What are you reading?

Two sequels and a prequel. I will be reading them all this year, hopefully. 

Started going through the short(ish) stories of Robert Aickman. British author who specialized in weird fiction. When I was young, I tried to read some of his stuff under the "I like guys like Stephen King and this guy's classified as horror, too!" philosophy, but wasn't able to get into him because his writing is a lot more subtle and doesn't tend to have the in-your-face scares and graphic violence.

But got the idea to give him another try, ordered everything I could off Amazon one day and now am trying again. Pretty entertaining, at least as long as you NEVER expect answers for why whatever is happening actually is happening.

Blood Runs Coal. really interesting book covering the history of the are I currently live in.

Finished The Pillars of the Earth. Epic. 

Reading The Bitcoin Standard again. 

Started reading The Rise and the Fall of the Third Reich.

posted by justincredible

Started reading The Rise and the Fall of the Third Reich.

Outstanding book. I read a lot of Third Reich/Hitler history and that one stands above the rest. 

Reading "The Barbell Prescription". It's about using strength training to offset the effects of aging in middle age and older. It basically adapts the Starting Strength program to the >50 population. Excellent program laid out in great detail. 

Finished Exhalation, which is a series of short stories. Very Black Mirror like and most of the stories make you think.

After that read the Devil All the Time. I enjoyed the movie, which followed the book closely. What a great, dark, story about southeast Ohio and how shady nearly everyone is in small towns. 

Now about a quarter of the of way through Ohio: A novel by Stephen Markley. Released in 2018, and set in 2013, it focuses on a small run down town in NE Ohio as 4 people navigate everything from losing buddies in Iraq, to the 2008 crash, to the drug crisis. It is really good, dark, and funny in spots. 

Just started The Fourth Turning by William Strauss and Neil Howe.

posted by ptown_trojans_1

Finished Exhalation, which is a series of short stories. Very Black Mirror like and most of the stories make you think.

After that read the Devil All the Time. I enjoyed the movie, which followed the book closely. What a great, dark, story about southeast Ohio and how shady nearly everyone is in small towns. 

Now about a quarter of the of way through Ohio: A novel by Stephen Markley. Released in 2018, and set in 2013, it focuses on a small run down town in NE Ohio as 4 people navigate everything from losing buddies in Iraq, to the 2008 crash, to the drug crisis. It is really good, dark, and funny in spots. 

I liked The Devil All the Time.  Pollock's other novel, The Heavenly Table is excellent if you want another recommendation.  By far his best work is his collection of short stories called Knockemstiff.  I highly, highly recommend.  He's a lifelong resident of Chillicothe.  

posted by justincredible

Just started The Fourth Turning by William Strauss and Neil Howe.

Recently finished this and The Sovereign Individual.

Just started Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson the other day.

posted by Zunardo

Just finished "Recursion" by Blake Crouch last night - wow.  

Recursion was Dark Matter squared.  Actually, it was "Dark Matter" meets "Groundhog Day" meets "Next" (Nicholas Cage movie).  This was a bit more difficult to grasp, there are a few websites that do a great job breaking down the plot intricacies.  One guy built a chart with all of the timelines so you could see how they lined up. 

Educational bonus:  I learned about DMT.

I am a huge sci-fi fan, about to start the last book in the Ender's Game series in a few weeks when it finally arrives called The Last Shadow.

Loved all of Michael Crichton books before he passed.

Never heard of these 2, Dark Matter and Recursion.  Is there anything I need to read before Dark Matter or is that the "first" in the series? I may go get that tonight to read while I am waiting for The Last Shadow to arrive.

A long time ago, I'd bought a pair of anthologies edited by Marvin Kaye (Masterpieces of Terror and the Supernatural AND Devils and Demons). Basically collections of horror, fantasy and the like from the 1800s to 1980s. Found he put together a lot more of these, so I bought five online and am going through Weird Tales -- a collection of stories published in the various forms of that classic magazine.

posted by justincredible

Read the first two Jack Reacher novels recently. Not bad.

I loved most of the Jack Reacher books. To be honest, after about 8 or so though the writing and the stories become redundant.

I mean you can only be told about how a punch is thrown for 3 paragraphs so many times. And basically its the "same" story each time, he arrives into some random town that has some form of corruption, and he kills a bunch of people on his way to fix the corruption. He has sex with some hot woman during all of this and then leaves town.

All 15 or whatever books are the same in that regard. 

posted by Zunardo

Finished all three books in the "Wayward Pines" trilogy by Blake Crouch over the weekend.  Very, very well done.  My only complaint was that last postscript "chapter" at the end of "The Last Town", just leaves you begging for a fourth book to follow.

Just read the plot, almost has a "Stranger Things" feel to it, I have never read anything from Blake, but between this trilogy and Dark Matter/Recursion that I have read the reviews on this thread, I will have to check his stuff out.

posted by jmog

Never heard of these 2, Dark Matter and Recursion.  Is there anything I need to read before Dark Matter or is that the "first" in the series? I may go get that tonight to read while I am waiting for The Last Shadow to arrive.

They are unrelated, just written by the same guy. Both stand-alone stories. Both excellent.

Project Hail Mary is one of the better sci-fi books I've read.

Bout to start Outlaw Platoon from Sean Parnell. Been killing Connelly’s Bosch books but the library sucks.

Just read Greenlights, it was good, not great. 

posted by justincredible

Project Hail Mary is one of the better sci-fi books I've read.

Hah!  I didn't see your post until just now.  Happened to see this book at the library the same day as your post.  Looked interesting, checked it out.  And it is very interesting.  

I didn't recognize the name of author Andy Weir until I read the jacket synopsis and it mentioned his earlier work.  I read "The Martian" after that movie came out.  Interesting to some similarity between that and "Project Hail Mary".

I started his other novel Artemis the other day. So far, so good. I’m about 25% finished.