What Are You Reading?

[Phoebe]

Well? You must have gotten at least one Christmas book. So what of it? I have Zero Christmas Books. Sad. But plenty of leftovers from every other day, so somehow one can manage.

[FlameBlade]

Woman Who Smashed Codes by Jason Fagone. Excellent, well written, about Elizebeth Friedman who practically put her thumb on the entire US history along with international history to include Nazis in South America through cryptanalysis.

[mimekiller]

Future Home of the Living God
All life on earth is devolving in shocking ways while a pregnant native american woman is reconnecting with her biological family after she was adopted. Super great read with a interesting concept but told in a very personal way. Digging it.

[Iantha]

bonk by Mary Roach, a book about the study of sex and what that has looked like over the years. Her writing is hilarious.

[Walrus]

Working on getting back into reading.

I finally am getting around to reading the shannara chronicles - about 2/3 of the way through The Sword of Shannara by my bed
My travel book is Storm Front - I read the dresden files up to book 6 a long time ago, and keep getting not so subtle hints to read it, so I am starting again. Enjoy the humor and writing style.

In Audiobook I am 'reading' the dune series again, am working on Hunters of Dune. On and off 'reading' the foundation trilogy again.
I don't spend a lot of time in audiobooks these says, I usually work my way through podcasts...

[mimekiller]

It was a bittersweet moment when I got all caught up with DRESDEN and became part of the frothing masses that wants Jim Butcher to stop writing awful steam book novels and growing out his ponytail and focus on the trials and tribulations of my fav wizard.

[Walrus]

[Iantha]

The Soul of America; The Battle for our Better Angels by Jon Meacham.

I heard him on NPR a week and a half ago and he was asked what he thought of the current administration. He gave the most grounded, intelligent, realistic, and hopeful response I'd heard since this disastrous election cycle began. I'm only a chapter in but, so far, I am enjoying his writing style and perspective.

[Mike]

[Phoebe]

Storm in a Teacup and the Songs of Trees. The first one is by Czerski and is a popular level book about physics since that's all I can handle. The other one is about... Trees.

[Bonefish]

I finished up Republic of Fear and the Internal history of the USSR. Now I'm reading Mein Kampf.

Hitler sucked as a writer. It's torture.

[mimekiller]

Well to be fair he was writing in a prison cell! Its hard to cross your T's and dot your I's in prison lmao hahaha



Finished OUTPOST part 1 of the DONOVAN trilogy, if you like colony SF, and the idea of getting into a new series but its worth it!

[akiva]

I've been re-reading the Chronicles of Prydain with my daughter.

[Phoebe]

The Origins of Totalitarianism, and I still don't get it really.

[Phoebe]

Various old radical feminist tracts. They're shocking in a way; the idea that such women wrote in the 70s and this is where feminism went by 2018... Wow. These are the very few feminists who actually did have a problem with men, sex with men, and traditional families. And though I'm neck deep in such tradition and happy with it, I find it's much different to look back on these texts from this life perspective than it was to read them as a younger woman. These women knew a few things and it can be difficult to hold their lens up to your life, much less, say, the state of the nation!

[Mike]

Prey of the Gods by Nicky Drayden

I will talk about it more on the podcast, but this is a very broken novel that is nonetheless an enthusiastic recommend from me.

Set in South Africa of the 2060's, Prey of the Gods combines sci-fi, fantasy and horror with well-developed characters that are very hard to love and yet force you to love them anyway. It's a story of ancient/hidden gods and demigods of Africa rising in a gritty near-future Port Elizabeth, and of a half-dozen disparate characters whose arcs eventually converge.

It is frenetic and wildly imaginative and captivating and is worth reading for the world and the characters. The plot however veers wildly, and some very interesting elements are downplayed or dropped by the end, so I was both thrilled and frustrated with the whole thing.

I recommend it, and I'll be checking out more of her work.

[Bonefish]

Still reading the same thing. It's an absolute horrid mess, and it's not because it was written in prison. Mine has footnotes, with the revisions made after prison. They don't fuckin help. They change plenty of parts, usually to discredit someone Hitler admired in his youth, but they don't make it any better to read. I guess that could be the appeal, it's simple and repetitive and self fulfilling. And fucking crazy.

[mimekiller]

They have that show on netflix Hitler Circle of evil or something that's about his mentor, and the people that grew to power with him and of course how they all handed the fallout of Germanys defeat. What a wild group of characters that mostly act like catty children! not good people!

[Phoebe]

This is the type of thing that creeps into my dreams at 2 am while I'm trying to sleep, and then you wake up in cloud of acidic dog gas and someone telling you to stop snoring.

[Phoebe]

For some reason, not a very good or well thought through reason, I decided to read "Fevre Dream" by George RR Martin, just to see how it compares, both to his others and to other random vampire stuff. On the one hand it was fascinating because river boats are involved. On the other hand, he should never ever be allowed to write about black people in the 1800's. Or women. Or anyone really but white men similar to himself and vampires. He could have just written about the vampires, assuming they were white male vampires only.