General

I should check her out. My wife and I liked Midnight Gospel and Mary Oliver is cool too.

bill wrote:
I read the abridged version a long time ago. Less than 200 pages. Was pretty good.

I used to read abridged versions of books by a series called Great Illustrated Classics. Hardcover books with some pictures in them. Easy reads. Pretty enjoyable.

I'd still recommend them. More for kids or young adults, but great for adults too if you want an easy read and the gist of the stories, without going for the full 1000+ page versions.

Edit: the word "read" seems interesting to me because although the spelling remains the same, the pronunciation changes based on past or future tense. You can say "last week I read a book," and that is past tense for "read," and is pronounced like "red," but if you say "tomorrow I will read a book," then it's future tense and pronounced like "reed."

I know it's just the start of the year, but I think I'm throwing in the towel. I don't think I can read a book for every system I own, unless you count manga. I just don't read nearly as often these days as I used to.

But I read the whole Demon Slayer series last year. Combined, that's gotta count for several books, right? Right?! Plus I read some other manga too.

I got halfway through a book by Brandon Sanderson, but lost steam and stopped completely. I then asked someone to spoil the ending for me.

What I really need is a fantastic book to get back into reading.

But I don't know anything other than Doors of Stone (Patrick Rothfuss) that I really want to read.

Doors of Stone is never coming out.

Kommie wrote:
I'm somewhat hopeful. Keeping it in mind just in case. If it comes out, it will be a nice surprise. If not, well it's been 10 years already anyway. Gotta move on to other things. (But doesn't hurt to keep it in mind)

The @Gypsy errr I mean The Scumbag by Rick Remender. An over the top book that does a pretty good

nonamesleft wrote:

From what I've read about book 2, it does absolutely nothing to advance the main plot setup in book 1 so not sure how book 3 would be unless it would be very absurdly long.

Kommie wrote:
Offhand I don't recall any huge plot advances in book 2. But there was progress.

Plot advances aside, I thought both books were great, so I was happy to have something good to read.

Moving on to other books for now.

12. Small Victories - Spotting Improbable Moments of Grace (Anne Lamott) - Shot through another Lamott today via audiobook while working. There's a particular story in here where she's writing about the passing of her dog, Sadie, and it legitimately stopped me in my tracks and had a couple gentle tears flowing out of me. Same notes as yesterday really, some really beautiful and heartbreaking writing here as well. Now I gotta switch it back up a bit for the next book. Maybe I'll find a short Stephen King book and give him another whirl. While they've been few and far between, I've yet to read a Stephen King book that I LOVE beyond his book about writing, so named "On Writing". That's a banger of a book.

Trigger Warning
by William W. Johnstone

Jake Rivers is the only non-liberal snowflake at his College. Former Army, he's great at everything. Beats up 4 guys at once on separate occasions. But when liberals plant bombs everywhere and threaten the school with gun violence unless all the kids' families pay 100 million dollars into an offshore bank account, who's there to stop them? That's right, Jake Rivers. This book is basically "just stop the terrorists with their own guns after overpowering them" fantasy book. I managed to read it during downtime at work and yeah, it's bad.

13. Elevation (Stephen King) - Found and blasted through a short Stephen King last night, probably stayed up a touch too late finishing it, but I actually thoroughly enjoyed this one. Centers around acknowledging we're on borrowed time and making amends in the face of that fact. I think I'll keep giving King more of my reading time this year.

finally got my first one done!

Red Sister by Mark Lawrence

great story so far with at least two more books to go. i've shifted to primarily work from home, so my driving time has severely dropped. don't think i'm going to come close to my 50 books these last couple years.

bogo wrote:

This is on my TBR. Hopefully it's good cause I couldn't stand his other 2 popular series

"Livability: Stories" by Jon Raymond - a well-written slice-of-life short story collection. Notably, 2 of the stories were made into independent films I liked ("Old Joy" and "Wendy and Lucy" both directed by Kelly Reichardt). Not much plot or action in these, but lots of attention to what is on people's minds and subtle aspects of living.

Kommie wrote:

Only other one that I have read is the broken empire books. Two different trilogies, one pretty good one not so much. I would definitely say this is better in general but you really got to pay attention because the world building is...a lot lol

14. On the Fox Roads (Nghi Vo) - This can barely be considered a book proper - it was really a short story, but I've heard loads about Vo's The Empress of Salt and Fortune, which is rather short itself, and I wanted a tiny taster of what her writing was like and - hot dog - I'm really excited. Fantasy and mystery all wound together, rather poetically told, with writing that also doesn't feel the need to overstay its welcome and spell every. single. thing. out for you. I'm really looking forward to reading the rest of Vo's work.

I finished We by Yevgeny Zamyatin. Very enjoyable dystopian sci-fi from Russia. Didn't realize it was such an influence on so many well-known dystopian novels. Relatively quick and easy read. Worth checking out if you are a fan of 1984, Brave New World, etc.

15. Pride and Prejudice (Jane Austen) - Somehow managed to make it out of public education having never read Pride and Prejudice. I'm not gonna lie. I straight up loved it. I'm not typically into the whole Regency thing within British history but I guess I just picked this up at the right time because I thought it was an absolute riot. Austen wrote with plenty of intended humor, but so many of the characters are written so well that their very existence on the page was hilarious to me. Elizabeth's mother's nerves being shot every single time she was in a scene reminded me so much of my late grandmother before she deteriorated from Alzheimer's. Granny's nerves would be so on edge when she watched the Titans play football. I miss her.

On a lighter side, if you get a kick outta uppityness and the baffling formalities that encroached on seemingly everything during the Regency Period, you might actually have a good time with Pride and Prejudice.

Very fun dry humor in P&P. It's a pretty good product. The A&E show from way back in the day is a great adaptation, Colin Firth's still the best Darcy

DarkFact wrote:

Looks like I can watch it via uktvplay. I'll have to watch it now that I've finally read the book.

16. Outliers (Malcom Gladwell) - Listened to the audiobook while working today. I'm (maybe) a backwards stumbler onto Gladwell via becoming familiar with and enjoying Revisionist History before cracking into any of his books. (Dude's voice is choice though and I'll probably opt for listening through the audiobooks for some more of his writing.) I thought this was really interesting though. I could see how some folks reading through this and taking a defeatist mindset up, but I thought it was rather heartwarming to hear so many stories regarding how success so correlates to one's community. I love the dispelling of the idea that any individual claiming singularity in their achievements succeeds only in deluding themselves.

Gladwell is intriguing but he has many critics too.

bill wrote:

I can understand a level of criticism if folks go down the rabbit hole of buying out on him as an infallible academic resource. Wasn't he initially a journalist? I think the dude's a great storyteller, but I wouldn't bank anything on him personally haha.

And I picked up Livability based on your comments the other day. I'm about a quarter of the way through and am really enjoying my time with it.

cool

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