Last night I finished The Exorcist, it surprised me. I look forward to seeing the film at somepoint. Before The Exorcist I read Slewfoot by Brom I will track down his other books as I enjoyed that one!
My final reads of 2024 are Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka and The Ghost Cat by Alex Howard.
@BlAcK_Sw0rDsMaN Well, we don't get the Times readily here in Norway and I'm not aware of anything similar to the TLS over here, though I'm fairly certain such a thing exists, should I go looking.
With a to-read list currently numbering 935 novels of varying shapes, sizes and genres, I should probably avoid book recommendations for the next 20 years or so, but I keep stumbling upon books I get interested in reading, mainly in this very thread and through my connections on Goodreads.
As an example, I rarely explore classic literature and I've never really given Bronte or Austen any real consideration, but your mention of Wuthering Heights made me curious, so my list now stands at 936
Finished Michael Connelly's The Late Show (Goodreads page) over the holidays. Introducing Renée Ballard, who seems to be Harry Bosch's heir apparent, this novel was a good introduction to the character and her corner of the LAPD. While her approach to solving cases felt a bit similar to Bosch, I still enjoyed how it all played out, even though the "main" case hewed a bit close to the blueprint Connelly used a bit too many times in the earlier Bosch books. Looking forward to following this character further. Four stars.
Next up is another Dragonlance novel about the second generations of heroes, Dragons of Summe Flame (Goodreads page).
Finished Secret Rendezvous by Kobo Abe. That was certainly a bizarre and provocative journey, definitely not one for the squeamish or faint-hearted. Needless to say, Abe certainly must have had a fertile and unique imagination. One of the most unusual and singular books I have ever read. I would say I found it more enoyable to read overall than The Master and Magarita by Bulgakov, but still had it's disturbing moments, so stay forewarned and forearmed before approaching the text, if it pleases you to do so.
Next on my list is Rashomon and 17 Other Stories by Ryunosuke Akutagawa.
2025 is here and I've been reflecting a bit on my journey with the written word for the past year.
2024 was a surprisingly good year in books for me. I was almost certain that I wouldn't get as much time reading this year as I usually do, so I lowered my reading challenge goal to 25 books, from my usual 30. The end result turned out to be 52 "books" read in 2024. I put "books" in quotes, as some of them were novellas the size of mere (digital) pamphlets, but, according to the stats on Goodreads, the average page count of all 52 works were 378, which is a fairly normal novel size.
The first novel of the year was James Clavell's Shogun, a fantastic epic that set the bar very high for the novels to follow. One of the easiest five star ratings I've ever given.
The latter two were heavy contenders for favourite novel of the year, only slightly edged out by the breadth of a samurai's blade by "Shogun". I really cannot recommend these three novels enough.
Another pleasant surprise was Exodus - The Archimedes Engine by Peter F. Hamilton. I've struggled with Hamilton's books before, finding them very dense, but this one offered no resistance and was a shining example of great stories woven together with sublime world-building (or, rather, universe-building).
There was plenty of time for "comfort" reads as well: 10 Michael Connelly novels set in the Harry Bosch universe was consumed, no less than two happy reunions with one of my favourite characters, Holly Gibney, in Stephen King's If It Bleeds and Holly. I also returned to the world of Krynn with some new (to me) Dragonlance novels, the quality of which was varied, but had a consistently high nostalgia factor to see me through the rough parts.
All in all, a pretty fantastic year for reading for me. Apologies for the long post, but if any on here are looking for something to read, maybe some of these may be of interest?
Happy new year fellow readers and may we all have a fantastic 2025 with lots of gripping, edifying and compelling books to read
I would love to hear how you guys would sum up your reading year! Which were your favourites? Any disappointments or unexpected pleasant surprises? Any that's taken up residence in your mindspace and refuses to go away, for good or ill?
@FuriousMachine That is some mighty impressive results for the year and lots of variety too. My reading year was so so, although I managed to rediscover a love of fiction with starting the Witcher series and returning to Stephen King with the Body. Despite that I’m still struggling for consistency at the moment but I’m hoping that improves this year. Started the next Witcher book yesterday, Blood of Elves 2025 is starting strong.
Happy reading 👍
I Have No Idea Where This Will Lead Us, But I Have A Definite Feeling It Will Be A Place Both Wonderful And Strange.
@PeaceSalad Happy to hear that you still find it worthwhile to pursue fiction (and hopefully fun, too). I remember you saying that you wanted to make an effort to read more earlier in the year
Coming across a boring or dense novel can easily put a halt to such an endeavor, which is why I've found that having a couple of alternatives I'm excited about on hand is very useful, as I can then quickly discard the one that doesn't provide joy and immediately get back on the horse again with one that has a good chance of being a compelling read. Luckily, I haven't had a DNF for quite a while, but I've been close a couple of times.
While I found Blood of Elves to be one of the weaker novels in the series, it was still quite a good read, so I should think you'll enjoy that one as well.
Happy new year, mate; may you have lots of fun and engaging reads in the year to come
@FuriousMachine Ah yes, I just can’t seem to get round that hill. I run out of steam with a book and either, through stubbornness or stupidity try and push on and inevitably don’t end up reading anything at all, often for months. Kafka on the Shore was such a book and I’ve forced myself to forget it or kick it down the road in favour of The Witcher. New year new me 😂
I Have No Idea Where This Will Lead Us, But I Have A Definite Feeling It Will Be A Place Both Wonderful And Strange.
