What are you reading in 2026?

[Paul Farquhar]

Because everyone else in the world is also, in the end, like a gaggle of chickens running around with their heads cut off.

I thought it was supposed to be fantasy?

 

[Parmandur]

I thought it was supposed to be fantasy?

Jordan took his fantasy pretty seriously as a method to convey his experience of the world: he was a military veteran, who then went to University before becoming a government employee as a scientist, and a religious Anglican and a Freemason.

His experience of institutions is very much reflected in the venial insanity of every single institution in these books.

The Aes Sedai in the first two books versus subsequent books are very much his read of "what the world thinks Freemason are like" versus "this is what the Freemason are like".

 

[TwoSix]

But it didn't felt like an intented theme, it felt more like an inconsistency to how they are portrayed in the first two books. I can't imagine how they build the influence they are supposed to have when they act like in book 3.

Institutions corrupt over time.

 

[Parmandur]

Institutions corrupt over time.

In the second set of books, when the Dragon begins his public reign, they found new institutions that get corrupted pretty much immediately.

 

[Reynard]

I picked up but haven't started yet If Anyone Builds It, Everyone Dies.

No reason. Certainly not any current events...

 

[Parmandur]

I picked up but haven't started yet If Anyone Builds It, Everyone Dies.

No reason. Certainly not any current events...

To be even more blunt, I would recommend Robert O. Paxton's "The Anatomy of Fascism" as an informative and explanatory read.

 

[Ralif Redhammer]

I picked up but haven't started yet If Anyone Builds It, Everyone Dies.

No reason. Certainly not any current events...

Me too! I just heard about it listening to the Dystopia Now podcast... which I've been listening to for no particular reason, not at all.

 

[Eyes of Nine]

Library wants Stone & Sky back, most recent book in Rivers of London series that they have (maybe most recent, period).

I've decided to risk library fines and the squinting scorn of the librarian to keep it through to the weekend and read it.

 

[jian]

Read Trauma Industrial Complex by Darren McGarvey, a Scottish rapper and writer who has written prominently and eloquently about his addictions and childhood traumas, and this latest book is no exception. About half the book is less about his lived experiences and more about how he thinks trauma is processed by individuals, their audience, and social media - how, for instance, it’s very common and normal for people talking about their terrible life experiences to remember things inconsistently and emotionally, even shaping their narrative to be more like other people’s or more socially acceptable or even entertaining versions of the stories, and how this doesn’t invalidate their testimony or lived experience.

I found it a very engaging and informative read, and would recommend it. I’ll leave you from a quote from the book - not from McGarvey, but from Resmaa Menakem:

“Trauma decontextualised over time in a person looks like personality. Trauma decontextualised over time in a family looks like family traits. Trauma decontextualised over time in people looks like culture.”

 

[Autumnal]

That quote resonates a lot with me. The older I get, the more I think about how basic realities like untreated, untreatable chronic pain have shaped routine life throughout the ages.