Just started listening to 14 by Peter clines. So far so good. NGL i mostly picked it because it's narrated by Ray Porter and he's simply the best audio book narrator of all time.

Finished Implacable by Jack Campbell and Dragonsong by Anne McCaffrey.

I'm in the middle of Galactic Patrol by "Doc" Smith and The White Dragon by Anne McCaffrey.

Coming soon from the library: I have The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath and Dragondrums by Anne McCaffrey on hold!

I'm reading Sharp Ends by Joe Abercrombie. Each time I move to a new section in the book, I feel like I missed reading something else, and need to remind myself that's how this book is. I'm enjoying it filling in some gaps in knowledge and basically reliving scenes from completely different perspectives. First Law is a great world that he's built.

And listening to This Inevitable Ruin, book 7 in DCC. Feels like chaos at times, as the books tend towards more and more. I sometimes feel like it's too big. Still very much enjoy it, although it feels like information overload.

I’m finishing Snow Crash and Will start Do androids dream of electric sheep? Afterwards

I started October Film Haunt by Michael Wehunt. I'm about 15% into it, and it's alright so far.

Have been working my way through debt by david graber, and waiting for an order of books that should have arrived a month ago.
Pretty interesting book about the creation of debt and money, though i feel at times it requires a baseline knowledge in both economics and the english language i dont quite possess

Currently reading Carl Jung's Answer to Job. It has been extremely fascinating.

Currently reading The Jennifer Morgue by Charles Stross. I picked up a hardbound collection called OnHer Majesty’s Occult Service that had The Atrocity Archive and Jennifer Morgue in one. I read AA years ago, so this has been fun.

Just finished the farseer trilogy, part of the realm of the enderlings by robin hobb. Started the livetrader trilogy which is next in line and I had to drop it.

Book 3 of the farseer trilogy really becomes insufferable, made me hate the main character, and has an unsatisfactory ending. And the amount of sexual assault /rape in the books skyrockets to a degree that makes the act feel trival. I had to drop the first book of the next series a couple chapters in when a character thinks about his sexual assault as a minor paragraphs after meeting him.

SA isnt a deal breaker for me, especially in fantasy. Ive read a song of ice and fire. But I dont like how trivialized it is, and that combined with what a miserable character Fitz becomes I just decided i didnt want to go through it again. So now I'll need to find something else to read.

Klara and the Sun by Kazuo Ishiguro. Wasn't my initial planned read after previous book, however, I realized the movie is coming out this week. It's my first novel by him, I've been blown away as it's so lovely and poignant with a dash of cheekiness in regards to the human experience. So happy I started it, as I'm enjoying it more since my last two reads were disappointments.

On the non-fiction side, I'm reading Designing for the Digital Age by Kim Goodwin. Another title I've discovered through the author Erika Hall, who ascribes the book as an essential read -- of which I can see why. It's a masterclass of a book, despite it being published in 2009, the info I've read so far is evergreen (irrespective of AI "hype" of today).

I finished "The Diamond Age" by Neal Stephenson and "Hail Mary" by Andy Weir, now I'm working on "Ulysses" by James Joyce.

And just... holy shit, how much more remarkably difficult it is to read Ulysses as opposed to the other two. The Diamond Age is a good bit of sci-fi, if a little dense, while Hail Mary felt like reading a childrens story for how easy it was. Now Ulysses is so massively dense, with no quotation marks, constantly referencing Shakespeare, speaking in 4 different languages thus far, while ricocheting from thought to thought, scene to scene like a bullet fired inside a closed metal chamber. It's a massive shift.

I’m about to start my first read of Moby Dick. Currently reading the LOTR books.

Still working on A Memory of Light by Brandon Sanderson. After having complained of the slow pacing of the books, it feels weird to say the final book moves too fast in the beginning. It has since settled in to a more reasonable pace though, so that's okay.

Did not have a ton of time to read this week. I did finish The Memory Police. I really enjoyed it. Not entirely sure i am on tack with how I interpreted it? I probably still need to think on it.

