Yeeeah! I have the second book too and want to buy Godhusk. And if you want the ultimate experience i listen Simon Stålenhag soundtracks while i read them
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Just finished Nuclear War: A Scenario. Not exactly a light read, it’s about what realistically would happen if someone launched a nuke at the US. It’s harrowing and bleak but also super interesting, and actually scary.
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As an enjoyer of fine literature, I have been immersing myself before bed each night in…The Mothman Prophecies by John Keel lol
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i love Simon Stålenhag but admittedly didn’t listen that much to his music, will do!
I just finished James Blish’s Black Easter after a glowing review on Bookpilled’s youtube channel. It was pretty good!
It’s a really short, fun story about an arms dealer commissioning a black magician to do some really gnarly demonic summoning. Great stuff!
I’m also trying my best to do little reviews on everything I’m reading this year on my blog. It’s a fun project that gets me to think a little harder about what I’m reading but damn is it easy to fall behind.
Now, I’m clearing out my “currently reading“ list and picking up the read-through of Pride and Prejudice I put on hold some time last year. Having watched the BBC adaptation a couple times, it’s so fun to get more depth and even more humour out of that story.
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Any manga fans? Been getting really into Shaman King lately 
I used to read a lot of manga, less now. As a kid I loved comic books and was drawn to how manga was easier to get into and follow than most superhero comics. I loved shounen as a kid, mainly action stuff, then as a teenager I had a pretty long rom-com phase. Now I don’t read as much, but I still have some favorites I go back to regularly.
My favorite manga is still Hunter X Hunter - I’ve always liked it and think Togashi’s visual storytelling is phenomenal. My favorite mangaka all-up has to be Satoshi Mizukami, though. He’s not super popular state-side, but he has a lot of works I’ve really enjoyed. Spirit Circle, his manga about reincarnation, is another of my all-time favorites. I like his other series too, and I’m glad there’s still an English publication of World End Solte going on (because it seems that Tokyopop dropped Sengoku Youko, sad).
Beyond that I also love Delicious in Dungeon, A Silent Voice, and anything by Naoki Urasawa.
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Hunter x Hunter is PHENOMENAL. The characters in that manga are so detailed back-story wise compared to any other manga. And the power system is absolutely nuts
Slowly but surely catching up on book reviews on my blog
It’s getting tough to write since these books are now a few months behind me but I did manage to pull together some thoughts on The Man Who Was Thursday, which i think would be tough even if I’d just finished it.
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Absolute Batman anyone? Daaaaamn
I’ve never been a big DC person, but I love Nick Dragotta. I figured I’d wait for a hardcover collection of some kind.
Almost finished with Pride and Prejudice, what a fucking book!
It seems redundant to praise the classics whenever i read them because, duh, but oh my god its so nice to read something that’s actually as good as people say it is.
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I’m re-reading Frank Herbert’s Dune novels, at the moment.
I read Dune and its sequels for the first time late in my teens, and I can’t think of any other art that was anywhere near as formative for me as Dune was. It became the high water mark against which I found myself judging all other media. Dune was what first taught me how art could be something more important than only entertainment or escapism.
It’s been quite some years now. I always held off on re-reading the series, mainly out of a sort of anxiety that there was no way it could possibly live up to my memory of it. But I finally got brave enough to start my re-read. I’m on Children of Dune now. Reading it older and with more life experience, honestly, the pedestal I hold Dune on has grown even a little taller if anything.
If I could identify just one flaw with the series, though, it would be how the notion that humanity could ever produce the kinds of intelligent leaders who would have plans within plans within plans was hopelessly fantastical and optimistic and detached from the reality we actually live in. I didn’t know that, reading it when I was younger, but age has taught me that power over others is apparently inimical to intellect and discipline. That anyone who didn’t start out already as a Harkonnen will become one soon enough. I believe the series is still surely the greatest ever written, but the idea of rational and intellectually competent leaders does strike me as perhaps the one science fiction concept too far-flung and inconceivable even for Dune.
Dune is one of those things that should be entirely my thing on paper, but I’ve read the first two books and just cant get on board. Any given element is extremely cool, and i think about it a lot but, man, I think it’s just the actual prose that I cant vibe with. I love the ideas but I guess i wish someone with a little more swag than Ferbert had written them.
right now i’m reading this
i flew to oregon to see my friend in portland and had plenty of time to read while i was at the airport and on the plane. i’ve been really bad about reading for a while so i’m proud of myself for making any progress
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I’m currently reading The Antidote by Oliver Burkeman! I’m not super great at reading, lol, so this is an accomplishment for me that I’ve started to pick something up!
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I really could not disagree more! I can’t imagine the philosophical and political messages of Dune being written with “swag”. It’s like asking for the Mona Lisa to be redrawn as an anime waifu.
he’s just writing some really wild stuff and often having very little fun with it, imo!
but tastes are all different so i dont wanna beef about Dune too much lmao
having finished Pride and Prejudice, i can easily cement that as a new all-timer for me, a perfect book!
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I just finished Some Desperate Glory by Emily Tesh. Earth was blown up by aliens, and the main character is one of the survivors, living in a fascist space cult hellbent on vengeance. It can be a little hard going on the beginning, because Kyr is fully immersed and indoctrinated in the fascism, but once the story really gets going and she has her horizons expanded it’s hard to put down. And the mid novel twist genuinely caught me by surprise.
Just started Blood Over Bright Haven by M.L. Wang, but I’m only a couple of chapters in so I haven’t got a feel for the book yet.
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