Please Kill Me: The Uncensored Oral History of Punk
Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson
Snow Crash is good, but IDK. It just isn’t pulling me in the way I expected it to, so it’s taking me too long to get through.
Then I have some Jack Reacher novel on my bedside table waiting to be started, and I was just eyeballing a collection of H.P. Lovecraft stories on my shelf.
My ‘big read’ this year is Finnegans Wake - which I am (or have been) reading week by week along with the TrueLit sub on reddit. It would be a profoundly different experience to read it without the analysis and discussion going on there, so that is something…
Otherwise, I am reading The Twisted Ones by T. Kingfisher, which is engaging and entertaining, as was her The Hollow Places which I read immediately before. I am also dipping into a collection of the Para Handy tales by Neil Munro, which are a cosy - if stereotypical and patronising - glimpse into another time and pace of life.
I have just returned from a couple of weeks away during which I finished an anthology of Clarke Ashton Smith short fantasy tales (all about the atmosphere: story and worldbuilding are very much secondary and character scarcely features); Haldor Laxness’s The Atom Station (a sparse look at the clash of modern - written in 1948 - and traditional Icelandic values); and Blackwood’s The Willows (an extrapolation of the original idea of “panic” - as several of this other tales are).
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 don't have one particular favorite, but up there is Akwaeke Emezi, who wrote Freshwater and The Death of Vivek Oji (among many, many others). Something about their writing style just sings to my soul.
Man, that's a really tough question if I'm only allowed to pick one.
I've enjoyed some Becky Chambers books as well, though the Monk & Robot series weren't quite my cup of tea. The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet is one of my favourite books.
If I could wish for one new book from any author, it'd have to be Robert Brockway. His Vicious Circuit trilogy is a masterpiece in so many aspects, I've immensely enjoyed Carrier Wave and am currently following his rewrite of Rx and Fuck You In Particular, Nashville, Tennessee on Patreon.
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When the Pulitzer Prize-winning author Jennifer Egan was in the Netherlands a few years ago promoting her most recent novel, “The Candy House,” she noticed something unexpected.
As English fluency has increased in Europe, more readers have started buying American and British books in the original language, forgoing the translated versions that are published locally.
The English-language books that are selling abroad are generally cheap paperbacks, printed by American and British publishers as export editions.
In an effort to combat the English-language appeal of TikTok, some Dutch publishers have started to release translated books under their English titles, with covers that are similar, or the same, as the original designs.
Ms. Hodge is part of a 35-person group chat named “Dutch Booksta Girlies,” which consists of women who befriended each other on Instagram while discussing books.
Bookstores have adapted to the trend, buying more English-language versions of popular books or focusing on English editions of young adult novels.
finishing up The Books of Jacob by Olga Tokarczuk. very long, and I struggled for the first half of it with keeping track of the dizzying array of characters, but overall pretty good. I enjoyed Primeval and Other Tales by her much more, however.
next up will be Soldiers and Kings by Jason DeLeon (Land of Open Graves, his previous book, was a goddamn gut punch, and expecting the same from this one - both deal with migration at the southern US border). also looking forward to James by Percival Everett.
Sounds like the other commenter got it. I’m commenting because the only time I’ve ever posted about a book o couldn’t remember was “The Dark Lord of Derkholm” also by Diana Wynn Jones! Great book of you haven’t read it. She wrote Howell’s Moving Castle too.
Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow, Escape into Meaning, and The Andalite Chronicles. I think after I’m done with Tomorrow, I’ll pick up the third Mistborn.
Right now I’m reading Fledgling by Octavia Butler. It’s an interesting twist on what a “vampire novel” is, and I’m enjoying it a lot! I’m also reading Trick Mirror: Reflections on Self-Delusion by Jia Tolentino. This one is great so far, every single essay has had a line or two that has really made me stop and think.
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