- Kokipy
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Re: What have you been reading lately?
I went thru a Mary Gentle phase decades ago - don’t remember much.
- Surtac
- Antipodean Assassin
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Re: What have you been reading lately?
I abandoned everything I had in progress when my copy of Alliance Unbound arrived so I could read that 'without salt' as it were.
By the time Id finished it, my pre-order of Nick Harkaway's Karla's Choice had dropped to the kindle so I'm now reading that. And so far, it's very good.
It's a strange world. Let's keep it that way.
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Thread Starter- Kokipy
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Re: What have you been reading lately?
I just finished Stephenson’s Polostan- the first volume in what looks to be a series- unclear how many more volumes he will need to tell the story. People who like physics (looking specifically at you, Star) may find it appealing. I was entertained to see that he named an early aeronaut Jean Piccard. Of course, this may have been a real person. Many of the characters in one part of the book or another were real people. But if this character was fictional, I enjoyed the name choice
and of course I enjoyed it. I love all of his books. But I wish he had published the whole thing at once. I am fussed about having to wait for the sequels!
- Kokipy
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Re: What have you been reading lately?
Just finished Prophet Song by Paul Lynch. It won the Man Booker price in 2023. It was very very hard to take. Set in near future Ireland, in which an authoritarian regime has just taken over due to some kind of unnamed “threat”, and follows a family trying to survive. Flavors of Stalinism, Gaza, Ukraine, the Holocaust, and any kind of brutal civil war you can imagine. It would not have been easy to read at any time, but with what I fear is coming for us here in the USA in January it was almost impossible to get through. Political enemies made to disappear, children seized, tortured and killed, censureship, the whole authoritarian playbook.
- Pence
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Re: What have you been reading lately?
I've been rereading Becky Chambers 'A Psalm for the Wild Built' and the sequel 'A Prayer For the Crown Shy'. I need soothing reads right now. Next on the list is a reread of Goddards Greenwing and Dart series.
- Surtac
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Re: What have you been reading lately?
Kokipy wrote:
Just finished Prophet Song by Paul Lynch. It won the Man Booker price in 2023. It was very very hard to take. Set in near future Ireland, in which an authoritarian regime has just taken over due to some kind of unnamed “threat”, and follows a family trying to survive. Flavors of Stalinism, Gaza, Ukraine, the Holocaust, and any kind of brutal civil war you can imagine. It would not have been easy to read at any time, but with what I fear is coming for us here in the USA in January it was almost impossible to get through. Political enemies made to disappear, children seized, tortured and killed, censureship, the whole authoritarian playbook.
Interesting. That description reminds me a little of Bernard Maclaverty's early 1980s novel Cal, about the Irish Troubles of the time, and a book I found to be quite depressing also (though I did really like the film adaptation).
As it happens, the book I most recently bought on kindle was the 2024 Booker winner, Samantha Harvey's Orbital. We'll see how disturbing that one turns out to be. I plan to get to that one next after I finish Karla's Choice, which is proving slower going than I thought it would.
It's a strange world. Let's keep it that way.
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Thread Starter- Kokipy
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Re: What have you been reading lately?
I agree with Pence- Jemis is on my soon to be reread pile. Goddard is a comfort in trying times. I have started up again with the Murderbot series too. But I am also trying to find a library that has Orbital trying to limit my purchases in anticipation of possible economic collapse .
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