What are you reading in 2026?
- Thread starter Alzrius
- Start date
My reading lately has been…eclectic, if I feel charitable, chaotic, when I don’t. Notes:
Earth’s Great Extinctions, written and read by Rachel Phillips. This is GeoGirl from YouTube, and she’s as good in a short lecture series as she is with videos. The subject is familiar to me, but she has more up-to-date info than I do, so I learned a bunch of interesting stuff. This is really highly recommended to anyone interested in the topic.
Dead Letter Society, by Roni Montfort. A 1-2 person journaling RPG of vampires exchanging letters. I’m not sure I like all the system bits, but I’m looking forward to taking it out for a spin soon. It’s a gorgeous print book, and there’s an ePub version, which is very important to me.
The Fall of Numenor, by J.R.R. Tolkien, edited by Brian Sibley, read by Samuel West. This is a “best bits” account of Niemor’s rise and fall, drawing on the Tales of Years in Return of the King and several volumes of the History of Middle-Esrth. It’s much less an overtly scholarly sort of thing than HOME, designed to just read. It’s got neat details is either not encountered or forgotten, like the bears of the island who dance with and for humans, but are confused and disoriented by human laughter. Very good stuff for Tolkien fans who may not wish for all the details Christopher Tolkien wanted to share.
Zero Sum Galaxy, by Thomas Brookside. I’m a huge fan of Brookside’a first three books: a Roman commander’s plea to Commodus for help with a zombie apocalypse in Brittany, the Israelite invasion of Canaan from Jericho’s point of view as cosmic horror, and a sequel to The Merchant Of Venice that gets wonderfully metafictional. This is the first volume of an sf trilogy and it’s…fine. Intones with a nest destruction of Earth and other planets that exploits an interesting possible complication of Alcubierre warp drives. There are some excellent elements in the portrayal of life a couple centuries later with humanity in an endless struggle for survival that everybody knows they’re eventually going to lose, and a good plot. But the society seems oddly retrograde, with women in particular accepting a status I don’t think they would. It reads too much like something Baen might have published when I was in college. The other two volumes are on Kindle Unlimited, so I’ll hope for Brookside excellence to make an appearance.
Bury Our Bones In The Midnight Soil, by V.E. Schwab. Oh, here’s some excellence now. This is so, so, good, about three women each made into a vampire on the brink of adulthood, from the 1500s to the present. Their stories interweave in elegant ways, and Schwab shows in intimate detail the inevitable loss of humanity in decades and centuries of unnatural life without making them unsympathetic or uninteresting. Makes me wanna go rewrite some of my Vampire: The Masquerade work to add some fresh depths.
Earth’s Great Extinctions, written and read by Rachel Phillips. This is GeoGirl from YouTube, and she’s as good in a short lecture series as she is with videos. The subject is familiar to me, but she has more up-to-date info than I do, so I learned a bunch of interesting stuff. This is really highly recommended to anyone interested in the topic.
Dead Letter Society, by Roni Montfort. A 1-2 person journaling RPG of vampires exchanging letters. I’m not sure I like all the system bits, but I’m looking forward to taking it out for a spin soon. It’s a gorgeous print book, and there’s an ePub version, which is very important to me.
The Fall of Numenor, by J.R.R. Tolkien, edited by Brian Sibley, read by Samuel West. This is a “best bits” account of Niemor’s rise and fall, drawing on the Tales of Years in Return of the King and several volumes of the History of Middle-Esrth. It’s much less an overtly scholarly sort of thing than HOME, designed to just read. It’s got neat details is either not encountered or forgotten, like the bears of the island who dance with and for humans, but are confused and disoriented by human laughter. Very good stuff for Tolkien fans who may not wish for all the details Christopher Tolkien wanted to share.
