What Are You Reading?

[Ironclad Alibi]

I just finish "King Rat" by China Mieville.

[Ceir]

Set myself a bit of a challenge this tear - read 50 books in 2026. One a week, more or less...so of course I started with a bunch of 350+ page chunkers and I'm slow off the line.

So far I've finished ST:TNG Pliable Truths, by Dayton Ward; and Canvas Falcons: The Men and Planes of World War I, by Stephen Longstreet.

Currently in progress are finally getting to my copy of Monkey King, the Journey to the West translation/abridgement by Julie Lovell; and Gene Kranz's Failure Is Not An Option.

Might go for some lighter fare after these, knock out some old-school scifi/fantasy serials.

[Ironclad Alibi]

I am presently reading "A Blink of the Screen", a collection of short stories by Terry Pratchett

[Pixilated]

I just finished a cheery little ditty titled "The Plague Tales" by Ann Benson. It bounces back and forth between the era of the Black Death and the far future (that being 2005, -- well, the novel was published in the late 1990s).

[Ironclad Alibi]

I am now reading an old book, the 1926 novel "Topper" by Thorne Smith. I recently watched the 1937 movie and decided to read the book.

[Nunavut Pants]

Returned "I Capture the Castle" to the library without finishing it.

Read the first two "Dungeon Crawler Carl" books. The third is waiting at the library, which was closed for the Presidents' Day holiday today. (Rats!)

Working my way through "Harrow the Ninth", sequel to "Gideon the Ninth". There are a lot of things that annoy me about it, from the jumping around in timeline to the chapters randomly in second person ("you did this") or third person ("they did that") to the descriptive language always being so very negative. But I want to keep reading it for some reason! Is it just because it is very stylish? It's not just persistence or doggedness on my part.

[Irving Patrick Freleigh]

Yeah yeah I know, global warming is bad and climate change is slowly killing the planet on which we all live.

But it's February in Wisconsin, and I'm outside standing on the grass barefoot. I will never complain about that.

[Ceir]

I've made some progress to my list. So far I've finished Monkey King, as well as some lighter fare as a palate cleanser: A Princess of Mars is a classic; as well as The Gilpin Gold Tram, a short history of one particular narrow-gauge railroad in Colorado.

I'm still grinding through Failure Is Not An Option, it's fascinating, but dense and crunchy and slow going. I've also started up on another classic (to me), One Corpse Too Many, the first Brother Cadfael mystery. I've read it before, but it's been years; makes me want to find the PBS Mystery series too.

[Ironclad Alibi]

I just finished "Sun Dogs" by Mark J. McGarry.

[Nunavut Pants]

The annoyances in "Gideon the Ninth" were resolved/explained at least to some extent. Still not my favorite, but very stylish and somewhat thought-provoking.

I devoured the third "Dungeon Crawler Carl" book, and am waiting for the fourth to be available at the library.

I did a quick re-read of "The Curse of Chalion" while I was waiting for "A Closed and Distant Orbit" (sequel to "A Long Way to a Small and Angry Planet") to be ready at the library; I have started on that one now.