What are you reading in 2025?

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

I love vampire fiction and Salems Lot left me very whelmed. Maybe I should give it another chance.

 

[prabe]

'Salem's Lot always struck me as a gloriously creepy novel, especially when the vampires start coming out of the woodwork in the last half-ish.

Pet Sematary is literally the only novel to have given me nightmares. Granted, I read it probably within a year of my mom dying, and I would have been like fourteen. (The nature of the nightmares should be clear ...)

 

[gban007]

I think Pet Semetary is the better book but 'Salem's Lot gets a lot of affection from me just because it leads to one of my favorite moments of all King's writing, toward the end of The Dark Tower.

I really need to read the Dark Tower at some point, maybe a goal for 2026.

 

[overgeeked]

I really need to read the Dark Tower at some point, maybe a goal for 2026.

My wife keeps telling me I’d love it, but I just haven’t gotten around to it yet.

 

[gnarlygninja]

If you like Stephen King, have read a lot of his books, and would be interested in how they all connect it's probably worth it. They were probably my greatest love (of books) as a teenager but when I reread them a few years ago the apple had lost a lot of its shine. There are still some great moments in it though.

 

[Thomas Shey]

If you like Stephen King, have read a lot of his books, and would be interested in how they all connect it's probably worth it. They were probably my greatest love (of books) as a teenager but when I reread them a few years ago the apple had lost a lot of its shine. There are still some great moments in it though.

While I dearly loved Carrie and Salem's Lot when I first read them, over time I became less and less enamored of his novels, though I still appreciated at least some of his short stories.

 

[Nellisir]

'Salem's Lot always struck me as a gloriously creepy novel, especially when the vampires start coming out of the woodwork in the last half-ish.

Pet Sematary is literally the only novel to have given me nightmares. Granted, I read it probably within a year of my mom dying, and I would have been like fourteen. (The nature of the nightmares should be clear ...)

Dude.

I'm sorry about the loss of your mom, and the nightmares sound...absolutely awful.
(I understand both were some time ago, but....)

 

[overgeeked]

Just finished Matrix Games for Modern Wargaming. Nice little pamphlet on Matrix Games. I love the idea of Matrix Games and I’m sometimes surprised they haven’t taken off in RPG spaces. But then I remember they’re the antithesis of the “big numbers go up forever” style of mechanics that dominate the hobby. That they haven’t taken off with storygamers and minimalists is the real surprise. Some of the additional mechanics presented in the book remind me of Tunnels & Trolls, which is kinda weird but kinda cool.

 

[Eyes of Nine]

Finished the Other Wind, final volume of Earthsea. My massive volume also has 4 more short stories and an essay from UKlG too that I still have to read - prob by New Years. However I can say without reservation that this is a masterpiece of fiction. Le Guin's ability to capture the nuance of feeling and setting in just a few words is unmatched. I loved how it resolved, she def stuck the landing, with the perfect tone of elegiac sadness.

Next up, someone was lucky enough to be gifted a single volume set of the first three Hainish novels. Long ago I read the Left Hand of Darkness and the Dispossessed (and later The Word for World is Forest); but I have never read Rocannon's World, Planet of Exile, and City of Illusions. And so where 2025 was my year with Earthsea, I imagine in 2026 I'll be reading all the Hainish novels, and if I can track them down, the short stories too.

Probably will start off in March-ish, since I've got 7 volumes of the Rivers of London sitting next to my armchair...

Relatedly for gifts, also was gifted the first volume in MC Beaton's Hamish Macbeth series, Death of a Gossip. I have a bunch of the later volumes that I bought for a $1 but my brain needs me to read them "in order".

(My other 2026 task - keep my Hainish and Hamish separate lol)

 

[Cadence]

Rereading the Nero Wolfe corpus again (3rd time through for it, this time in in-universe order) after having gotten samples of some more authors in since last time, and a lot of detective TV shows.

Neither "Fer-de-Lance" (1934) nor "The League of Frightened Men" (1935) will come in near the top of my all time favorites list, but they do have parts that show Rex Stout can really write and is a great builder of recurring characters.

In comparison, it wasn't Alleyn that kept me reading Marsh (she is great at setting up the story specific characters before Alleyn gets there), nor Grant his early Tey books (she can really write in general). As far as a "series", Hammett's Continental Op has an interesting protagonist to go with the great writing - but I don't know if I ever really care about the Op as a person. Jones's Pinkerton and Bull had the downside of not being as strong of characters nor having that level of writing, and Sayer and her Wimsey haven't gotten me to pick up book 4 of that yet. I think Archie's narration for the Wolfe cases might have been able to pull me through even if the writing wasn't near as strong as it is.

After those first two in the series, "O Careless Love!" (1935) isn't listed as a Wolfe related book, but it does have an upscale Restaurant in NYC called Rusterman's, so I slotted it in. It's a romantic-comedy, and I think I liked it even more this time through. (I imagine one of the characters having the voice of Gale Gordon from Our Miss Brooks). On the down side it isn't a detective story and it doesn't have Archie, Fritz, or Wolfe. On the plus side it was a very well-written, fast, fun read.

Near the beginning of "The Rubber Band" (1936) now.