Made little progress in He who fights with Monsters book 1, but its really growing on me. The MC is kind of annoying but everything else I like from the powers to how the world interacts and feels like things continue to happen even when we dont see them. The supporting cast feels importent too where as in DCC it really only felt like we cared abour Carl and Donut for quite some time.

Did start Circe by Madeline Miller. I am enjoying so far but only a few chapters in.

The Design of Everyday Things. I finally got my hands of a french edition. I'm reading it slowly but I'm already done with the first half.

Just got done with GK Chestertons “The Man who was Thursday” and now I’m starting Tolstois “War and Peace”, which I am really excited and a little intimidated by. So far mostly doing research on the period, will start reading probably tomorrow. I already read some of his older and shorter novels and hated them, Ivan Iljytch aside. I am hoping that the younger Tolstoi had smarter ideas than the misogynist religious fundamentalist of the later period.

Anyways, since I can’t speak on War and Peace yet, here is my review for Chesterton:

Chesterton crafts a humorous and thrilling mystery, plunging his readers and his hero, the poet-turned-detective Gabriel Syme, into a nightmarish chase through London and northern France as he tries to unravel a vast and sinister anarchist conspiracy. It is hard to discuss this novel without revealing too much, so I will tread carefully.
The plot starts out simple enough. Two poets meet in a park and discuss the autheticity of their anarchist beliefs. One turns out to be a detective, the other part of a real anarchist lodge. In the following 15 chapters Chesterton gradually adds layer upon layer until the story seems to have changed completely from it's point of origin, only for it to come full circle and show that our first expectations were wrong all along. The characters and the reader reach this realisation together: their assumptions have sent them on a quest that is not what it seems. How expectations and biases shape our reality is one of the book’s strongest themes, and it fits Chesterton’s obvious distrust of materialism and rationalism.
The style follows the same arc. At first the writing seems fairly conventional, apart from some comic and eccentric touches. But these grow stranger with every chapter, until the final masked ball feels closer to the ritual in Kubrick’s Eyes Wide Shut than to a detective story.
That said, the book has clear weaknesses. Its portrayal of anarchism is hardly fair and is at best a caricature. Whenever the text talks about anarchism, it has about as much credibility as my grandmother talking about drugs: mostly sensationalist headlines with little substance. There is some critique of society, but it comes from a perspective that is not interested in fundamental questions and is fairly comfortable with the status quo. The strong religious themes won’t be to everyone’s taste, though I found that they never became preachy. There are also some parts that seem a bit repetitive, but I can understand their addition from a structural perspective.
Overall, I found this quite entertaining and fun. Chesterton is definitely very talented when it comes to writing. However, it didn’t impress me as much as I expected given its reputation. Perhaps I simply dislike cops too much to ever truly enjoy a story centered around them.

Gideon the Ninth by Tamsyn Muir, necromantic sci-fantasy. About 2/3 of the way through, and I am pleasantly surprised and really enjoying it.

Saw it on recommendation lists several years ago, and, honestly, expected boring YA with annoying characters. I mean, Gideon is cringe, and Harrow is a bitch, but it's tolerable and does not get in a way of the story.

Catch 22 - funny and it's good for when you only have a few minutes to read at a time.

Brothers Karamazov- enjoying it, but if i put it down for two days i have to go back to figure out everyone's name.

Listening to two Joan Didion books - Year of Magical Thinking and Slouching Towards Bethlehem.

Just wrapped up Surface Detail by Iain M. Banks, the second to last book in my Culture series re-read. As expected, and just as I remembered, I loved it. His political commentary is spot on and surprisingly poignant today, and his imagination never fails to surprise. There are only two things I hate about this re-read: first, that it’s nearly over, and second, that I still haven't emerged with a single favorite, they’re all brilliant!

Sandmannen (the Sandman in English) by Lars Kepler (2012). So far a pretty great thriller with dark vibes. I'm definitely hooked.

I also carry 23 Things They Don't Tell You About Capitalism by Ha-Joon Chang (2010) with me on the train, though I'm kinda feeling like i've got the point already so i'm not sure if I'll finish it completely or just skip some chapters.

