Have you read any books lately? Do you think your comrades on the realm of Wyrmrest Accord would enjoy reading what you read? Tell us, please.
I just finished “Gardens of the Moon”, a fantasy novel in the “Malazan” series, because someone recommended the series to me. I pretty much enjoyed it, though the series did come to me with the ominous disclaimer that it takes several books to get really good. I’ll probably give the next one a try soon. It involved all the fantasy you could want: drow by some other name who live on a moon, dragons appeared at one point, there is an evil(?) empire trying to conquer the city of nice people, and most of the characters are wizards. I’ve got no problem with any of that
The main thing I didn’t like was the author’s tendency to under describe stuff, in that the world has a bunch of non-human species of sapient peoples but I never really got a good physical description of most of them. I figured out that the moon people were drow eventually, but a few other species I never quite figured out. I’m still not exactly sure what a “Barghast” or a “Moranth” looks like to distinguish them from humans, even after meeting a few of them in the book. Is that weird? Tolkien started out by telling me that hobbits were short and had furry feet, and I appreciate that.
Anyway. What about you, dear reader? Tell me something you read recently, or that you would like others to read.
Jeff VanderMeer’s Annihilation. Part of the Southern Reach Series but I haven’t been able to find time to dig into the following three books though. Annihilation is fantastic. It’s a fun blend of scifi and horror that leaves you unsettled and wondering.
Actually got made into a movie with Natalie Portman which I’m sure more folks are familiar with than the novel. Definitely recommend the book - the film diverges greatly from it, but I enjoyed both.
Right now I’m working through The Bone Mother, David Demchuk’s 2017 novel about creatures of Slavic folklore living among human beings and fleeing the violent persecution of the Night Police.
I have a general set of strong horror, fantasy, & speculative fiction recommendations and most of them are written by queer and/or BIPOC authors:
David Demchuk - Red X
N.K. Jemisin - Literally everything she’s ever written but first and foremost The Broken Earth trilogy
Simon Jimenez - The Vanished Birds, The Spear Cuts Through Water
Anne Leckie - The Radch Trilogy
Tamsyn Muir - The Locked Tomb series
Stephen Graham Jones - The Only Good Indians, Mongrels, The Indian Lake Trilogy, After the People Lights have Gone Off (tbh anything and everything he’s written. Like Jemisin, the man is a powerhouse)
Octavia Butler - Parable of the Sower, Parable of the Talents and honestly her entire body of work, the woman was a legend of speculative fiction
Nalo Hopkinson - All of it. All of it is good. My favorites from her are Skin Folk, Falling In Love with Hominids, and Jamaica Ginger and Other Concoctions.
Marlon James - Black Leopard, Red Wolf and Moon Witch, Spider King (Popular publications will describe these as ‘Game of Thrones in ancient Africa.’ Don’t listen to that. They are feverish, surreal, fantastic journeys with a unique voice.)
Zen Cho - Black Water Sister, Spirits Abroad
Isabel Yap - Never Have I Ever
Indrapramit Das - The Devourers
Arkady Martine - A Memory Called Empire, A Desolation Called Peace
Rivers Solomon - A Unkindness of Ghosts, Sorrowland
Amal Al-Mohtar & Max Gladstone - This Is How You Lose the Time War
Catherynne M. Valente - The Orphan’s Tales Duology
Madeline Miller - The Song of Achilles, Circe
Martha Wells - The Murderbot Diaries
I collect old RPG books (old is subjective of course) and I use them for reference material in my other tabletop games, and things like that. I’ve been working on my Legend of the Five Rings game that I’m plotting, so I’ve been re-reading and cracking open a number of 4th edition/3rd edition books to study up on aspects of the setting I wasn’t familiar with before.
My favourite books to read are kinda offbeat non-fiction ones, the kind that fill your head with lots of random but interesting knowledge; for example, Mary Roach is in my top 5 authors, I’m actually due for a reread of Stiff. So the book I’ve nearly finished, and wholeheartedly recommend, is something along the same lines.
It’s Seven Deadly Sins: The Biology of Being Human by Guy Leschziner. It’s basically using the ‘sins’ as a framework to delve into the influence our biology/neurology affects our emotions, impulses, etc. and how injury, illness, and/or biological defect has more responsibility over them than one might think.
I attempted to wade into literary RPGs in the past and was disappointed, so when a friend recommended Dungeon Crawler Carl, I was hesitant. Two months later and I am five books in. Probably a fun read, but as an audiobook guy the narration by Jeff Hayes is really exceptional.
Once I’ve moved past those, I have some other Jeff VanderMeer novels queued up. There was a recent addition to the aforementioned Southern Reach trilogy, a fourth book called Absolution. So I might read that or one of the others, City of Saints and Madmen, or Finch.
Bowlaway by Elizabeth McCracken. It’s been a funny read so far.
I’ve been meaning to re-read The Dark Forest for 3 Body Problem season 2. Actually liked the Netflix adaptation a lot more than the first book.
Made some friends watch The Princess Bride for the first time, so I’ve been tempted to to pick that up again. I have a nephew named after one of the characters and will die of happy if I get to read it to him.
Oh boy oh boy oh boy! I’ve been making my way through Discworld this year, it was my New Year’s Resolution to get through as much of the series as possible! I’m six books in so far, averaging about 1 book a month!
It was the hypocrisy that got to me, honestly. I’m fairly understanding of lashing out online (the internet makes us crazy), but the pile-on for Fall was so disgraceful, so out of character, so devastating for art and writing that it warranted a lot more than just the half-hearted apology it got.
Oh goodness, I have a pile of paper and random stickies with things I want to read. Sources for some the readings I did for classes, some books on mythologies, a couple of books on Norse paganism, a book on druidism, and my friend’s book which she finally got around to finishing (it’s the fully fleshed out, extension of her dissertation, and I’m so proud of her!).
About 98% of what I have on the “to read” list are non-fiction. At the moment, my interests are human evolution, religions (all of them), psychology, and history. I do read fiction, but I go in phases.