I'm reading The Anglo-Saxons by Marc Morris. It's non-fiction. Morris' books have a good narrative, but they are scholarly works. I haven't gotten very far into The Anglo-Saxons yet, but one bit I greatly enjoyed was the author drawing parallels between Beowulf and Tolkien's Rohirrim, all while discussing the archaeological evidence for feasting halls and the zeitgeist of the people who'd built those halls.
I just realized, boy is it refreshing to actually talk about sites like z-lib without being censored. Library Genesis and Anna’s Archive are also nifty.
Book Depository closed the other month, I don’t know if Amazon understood how important it is for people outside US and EU, but the closure really pushed everyone I know to casually switch back to piracy.
Once you’ve read that, get a copy of Nightwatch. Much the same cast of characters, but it’s widely considered to be Terry’s magnum opus. That book is a damn work of art.
I use Goodreads, it’s got a very annoying interface but I do like being able to discover other people’s lists. What’s the pro to leaving for one of these other platforms?
I left GoodReads because I try to have as little to do with Amazon as possible. I tried StoryGraph but never warmed up to it. I realize LibraryThing has some indirect Amazon ownership, but I found it an acceptable compromise.
I agree that would be a great feature. Dunno if it’s exclusive to my instance but Discovery also doesn’t have an option for global notifications (it’s just the local one) which is a bit limiting since my instance isn’t that big.
Lord of the Rings just about saved my life in high school. Possession by A.S. Byatt. Foucault’s Pendulum by Umberto Eco. Oryx and Crake by Margaret Atwood, though I’ve yet to read the sequels. Atonement by Ian McEwan. Just about anything by Geoff Ryman, Ali Smith, José Saramago, or Sheri Holman.
Your taste seems like exactly the sort of thing I’d enjoy, do you have any specific suggestions for someone who absolutely loves Eco’s metafictional novels in particular and metafiction in general? (Aside from Possession, which I’ve never heard of but is going directly on my to-read list)
I recently read How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe by Charles Yu, which I really liked. It is science fictional, though, but maybe not…maybe more surreal. Jorge Luis Borges, Italo Calvino, David Markson. I started Dictionary of the Khazars by Milorad Pavić many years ago, got interrupted, and haven’t got back to it, but I definitely need to because it was so intriguing in form.
I usually have a print/ebook and an audio book (for the car) going at the same time.
For print book, currently reading Crooked Kingdom, one of the books in the Grishaverse series/world. I, uh, got a little obsessed after watching the first season of Shadow and Bone a year or two ago.
For audiobook, currently listening to Children of Ruin. Not too far into it yet, but I loved loved loved Children of Time (also listened to the audiobook version), so I’m excited to see where this one goes.
I really want to read Children of Time. I actually did start it and got half way through, but I have such an intense arachnophobia that I had to give up because I kept dreaming of spiders and waking up terrified. I enjoyed his writing style, though, and am curious about his new trilogy coming out.
I’m currently reading through Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson. I’m a fan of SciFi, and cyberpunk especially. This book was on my reading list, and I decided to pick it up while in the bookstore the other day.
So far I’m really enjoying it. It feels a bit more pulpy than some of the other cyberpunk classics such as Neuromancer and Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep, but that’s not a bad thing. It certainly doesn’t take away from the entertainment in my opinion. Not every book needs to have a grand philosophy behind it.
I guess I should finally read Snow Crash, but other books keep getting in the way. I just finished Neuromancer which surprised me with how well written it was. No idea why, but I expected the classics to be more … exhausting.
I’ll also suggest Tree of Aeons if you want a magical equivalent (guy becomes a magical tree). Both series capture the transition to non-human thinking pretty well
Another vote for Bobiverse written by Dennis E. Taylor
Synopsis
The Bobiverse is the story of Robert “Bob” Johansson, who, after becoming financially independent by selling his software company, decides to spend some of his money by contracting to have his head cryonically frozen by CryoEterna Inc. upon his death. The idea is that his head would be preserved until later, when technology permitted a body to be grown and his thawed head attached to it - thus resuming life. The next day he is unexpectedly killed in an automobile accident. He wakes up 117 years later to find that he has been harvested from his frozen head and installed as simulation in a computer matrix to be an artificial intelligence. The series follows Bob as he is installed into the first Von Neumann Probe, to explore and replicate across the galaxy.
I don’t think anyone ever mistook Beowulf (c. 700–1000 AD) for nonfiction, but just wanted to mention that if you’ve read it and enjoyed it, you might like Grendel, a modern retelling of Beowulf from the monster’s perspective.
Btw it’s really fun to get a side-by-side Modern English and Old English edition of Beowulf and compare them. Wild how much language can change in that time span.
Man, the Puppies’ anti-representation Hugo campaign backfiring into Internet fame for Chuck Tingle was one of the few highlights of 2016. I was at WorldCon that year and the number of people sporting " I Am Chuck Tingle" ribbons on their badges was amazing.
I’ve loved tingle, I’ve read most of his Asexual stories (which do a great job of both portraying ace and satirizing/joking around with it) and also Straight. I gotta say though, while Straight was an enjoyable read, it wasn’t really good as far as being a horror novel went. But that’s fair for the guys first try, and I’m interested to see what his next “serious” offering reads like
I am very, very excited for Ann Patchett’s Tom Lake. I don’t even know how to explain it but her novels are like some sort of mix of hypnosis and dopamine to my brain.
I read Bel Canto earlier this year and it was fantastic. I was hooked immediately and engrossed the whole way through! I’ll definitely have to pick up her new one!
That was a very good one. I also loved her last novel Dutch House. I read it when it came out and then listened to the audio read by Tom Hanks a couple times during the early days of the pandemic when all I could really do was go for long walks. It’s not exactly a cheerful book, but I found it very comforting.
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