Zero Sum Galaxy, by Thomas Brookside. I’m a huge fan of Brookside’a first three books: a Roman commander’s plea to Commodus for help with a zombie apocalypse in Brittany, the Israelite invasion of Canaan from Jericho’s point of view as cosmic horror, and a sequel to The Merchant Of Venice that gets wonderfully metafictional. This is the first volume of an sf trilogy and it’s…fine. Intones with a nest destruction of Earth and other planets that exploits an interesting possible complication of Alcubierre warp drives. There are some excellent elements in the portrayal of life a couple centuries later with humanity in an endless struggle for survival that everybody knows they’re eventually going to lose, and a good plot. But the society seems oddly retrograde, with women in particular accepting a status I don’t think they would. It reads too much like something Baen might have published when I was in college. The other two volumes are on Kindle Unlimited, so I’ll hope for Brookside excellence to make an appearance.
Bury Our Bones In The Midnight Soil, by V.E. Schwab. Oh, here’s some excellence now. This is so, so, good, about three women each made into a vampire on the brink of adulthood, from the 1500s to the present. Their stories interweave in elegant ways, and Schwab shows in intimate detail the inevitable loss of humanity in decades and centuries of unnatural life without making them unsympathetic or uninteresting. Makes me wanna go rewrite some of my Vampire: The Masquerade work to add some fresh depths.
Aaand finished Dungeon Crawler Carl. Now I understand what all the hype is about.
I'll read the second one.
I'll read the second one.
Alzrius
The EN World kitten
My local library finally fulfilled my hold of The Butcher's Masquerade, which I read back in February, save for the fifth part of the "Backstage at the Pineapple Cabaret" novella, which was what I read earlier today.
I find myself beginning to grow slightly dissatisfied with these snippets, largely because I'm starting to question precisely what purpose they serve within the overall narrative. I mentioned before that it felt like they were beginning to become relevant in the main (i.e. Carl's) plotline, which I have no doubt is what they're ultimately in service to, but in terms of standing on their own merits I think that they're beginning to suffer.
In this fifth entry, we have more wheels-within-wheels turning, offering us further glimpses of various machinations and intrigues that are happening...but results in very little. Yes, we see characters putting schemes into motion, and there are discoveries, maneuverings, and even deaths, but none of it seems to amount to anything. If this is all a setup to some dramatic happenstance later in Carl's saga, then we're getting an awful lot of buildup, and if it's not, then it's beginning to look like an exercise in futility.
The thing is, that futility is largely something that's experienced in-character. One of the recurring themes in these stories, at least as I see it, is the degree to which each character (since each novella presents things from a different individual's point of view) realizes the degree to which things are completely hopeless. That they're completely disposable and unvalued by the people in power, which are not simply some cabal but rather the entirety of the upper echelons of galactic society. What hope they have is illusory, the promises that were made to them all lies; the ones who believe them are simply buying into a delusion, the rest are apathetic, and even those with ambitions of fighting back have no idea what their up against.
By itself, that makes for a bleak picture, but what really drives home the sense of nihilism is how factionalized and divided the powerless characters are. Not just between those who believe the lies they've been fed about advancing if they do a good job and those who aren't so naive, but between various other groups who despise their confederates for reasons ranging from ideological fanaticism to gross differences in biology to simply being absorbed with their own desires at the expense of others. It's a life-and-death struggle, not against their oppressors, but against each other, and unless there's some impressive twist waiting to be unleashed (which might very well be the case) it's all for naught, since none of them have the power to change their situation or save themselves.
Ultimately, that should be a depressing state of affairs, and it is...but it's to Dinniman's credit that he somehow manages to thread the needle of making that funny. To be sure, it's black comedy, but comedy nonetheless. I said previously that there was Deadpool-esque quality to how things danced between poignancy and hilarity before, but here it's more of an issue of laughing because the heart of humor is absurdity, and it's likewise absurd how these characters can be so myopic. To be able to turn the latter into the former is skillful, and yet Dinniman consistently pulls it off.
With any luck, I'll be able to get my hands on the remaining two novellas before my library fulfills my hold for the new book.