The Outsider by Stephen King. A kid is horrifically murdered in a small town, and the local near-celebrity Little League baseball coach is publicly arrested for the murder with multiple eyewitness accounts putting him around town and interacting with the victim that day. Except the coach has an airtight alibi because he was in a city 70 miles away with 3 other teachers at a conference. Was the murder committed by some kind of doppelganger? I need to keep reading to find out

Picked up Marina by Carlos Ruiz Zafon, good read so far!

Bridges his YA fiction with his adult works.

The Outsider by Stephen King and Victorian Psycho by Virginia Feito. I like them both a lot so far. The first half of The Outsider was really strong and had me hooked.

I just finished a concise bio of Napoleon by David A. Bell. Now I'm reading The Wine Bible. The real doozy was a couple weeks ago when I read The Death of Ivan Ilyich in one sitting. As someone of middle age, boy that hits different than it would have 10 years ago. An axe for the frozen sea within us, indeed.

skimming through steelheart again cause it came up and I couldn't remember a thing from the plot.

I started Harrow the Ninth by Tamsyn Muir this week. The first book of the series was on my bingo card last year, and I'm hoping this one helps me understand the hype better. I suspect I'm just the wrong demographic to find the series better than sliced bread, but I am still enjoying it so far. Harrow is definitely more experimental in structure: some sections are second-person, some are out of order, and some are clearly not real, though whether they're dreams, hallucinations, or memories of alternate timelines, idk.

Re-reading Frankl's "Man's search for meaning".

Finished "something in the woods loves you", which I really liked. Started and finished "are prisons obsolete" good, but felt it needed to dig into alternatives more. About half way through "the round house"

yesteryear. (listening) i like the tone. stoked to see where it goes.

taking a break from carl and donut.

I'm just over halfway through "The Pride of Chanur" by C.J. Cherryh. A First Contact story told from the Aliens' perspective. The author has a very minimalist writing style, so things like how the stations or space ships look are never really described. I thought I might dislike that, but I actually don't mind it, leaves more room for the imagination. So far I quite like it and will probably continue with the series after I'm done with this one.

Still on "the wandering inn" volume 3. I think it's wrapping up, so it's getting less convoluted right now. After this I'll take a break from the series. I've got some catching up to do with series I've been reading over the years (the gray man and Reacher). After that we'll see, plenty to read and too little time as always.

I started The Dungeon Anarchist’s Cookbook by Matt Dinniman. I’m so loving this series and I’m going to be so sad when I’m done with it. It is well worth the ride though!

I also started to actually read Sellout by Dan Ozzi. It’s about the second rise of the punk scene in 1994-2007. Each chapter chronicles the moment in time when these bands really gained momentum and moved from the underground to mainstream. The intro has a bit about the grunge movement that came just before 90s punk and basically asks the question, “Who will replace Nirvana?”. The first band is Green Day (my personal favorite band and part of why I wanted to read the book), there is a small bit about how they got together and some about their time at Gilman. It then goes into how they left their old label, jumped on a mainstream label, and some of the fallout within the community they came from. I don’t normally read much into the personal side of bands, but a friend really recommended I check this book out. I got suuuuuuper lucky and actually found it in stock at a brand new Barnes & Noble that just opened, so the universe must have been telling me to read it too lol

I finished Want Submitted by Anonymous Edited by Gillian Anderson. It was a good read and I really enjoyed it. I took my time because some of the letters can get repetitive. It’s one that I can recommend to women who sometimes feel our fantasies are weird, because they’re not and you’re normal ☺️

Managed to finish Operation Bounce House by Matt Dinniman over the weekend, if you like DCC you’ll probably enjoy this one too. I don’t enjoy when authors have a totally different feel between their different series or books. With Asimov for example, you know what to expect with his writing and delivery as well as deeper stories. Andy Weir, you know you’re getting some good comedy along with some math and deeper science. Matt Dinniman, well low brow humour, there’s some deep lore that takes time to explain itself, as well as the pop culture references.

I’m hopefully gonna get started on book 2 of The Corellian trilogy - Assault at Selonia today, the first one was pretty good, although the amount of typos was jarring.

The Right to Remain by James Grippando