What Are You Currently Reading?

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Re: What Are You Currently Reading?

Postby cmsellers » Fri Sep 20, 2019 2:15 am

I've been reading a lot of collections of science fiction short stories, which I haven't posted about because I read so many of them. I also just finished reading the Wayward Children series of novellas by Seanan McGuire, on Tess's recommendation, which is unusual because they're A. fantasy and B. standalone novellas. (I read novellas, but usually in anthologies.)

I also read Kage Baker's The Anvil of the World, which is unusual because it's A. fantasy and B. an outright novel, though it's really structured like three linked novellas. I liked it enough to request the other books in the series, but there's only one copy of each, currently out, so it could take up to three weeks.

I'm also still reading some nonfiction. I'm literally currently reading Debt: the First 5,000 Years, which is interesting, despite the far-left politics of its author, but also kind of a chore to read. I realized I wasn't going to get through it out of sheer enjoyment, so I'm making myself read a chapter a day.

And weirdly, the fact that it's a chore means I'm talking about it when books I find easier to read I'm not bothering to mention. Last two non-fiction books I read before this were The Art of Not Being Governed: An Anarchist History of Upland Southeast Asia and Against the Grain: A Deep History of the Earliest States, both by James C. Scott.
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Re: What Are You Currently Reading?

Postby IamNotCreepy » Mon Sep 23, 2019 1:45 pm

When I went on vacation in the spring, I finally took my co-worker's advice and read the first Dresden Files book, Storm Front.

It was the perfect vacation book, and I've been hooked since. I have been making my way through the whole series since, and I devoured two of them just this past week while on vacation.

Unfortunately, I only have two more before I am caught up on the main novels. There are still the short story collections, though, and we bought the cooperative card game, which looks really fun.
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Re: What Are You Currently Reading?

Postby CarrieVS » Sun Sep 29, 2019 10:03 pm

I tried reading Pride and Prejudice many years ago and I don't believe I finished it. (I don't quite remember how far I got.)

I'm now reading Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, which is not nearly such heavy going, but I continually find myself wanting to know what was in the original that's replaced with Elizabeth sharpening swords over polite conversation in the drawing room, or the carriage passing a horde of zombie children on the journey between Netherfield and Longbourn. But not quite enough to put this book down and read the original.
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Re: What Are You Currently Reading?

Postby Ladki96 » Mon Sep 30, 2019 9:46 pm

Pride and Prejudice was awesome ^^ so were all of Austen's works!

What? Don't judge guys :<

I have not read the uh, Zombies version but it sounds okay? o.O definitely more badass XD
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Re: What Are You Currently Reading?

Postby jbobsully11 » Tue Oct 22, 2019 2:05 pm

It has occurred to me that I've started six books at different times and never finished any of them, so I'm making an effort to get through them all. Currently, it means reading The Last Unicorn. I like it a lot better than The Innkeeper's Song so far.
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Re: What Are You Currently Reading?

Postby cmsellers » Tue Oct 22, 2019 2:50 pm

I read that as a teenager, after seeing the movie as a kid. I liked it, but it didn't make as much of an impression as the movie did.
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Re: What Are You Currently Reading?

Postby Pedgerow » Tue Apr 21, 2020 9:07 pm

Ten years ago, possibly longer, I read Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand. It was tough going. No book in my life has ever taken me more than three weeks, 21 days, to finish reading. Except for Atlas Shrugged, which took a total of 54 days. So when I got a copy of Ayn Rand's other monstrous doorstop, The Fountainhead, for Christmas or my birthday, I put it on the shelf and did not read it. It has been there, untouched, for basically a decade; this website did not exist when I put it there. But now, due to various lockdown measures and party-pooping pandemics of as-yet incurable diseases, I thought I'd never have as much free time as I do now. I started reading The Fountainhead, and holy shit, it's actually pretty good! The characters are relatable, the book is surprisingly modern for one that was written in 1943, and I'm over halfway through and there still hasn't been a single novel-length tangent incoherently arguing that the book's mad philosophy actually makes perfect sense. It still has the Ayn Rand style, but it's a billion times more readable and more accessible. It's not quite awesome, but at least it's normal, and the story isn't completely overshadowed by unhinged rabbit holes that read like a school shooter's manifesto. Reading The Fountainhead versus reading Atlas Shrugged is like taking a lengthy afternoon walk in the countryside with a slightly odd person, versus chopping off both your legs and hopping along on your balls all the way to the summit of Mount Kilimanjaro.

Officer Barbrady should definitely have read The Fountainhead instead.
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Re: What Are You Currently Reading?

Postby cmsellers » Wed Apr 22, 2020 4:53 am

If you want a half-decent Ayn Rand book, read Anthem. It's coherent, mercifully short, and best of all, it's in the public domain. It's also extremely easy to read. I read the entire thing on an LED screen, which is not something I can normally do with long-form writing. Fortunately, it's not the kind of book where you'll miss something if you miss something when reading it.
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Re: What Are You Currently Reading?

