What are you reading in 2026?

[Ralif Redhammer]

Back from vacation. Did a ton of reading, so let's catch up.

• Finished Baird's Clipjoint. A really underlooked gem of a book, full of high-tech, low-life vibes.
• Re-read Moorcock's The Jewel in the Skull. Love this book - you can tell because the binding finally went this last re-read. Honestly, I'd be hard-pressed to rank Elric's or Dorian Hawkmoon's tales higher than the other for me.
• Read Gibson's Idoru. Some of the more hallucinatory-philosophical bits reminded me of The Gernsback Continuum.
• Now I am reading Steven Barnes' Firedance, the last in the Aubry Knight trilogy.

I read Do Androids Dream Of Electric Sheep over the weekend. Wow it has been awhile since a book had me so focused on the last 3 pages. But also has me questioning the movie choices now. I have to rewatch really soon

It's a classic. Blade Runner, also a classic. I think both tell variations, different stories that converge and diverge in ways that make both important. Both powerfully influential in their own rights.

 

[jian]

I just watched the animated movie based on the comics, based on the video games. If you've seen it how different is it from the comics and video game?

Nightwing was a very positive beacon of light personality in it. With Superman snapped that aspect could shine brighter in the story.

I haven’t seen the movie but have played the game, so the main difference in the comic is that Taylor fleshes out every single character and gives them understandable and sympathetic motivations (mostly; some people are just d*cks, like Sinestro) to explain their changes over time. This takes quite a lot of time and so it’s probably not covered in the movie.

For fun, Taylor did a Jon Kent story where Jon is accidentally sent to the Injustice world and gets to be appalled but compassionate - his interactions with Fascist Dad are particularly interesting.

 

[jian]

Also finally read Jane Jacobs' magnum opus, The Death and Life of Great American Cities. It's interesting and thoughtful. Having only lived in only one great North American city, I'm not sure I'm qualified to disagree, but I suspect some of the ideas are a little dated. That said, I did appreciate the insights into Ebenezer Howard's garden cities (which sound very condescending; I've been to Welwyn Garden City, at least, which is frankly indistinguishable from any other English medium-sized town) and Le Corbusier's Radiant City (which is condescending in a different way but definitely has vision). My current home town seems to have its own version of urban planning ideology, which I think works very well for combining density and liveability.

 

[Eyes of Nine]

Also finally read Jane Jacobs' magnum opus, The Death and Life of Great American Cities. It's interesting and thoughtful. Having only lived in only one great North American city, I'm not sure I'm qualified to disagree, but I suspect some of the ideas are a little dated. That said, I did appreciate the insights into Ebenezer Howard's garden cities (which sound very condescending; I've been to Welwyn Garden City, at least, which is frankly indistinguishable from any other English medium-sized town) and Le Corbusier's Radiant City (which is condescending in a different way but definitely has vision). My current home town seems to have its own version of urban planning ideology, which I think works very well for combining density and liveability.

I only got through the first 50 pages or so of DaLoGAC and had to put it down for a while. Just breezed through second read of War of Art, which is always inspiring.

Now reading Decolonizing Wealth, will go back to DaLoGAC soon. But may also try Cities and the Wealth of Nations on the way...

 

[Retros_x]

, and more just kind of tapered off than it did properly end.

I think it really shows that this was published as a web series first.

I finished The Expanse #2. And I kinda liked it although it felt like a rehashing of the first book and the story barely drives the overall plot forwards. Honestly this book feels like it could've been removed and only use the epilogue as prologue for the next book.

But it was so fun! I really enjoyed the new characters, especially Bobby and Avasarala. The old characters had also some cool moments and the Rocinante crew grew closer together and got independence.

I am doing a break for now, but I am looking forward continuing with the series.

 

[Parmandur]

I think it really shows that this was published as a web series first.

I finished The Expanse #2. And I kinda liked it although it felt like a rehashing of the first book and the story barely drives the overall plot forwards. Honestly this book feels like it could've been removed and only use the epilogue as prologue for the next book.

But it was so fun! I really enjoyed the new characters, especially Bobby and Avasarala. The old characters had also some cool moments and the Rocinante crew grew closer together and got independence.

I am doing a break for now, but I am looking forward continuing with the series.

Yeah, that makes sense.

The structural issue was fairly minor, the main issue for me is that the book is clearly meant to be funny, and probably succeeds in being so for a lot of people...but I just wasn't laughing. Didn't land for me.

 

[Alzrius]

Personal circumstances have kept me from reading as much as I'd prefer to for the last several weeks now, but when my local library informed me that my reservation on Jim Butcher's latest Dresden Files novel, Twelve Months, was finally ready, I somehow found the time to pick it up and polish it off.

