What are you reading in 2026?

[Old Fezziwig]

Like, that was the stated geography, not ... I dunno ... about where they could get shooting to happen and look right-ish? (Obviously, even if it wasn't the latter, it'd be disruptive to a local.)

I think they shot mostly in Virginia, the UK, and Hungary. It was the narrative; they had some exposition they needed to get out and Laura Linney to get on screen. But still Knox's path in the film would've taken him a dozen miles south and east of Boston and well past Cambridge. The most generous reading of the movie would be that Knox dropped cannon off in Cambridge for deployment at Lechmere Point and Cobble Hill then brought the rest around to Lamb's Dam in Roxbury, but he's still going way out of his way. Bananas! (And we do have a reasonable idea of the path he actually took -- Henry Knox Trail - Wikipedia.)

 

[prabe]

I think they shot mostly in Virginia, the UK, and Hungary. It was the narrative; they had some exposition they needed to get out and Laura Linney to get on screen. But still Knox's path in the film would've taken him a dozen miles south and east of Boston and well past Cambridge. The most generous reading of the movie would be that Knox dropped cannon off in Cambridge for deployment at Lechmere Point and Cobble Hill then brought the rest around to Lamb's Dam in Roxbury, but he's still going way out of his way. Bananas! (And we do have a reasonable idea of the path he actually took -- Henry Knox Trail - Wikipedia.)

Yeah, getting something that wrong is kinda unforgivable. For me, in books, it comes to, "How hard is this to look up, really?" I mean, I read a novel where (for reasons) the author had a Southwest Airlines A380 crash, and I was like ... no, that can't happen--Southwest doesn't fly Airbuses, at all. Yes, I'm a little weird for having that knowledge sitting in my head, but that's not hard to find (and really any plane would have sufficed, it didn't have to be the biggest of airliners). Fortunately for my mood that night, that happened well into a book that was otherwise working for me and I cringed and moved on.

 

[Parmandur]

Just started Dungeon Crawler Carl. It's a trip.

 

[gban007]

Finished rereading Azure Bonds. Held up well, tighter focus than Counselors and Kings and easier to keep interested, and all the characters were good to read about, likeable or not.
Though I initially got confused around Westgates location to begin with
Will look to read rest of trilogy, but for something a bit different will be reading first Spice and Wolf novel.

 

[John Lloyd1]

Just finished My Brilliant Career by Miles Franklin. I really enjoyed the main character and the description of late 19th century Australia. Loved the wild autobiographical tone (not an autobiography) and they way it worked with the genre conventions. For example, when the prospective partner had had lost all their wealth and then gained it again through a surprise inheritance, the protagonist said how astonished they were because that sort of thing only happened in novels.

Much better than another Australian classic I read almost ten years ago, Voss by Patrick White. That one treated the Australian bush as an alien landscape, which it is not.

 

[Autumnal]

I was startled and delighted to discover the King County Library System has copies of an audiobook of Madeleine L’Engle reading A Wind In The Door, the sequel to A Wrinkle In Time. It is wonderful. Recorded in 1994, her voice has strength and vibrancy I remember from her at a lecture and reading about that time. There’s a lot of her in Mrs. Murry, I think.

 

[jian]

Read Blitzed: Drugs in Nazi Germany by Norman Ohler, which is a fascinating eye-opener (and if you needed one of those, the Fatherland was just the place for you) of a book. From the extremely common and initially legal use of morphine, cocaine, and methamphetamine (the latter usually marketed as Pervitin, especially to front line troops, but also available as chocolates for the worn out hausfrau) to the extraordinary concoctions delivered hourly to the Fuhrer by Theodor Morell, his personal quack, I think it’s fair to say that the Nazis couldn’t have functioned without massive and frequent drug use.

This was particularly true of Hitler, whom Ohler wryly notes was mostly technically a vegetarian but really wasn’t if you consider the quantities of animal organ extracts with which Morell injected him (as well as meth, heroin, cocaine, and oxycodone, among other things). This of course contributed greatly to Hitler’s increasingly erratic behaviour and mental and physical decline from 1941 onwards. I am strongly reminded of the likely need for regular stimulant and sedative medication (gradually less effective as time goes on, resulting in longer and longer refractory periods between public appearances and extremely noticeable erratic behaviour and decline) that at least one modern head of state is currently exhibiting. I think the modern drugs of choice are Adderall and alprazolam; we’ve come a long way, pharmacologically speaking, in the last 80 years.

 

[jian]

I’ve also finished Trust Me I’m Lying: Confessions of a Media Manipulator by Ryan Holiday, which I think was recommended here. It’s a deeply depressing but highly informative book about how modern media - especially the social media to blog/Substack to news pipeline - works, and how facts basically no longer matter in public discourse. I would recommend it as required for all schools but I don’t want an entire generation of innocent kids to consider suicide.

 

[Autumnal]

Blitzed is fascinating, and seems likely to help explain behavior in modern groups like high finance and politics.

 

[prabe]

Yet another book requested after hearing about it here. There's at least one request ahead of mine, I'm patient (and I sincerely hope I'm not overtruncating someone else's time with the book).