@PeaceSalad Took me a while to stop feeling like I would somehow have failed at something if I didn't finish a book I started; then along came Jack Kerouac's "On the Road" and I realised that life is just too short to spend massive amounts of time on something I didn't truly enjoy. Haven't looked back since!
Finished Dragons of Summer Flame, by Margaret Weis & Tracy Hickman, which has the dubious honor of being the most unsatisfying Dragonlance novel I've read yet. It seems the intent was to chuck out all the old and usher in the new, which could be a good thing if it had been executed well. As it stands, it just felt like going through the motions and very few of the sacrifices the characters made had any heft, mainly because most of them were strangers to me. I don't know if someone who's read every single Dragonlance novel between this and the original trilogy would have felt more of a connection to these characters, but I sure didn't. Even the returning characters from the OG chronicles felt thin and wasted. Two and a half stars.
I've also started Burning Chrome, a short-story collection by William Gibson and intend to use it as a palate cleanser in-between novels. I finished the first novella, Johnny Mnemonic, which is set in "the Sprawl" of Neuromancer fame. This is a tight and fast novella with an insane amount of world building for such a short story. Very good, five stars.
I've been wanting to read something of Nathan Ballingrud, so when I learned that The Strange was getting adapted, it seemed like a good place to start. Apparently, it's a sci-fi western in the vein of True Grit, set on Mars. Should be interesting.
Finished Rashomon and 17 Other Stories: Penguin Deluxe Classics Edition .I found the first third of the book to be excellent, and while the second and third sections of the book were good also, but I didn't enjoy them as much as the Japanese-mythology/samurai-influenced content in the first third of the book. Still worth reading for the first third, and the final, autobiographical secton suggested that the author led quite a troubled life, dying young and struggling with his mental health.
Oh, and to sum up my reading year, Moby-Dick: Penguin Deluxe Classics Edition and The Portable Chekhov were the highlights, with works by Kobo Abe being notable for their singularity and literary quality, I also greatly enjoyed The Portable Mark Twain but I am unsure if I read that the previous year, along with James by Percival Everett.
@FuriousMachine Hey man, how are you? Hope all is going well, fellow PushSquare bookworm! .I was just wondering how you turn the titles of books into Goodreads links on here? Thanks in advance!
"Well, do what you can and do your best to make a good showing." - Kobo Abe
@BlAcK_Sw0rDsMaN Hey buddy! Aside from being snowed in (a heavy snowfall has more or less crippled all public transport in Oslo... who could have expected snow in Norway in January? Boggles the mind), all is very well. I hope life is treating you well over there on the great isles
For the Goodreads links I just use the [ url ] tag. The syntax is [ url=http://webaddress ]Link text [ /url ]
These forums supports quite a bit of useful formatting and a helpful user compiled a reference which can be found here. I don't know how comprehensive it is, though. Might be that the forums support most kinds of BBCode, but I don't know for sure, as I've never experimented much with it. Hope that helps!
Finished Nathan Ballingrud's The Strange last night and that was a bit of a new experience for me: For the longest time I found the story completely uninteresting, but the well-written characters, setting and all around solid writing kept me glued to the book like nothing else. It feels strange (ahem) to award four and half stars to a novel with a story I couldn't care less about, but here we are. For a "pulp sci-fi" novel, the writing is just that good.
The Gernsback Continuum was my palate cleanser from William Gibson's Burning Chrome short-story collection this time, which was a fun little story that reminds us that the "perfect" visions of the future from the 30s and 40s had a dark side
I was listening to a bit more Tower of Fools last night and simply kept falling asleep and had to stop, and you have churned through 4 million books since I started that 😂
It is really quite good though. Which is why, seemingly, I want to make jokes and observations in Latin now. A trait I'm sure will get ever increasingly more annoying 😁
deprecationem sui, et se ipsum ridere posse, est vitalis
When it seems you're out of luck.
There's just one man who gives a f*************ck
⚔️🛡🐎
I recently finished Children of Time by Adrian Tchaikovsky. I have mixed feelings about it. Overall, it’s an incredible piece of fiction, and creatively does unique things regarding evolution. With that said, I wasn’t invested in some chapters that alternate between certain characters. By the end of the book, I understood thematically why it was written that way, and I applaud it because of how brilliant it was, but I wasn’t completely hooked. It’s also the first book in a trilogy so I can only assume it gets better from here.
I also just started The Blade Itself by Joe Abercrombie. I can’t give too many thoughts on it since I’m only a few pages in, but I’m excited to delve deeper into this First Law trilogy that seems to be as epic as Shogun.
@Ravix hehehe, as long as you don't expect us all to understand Latin, we're all good
@Kraven Hope you'll enjoy Abercrombie; it's a great fantasy trilogy (though "Shogun" wouldn't be my first comparison) and there are several other excellent novels by him in the same world worth reading as well
Forums
Topic: Books You're Currently Reading?
Posts 1,101 to 1,120 of 1,123
Please login or sign up to reply to this topic