Finished reading The Elusive Shift by Jon Peterson, about how a wargame hack (D&D) came to be understood as a “role-playing game”, and what that meant to early players and theorists. I can’t recommend this book to you; only you know if you would find this interesting. I thoroughly enjoyed it, of course.
Finished rereading Post Captain by Patrick O’Brian. Master & Commander was good, but this book is where O’Brian really started to figure out what he was doing.
Finished rereading Master & Commander by Patrick O’Brian. It’s a little longer than most of the other 19 (!) books in the series, a little less tightly-focused, but still very enjoyable.
My unpopular opinion: I read The Three-Body Problem by Cixin Liu, trans. Ken Liu, and while the premise was intriguing, I super did not love the story, and have no interest in reading the rest.
Finished reading The Galaxy, and the Ground Within by Becky Chambers. I loved this series; I don’t know if “cozy sci-fi” is a genre, but this would anchor it. Lots of explorations of family and community.
Finished rereading Seven Surrenders by Ada Palmer, the second book of the series.
Interesting: When I started rereading the first book, I had forgotten most of it, but it came back to me as I was reading it. This book, though, I felt like there were whole chapters I was reading for the first time. Really enjoyed it, though! She undercut her “I am writing about only the best people” shtick at the end — a little later than I’d’ve liked, but I’ll take it. Looking forward to book three.
Finished rereading Too Like the Lightning by Ada Palmer. Still has off-putting elements, but I’m charging ahead to the next book.
Musing about what it would take to turn the long walk journal into a print-on-demand book.
Finished God Cancer by Greg Stolze. I didn’t know I was looking for a short horror novel mashup of Lovecraft (At the Mountains of Madness–style) and cancer, but I sure was.
Finished A Desolation Called Peace by Arkady Martine. A satisfying sequel to her first, not flawless but still very well executed.
Finished Piranesi by Susanna Clarke. Short and unsettling and very, very good.
At the moment, this is what my notional stack of books looks like:
Interspersed in there are Web Typography by Richard Ritter, and various RPG books.
(Really, though, anything past the second is purely speculative, and even the first two aren’t locked down yet.)
Finished reading Cuisine & Empire by Rachel Laudan, a Christmas gift. Fascinating look at how ingredients, cooking techniques, and culinary philosophies have changed and spread over the millennia.
Got sucked into Ancillary Justice, and then reread Ancillary Sword and Ancillary Mercy in short order. A couple thoughts:
Anyway, I finally got back to The End of Policing last night.
For years I’ve only read one book at a time. I’ve recently started alternating between two — one important, one fun. So, also currently rereading Ancillary Justice by Ann Leckie.