Viv (the protagonist of the previous books) and set her on the path of not being a murderhobo and opening a coffee shop instead. Fern, however, isn’t particularly sorted out herself, which causes her to stow away with a famous elven swordswoman and things just take off from there. If you liked the previous books, you’ll very probably like this one.

 

[trappedslider]

so the book i did an iil on finally showed up,so i'll dig into it this weekend.

The Man from the Train is a 2017 true crime book written by Bill James and his daughter Rachel McCarthy James in which the authors claim to have discovered a serial killer active in the late 1800s and early 1900s.

so i tried reading this but it jsut didn't work for me, i think it maybe because my interested in the subject wasn't there.

Anyway, I returned it and got a couple of books, one that grabbed my attention from the start
Billion-Dollar Ransom: A Thriller by James Patterson (Author), Duane Swierczynski (Author) and the other is America the Abandoned: Captivating Portraits of Deserted Homes

 

[Autumnal]

I promised someone here I’d take a look at The Darkness Comes Before, now that I’m out of the hospital with a new stent in my heart, I’m able to do that. I have two comments, one more serious than the other.

1. This man may love his diacritcal marks a little too much. Just in the first couple pages, there are:

KÛNIÜRI (place)
Kûniüric High Kings
Anasûrimbor Ganrelka II, High King of Kûniüri
The five Knights of Trysë who’d rescued Ganrelka after the catastrophe on the Fields of Eleneöt
Ishuäl (place)

…and so on. Diacriticals are nice, but honestly, too much can be enough sometimes.

2. I’m really enjoying it so far. There’s a lot of good writing and interesting thinking in it. I don’t especially believe in the superior insights into cause and effect and therefore into social engineering t that one faction has, but it’s great for a story. A bunch of the other factions are also very interesting, and the nonhumans are intriguing.

Naturally, I have no idea where things are going. I could try to guess, but honestly that isn’t a lot of fun for me - I take it as it comes. I’m really curious to find out.