I find myself beginning to grow slightly dissatisfied with these snippets, largely because I'm starting to question precisely what purpose they serve within the overall narrative. I mentioned before that it felt like they were beginning to become relevant in the main (i.e. Carl's) plotline, which I have no doubt is what they're ultimately in service to, but in terms of standing on their own merits I think that they're beginning to suffer.
In this fifth entry, we have more wheels-within-wheels turning, offering us further glimpses of various machinations and intrigues that are happening...but results in very little. Yes, we see characters putting schemes into motion, and there are discoveries, maneuverings, and even deaths, but none of it seems to amount to anything. If this is all a setup to some dramatic happenstance later in Carl's saga, then we're getting an awful lot of buildup, and if it's not, then it's beginning to look like an exercise in futility.
The thing is, that futility is largely something that's experienced in-character. One of the recurring themes in these stories, at least as I see it, is the degree to which each character (since each novella presents things from a different individual's point of view) realizes the degree to which things are completely hopeless. That they're completely disposable and unvalued by the people in power, which are not simply some cabal but rather the entirety of the upper echelons of galactic society. What hope they have is illusory, the promises that were made to them all lies; the ones who believe them are simply buying into a delusion, the rest are apathetic, and even those with ambitions of fighting back have no idea what their up against.
By itself, that makes for a bleak picture, but what really drives home the sense of nihilism is how factionalized and divided the powerless characters are. Not just between those who believe the lies they've been fed about advancing if they do a good job and those who aren't so naive, but between various other groups who despise their confederates for reasons ranging from ideological fanaticism to gross differences in biology to simply being absorbed with their own desires at the expense of others. It's a life-and-death struggle, not against their oppressors, but against each other, and unless there's some impressive twist waiting to be unleashed (which might very well be the case) it's all for naught, since none of them have the power to change their situation or save themselves.
Ultimately, that should be a depressing state of affairs, and it is...but it's to Dinniman's credit that he somehow manages to thread the needle of making that funny. To be sure, it's black comedy, but comedy nonetheless. I said previously that there was Deadpool-esque quality to how things danced between poignancy and hilarity before, but here it's more of an issue of laughing because the heart of humor is absurdity, and it's likewise absurd how these characters can be so myopic. To be able to turn the latter into the former is skillful, and yet Dinniman consistently pulls it off.
With any luck, I'll be able to get my hands on the remaining two novellas before my library fulfills my hold for the new book.
Have read Win Every Argument by Mehdi Hasan, which is a very interesting book. Hasan is a TV political journalist who started out in the UK (BBC, Sky, Channel 4) before moving to Al Jazeera. He's well known for his incisive interviews with politicians and debating dozens of people at once about the issues of the day. If anyone knows how to win an argument (or at least score points in political interviews and debates), it's him.
As you might expect, this is mainly a book about debating and rhetoric, and I've read and heard such stuff before, mainly from Sam Leith (whom he quotes) and Rory Stewart. But Hasan's work is edgier, goes further, hits harder. He freely admits that he loves arguments and confrontation, and that it gets him into trouble (he was a close colleague of Jamal Khashoggi and states at one point in the book, "and thank God, I emerged from the Saudi embassy alive").
He particularly emphasises "bringing the receipts" (doing your research and hitting them with inconvenient facts, preferably their own quotes) and ad hominem (he admits that yes, technically, their hypocrisy or lack of character doesn't invalidate their argument, but that's really not what most audiences think or feel, and really their reputation is part of their argument, as the ethos* component).
*For those who don't know, classical Greek rhetoric defines the three components of an argument as ethos ("I am like you, you should trust me"), logos ("here are the facts and figures, the chain of logic") and pathos ("won't anyone think of the children?"). Most texts suggest you should use all three equally and preferably in the same sentence.
