Books are Back, Baby! I’ve always been a reader. I honestly cannot think of a time when I wasn’t reading something. My current book tracking app (more on that in a moment) says my reading streak is 9 days. Bitch, my streak is 51 years (by my rules, if you miss a day because you’re unconscious in the hospital because your gall bladder popped like a hotdog in the microwave, it doesn’t count).
Currently reading: The English Major by Jim Harrison 📚
My god, but Jim Harrison can WRITE. Every line is quotable.
Watched: Top Gun 🍿
Just testing this feature. But also did see this in the theatre last weekend and it was as fun as I remember.
Currently reading: Avenue of Mysteries by John Irving 📚 Woke up super early - it’s a million degrees (in Boston, in May, we’re cooked) - brewed some coffee and read. Chapter 25 (Act 5, Scene 3) absolutely wrecked me. I cried from beginning to end, even though everything was foreshadowed quite clearly. But even more incredibly, Irving pulls off a very neat trick by showing you how he’s doing it by having the protagonist, a writer, explain the very techniques Irving is using while he’s using them.
Well, after yesterday’s post about there being no good book tracking apps, I may stand corrected. I’ve started playing around with Pagebound, and I think they’re really onto something. Easy to use, no AI, and designed for book conversation, not just book reviews/marketing.
I ditched most social media (or rather, parasocial media) years ago, after realizing that all it was doing was making me mad. Plus, I am of the firm belief that you’re not supposed to stay in touch with everyone you ever meet in perpetuity. Most people come and go, and that’s natural and good. But mostly, I was logging in 900 times a day to fight about politics with a guy I knew from 8th grade and giving away my data for the privilege.
Finished reading: Inherent Vice by Thomas Pynchon 📚
I enjoyed this book very much, and if you asked me to write a book report on it, I would fail spectacularly.
The prose was gorgeous - I loved every word. It was immersive, evocative, and rhythmic. The protagonist is stoned for most, if not all, of the book, and it read that way. Although this was my first Pynchon novel, I have read all the greats when it comes to hard boiled detective fiction: Chandler, Hammett, Ellroy, and despite the fundamental grooviness, this book somehow sits squarely with the rest of them.
Our PI gets engaged and then sort of drifts through the story, which honestly, Philip Marlowe does plenty of, you know? This novel was like Ellroy’s L.A. Noir reimagined by Hunter Thompson. There is organized crime, croooked cops, setups and double-crosses, everything a good detective story needs, but it’s all swirled up with hazy, languid language that very successfully conjures LA’s hippie phase.
I was enjoying the story anyway, but I was all in when we found a morgue drawer filled with frozen chocolate bananas for our dirty LA detective. I genuinely laughed at that; ditto when Doc being represented by a maritime attorney paid off at the end.
I didn’t do myself any favors by reading this book in fits and starts before bed and on plane rides. If I tackle another Pynchon - and I plan to - I’ll approach it with a little more structure. Chapter by chapter, in the morningtime, taking it slow.
As a very unimportant aside, I work in an insurance-adjacent job, and found it interesting that “inherent vice” is a real insurance term.
All in all - great read, and I’m anxious to try something else by this author, although I think I’ll pick something off my physical to-read pile first.
#bookstodon
Currently reading: Inherent Vice by Thomas Pynchon 📚
Started this last night when I couldn’t sleep in the wee hours. Already loving it - it’s like Hunter Thompson crossed with James Ellroy…
Attending the inaugural OSRCon in Chelmsford, MA, sparked joy and inspiration through engaging tabletop RPG experiences, despite initial frustrations with the writing process.
Finished reading: Men Without Women Stories by Haruki Murakami 📚
I love Murakami, and most of these stories were really good, but “Kino” is an all time great. It really struck me and has stayed with me in a significant way. Feels very Japanese in the way a Studio Ghibli film does - there’s a gentle simplicity to it, with an undercurrent of loneliness.
The last time a short story landed this way for me was Salinger’s “The Laughing Man,” which I suddenly really want to re-read.
Finished reading: Kellanved’s Reach (Path to Ascendancy, 3) by Ian C. Esslemont 📚
Found this one to be very satisfying, if a little…shallow? Mostly got a lot of character and plot origin stories, and I’m a sucker for that. Plus I tend to think that a lot of the complexity Malazan nerds love so much isn’t really as amazing as they think, so just some good, fun storytelling is fine by me.
Not sure if I’ll keep banging away on Malazan or take a breather and try to reduce my physical pile of books to be read first. Haruki Murakami might make a nice little palate cleanser, y’know?
Watched: Paradise S2E4, A Holy Charge 🍿
Mostly testing this functionality on micro.blog, but I did watch this last night, and it did wreck me.
Finished reading: Blood and Bone by Ian C. Esslemont 📚
I am honestly not sure how I felt about this book at all. Parts of it, I absolutely loved. Some really great characterization, fun banter, cool set pieces. The lore was fascinating, and some passages were genuinely chilling. It was set in a part of the #malazan world we hadn’t seen before, and I really appreciated a lot of the detail.
That said, the ending was so confusing I had to read chapter summaries in the wiki and consult Reddit to understand what the fuck actually happened. I’d say part of that was my fault for reading late at night while dealing with insomnia, but there are a lot of Reddit posts that suggest maybe it wasn’t just me.
I will cop to making a bad decision in treating these novels as interstitial to the Malazan Book of the Fallen. They’re their own series, and I should have been reading them that way, so part of my befuddlement is my own doing.
On to Assail!
Finished reading: Orb Sceptre Throne by Ian C. Esslemont 📚
I really enjoyed this one. Loved the deeper look at the Seguleh and the Moranth. I found the climax to be a bit of a mess, though, and was disappointed. It was wacky when it shouldn’t have been, and while I love a good all-storylines-converge ending, it felt forced and coincidental. Still, one of my favorite Malazan novels so far. I’m moving directly on to the next in the series, since there are so many characters and locations to keep straight.
On a side note, I got some bookshop.org gift cards for Christmas, and it turns out, those can only be redeemed for physical books, so I ended up with the last 3 books in the Novels of the Malazan Empire in paperback, which is fine except (a) I have everything else as ebooks, and (b) shelf space is at a premium these days. But man, these books are gorgeous and I kind of want to backfill the rest now. Which means some other books are going to have to go, and that is never fun.
Finished reading: Stonewielder by Ian C. Esslemont 📚
Really enjoyed this one - but I am going to commit to just reading the next 3 books in the series because it’s too confusing to pause in between. #Malazan is just too dense to do that way, at least for a dimwit like me.
Currently reading: Stonewielder by Ian C. Esslemont 📚
I’m about 75% of the way through and really enjoying this one, but I don’t know what I’d do without the #Malazan wiki. I have a hard time keeping characters straight in ONE book, let alone all of them.
Currently reading: Stonewielder by Ian C. Esslemont 📚
Currently reading: Careless People by Sarah Wynn-Williams 📚
Finally became available at the library. Easy read.
Finished reading: The Fifth Head of Cerberus by Gene Wolfe 📚
On my phone, so a detailed review of this complex, amazing book is impossible, but 10/10. Gene Wolfe does it again
#books #sff
As I type this, I’m watching the progress bar on #k3b tick up. I’m ripping a CD I bought over the weekend at the local used record store. As an aside, I love that there is a local used record store in my town, even though when I go in there, I feel like a child wearing a propeller hat in a room full of sophisticated jazz listeners smoking pipes and stroking their funky beards.