Overall, this was one of the more sedate books in the series, which I'd expected. While a lot of the early books were semi-independent of each other due to each one dealing with circumstances that had little to do with what had happened previously, that changed as the series grew longer and prior events began to exert a pull on future developments. In a way, the three most recent books reflect this quite strongly, being almost like a trilogy of events, where Peace Talks was the buildup to war, Battle Ground was the outbreak out hostilities, and Twelve Months is the aftermath. (I know that the first two of those were actually one book that had to be split in two due to its length, but I think the aforementioned description of them as a mini-trilogy within the larger context of the series works well too.)

The result of that is that Twelve Months is, like all aftermaths, relatively staid in what happens. While there are still action sequences, they're few in number and comparatively small in stakes. Likewise, there are developments to be found here, but they're personal far more than political, focusing on the aftermath of what happened in the previous novel.

In this regard, the book strikes me as bordering on indulgent with its focus on loss, grief, and healing. It's a credit to Butcher's skill as a writer that he never crosses the line to where these become a slog to work through, and certainly they weren't inappropriate given the fallout of what happened, but at the same time these themes are so omnipresent that they overshadow almost everything else. In this, I suspect that some of this is because the book is serving as Butcher's own personal catharsis; his dedication alludes to having gone through a rough time, which is also my guess for why (or at least part of the reason why) this book was so long in coming. Hopefully he, like his protagonist, is doing better now.

Likewise, with the ebb having been presented, my hope is that the next book comes with a metaphorical flow. Twelve Months sets the chess pieces back up, as the powers that be adjust to the new situation and characters pick themselves up off the proverbial mat. I'm looking forward to seeing what develops now that things are primed for another impactful sequence of events.

 

[jian]

Recently read two excellent takes on Cinderella, which I'll mention here.

The first is Lady Tremaine by Rachel Hochhauser, which I read about a month ago, and which (as the name implies; it's the name given to her in the Disney film) is from the point of view of Cinderella's stepmother. And as you'd expect, she's not wicked, but she is pragmatic and highly aware of what being poor means in an unequal world that only cares about appearances. Her daughters are nice enough, and her stepdaughter is a spoiled child unable to adapt to her new circumstances (she actually does the least housework of all of them, considering it beneath her). There are some more and less predictable twists, and a reasonably satisfying ending, albeit one that isn't that of the original fairytale. Highly recommended.

Cinder House by Freya Marske takes us back to Ella as the protagonist, but the twist is that she's dead - she died when her stepmother poisoned her and her father for the house. Ella remains bound to the house as a ghost, and isn't free even then - her stepmother and stepsisters can see her, and one of her stepsisters (who's wicked enough for all three) works out how to enslave her into doing the housework and cleaning. Gradually she learns how to travel outside the house at night - though she's always pulled back by the stroke of midnight - and ever so slowly earns her happy ending, which again isn't quite what you'd expect. A delight.

 

[Retros_x]

Rant incoming:

I've started Words of Radiance by Sanderson and I am already annoyed by his writing again, just 3 chapters in. I try to accept that I won't be happy with all of it and just try to enjoy the plot - which is enjoyable! But his worldbuilding and writing bothers me so much. The worlds feels so artificial, like a puzzle box for the main characters to solve, like a video game world just statically waiting for interaction.

It was blatant in the first SA-Book, with the Parshendi: the main characters faction fight this multiple-years long fight, half a decade if I remember correctly, against the Parshendi a secretful race of people. They never try to speak with them, they never parley, they never even try to find something out about their enemies (feels really unrealistic about big scale warfare) and than one of the main characters just gets the idea to look closely at one of the dead enemy bodies and suddenly realizes a big secret/revelation and I am just like what? In multiple years no one got the idea to just look at a dead body of the enemy?

The same thing but in smaller happens right at the start of book two: Shallan is on a ship, traveling at the coast, suddenly a rare creature swims next to the boat, but only their outer shell-like body is seen. She wonders how they look under it, but nobody knows! Because no sailor ever killed one, that brings bad luck! So she dives under water and looks at the creature - the sailors even have special masks so she can clearly see underwater. Its not just all sailors for centuries appereantly did a holy oath to never kill one (highly unbelievable), but not just that, no one ever got the idea to just look at them underwater, although they even have diving masks commonly lying around on their ships? And she just does this super easily, just in her dress, she jumps in the water and casually observes this creature that for centuries no one knew what it looks like? This is the most static world-building I have ever witnessed in a novel, its truly just full of NPCs doing nothing until a main character decides to do something.

