What are you reading in 2026?

[Ralif Redhammer]

Read first time recently, I liked.

I started to read a few months ago and bounced off of it, for whatever reason, but this time it's sticking.

Nothing from my To Be Read pile was really calling out to me, so I tore through a re-read of World War Z by Max Brooks, and again got angry about the movie.

The book is so darn good, it was always going to be a tall order to adapt to a feature film (these days, I suspect it assuredly would've been done as a TV series). But what they did stripped away most of what made the book so compelling in favor of making it a horror-action vehicle for Brad Pitt.

 

[ErisIndomina]

The book is so darn good, it was always going to be a tall order to adapt to a feature film (these days, I suspect it assuredly would've been done as a TV series). But what they did stripped away most of what made the book so compelling in favor of making it a horror-action vehicle for Brad Pitt.

Ever watch the movie Savageland? I'd want that crew to work on a TV series version of World War Z.

 

[Autumnal]

Savageland is amazingly good.

 

[Richards]

I was on a business trip the last three days, and I was two chapters into a 488-page novel, so it was with a sinking feeling I opened my carry-on bag on the first of my two flights that day to learn I had left the book back home by my bed.

Fortunately, I had a lengthy layover and the first airport had a decent bookstore, so I picked up Badlands by Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child, the latest in their Nora Kelly series - mystery/thrillers with an archaeological twist. This one dealt with a couple of mysterious deaths in the New Mexico desert involving sacred artifacts from a tribe that used to live in that part of the world. It was a good read. (Most of their books are.)

Also fortunately, buried in the bottom of my suitcase was the second book I had brought with me, and I started it today and am now over 200 pages in. This one is Chameleon by William Diehl, a thriller about a pair of reporters tracking down the world's deadliest - and most elusive - assassin. It's very well written and is definitely holding my interest, but I wish the print was a little bigger. (I can only read it with my highest-magnification reading glasses.)

And tomorrow I find out if our copy of Book 7 of the "Dungeon Crawler Carl" series has been finished by the D&D player who borrowed it, and if so it's jumping to the next-to-be-read list. (I may eventually get back to chapter 3 of my original 488-page book in October or November.)

Johnathan

 

[jian]

Just finished Armor for Liars by S E Grove, which is an excellent standalone fantasy novel.

In an alternate late 19th century where all magic derives from the dead - either enchantment, which consumes human bone for lesser effects, or the binding of thews*, which are dead women enslaved by enchanters for greater effects - a new student at Commonwealth University in Boston learns as much as they can about enchantment and the process of obtaining and binding thews, while the ghost of a former student watches over them.

*While the word means muscles or strength these days, it used to mean something more like virtue or reputation in the 15th century.

There’s a lot of excellent worldbuilding and discussion of ramifications. For instance, are all thews necessarily unwilling? They may have been bound as slaves initially but they do gain a great deal of power (magic, shape shifting, telepathy) in their new form and of course they get to return to the world of the living. They’re definitely coerced but they might also have some interest in collaborating with the status quo.

There’s also some interesting personal insights about being Hispanic or descended from colonised peoples and passing as white, and what that does for impostor syndrome. The writer is herself half-Guatemalan.

 

[Zaukrie]

Just finished When the Moon Hits Your Eye by Scalzi. Not my favorite by him, but I mostly enjoyed it.

 

[Zaukrie]

I'm also reading Zen Golf, which actually teaches, rather than just tells you to be present. I'll be reading this more than once.

 

[jian]

Stayed up late last night and finished Endling by Maria Reva, which is distinctly a curate’s egg of a book.

What it feels like is that Reva (who is Ukrainian-Canadian and lives in Vancouver) was writing a fairly conventional novel set in Ukraine (about a snail researcher who specialises in species about to go extinct - endlings - and finances her studies by working as a mail order bride meeting foreign men) which was horribly disrupted by the Russian invasion in 2022. Her anguish leads her to feel that she can’t write anything so frivolous and impersonal and so her novel is broken up with personal insights and experiences, especially about Reva’s grandfather who refuses to leave his flat in Kherson. It’s all a bit Pirandello and doesn’t really land well, but I guess I respect her for trying. Obviously, I have no idea if any of the stuff that Reva-in-the-book says is true at all, I rather hope it isn’t.

 

[Ralif Redhammer]

Ever watch the movie Savageland? I'd want that crew to work on a TV series version of World War Z.

I have never heard of it prior. Judging by the trailer, they'd get WWZ better.

When the WWZ was turned into a blockbuster movie, it was likely doomed from the start to lose what made the book so compelling.

 

[Paka]

2 Adrian Tchaikovsky books in a row.