Book Recommendations?

r013nt0 wrote:
Robear wrote:

Kind of like reading a book about the rise of the NSDAP in the late 20's in, say, 1944 Germany... It might be a really cogent account, but I've been waving the warning flag since the early 80's and frankly I'm exhausted by the outcome.

Yep. I tried to get everyone I know to read In the Garden of Beasts when it came out.
Very few people are interested, turns out.

It's on my stack!

Recently finished two short reads in The Forest and Pale Green Dot by Justin Groot. Both were enjoyable and I am looking forward to the next book. The basic premise is that the world is pretty much the same as it is today. Same countries and same wars and a lot of that stuff. The main difference is that the oceans are gone. They have been replaced by huge forests filled with all kinds of dangerous creatures like giant bugs and snakes the size of subway cars and dinosaurs and even dragons. There are Rangers who going into the forests and the books follow a group of them as the uncover the mystery of said forest.

Danjo Olivaw wrote:
r013nt0 wrote:
Robear wrote:

Kind of like reading a book about the rise of the NSDAP in the late 20's in, say, 1944 Germany... It might be a really cogent account, but I've been waving the warning flag since the early 80's and frankly I'm exhausted by the outcome.

Yep. I tried to get everyone I know to read In the Garden of Beasts when it came out.
Very few people are interested, turns out.

It's on my stack!

I’m adding it to my stack and it’s going right to the top! Totally not a healthy read for me, but I prefer knowledge to ignorance no matter how traumatizing the facts of the knowledge might be.

It’s a great book. I’m sure Reaganland is too. I’m just... I’ve been following the various threads that got us here since the early 80’s and I’m burned out on it. Back then, we were still branches in a forest. Now, much of it has already gone into the wood chipper I’ve been pointing to for decades, and rest is on fire or flooded. We’re just trying to figure out how much worse it can get, and how quickly. That’s what the election will decide...

I wish reading another book would help me feel better about it.

Robear wrote:

I wish reading another book would help me feel better about it.

Well now I've started reading Evil Geniuses: The Unmaking of America: A Recent History and let me tell you.... it's not the book you're looking for.

Seems great so far, though. I've already ended up screenshotting most of the 3rd chapter to send to my sister because boy oh boy does it show how much our grandfather (and, to a lesser extent, father) got duped and bought into the anti-union full steam ahead supply-side economics and Capitalism of Milton Friedman / Jack Kemp / The Wall Street Journal.

It's a lived history for me.

Robear wrote:

I wish reading another book would help me feel better about it.

RawkGWJ wrote:

Totally not a healthy read for me, but I prefer knowledge to ignorance no matter how traumatizing the facts of the knowledge might be.

Reading this will NOT make me feel better. It will most likely cause me much anxiety, but for me, ignorance NOT bliss. I want the ugly truth no matter how hard it is to swallow. What I hate more than anxiety is being blindsided.

I have plenty of friends and family who don't want to engage any more than they have to with any of what's going on. And that's a completely valid response. They know the stakes, they know for whom they want to vote, and that's all they are equipped to deal with currently. Again, totally fair.

For me, though, I find some measure of, not comfort exactly -but something adjacent to it, in having a deeper understanding of what is actually going on, who the principal players are, and how we got here. While it can certainly be disheartening to see exactly what the scope of the juggernaut we're up against is, I guess I'd rather just know.

I would like to be a part of the "informed electorate" Jefferson believed was crucial for a properly functioning democracy.

I would agree with this.

Absolutely. But... I'm there. Have been for years. It's part of why I stopped posting in P&C (well, D&D now). After years of watching things turn bad, eventually even an optimist like me realizes that talking about it has become superfluous. It's got enough momentum that real change will be required to fix things.

But this is not a book discussion.

Well there is being informed, and then there is being over-saturated to the point of unhealthy obsession. When you are considering reading something that is going to seriously impact your mental health and/or set off triggers, consider whether you are truly learning something new and important, or rather, if you are just reinforcing what you already know. If the latter, you would probably be better served reading something more edifying and healthy. (Or even just something trashy and fun. )

I’m listening to the audiobook of Normal People by Sally Rooney. I learned about it from Brene Brown in her podcast. ITS SO EFFING GOOD! It’s an 8.5 hour audiobook. I’m already halfway through.

Full disclosure:
It’s in no way fantasy or sci-fi. I encourage y’all to branch out a bit.

Speaking of great audiobooks, I just finished Bird by Bird by Anne Lamott, narrated by Susan Bennett. I thought at first it was going to be a guide to writing by way of ornithology, but actually it's simply a guide to writing and being creative while dealing with writer's block, self-hatred, and the usual demons. I had a physical copy and I marked quite a few pages where I knew I'd return for guidance.

Calvino's Italian Folktales on sale at $2.99

Natus wrote:

Speaking of great audiobooks, I just finished Bird by Bird by Anne Lamott, narrated by Susan Bennett. I thought at first it was going to be a guide to writing by way of ornithology, but actually it's simply a guide to writing and being creative while dealing with writer's block, self-hatred, and the usual demons. I had a physical copy and I marked quite a few pages where I knew I'd return for guidance.

Thank you. I will add this to the stack.

Malor wrote:

Just finished Naomi Novik's Deadly Education. It was delightful, and I strongly recommend it.

It's much more YA than her normal fare, but I enjoyed it every bit as much as her last two books. Unlike those, I don't think this one will get a Nebula nomination, because it just doesn't feel like a book they'd appreciate. It's a little too popcornish for them, I think.

