Finished The Novice by Trudi Canavan. The second book in The Black Magician trilogy.
Found the second half to be more interesting than the first half, but that is probably just me.
Started Carl’s Doomsday Scenario by Matt Dinniman, book 2 of Dungeon Crawler Carl.
What about all of you? What have you all been reading or listening to lately?
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Partway through Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir. I’ve known of it for years but somehow never picked it up until recently. I’ll probably finish it tomorrow.
I’m also reading A Natural History of Dragons by Marie Brennan. It’s fun, featuring the adventures of an lady in fantasy not-England who’s fascinated by dragons. I’m not that far in, so we’ll see where it goes!
Just finished Prador Moon by Neal Asher. Kind of a vicious war story in a high-tech sci-fi galaxy. I’ve read a couple of this author’s other books, and I’m enjoying getting to know the Polity setting.
I also finished Dragon Champion by EE Knight. This one was a bit more of a struggle to finish. I’m not sure why. It started out strong, following the hatching and life of a dragon in a world that mostly hunts dragons down. I really enjoyed the author’s take on a dragon life stages and how he characterized the main character, but it didn’t quite have that “one more page!” quality for me.
Just started listening to A Wizard of Earthsea for my commute. It’ll be my first Ursula K. LeGuin book. So far I like it, the prose feels old-school (which I suppose it is), but in a way that I like.
That series is fascinating. Wizard is incredibly early in modern fantasy. The final short story came out 50 years later in 2018. The whole genre developed in between and you can see the series develop with it.
I just finished that one back in April, it was cool. I also read Left Hand of Darkness (also really cool), and I wanna read more of her stuff but im not sure what yet.
Re-reading the Foundation trilogy by Issac Asimov. Just got to the part of Foundation and Empire where the Mule shows up. It’s fun to see the new anachronisms jump out at me. Last time I read this, printed newspapers were still a thing, and reading about the massive printing press network that prints paper newspapers for the forty billion residents of the Imperial capital jumps out at me like it didn’t before. And obviously, everybody smokes.
The starkest difference for me (37 years old) so didn’t grow up with the stories, was some of the verbiage used. It’s gone out of most media nowadays though. But yeah the commonality of smoking was weird, even though I grew up as it was phased out in Canada.
Queer, fag, retard (not the modern acceptable slowing something down), and I’m sure there’s more, but I read those 2 years ago, and I read a lot of old scifi, so maybe not all was Foundation, but it’s definitely a thing of the times.
I don’t think I’ve seen any reference, derogatory or otherwise, to queerness in Foundation so far. Everybody is midcentury straight and there’s no question about it. There’s definitely a lot of midcentury slang though. Asimov does regional dialects, or at least makes reference to them, and it’s hard to work out which parts are Asimov trying to sound provincial and which parts are just a product of Asimov’s time.
Queer would be used as happy/weird back than. Wasn’t derogatory yet.
I guess the point is, the words are before the times it was used against people, so it was common vernacular at the time.
Fag is a cigarette.
Edit, maybe it was the Galactic Empire series
“Cleon II was Lord of the Universe. Cleon II also suffered from a painful and undiagnosed ailment. By the queer twists of human affairs, the two statements are not mutually exclusive…”
“queer” is usually properly defined as strange or unusual, “gay” as happy or merry, and both had become slang for homosexual by the mid-20th century (OED’s first reference to that slang usage of “queer” in the US is from 1914, well before Asimov’s writing). Slang usages overlap with non-slang usage, so if Asimov used the word “queer” he could have been using either definition.
Slang words for culturally taboo topics like sexuality generally rely on that ambiguity because it allows people to circumvent the taboo, and so that discussion of sexuality could be plausibly denied if challenged. You see a similar thing happening today in socially conservative circles, discussing a family member’s “roommate”.
With all that said, “queer” was a much more socially acceptable slur for gay folks back in the 40’s, and I thought that’s what you meant. Asimov might well have used “queer” to mean strange or peculiar, I’m working with a paper copy so I can’t easily search for usages, but I think the word itself pops up a couple of times with that meaning.
I don’t think the use of “fag” as synonym of cigarette ever really caught on in the US, and I don’t think I’ve seen it in Foundation, so you may be remembering some other work.
That’s right, I was combining them, but also knew there was another common one.
I’ll check digitally later, but it was probably the Robots series, which is all part of his broader Foundations universe. There’s detectives and cigarettes galore in those ones.
The later foundation novels tie the universe together, so could be some words come back up again.
I’m reading Holes to two of my kids. Had not read it before, it’s a book about a kid that got sent to a work camp to avoid prison. I got a bit caught out having to explain some of the events in the middle to the kids.
On my own time I’m reading Before the coffee gets cold, a time travel book about a cafe that can transport you back in time.
Both of these books are in progress, haven’t finished them yet.
Just finished The Great Alone by Kristin Hannah. Great read about a family who moves to a (very) small Alaskan town to start over.
Currently reading Wild Dark Shore by Charlotte McConaghy. This one is about a small family maintaining a seed vault on a remote island, kind of dystopian and mysterious so far. Very tight prose.
Interestingly, both of these came my way via the “Skip the Line” selection at my local library, where popular titles are available on a 7-day loan instead of the standard 21 days. Great way to discover new (to me) authors and genres.
A Trade of Blood just came in on Libby and I’m pumped, started it this morning. It’s the third in the Ana and Din series by Robert Jackson Bennett. I loved the first two so I’ve been waiting for this one with bated breath, as they say.
70% through The Death of the Necromancer by Martha Wells. It’s pretty okay, but the tension drags on a bit at points. There was a section with one of the heroes sneakily holding onto a horse-drawn carriage as it drives through town; it felt like the scene went on for 20 pages (it didn’t) and the tension kept getting amped up to the point where I felt no tension at all. Still good enough to finish though.
Took a brief break and got 15% into Over the Wine Dark Sea by H. N. Turteltaub. I’m really enjoying it, got a laid back style that I appreciate. Shout out to whoever recommended that in one of these threads a couple months back.
The Sudden Appearance of Hope, by Claire North.
No one can remember Hope Arden. Literally. Turn your head for a minute and you forget having met her. Makes life difficult.
Fabulous Bodies by Chuck Tingle. No dull moment yet.
Still reading “Path of Daggers” by Robert Jordan. Still enjoying it mostly. I should read it more and spend less time on my phone. Also reading a lot for my studies, so sometimes I need a reading break.
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Read Blindsight by Peter Watts last week. It was cool, though maybe overly bleak for me. I think I’d like to read some more like whimsical sci-fi stuff next.
Rationality: From AI to Zombies, so far it’s alright, bunch of blog posts turned into a book.
I’m a fan of thinking fast and slow (even though it’s got some issues), and lots of the blog posts use the work from that book as a basis; which is fine… but it’s got this “i’m just learned that i’m an athiest and need to convince everyone else that they are wrong” vibe to it (I was there, i get it!) that’s really tiring. I’m only 1/4 into it not sure if i’ll make it the rest of the way.
I guess i’m also a bit put off by it cause these guys were funded by peter theil (sp?), who’s a well known piece of shit. also it influenced the zizians…
Listening to Dominion by Stephen R Bown.
It tells the story of how Canada’s railroad was built. Absolutely fantastic.
I’m feeling a bit unsatisfied and listless. I put a hold for Scholomance audio book but that’s going to be a wait.
I’m open to suggestions…
