What Are You Reading?

[Jay 2K Winger]

Most recent book is, I believe, Amongst Our Weapons. I've also read the three novellas and the short story collection (Tales from the Folly), but I need to get my hands on the comic books, since they are also canon. I got the first comic book, Body Work, for Christmas, and I've seen references to it in at least one of the novels. (Peter mentions "the most haunted car in England," which featured in the comic.)

[Nunavut Pants]

Oh, I loved the Rivers of London books. Not sure if there's another one that has come out since I read the last one; I'll have to check my library again.

I think I'll re-read the Murderbot Diaries again soon. Gonna hit Powell's City of Books today or tomorrow!!!

[Jay 2K Winger]

Finished off the Rivers of London series, then started bringing in some of my D&D books to bone up on lore and knowledge and such for future tabletop play.

Also recently acquired the Binging with Babish cookbook after starting to get into Babish's YouTube channel. I don't know that I'll ever actually make anything from the cookbook, but I like his channel and want to support it.

Similarly, I've pre-ordered B. Dylan Hollis's Baking Yesteryear cookbook, as I like Dylan's short videos (originally on TikTok, but as I don't use TikTok, I follow him on YouTube) and have actually made one of the recipes he featured-- Ice Cream Bread. (Which is delightful. Partway bread, partway cake, a little bit sweet without being overpowering. Gave some to my diabetic Mom, who loved it.) Looking forward to seeing what other recipes Dylan put in the cookbookk.

[Nunavut Pants]

Lots of Mercedes Lackey. I've gotten through three of the "500 Kingdoms" books, which offer an interesting take on fairy tales, and just finished off "Joust", which is a sort of ancient-Egypt-meets-jousting-on-dragons thing. With two sequels of the latter to go. Most of the above were checked out of the local library.

They're great mental popcorn!!

[Ironclad Alibi]

I am reading "If You Shoot The Breeze, Are You Murdering The Weather?" by Alan Dean Foster. A collection of 100 short essays he wrote for a local newspaper.

[Ghel]

I'm currently reading 1001 Great Ideas for Teaching & Raising Children with Autism or Asperger's [an outdated designation - we are now encouraged to say Autism Spectrum Disorder] by Ellen Notbohm and Veronica Zysk. I had bought it a while back, but lent it to my partner's mom, who is raising his son who has ASD. Although a lot of the suggestion are focused more on children who are more neurodivergent than my stepson, I'm still finding a lot of things that are helpful. They had suggestions for homemade fidget toys, which is great. They also suggested getting a chew necklace for a child of any age, if that's a comfort for them. I've seen my stepson chew on his shirts or regular necklaces, so I asked him if he'd like me to get him some silicone chew necklaces. He said yes, so they're on their way.

[Ceir]

Still paging my way through that Firefly novel, but I multi-read. Got into my first piece of manga - volume 1 of Mobile Suit Gundam: The Origin. I likes me some giant robots, but man, as a westerner who genuinely has not read manga before, this takes a lot of effort!

Nothing really on the nonfiction front, but picked up a new tabletop rulebook for Team Yankee, the Cold War alt-history minis game.

[Kit-Ginevra]

Have now just got through Why Mummy Gets Sloshed


From the first in the series(Why Mummy Drinks)- 'Welcome to Mummy's world.Daddy likes Gadgets.Boy Child Peter and Girl Child Jane like starting fires,trying to kill each other and driving Mummy to drink,and Mummy just needs a break'.We then progress through Why Mummy Swears,Why Mummy Doesn't Give a F*?#@ and Why Mummy Gets Sloshed through the delightful teenage years until they're stashed off to university and the peace and quiet begins*

Ooh and yippy yay there's a new one coming out for Christmas...Why Mummy Drinks at Christmas


*hahahahahahaha....

[Ghel]

I picked up "Johnny and the Dead" by Terry Pratchett at a recent library book sale. It's very funny. It's a children's/young adult book about a 12-year-old boy who suddenly discovers he can see ghosts. Or the "recently dead" as they prefer to be called. These dead folks rope Johnny into trying to keep the cemetery from being turned into an office building. There's tons of jokes about the dead not understanding the present world, and Johnny and his friends not understanding the past. As soon as I'm done with it, I'm going to pass it on to my 10-year-old stepson. I'm sure he'll love it.

[Nunavut Pants]

Oh, Rivers of London was excellent! The rest of the series is also good!

I've been reading lots of stuff on Reddit, mostly on r/HFY . "Suddenly A Dungeon" and "Accidentally Adopted" have been great fun!!

[Jay 2K Winger]

With my internet access at work disabled, I've started making an actual dent in my reading backlog. And by "dent," I mean I've started to run low on books to read to the point that I'm now actively buying books again for myself instead of just waiting until Xmastime.

Finished off the Nevernight Chronicles by Jay Kristoff, which was an interesting fantasy trilogy with some decent worldbuilding and wonderfully snarky footnotes.

Read Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell, after hearing about it a while back. Another interesting historical fantasy, want to track down a legitimate source for streaming the TV series they did for it, to see how well it was adapted.

Just started the Rivers of London series, need to pick up the second book.

ETA: Forgot that I also read the first Witcher novel, too.

[Ceir]

Just finished Firefly: Big Damn Hero and I'm into The Magnificent Nine. Pretty shiny so far, they feel like they'd fit into the show pretty well!

[Ironclad Alibi]

I've just finished reading Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter by Seth Grahame-Smith. It was good.

I agree. It is an excellent book. Haven't seen the movie yet.

I am now reading "How To Sell A Haunted House" by Grady Hendrix.

[Ghel]

I've just finished reading Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter by Seth Grahame-Smith. It was good. I saw the movie first, and it had a different vibe. After reading the Expanse series, I'm afraid I've been spoiled by what a good book is. AH:VH was a good book, it just wasn't Expanse levels of good.

I'm now reading the sequel, Last American Vampire. I like it so far. It uses the same framing of "I, the author, am playing a fictional version of myself who's writing a book about supposedly true events" that the first one did. It allows the use of an unreliable narrator, which I rather like.

[Ceir]

Plowing through Star Trek: Constellations, an anthology of TOS-era short stories. Bite-sized and tasty. I specifically just finished 'See No Evil', which I can sum up as "Uhura versus the Planet Of Cancel Culture". For one, it's funny 'cause this book was published in 2006, way before that became A Thing on the internet; for two, nice to get an Uhura-centric story, they're pretty rare.