What are you Reading Now?

I just picked up the library's copy of Power Failure by Ben Bova. Its been a while since I read his stuff, and I'm really looking to digging in.

 

The Blade Itself, then on to Before They Are Hanged, by Joe Abercrombie. It's a new, gritty fantasy trilogy. Gripping stuff so far!

 

Just got the book "The Russo-Japanese War in Global Perspectiv volume 1". Will start reading it tonight if everything goes according to plan.

 

I just finished Lord of the Flies audio (which was awesome) and gave up trying to read Moby Dick again. Not sure what's next...

 

I decided to finally tackle Gravity's Rainbow. It's not as bad as some folks claim. Nor as good as others claim.

 

Thinking about making a major investment into David Edding's fantasy literature. I didn't really like it when I first read it but hopefully I am not as fixed in my preferences that I can't appreciate the parts of it that I did like, and can try to see where he's trying to take me as opposed to struggle against it.

 

Right now, the chronicle for WoW.

 

Currently re-reading the code I'm testing tomorrow.
Also reading Grandma's Pączki recipe - well, trying to. Polish diacritical marks and her cursive never went well together, I'm afraid.

 

I'm technically in the middle of like 5 books and my Goodreads shows more than that because i've abandoned several and haven't taken them down.

I really dislike a lot of YA. I absolutely hate the one generic voice and style it is all written in, mainly. They sound more and more the same with every passing month. There are good ones but it's hard to come upon them. But my library doesn't have any of the sequels I want to read. not a single one of scott lynch's books there, city of stairs is just there bereft of its sequels, not a single first book in any of brandon sanderson's series is ever there (idk if he's any good or not i havent had the opportunity to find out), i've been searching for the sequel to annihilation for half a year, but it's never there. I waited months and months for gardens of the moon to show up and now deadhouse gates has been absent for like 5 months. How? If you can consistently have 4 copies of twilight on the shelves you can keep one book of literally any good series, YA or otherwise, cant you? but no

My local library's general fiction section is like 6 rows of shelves thats mostly christian romance novels. It's bad. Very, very bad. No fantasy novel that is even a little bit off the beaten path, except some weird arthurian stuff i have no interest in. The young adult section is, admittedly, rather robust, and i find myself bringing home and rejecting YA books over and over. Almost nothing on my TBR is even there if it's not YA. I don't have the money to buy things just so I can see if I like them, or buy them at all, and i'm sure as hell not buying just the second book in a series.

Basically nothing I'm reading right now is doing it for me and I'm just going to sit here and...try to survive it I guess

Honestly if good books weren't so uncommon...

 

honestly i'm not sure how YA is such a huge category because you can read 5 of em published in the past 5 years and you have a pretty good chance of having read almost everything published in the same time span. Is the category held up by people who *habitually* buy YA? How do you even???

This current epoch is almost worse than when all those shitty dystopians were getting published in the wake of the hunger games. Now the thing is queens, and there are dozens of barely distinguishable books about girls having to take back their thrones. Usually at least two female POV's. Girl is always a badass fighter. Generic fantasy world. Two or three fantasy creatures. Something something forbidden magic. Something empire. Bland court intrigue. It's not anything like with the hunger games where dystopia was everywhere, it's the same plotline over and over, not just the same tropes.

 

I am slogging my way through the Wheel of Time, currently on #5 -- The Fires of Heaven. I aim to complete the entire series by the end of the year.

 

Espedair Street by Ian Banks. Not a fantasy, but maybe a modern Fairytale.

 

We had a family friend that made Pączki for holidays and birthdays. My mouth still waters at the thought of them.