I also found the section on how to deal with a Gish gallop (the common tactic of spewing nonsense and lies non-stop over an extended period, meaning you can't hope to challenge or refute them all) interesting. Singling out specific points for destruction, interrupting, refusing to concede, not letting them dodge or evade, telling the audience what they're doing, nailing them down - it's all good if you can do it.
As you might expect, this is mainly a book about debating and rhetoric, and I've read and heard such stuff before, mainly from Sam Leith (whom he quotes) and Rory Stewart. But Hasan's work is edgier, goes further, hits harder. He freely admits that he loves arguments and confrontation, and that it gets him into trouble (he was a close colleague of Jamal Khashoggi and states at one point in the book, "and thank God, I emerged from the Saudi embassy alive").
He particularly emphasises "bringing the receipts" (doing your research and hitting them with inconvenient facts, preferably their own quotes) and ad hominem (he admits that yes, technically, their hypocrisy or lack of character doesn't invalidate their argument, but that's really not what most audiences think or feel, and really their reputation is part of their argument, as the ethos* component).
*For those who don't know, classical Greek rhetoric defines the three components of an argument as ethos ("I am like you, you should trust me"), logos ("here are the facts and figures, the chain of logic") and pathos ("won't anyone think of the children?"). Most texts suggest you should use all three equally and preferably in the same sentence.
I also found the section on how to deal with a Gish gallop (the common tactic of spewing nonsense and lies non-stop over an extended period, meaning you can't hope to challenge or refute them all) interesting. Singling out specific points for destruction, interrupting, refusing to concede, not letting them dodge or evade, telling the audience what they're doing, nailing them down - it's all good if you can do it.
Ralif Redhammer
Legend
Cadigan's Synners proved to be the rare DNF for me. I've liked everything else I've read of her's, but this didn't do it for me. I think that my patience for books with a large cast of POV characters was used up by A Song of Ice and Fire. I was a hundred pages in with half-a-dozen POV characters and new ones were still being added when I put the book down. I suspect I'll pick it up and give it another try some other time.
I read Betancourt's Rememory. The Good Show Sir cover put me off of it for a long time. But the author's previous Johnny Zed was so darn good. The cat-person thing still threw me for a loop, but Rememory was quite good, with some really stand-out, jaw-dropping moments.
Now I'm reading Lewis Shiner's Frontera.
I read Betancourt's Rememory. The Good Show Sir cover put me off of it for a long time. But the author's previous Johnny Zed was so darn good. The cat-person thing still threw me for a loop, but Rememory was quite good, with some really stand-out, jaw-dropping moments.
Now I'm reading Lewis Shiner's Frontera.
Read Abyss of Dreams by Peter Hamilton, first of another 2 parter in the Commonwealth universe.
Found it faster paced and more engrossing than the Void books, where the Edard parts really slowed it down.
Ending was somewhat bleak in many respects. We have 4 main POVs, all of which start sympathetically, but by end 2 of then have really changed, one being quite ruthless and manipulative, and the other going completely off the deep end, though hard to say how much of a hand the manipulative one had in that.
All round an enjoyable road though, and straight on to book 2.
Found it faster paced and more engrossing than the Void books, where the Edard parts really slowed it down.
Ending was somewhat bleak in many respects. We have 4 main POVs, all of which start sympathetically, but by end 2 of then have really changed, one being quite ruthless and manipulative, and the other going completely off the deep end, though hard to say how much of a hand the manipulative one had in that.
All round an enjoyable road though, and straight on to book 2.
I'm about 150 pages into Almost Adam by Petru Popescu. It's a novel about the discovery of a living Australopithecine (early human from the Pliocene Age), with the possibility of a small population still alive. It's holding my interest, which is good: I have another 400 pages to go!
Johnathan
Johnathan
Retros_x
Hero
worth noting that GOTs POV characters are mostly added at the same time. Like as a reader we are already introduced to Cat before we get her first POV. In general a lot of POV characters is hard to pull of, but Martin absolutely delivered in that regard. I read GoT for the first time 2 years ago and was surprised by how good the craftmanship was.
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