What are you reading?

[Spritelady]

Somehow it's almost the end of May and I haven't yet posted a reading update!

My goal this year is to read 78 books and so far I've read 35, so I think I'm more or less on track.

My most recent completed read was a duology that's doing the rounds in romantasy circles: it's the first two books in the Crowns of Nyaxia series, the first being The Serpent and the Wings of Night and the second being The Ashes and the Star-Cursed King.
I enjoyed this, it had a lot of the classic tropes of romantasy books at the moment but was nevertheless entertaining and I liked the characters. I don't think it will ever win any prizes for deep literature, but I was happy just to be entertained by my books.

I also recently finished the second trilogy in the Robin Hobbs series, The Liveship Traders trilogy. I absolutely love these books and I can't believe they aren't more widely known. I think her characters are incredibly well written, the plot is intriguing and, as with the first trilogy, I was so impressed at how the various story strands were brought together in the final book.

I've bought the next trilogy in this series, which returns to the setting and characters of the first trilogy, so I'll get to those once I've worked my way through Throne of Glass (I really am on a romantasy kick lately...)

[The Seamstress]

That's cool!

I set myself a 50 books goal like last year, but so far I've only read four, currently reading the fifth, so I don't know if that's going to work...

Two of the four books were by Veo Corva, The Old Goat and the Alien and Books and Bone, and I enjoyed them very much. If you haven't read them yet, highly recommend!

Also read book 2 in the Aggie Morton Mystery Queen series, which was okay, but I liked the first one better tbh.

Now I'm reading Die vierte Wand ("The fourth Wall" - don't know if it has been translated to English, couldn't find anything), which is a German children's book. It's about a young girl living with her family in a house no one ever leaves or enters, everything is the same each day, they eat from empty plates and their books have empty pages etc. Then one day there's a mysterious package in the hallway addressed to the girl, and it's a book with actual words in it. Girl begins to read and starts questioning things, then decides she wants to go outside and see the world, climbs out of an open window, and lands back in her room, but now the house is different... It's quite intriguing so far. I have to admit, after reading almost exclusively in English the past several years it's kinda weird going back to German XD But I want to balance it more!

[Jubal]

My goal remains a book a month because that's sadly more realistic than any of the loftier ambitions of you good folks! I do like both Old Goat and Books and Bone, the latter is probably my favourite of V's books. I've still not read their newest book, I should do sometime.

Meanwhile I have read books 4 and 5 of my goal, namely Journey to the Centre of the Earth and 20,000 Leagues Under The Sea, both by Jules Verne, as they're SF classics I'd not read previously.

They're quite an interesting pair partly in how the narrative differs from modern books. There's not a lot of character arc in either, and the focus is very much on a character documenting a fascinating situation as a sort of "what if this cool thing were the case" rather than the sort of story that has a particular adventure structure and climax. There's also a big focus on retained mystery - there are aspects of either book that never do get resolved, because the objective of the main characters is largely to get out alive as opposed to accomplishing some greater goal.

The science-fictional elements are also interesting in that there are some things that we much more know to be wrong that are presented as largely theoretical in the books: Journey to the Centre of the Earth probably feels much more fantastical to modern eyes than it did when it was written, because we know you can't do some of that stuff and we know how e.g. continental drift works.

Modern texts also, I think, have often dropped a lot of day-to-day slice of life stuff in adventure fiction. Up to the mid C20th and even including e.g. Tolkien, there's often quite a lot of time spent in texts on survival, food, and perils like the dark or thirst. I feel like there's a lot less of that in modern fantasy, certainly a lot less of that presented as a practical survival challenge rather than to indicate tests of will or endurance.

Of the two, I think 20,000 Leagues has the better setting and characters - the political and personal nature of Captain Nemo's existence gives him a sort of presence and poignancy as sympathetic antagonist and there's no equivalent in Journey. I was interested to realise how much Journey has influenced some later things like, notably, the Fallen London setting which I always most associate with Kubla Khan but clearly has resonances with Verne too especially regarding the idea of having much more of an ecosystem of prehistoric animals below the earth.

Not sure what I'll read next or, more worryingly, when I'll next have time to read. But crossed fingers...

[Rob_Haines]

I've recently been on a short story kick, assisted by InkFoundry, who are creating a searchable index of short stories by category and theme.

This was last night's read, a fictional research paper on cheese and prognostication, and I could not help but read the entire thing in Jubal's voice:

"The Efficacy of Tyromancy Over Reflective Scrying Methods in Prediction of Upcoming Misfortunes of Divination Colleagues, A Study by Cresivar Ibraxson, Associate Magus, Wintervale University" by Amanda Helms

[Jubal]

Ooh, I wonder if we can/should submit the various stories floating around these forums to that? I guess it depends exactly how they're interpreting the "public domain" requirement given we don't pay people to post here...

And yes, I can see that being a my-voice paper. I wonder if I should do more audio recordings of stories etc.