What are you reading in 2025?

[Sacrosanct]

Finished re-reading the original Dragonlance Chronicles along with the Lost Chronicles trilogy. The first two books was pretty easy, as they took place in between Dragons of Summer Flame and Dragons of Winter Night respectively. But the third (Dragons of the Hourglass Mage) took place at the same time as Dragons of Spring Dawning, so there was a lot of back and forth between the two.

Now I'm on to something completely different: I'm reading several Agatha Christie books on my slate.

 

[Jahydin]

Finally finished Don Quixote, just under the wire for 2025.

Awesome! I have three for this year: Paradise Lost (my favorite book, but can't seem to finish it...), LotR (movies were so good, I've put off reading the actual book), and Alien Clay (my first sci-fi book!).

A lot of pop culture needs to be audience tested less, but this is one where in addition to an editor, someone needed to sit down and ask Cervantes whether he wanted the audience to like Don Quixote or not, because Cervantes is all over the place on this. I think modern audiences would mostly be on Quixote's side, in the way that we like the well-meaning but at times delusional characters on Parks & Rec.

I liked that it was left up to the reader to decide if aimless heroism is admirable. For me, it certainly makes me pause and evaluate if I am "charging at windmills" whenever I go on a tear.

As I finished it, though, I realized there's probably enough stuff in the implied setting that Don Quixote believes in to add up to a slim Shadowdark zine, so I might do that. Obviously, it's a job better handled by a Castilian speaker, creating something similar to Brancalonia, but hopefully me cranking out six to eight pages of Quixote-inspired stuff won't offend the native speakers too badly.

Cool idea. Hope you share it here when you're done!

 

[Eyes of Nine]

I'm reading The Waves at Genji's Door: Japan Through Its Cinema by Joan Mellen. My son found it at a used bookstore and got it for me as a Christmas gift, knowing I love samurai movies (and kaiju movies, but this book doesn't address those). So far it's a little dry, but I'll give it a chance - at worst, I'll just skim until I hit the samurai movie bits.

Johnathan

Oh, I like books on Japanese Cinema, or at least, it's an area I'd like to read more about. Any other recommendations?