It's about a young lady, Galadriel Higgins(as mentioned upthread, not her idea), who is going to school at the Scholomance. This is a terrible place, insanely dangerous, full of monsters that desperately want to eat wizards. She's got maybe a 25% chance of surviving to graduation. The reason that teenagers voluntarily go here, of course, is that the odds in the outside world are even worse; there are a huge number of things that go bump in the night, and they all want Purina Wizard Chow, Made From Real Wizards™. The chance of surviving to adulthood on the outside is slim, but with the training the Scholomance gives them, if they can survive to graduation, they can protect themselves in the real world too. It's an animated magical construct, tricksy and malicious; there are no faculty, only students and the school. And the monsters, who have broken in and taken up residence because it's full of young, delectable Wizard Bites™.

Our heroine is unpopular, not least because she's snide toward almost everyone. And she's got a fundamental problem in that she's attuned to destruction, instead of the more peaceful arts. A mending spell is hard for her, but something that blows you into goo is dead simple. Which sounds great, except that these spells cost terrific amounts of mana, and mana is hard to generate. Unless, of course, you just rip it out of other wizards, which is something she has an extraordinary aptitude for. Most maleficers need your permission to steal your power, but she can kill everyone in a room without even blinking, and then use that power to blow big, big holes in things. This, however, rots you from the inside; do much of that, and you will literally collapse on yourself in a puddle of ick.

So, partly because of the long-term consequences, and partly because her mom raised her that way, she's committed to only using clean mana sources, which means she has only a trickle of power, poor proficiency in most spells that don't blow people up, low social status, and she's stuck in a malicious school that really likes to screw with its students. It powers itself from their ongoing discomfort.

This could be grimdark real easy, but it's not, it's almost pure fun, start to finish. I bet I was grinning half the time I was reading it. The humor is very dry, but pervasive.

This is a series book, and the last sentence in it sets up the next volume, one of the better closing lines I've read. It's not a traditional cliffhanger, but I am damnably curious to read what comes next, and I hope she writes faster than usual.

If you don't mind being equally curious, buy this one for sure.

Also enjoyed it. A bit more grown up magic school vs Harry Potter, but not up there with The Magicians or Superpowereds.

Also different in that you start with the main character as a junior, and not a freshman.

Natus wrote:

Calvino's Italian Folktales on sale at $2.99

Damn, missed this one.

SallyNasty wrote:
Natus wrote:

Calvino's Italian Folktales on sale at $2.99

Damn, missed this one.

It often dips that low. I'm especially excited because a professor of Italian might be teaching the Folktales next semester via ZOOM at the 92nd St Y.

Dunno if we have any Tana French fans around these parts but The Searcher is another disappointment. I'd say I enjoyed reading it more than Witch Elm but it's another book that fails to match the quality of her earlier work. I'd recommend it as a free read from the library or something but I paid for the hardcover so you don't have to. Don't expect any cool twists or weird stuff, it ends up being a thoroughly banal story that ends with an anticlimax.

Really? I haven't started it yet. But I liked Witch Elm, so I'll give it a shot still. I'm still about halfway through the classic Rebus books, then I need to start getting back to my other Tartan Noir writers. (For those curious about the genre, start with "The Necessary Death of Lewis Winter", that should put you right.)

Anyone have recommendations for fun, low stress reads? I usually lean sci-fi/fantasy, but I'm up for most things. Life's been a little too serious lately and I could use some junk food reading.

The aforementioned Wayfarers series by Becky Chambers might work. The first book is The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet.

It's not exactly junkfood reading, but it shines as a relatively low stress story focused on some likable characters.

FridgeGremlin wrote:

Anyone have recommendations for fun, low stress reads? I usually lean sci-fi/fantasy, but I'm up for most things. Life's been a little too serious lately and I could use some junk food reading.

I have been enjoyed Drew Hayes's NPC series for my most recent reads. You might know him from the Super Powered series. They are on Kindle Unlimited and fun reads.

I would also recommend Will Wight if you haven't read his stuff yet, also on KU (especially Cradle series).

Of course there is the Bobiverse books if you want more of the scifi side and light hearted.

Also more scifi-ish is the System Apocalypse series by Tao Wong. A bit more serious but still light reading, and there are like 9 or 10 books. They are litRPG but unlike many entries in the genre they have a story that moves along and character development.

There are plenty more to recommend, those are just ones that I remember from my recent reading stack that might be outside of the usual "top X" lists.

The Murderbot books are a great snack-type series with a pretty good dose of humor.

The Forest and Pale Green Dot by Justin Groot fit the snack sized and quick fun reads. Jam by Yahtzee Croshaw is just completely absurd and fun.

FridgeGremlin wrote:

Anyone have recommendations for fun, low stress reads? I usually lean sci-fi/fantasy, but I'm up for most things. Life's been a little too serious lately and I could use some junk food reading.

Lois McMaster Bujold's Penric and Desdemona novellas.

...Or, really, any of her work, especially the Vorkosigan books.

Robear wrote:

The Murderbot books are a great snack-type series with a pretty good dose of humor.

I heartily second this recommendation!

Robear wrote:

...Or, really, any of her work, especially the Vorkosigan books.

Agreed. But the Penric stuff is very light and quick.

Speaking of Bujold, I thought I'd seen she'd said she was only doing short format stuff in her "retirement" like the Penric novellas. I just started a full novel length book released last year I'd missed called "The Spirit Ring". So far so good. It's in the free Audible Plus books if you're an Audible subscriber.

Rykin wrote:

The Forest and Pale Green Dot by Justin Groot fit the snack sized and quick fun reads. Jam by Yahtzee Croshaw is just completely absurd and fun.

All of Croshaw's books can be described that way. So much fun!