The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoevsky

Phasma by Delilah Dawson. I absolutely love Star Wars. Don’t get me started on the sequels. The OG movies were peak Star Wars and it’s been downhill ever since. But the books are great

I’m in the last half of The Wanderers by Meg Howrey. I had gotten a few “available now” titles from my library’s e-lending and had very little idea of what it was I got going into it. I’ve been really enjoying it. It’s very atmospheric even if it’s kind of slow paced.

I’m reading The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov. It’s a Russian book written in the early 1900s, and it tells the story of Satan visiting the Soviet Union. Naturally, it was originally released in a censored form. I don’t know, the book felt relevant somehow.

I started the Hainish Cycle books by Ursula Le Guin and have gotten to The Left Hand of Darkness . They are a lot of fun as they feel very nostalgic for me. I very much want to re-read some Anne McCaffrey after this. They are also very sad, as they are usually allegorical and do not reflect our society in a positive light. Nevertheless, they ring very true and are very thought provoking, and her writing is outstanding.

Edit: If anyone is a fan of Le Guin but has NOT read any of Octavia Butler, I highly recommend her works. Especially the Xenogenesis trilogy.

Fallen Star by Lee Goldberg

I’ve been on hiatus the last couple of months as have very limited time, but still follow new releases from my favourite authors.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/In_the_Land_of_Invented_Languages?wprov=sfla1

I finished “In the Land of Invented Langauges” by Arika Okrent this morning.

I highly recommend it to anybody who is interested in languages or linguistics. She goes through the history of constructed languages more or less chronologically, mainly focusing on a few highly influential ones. It’s not a stuffy book about analyzing grammar (although there is some of that). Instead, it’s told from a very human perspective. Why did these languages creators do what they did? Who where they? How were they influenced by those that came before?

It’s not a humor book, but I found certain parts funny - like when she tried to translate “shit” into a very obtuse language from 1668.

If you like language, it’s a kind of cozy feel-good book about the human condition.

I’ve been traveling and haven’t had as much reading time as I’d like. That said, I’ve taken a good chunk out of Wind and Truth, Brandon Sanderson, which I’ve been enjoying! Some of it is ponderous, but much of it feels worthwhile detail and specificity.

I really liked Redshirts by John Scalzi. Just added Old Man’s War!

I’m about halfway through The Galaxy, and the Ground Within by Becky Chambers. It’s the 4th book in the (semi-non-linear) series. So far I really liked books 1 and 2, 3 was meh, and 0.5 was fine, but expected. 4 is captivating.

The Road by Cormac Maccarthy

I just finished Heaven’s River last night, the fourth book in Dennis S. Taylor’s Bobiverse series. Easily my favorite book in the series so far, I couldn’t put it down.

I had the first book in the series, We Are Legion, We Are Bob recommended to me a while back by a stranger in a local park when our dogs met. It sat in my “to be read” category until, when finishing my re-listen of Project Hail Mary, I noticed that the same narrator did the Bobiverse books. I’ve enjoyed them very much, and I suspect many in the Fediverse would as well. It’s the story of a software developer/physicist/engineer from the 21st century who, after his head is cryogenically frozen when he dies, becomes the replicant intelligence for a von Neumann probe in the 22nd century.

I’m a regular subscriber to the Folio Society so when they started promoing Piranesi, I was intrigued… not enough to drop $90 on THEIR edition, but enough to check out a less expensive version. 😉

https://www.foliosociety.com/usa/fiction/piranesi

It’s a strange book… very metaphorical. I’m not sure what to make of it yet. The protagonist, Piranesi, exists in a series of marble hallways filled with statues and they have been there several years.

They have memory lapses and have been documenting everything in a series of notebooks. There is one other living person, whom they call “The Other” and the skeletal remains of 13 other people.

The hallways exist on three floors, a lower level, open to the sea, where Piranesi can fish in order to survive, an upper level, open to the sky, where rain water collects, and a middle level isolated from the tides below and the storms above, that is habitable.

It’s not a BAD read, but definitely not for everyone. Reminds me a lot of experimental 1950s stage plays like Samuel Beckett or Harold Pinter.

Re-reading Iain M Banks’ opus.

Currently: Use Of Weapons. A violent first-person delve into a high level mercenary slowly losing his mind, Culture style.

Unfortunately I still haven’t grasped the timeline of the Culture novels, but this feels like one of the earlier ones.

Bingo card:

• Driven by wartime setting(s)
• Title in the format of “X of Y”
• Award winner
• Organized gamble, game or contest (Culture POV)
• Political machinations
• Features a jerk with a heart of gold (debatable)

Just finished Nation by Terry Pratchett and it was one of the most intense books I’ve read this year. It’s supposed to be YA so didn’t expect it to be this dark but it really pulls you in. If you like Terry Pratchett definitely give it a read.

Listening to the Dungeon Crawler Carl series by Matt Dinniman with my wife. The narrator, Jeff Hays, is excellent. Plus, I have checked out some books from my local library for the first time in a while (for physical books at least)

• Captain Kidd: A True Story Of Treasure And Betrayal by Samuel Marquis

some comic collections/graphic novels as well

• Haruki Murakami Manga Stories
• H.P. Lovecraft’s The Call of Cthulu by Gou Tanabe
• Decorum by Jonathan Hickman