This is a tangent, but it connects to some of the things I tend to binge – mainly archaeology shows. Set in Britain. Ok, Time Team (but not only Time Team).
It is just so funny to me every time they get disappointed by yet another Roman villa, but get so excited over Saxon post holes. I understand why, but it’s still pretty funny to me.
I had to binge the last half of The Dark Forest because the expiration date was today and I couldn’t renew. Overall I thought it was really good. Although the book focuses mainly the 4 people chosen to come up with ideas to thwart the invasion of the Trisolarans (plus a few other characters), the main focus of the book seems to be on one, Luo Ji, and that’s a good thing. The parts covering Luo Ji were the most interesting and entertaining parts, I thought.
The initial premise is pretty interesting - how do you thwart an invasion when any speech or writing you use to communicate will be known by the invaders?
Finished The Shadow of the Wind and The Hobbit yesterday. Started Perdido Street Station, Dragons of Autumn Twilight, and Jane Eyre.
I identified about 70 Dragonlance books I’d like to re/read (including 20 I’d like to read in advance of the new trilogy coming out starting in August 2022).
On the third in the series, but I’ll have to stop here for now (because that’s all the library has so far… there are further books… I mean, yes, I may buy, but I have a bunch of books I’ve already bought that I haven’t read and I kinda need to finish them. I’ve been clearing out my physical library and finding I have multiple copies of books I never finished and/or started… ok, lady and her tea, I’ll FINALLY FINISH YOU! YES I KNOW I HAVE TWO COPIES)
I ended up quitting Mr Dickens and his Carol. It started out kind of fun but eventually the multiple references to his novels and characters became a bore. His kids were as whiny and capitalistic as my own, and his wife (in the novel) was a Karen if I ever met one. Perhaps this was a ploy to get the reader to excuse his philandering, which I realize did happen in real life, but sheesh!
I’m back to podcasts, except I’ve been reading a chapter a day (or so) of Scott Erickson’s Honest Advent, which has given me much to contemplate. I’ll finish that and probably Brené Brown’s Gifts of Imperfection to round out my year in reading.
Jeez, if I want to read Dickens, I read Dickens.
It’s interesting to me how poorly Dickens fan-fic works, and how well Austen fan-fic does (though I’ve read a lot of extremely bad Austen fan-fic).
I did buy Dodger, by Terry Pratchett, recently, but that’s because I had it on deep discount and I’m a big Pratchett fan (also, I read a library copy before, liked it for the non-Dickens characters from real-life Victoriana, and am willing to flip $2 to the estate of Pratchett). Dodger is okay, but it’s more for people who like Victorian social improvement history and Terry Pratchett, and less for Dickens fans.
Oh wait, was that supposed to be a non-fiction book?
Yeah, I’m not really all that interested in non-fiction about Dickens.
I guess I haven’t read Austen fan-fic unless you count Pride and Prejudice and Zombies which was hilarious.
That’s fan-fic. I’ve not actually read that one. I have read some parodic Austen fanfic, but most play it straight. I like the ones that kind of go pretty far from the source material, like turning Austen herself into a detective. It actually works (the Stephanie Barron series)
I finished Shadow of the Wind (and bought books 2-4) and finished the Hobbit.
I cheated, and read Jane Eyre ahead of everything else, then read Dragons of Autumn Twilight. I bought the first three books in the Witcher series and should finish book 1 tonight. After Jane Eyre, I started Agnes Grey, and will finish that either tonight or tomorrow.
I started Perdido Street Station and will read that after those two. It hasn’t REALLY grabbed me yet though (about 120 pages in; the book is 700-ish).
After that, I’ll probably read the full Lord of the Rings in one straight run and try to get that done in December. All of my other December plans will start up in January.
I’m at 73 books read on the year, and I think I’d like to try to get to 80. I read 183 last year and my goal was 100, so… yeah.
I’m reading Frankl Man’s Search for Ultimate Meaning. It is not an easy read. I think he is working to saying that religiousness is the ultimate meaning which I would normally disagree with, but I’m having trouble understanding what his arguments and where they’re coming from. So I can’t even put together a mental counterpoint.
I took a break to read Chew, a graphic novel/comic book that I was given for Christmas. It was obscene, irrelevant and disgusting, and a lot of fun.
Going to start “The Impending Crisis: 1848-1861.”
Publisher Prize winner in the 70’s.
I’m finally finishing Grisham’s A Time for Mercy. It will be my 76th book. I usually read 100 but I cut back.
I’ve finished 38 this year so far, which is more than I’d have guessed.
Finished this. The last two chapters explained it much better than the first seven. Could have read the Wikipedia article and saved a lot of time.
I think I’ll keep my goal the same next year
oh sorry, it really was 124. I forgot to mark the “finished reading” date for 4 books.
Finally started Louise Penny’s The Madness of Crowds.
I finished The Thursday Murder Club. I really enjoyed it. 4 residents of a well-to-do retirement home meet weekly to try to investigate murders, going over files from a former-police resident. Then a worker at the retirement home gets murdered and they have something more solid to investigate. The characters are well developed and interesting and balance out very well. The book has quite a bit of humor in its writing, but the humor isn’t forced. The tone of the book is light. There are a series of twists the plot takes, which are pretty good. It seems like the kind of book that someone is guaranteed to turn into a movie (which will suck horribly compared to the book).
I was hoping to start reading The Dawn of Everything but my local bookstore can’t get it in until next week. In the meantime, I’ve started reading Bullshit Jobs by one of the same authors, David Graeber (who may have died of COVID), on my Nook.
My library started another reading program for this winter, so once I finish Troubled Blood by Robert Galbraith (a Cormoran Strike book), I’ll be back on shorter books again.
Death Gate Cycle never seems to make any lists of best fantasy series, but I really enjoyed reading them in college.
IMO books 7-10 of WOT were pure monotony and made me stop reading. I loved 1-4 and kept slogging through book after book hoping the story would actually go somewhere.
