Last week I finished When the Moon Hits Your Eye by John Scalzi, and I am currently working on the fourth book in the Chequey Series by Daniel O’Malley, Royal Gambit.
The Chequey Series started with The Rook, and I’ve been reading every book as it comes out. I enjoy the whole series, but it can be controversial because not everybody agrees with its structure, as each book doesn’t directly follow the characters of the one before, but instead tells another story with different characters who interact in the same world. They slightly overlap at some point.
What about all of you? What have you been reading or listening to lately??
With regards to Bingo, I’m provisionally planning to use When the Moon Hits Your Eye for the square New Release and Royal Gambit for the square Political, but they may drop off or be changed as time goes on.
For details on the c/Books bingo challenge that just restarted for the year, you can checkout the initial Book Bingo, and its Recommendation Post. Links are also present in our community sidebar.
Blindsight by Peter Watts. Its interesting and irritating at the same time. I think by the end of the 2nd page I was wondering if Peter Watts is autistic, not a bad thing because i relate to the characters but its jarring compared to how most people write characters and its a bit cringe sometimes. I’m also not enjoying how he describes things he will describe something by referencing several things that all would never occur in real life and so its hard to imagine them all together and then try to figure out wtf hes actually trying to get you to picture. The long descriptions really break the flow.
Other than that the story is cool im only 25% of the way in but so far so good.
Just finished The Decline Of Morality In Republican Rome, short but incisive piece on the hypocrisy of Cato the Younger.
I just finished The Years of Rice and Salt, which I enjoyed a lot more than I thought I was going to. Now I’m onto Parable of the Sower, which is a trip to read for the first time in 2025.
The beginning is just a bit prescient there…
Dungeon Crawler Carl
Welcome Crawlers!
This is the correct answer. Currently relistening to the audiobook series; book 4 atm. Enjoy your adventure. This is the one series that I would want to experience fresh again if possible.
Kill, kill, kill!
The case of Charles Dexter Ward by H.P. Lovecraft.
“Between the World and Me” Ta-Nehisi Coates 2015
Such a great book. Really upset he no longer writes for the Atlantic. Their long form journalism has taken such a huge hit since he left. I had really hoped he and Michelle Alexander would inspire a new civil rights movement. Here we are.
Fiction: The Borrowed, by Chan Ho-Kei (a hard-boiled detective novel set in Hong Kong)
Non-fiction: A New Illustrated History of Taiwan, by Chao Wan-Yai
Doctor Thorne, by the infamous Trollope! It’s exceedingly funny, I can highly recommend it. Like 19th century Terry Pratchett…
I’ve now read half of The Wheel of Time, so I’m reading a few “comfort books” before continuing with it. Right now I’m reading Hell’s Angels: A Strange and Terrible Saga by Hunter S. Thompson.
Reading Peter Straub/Stephen King “Black House”. Bit of a slow start but is it ever good!
I’m reading The Overstory by Richard Powers. I find it a slow read. A very good read too. I would recommend it specifically to those who are restless.
Wow this is an unreal listen…
It is about the madness that is the special forces particularly the ones stationed at Fort Bragg.
The first chapter is about how two Special Forces guys took their families to Disney World. They spend the trip snorting coke, dropping Molly and shoving speedballs (coke and Herion) up their asses.
When they got back, the wives went shopping and left thier children with the fathers.
One of them fathers (SF guys) got uber paranoid and became convinced there were listening and tracking devices in the car, so he began to dissemble the car in the driveway. The two starting fighting and things escalated and one shot the other 7 times.
The shooting was ruled self defense and by ruled I mean swept under the rug.
The story gets more intense and delves into the GWOT and the madness that caused globally and the role that the Delta Force and SF played in that.
It lays out the insanity of afghanistan, Iraq, the Arab spring and all the fucked up shit that we caused.
It lays out the culture and world of the SF world…
It is an intense read/listen.
I’m wrapping up with the Silo seeies by Hugh Howey. I finished Dust and have one short story left in Silo Stories.
I’ve enjoyed the series more than I expected to based on reviews I read. It wasn’t perfect but the ending of the main novels left me mostly satisfied. There was one sequence that I think should have been left out and one thread I wish we had gotten a more in depth look at (staying vague to avoid spoilers).
Coming back after reading the last short story to say that it was awful and put a bad taste in my mouth overall. If you’re reading this series, do yourself a favor and ignore In the Woods. It didn’t make sense from a story/logic perspective AND was deeply unsatisfying.
Wow, I wonder if I happened to miss that last one. I really liked the series and didn’t remember reading something past the third book. Thanks for the tip!
It’s a collection of 3 short stories called Silo Stories. It came with the box set of the books I got. The first two are fine, but honestly, I don’t you’re missing anything by skipping them altogether.
Contemporary Theological Approaches to Sexuality, ed. Lisa Isherwood and Dirk von Der Horst.
Didn’t read as much this week. Still working on Thirteenth by C.M. Rosens.
Finished Valuable Humans in Transit and Other Stories by qntm (technology-centered scifi short stories) | bingo: indie HM, short HM, cool cover)
No aliens or space opera in this, just a lot of speculative stories focused on computers or other technology. Some are structured as wiki entries, chat logs, or social media threads.
I liked this more than the other short story collection I read recently. I think it helped that it was very concept-focused, not character-, world-, or plot-focused.
