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Been reading Honor Harrington books on vacation.
Good: political and technological world building, factions that are flawed but easy to root for, compelling action sequences.
Bad: eye-rolling 90s neocon chicken-hawk posturing, Mary Sue vibes from Honor herself, some very clumsy historical parallels, well beyond what “Horatio Hornblower in space” strictly needs, and I think Weber was maybe literally in love with her.
I never really was able to get into the honorverse much; but the march upcountry series, by the same two authors who wrote some of the honorverse, I liked a lot.
Upcountry was some of the best military science fiction I ever read. And here, for some reason, they struck the right balance for me, cancelling out both their negative ( for me) traits .
It starts with a total loser of a prince and over time he finds his stride to be more of an Alexander the Great character.
The battles range from medieval weapons to space battles with real time communication constraints, in the four books
Last big story I read was The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath by HP Lovecraft
Currently reading The King in Yellow by Robert W Chambers as well as a collection of short stories by various authors called Shadows of Carcosa
Last book was Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula K. LeGuinn
Current is Wind and Truth by Brandon Sandseson
You Like It Darker, by Stephen King.
Another collection of short stories and the label is correct, these are darker than normal King fare, very much reminded me of Bachman books. And a character from Cujo makes an appearance that's just great. 5/5 good shit
Eve - 200 million years of evolution using a female perspective
Actually finished feeling happy to be born female which working in a male dominated industry (engineering) and enjoying male dominated hobbies (skiing, climbing, backpacking) often leaves me only surrounded by guys and feeling 'wrong' to not be able to match their ways of doing things instead of able to focus on my unique abilities.
In the middle of The Way of Kings in anticipation of reading book 5.
It's not just gender - introvert vs. extrovert, biology vs. computer, science vs. project management, anyone can be excluded without effort to create a welcoming atmosphere. At least you are able to keep up in their area
(that notably many men themselves couldn't do), which already speaks highly to your capabilities and temperament!:-)
The audiobooks for HHGttG are quite good if that's your sort of thing. Stephen Fry does a great job on the first one. I didn't quite like the voices in the other ones, but they were still overall well done.
In the middle of reading Tress of the Emerald Sea, by Brandon Sanderson. I haven't read any of his stuff other than his completion of the Wheel of Time series. I saw that Tress is a good standalone book in the series so I figured I'd try that out. It's good so far, but seems rather YA compared to what I assume the rest of the series is like.
I haven't read his YA but I'm in the middle of Stormlight 5, and yeah it's not YA. His adult books are generally the sort that you'd be comfortable giving a teenager but they deal with heavy stuff like class conflicts, cycles of racial violence, and ethical questions.
If you're interested in a stand alone of his adult books I'd recommend Elantris or Warbreaker, though both will get sequels later, neither was written knowing that.
Don't forget themes of depression and deep emotional trauma!
True, every book has a major character with major trauma.
And Mistborn dealt with systemically rooted sexual violence in a way that was shockingly well handled, including the way that it just demolished the mental health of everyone involved except the sociopathic
Last book I completed: The Conquest of Bread by Pyotr Kropotkin
Currently reading: Stormlight Archives book #5 by Brandon Sanderson
Now that I type that out, this is so avg lemmy user reading interests.
Lord of the Rings: the fellowship of the ring
Finally getting round to reading them all..
Oh my, you are a braver soul than I - that's daunting.
Nah, those are easy reads. The Silmarillion? Now that's daunting 😈
Isn't like the entire first half of The Fellowship Of The Ring devoted to the birthday party? 🎉
Tom Bombadil and such almost enticed me to read it but that party though... 🥳
Yeah it totally isn't easy reading lol. Just compared to The Silmarillion it feels that way.
I have only read the prologue to The Silmarillion, but most of the lore I know from LOTR is just from reading Wikipedia for the specific topics I was wanting to know about. How cool is it that the knowledge has passed from being available solely in book form to becoming part of the basic culture of the Western world:-).
Last book I read was Twilight. Working on the 2nd book in the series now. It's just a junk food of a book in the best way possible.
I wouldn't choose Twilight, but I get the same feeling when I'm reading any romance novel. Not much substance but my mood is ten times better.
Yeah! Sometimes you just need a brain-off good time.
I'm a bit surprised by Twilight - it has a couple of moments that are surprisingly gut-punching, like "The familiar smell of my shampoo made me feel like I might be the same person I had been this morning." That hit me hard.
I halfway wanna joke and say like "I'm sorry to hear that", but you're so right: the different types of stories each serve their own roles - not every book needs to be a brain-twister or expander, sometimes we just need to veg out and relax a minute and a great book can get us there!:-D
I haven’t read an actual book in ages. If reading fanfiction counts, the most recent one I’ve read is “Shrouded Destiny” by GladiusX, set in the universe of A Song of Ice and Fire.
It’s currently updating, and has been updating once per week for over a year. The narrative has nearly reached its conclusion.
I don’t necessarily agree with all the plot choices the author has made, but it is overall very well written, with far more realistic consequences and less plot armor compared to canon.
I just finished The Spine of the World, reading the next one, Sea of Swords now. I decided to finally read all the DnD books last January so I’ve been working my way through them. I read hella fast, a trilogy a week is pretty normal, so having such a ridiculous amount of books to get through is awesome for me.
I took a break over the summer and read all the Vlad Taltos books by Stephen Brust, holy Dinah that series is so good!! I think when I need another break from DnD I’ll read that series recommendation below, This Quest is Broken. Another series I quite liked was NPC’s by Drew Hays, the audiobooks are really well done.
And hitchhikers guide is one of my favourites, glad you enjoyed it!
"Schizoid Phenomena, Object Relations and the Self" by Harry Guntrip.
I've been reading all the Dune novels in publication order. The Guntrip book was an interlude in the middle of "Paul of Dune" which is my... 15th Dune book? I've lost count. Lol. But anyway, I'm back to reading that now.
After that, I'll probably start "Determined: A Science of Life Without Free Will" by Robert Sapolsky.
I really enjoyed Determined and Sapolsky's other book, Behave!
Yes! I've read Behave and Why Zebras Don't Get Ulcers already and both were amazingly informative. The premise of Determined holds particular interest for me, so I'm expecting even greater things from this one.
Including the ones by Brian Herbert? I've never heard anyone say a single good thing about those.
That's the ones. I had a friend who was a Dune superfan who convinced me to continue after I'd finished Frank's books. He expressed to me that he liked the Brian Herbert better and wished they'd started the recent Dune movies with Legends of Dune, the Dune trilogy by Brian Herbert and Kevin J. Anderson that's set earliest in the franchise.
(To be fair, it's ridiculously unrealistic to wish for that. And it'd only really be "better" than starting with Frank's book if they adapted basically... 11 to 14 novels worth to finish off the whole saga.)
Now, I'm not going to say I like Brian Herbert's better. Nor that there aren't things that I don't dislike about the Brian Herbert books. But there's a lot to love as well.
I'll talk about some of that in spoiler tags, but even in the spoiler tags, I won't give everything away.
Things I dislike about the Brian Herbert books:
spoiler
Things I like:
spoiler
Kevin J. Anderson holds a special place in my development as a young reader. His Star Wars books helped me understand that a book can be absolutely awful, and I don’t have to finish it, and that I haven’t failed by putting it down.