The world doesnt behave like a world, it behaves like a mystery novel, it exists to be solved. Everything is placed by Sanderson with all the knowledge, it doesn't feel like it existed before the story, his cultures, religions, politics are all over-engineered constructs heavily cohesive and connected to the plot and the magic systems, the characters are all functions to the plot rather than fictional beings, the prose is militantly transparent - only existing to deliver information and move plot - and ironically it is lacking of genuine mystery: Because everything is a puzzle with an answer we know he will deliver at some point in the series. There is nothing in the world that feels irrational, truly strange or unknowable, because you know everything is connected like a tightly designed and engineered machine.

I think this is the difference between a designed world and an imagined world. Sanderson is an exceptional DESIGNER, but the greatest fantasy authors seem like people who actually visited a fantastic place and are reporting back, writing about it. The worlds of Tolkien, Le Guin, G.R.R.Martin (at least in the first ASOIAF novels), Susanna Clarke feel so much more real, lived-in, immersive.

Sorry for this rant, but I think it helps me to clarify my problems with Sanderson, but also help to manage my expectations. I think I can enjoy his book when I just accept it as a pure plot and discovery of mechanics.

 

[Parmandur]

Rant incoming:

I've started Words of Radiance by Sanderson and I am already annoyed by his writing again, just 3 chapters in. I try to accept that I won't be happy with all of it and just try to enjoy the plot - which is enjoyable! But his worldbuilding and writing bothers me so much. The worlds feels so artificial, like a puzzle box for the main characters to solve, like a video game world just statically waiting for interaction.

It was blatant in the first SA-Book, with the Parshendi: the main characters faction fight this multiple-years long fight, half a decade if I remember correctly, against the Parshendi a secretful race of people. They never try to speak with them, they never parley, they never even try to find something out about their enemies (feels really unrealistic about big scale warfare) and than one of the main characters just gets the idea to look closely at one of the dead enemy bodies and suddenly realizes a big secret/revelation and I am just like what? In multiple years no one got the idea to just look at a dead body of the enemy?

The same thing but in smaller happens right at the start of book two: Shallan is on a ship, traveling at the coast, suddenly a rare creature swims next to the boat, but only their outer shell-like body is seen. She wonders how they look under it, but nobody knows! Because no sailor ever killed one, that brings bad luck! So she dives under water and looks at the creature - the sailors even have special masks so she can clearly see underwater. Its not just all sailors for centuries appereantly did a holy oath to never kill one (highly unbelievable), but not just that, no one ever got the idea to just look at them underwater, although they even have diving masks commonly lying around on their ships? And she just does this super easily, just in her dress, she jumps in the water and casually observes this creature that for centuries no one knew what it looks like? This is the most static world-building I have ever witnessed in a novel, its truly just full of NPCs doing nothing until a main character decides to do something.

The world doesnt behave like a world, it behaves like a mystery novel, it exists to be solved. Everything is placed by Sanderson with all the knowledge, it doesn't feel like it existed before the story, his cultures, religions, politics are all over-engineered constructs heavily cohesive and connected to the plot and the magic systems, the characters are all functions to the plot rather than fictional beings, the prose is militantly transparent - only existing to deliver information and move plot - and ironically it is lacking of genuine mystery: Because everything is a puzzle with an answer we know he will deliver at some point in the series. There is nothing in the world that feels irrational, truly strange or unknowable, because you know everything is connected like a tightly designed and engineered machine.

I think this is the difference between a designed world and an imagined world. Sanderson is an exceptional DESIGNER, but the greatest fantasy authors seem like people who actually visited a fantastic place and are reporting back, writing about it. The worlds of Tolkien, Le Guin, G.R.R.Martin (at least in the first ASOIAF novels), Susanna Clarke feel so much more real, lived-in, immersive.

Sorry for this rant, but I think it helps me to clarify my problems with Sanderson, but also help to manage my expectations. I think I can enjoy his book when I just accept it as a pure plot and discovery of mechanics.

I won't say you are wrong here, in fact if you check out Sanderson's University lecture on world building he really advocates specifically for what annoyed you here:


However, can't say that ever bothered me, I read Sanderson for the plot and the puzzle aspects because they are satisfying puzzles. Spending time working on the puzzles outside reading the books is pretty core to the Fandom, because he actually rewards and feeds that activity.

I certainly wouldn't compare his world building to three of the greatest fantasy writers of all time and George R. R. Martin.

I do think Words of Radiance isn't unreasonable as the highest rated novel in human history on Goodreads, but honestly if those things bother you it may not get better for you.