Postby IamNotCreepy » Fri May 01, 2020 4:03 pm

cmsellers wrote:If you want a half-decent Ayn Rand book, read Anthem. It's coherent, mercifully short, and best of all, it's in the public domain. It's also extremely easy to read. I read the entire thing on an LED screen, which is not something I can normally do with long-form writing. Fortunately, it's not the kind of book where you'll miss something if you miss something when reading it.


Sellers, I was actually going to recommend the same thing. I read it in middle school and enjoyed it. It's unique in that it is told from a first-person plural perspective.

I burned through all of the Dresden Files books (including the anthologies), so now I've started on Butcher's other series, Codex Alera. I read the first book, which really sucked me in. I am patiently waiting for the second book to arrive.

I also re-read Empire and Hidden Empire by Orson Scott Card recently. I did this because the second book deals with a deadly pandemic, and I was curious to see how it played out compared to our current pandemic. There were a lot of similarities and things that seemed oddly prescient for 2009, but the ending was very unrealistic and kind of ridiculous:

Spoiler: show
The virus makes everyone very sick for a couple of weeks, and there's a 15% mortality rate if treated properly.

After the virus breaks through the quarantine of all of Africa (where it originated), the US decides not to issue any stay-at-home orders or try to quarantine cities or the population for fear of wrecking the economy.

They decide to just let it run its course, which would in reality completely overwhelm the healthcare system and still crash the economy.


Still a fun read, though.
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Re: What Are You Currently Reading?

Postby cmsellers » Fri Aug 28, 2020 4:11 am

I just read The Ascent of Birds, which is fantastic. I was kind of expecting it would be stuff I basically knew but entertaining, like Richard Dawkins' The Ancestor's Tale, but there's actually a lot of new and interesting stuff packed in here. My only complaint is that I wish it was 2-3 times as long.
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Re: What Are You Currently Reading?

Postby jbobsully11 » Sun Aug 30, 2020 9:29 pm

My brother-in-law just told me about a short story called “They’re Made out of Meat,” about aliens who discover humans. I just finished reading it, and I think it’s pretty good. The full text is here.
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Crimson847 wrote:In other words, transgender-friendly privacy laws don't molest people, people molest people.

(Presumably, the only way to stop a bad guy with a transgender-friendly privacy law is a good guy with a transgender-friendly privacy law, and thus transgender-friendly privacy law rights need to be enshrined in the Constitution as well)
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Re: What Are You Currently Reading?

Postby cmsellers » Fri Sep 04, 2020 6:29 pm

My father loves that short story, and talked about it many times in my childhood.

I just started reading A Thing With Feathers. It's pretty short, so I'll finish it after work today.
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Re: What Are You Currently Reading?

Postby cmsellers » Mon Sep 07, 2020 1:07 am

Finished A Thing With Feathers. It was interesting, and well-written enough, but didn't inspire the pure joy in constant new discoveries that I had from The Ascent of Birds.

I'm now re-reading The Future Eaters by Tim Flannery, and also read his book The Eternal Frontier, a similar natural history of North America. He has a similar natural history of Europe from 2019, but since I can't find any cheap copies, I'll probably wait until libraries reopen.

Any rate, Australia and Zealandia, the subject of The Future Eaters, is the most interesting continent for me to read a natural history of, but the book, which was thirteen years old when I first read it in 2007, is now thirteen years older. Surprisingly, a lot of it still holds up, largely because Flannery was on the cutting edge and it takes scientists a long time to assimilate evidence that demolishes cherished pet hypotheses. He notes in 1994 that the rapid dinosaurs were like warm-blooded and feathered, and amazingly, the idea that ancient humans caused nearly global megafaunal extinctions is still controversial, despite the overwhelming evidence people like Flannery were presenting over a quarter-century ago.
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Re: What Are You Currently Reading?

Postby jbobsully11 » Sat Sep 12, 2020 8:27 pm

I finished Dark Places a little while ago and also read Matt Parker’s book Humble Pi: A Comedy of Maths Errors. I highly recommend them both.

I wasn't going to buy any more books until I had finished some of the ones I have, but I heard about a bunch more things that I wanted to read, and I ordered some more. Today, The Anti-Federalist Papers and Ursula LeGuin's The Wave in the Mind came in the mail.
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Crimson847 wrote:In other words, transgender-friendly privacy laws don't molest people, people molest people.

(Presumably, the only way to stop a bad guy with a transgender-friendly privacy law is a good guy with a transgender-friendly privacy law, and thus transgender-friendly privacy law rights need to be enshrined in the Constitution as well)
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Re: What Are You Currently Reading?

Postby cmsellers » Sun Sep 13, 2020 7:25 pm

I'm reading The Wizard and the Prophet by Charles C. Mann, author of 1491 and 1493. As with everything he writes, it's compelling reading. It's a discussion of the origin of and competition between the Malthusian and techno-optimist strains in environmentalist thinking.
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