Yesterday I just finished the 3000th book since I started tracking which books I read (and when) since June 2007. I thought it might be fun to look back at the last 15 years of reading—numbers and otherwise (if you’re wondering why I think this is fun, please recall that I worked on the r/Fantasy Bingo Statistics posts for 5 years).
In 2007 I created a spreadsheet to to track both my reading as well as all the books I wanted to read (and which libraries had the books I wanted). Even though I say it’s 3000 books, there are some things I didn’t count that others might (picture books that I read to my son, no short stories shorter than a novella, and no required readings for university classes), and some things I do count that others might not (rereads, manga/comic book volumes, and magazine issues).
MILESTONES
1st book: Perdido Street Station (Bas-Lag #1) by China Miéville (finished 14 June 2007)
500th: Diplomatic Immunity (Vorkosigan #14) by Lois McMaster Bujold (14 March 2010) …
A new biography by the fantasy novelist’s longtime assistant provides a joyful and painful closeup of the irrepressible writer who made the absurd strangely convincing
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Outside family, Wilkins probably knew Pratchett better than anyone else and it is wonderful to have this closeup picture of the writer’s working life, with its arguments and doubts, naps and negotiations. This is not a hagiography. The Pratchett who emerges can be curmudgeonly, vain, and infuriated and puzzled by the way the world has underestimated him.
Why is he so underestimated? The world he created was brilliantly absurd – elephants all the way down – and strangely convincing.
Reading Night Watch and I come across “Ladies of negotiable affection” for prostitutes and I died
I realize he has tons of these, but sadly I havent written down any from the other books
But what are your favorite Pratchett-isms?
And by this I mean any kind of funny silly way to refer to something. He has tons of bits of wonderful wisdom, but more interested in some of his naming conventions.
It seems like each book in the series gets worse and worse. So little actually happens but worse it takes so many unnecessary words for so little to happen. I’m convinced Robert Jordan was stalling or maybe he was paid by the word? Did he not have an editor to reign him in? We all know by now the ridiculousness of constantly smoothing skirts and sniffing which is painful enough. But how is it that every character seems to have contempt for the other gender? Men and women alike spend hours going on about how the gender is good for nothing and predictable and shallow and likes to gossip.
I really like the world of Wheel of Time but my God this has gotten painful to read. I love Brandon Sanderson and I have been trying to get to his books in hopes he saves the series but I don’t know if I can make it. But 8 books in is so far to give up now. But the thought of reading 3 or 4 more enormous books of nothing to get there is starting to feel like a never ending chasm. Anybody …
Here’s what I’d like to argue. Fairy Tale was just plain fun. Like literally page turning, pop corn eating, clap your hands and shout fun.
It’s literally a story told a thousand times. It’s predictable, It’s familiar, it’s all of those things and yet, King tells the story in the most masterful way. That’s all.
PS: The Audio book performance needs to win some kind of award, the voice actor was brilliant. Captured the vibes of the Wonder Years and Sandlot narration.
As a kid I used to love reading Goosebumps. Every time I would go to a bookstore I would pick out Goosebumps.
I think it created the love for horror and plot twists I have today. I love how at the end of every book there was a plot twist that I couldn’t wait to get to.
Are there any Goosebumps / R.L Stine fans here ?
A lot of people are witnessing with awe the fight of the Iranian women for their rights and freedom. Persepolis tells about the advent of the Islamic Revolution and what it meant for women. How they went from going to the university dressed in jeans to being locked in their houses wearing hiyabs. It does so in an entertaining voice without ever falling into a lecture tone.
The book is some 20 years old so its perspective is understandable for us, while being closer in time to the ajatollahs arrival to power.
I read these books as a kid and enjoyed them, but they really shine upon re-reading. I just finished Wintersmith (#3) via Libby last night, nearly shed a tear.
The Tiffany Aching books are set on Pratchett’s Discworld, but as with all Discworld series they stand perfectly on their own. The books are about the title character, a young girl from a rural agricultural village who grows into some magical powers and has to reckon with forces beyond her ken, and also the joys and perils of family, community, and responsibility.
Right off the bat these novels are utterly delightful. The first one, The Wee Free Men, features Tiffany befriending a gang of tiny Scottish fairies who love nothing more than drinking, fighting, stealing, fighting while drinking, drinking while stealing, and fighting while drinking & stealing. They have a whole vocabulary of nonsense Scots words such as “crivens,” an all-purpose curse that I’m going to start using daily, and their typical …
My story is probably a familiar one. I spent my youth and teenage years just devouring books. Especially the Sci Fi and Thriller genres. I probably read 90% of Crichton’s books as a tween, it was awesome. Then I decided to get a degree in English Lit. Between the oversaturation of books, the preoccupation with the literary canon, the PRESSURE placed on reading, and my eventual career writing sponcon, my love of reading went largely dormant.
In the 7 years since I graduated, I’ve picked my way through some challenging books. But more like, picked my way through half of dozens of challenging books. It’s been frustrating and dissapointing. Reading’s felt like a chore, and it’s left lingering a feeling of failure and resentment towards an activity that once sustained me.
Cue Mr. Crichton. One of my dear bookwormy friends (she tries and usually succeeds at 45 books a year) found a copy of Sphere at a garage sale. I had read it as a tween, and I remembered it …
As some (many?) of you may remember, a short story published in Clarkesworld in January 2020 titled “I Sexually Identify as an Attack Helicopter” generated significant controversy in the printSF community, with (baseless) charges of transphobia levelled at the author, for whom this was a first published work; she was forced to out herself as a trans woman before she would have otherwise done so and withdrew all of her entries to Clarkesworld.
I finally got around to reading the piece and it’s amazing, I wish I could read more of her work! Anyone have news on how she’s doing, whether she anticipates resuming writing for a public audience, or anything along those lines? I remember she was doing incredibly poorly at the time as a result of harassment and the like, and hope she’s doing better.
This short story collection absolutely blew my mind - such interesting and emotionally deep stories that are each organized around a single speculative idea. Some of those ideas are sci-fi and some are fantasy, and many of the stories feature characters who move between Asia and America as young people (like the author Ken Liu did in his life), and are wonderful coming of age stories in addition to exploring alternate worlds.
The story The Paper Menagerie itself is a great example. It’s about a young Chinese-American boy whose mother makes him origami animals that come to life when you blow into them. However, he comes to resent his Chinese mother and the toys she made for him when he starts to feel like an outsider in school. I won’t spoil the resolution, but this is one of the best stories about how parents and children feel about each other that I’ve ever read.
Another of my favorites is State Change, which is centered on the idea that when you are born, a …
I haven’t been in a reading mood in a while but recently got the urge and what sparked it was the game Returnal. Love the atmosphere and the world and seeing the dead civilization. Got me wondering if there are any good books on the topic? Loved Rendevous With Rama and the Ring World books. I absolutely love stories of first contact and discovery. Does anyone have any recommendations for books along the lines of archeological discovery, alien reawakening, exploration?
I’m aware of Seveneves but that’s a bit grander scale and timeline than I’d like - I prefer human-scale stories. I want some guy improvising radiation gear, fabricating replacement radio parts, and growing mushrooms!
And you need a flowchart to figure it out.