Currently one book (Use of Weapons) into the Culture series by Iain Banks. Instantly shot up my list of favorites novels. Looking for more dark, grime and gritty sci fi novels before I start the next Culture book (likely Excession) feel free to add suggestions to my short list: Sprawl trilogy Blindsight The Sparrow Snow Crash Annihilation 3 Body Problem The Murderbot Diaries
FWIW - while I like it - Murderbot isnt really dark or gritty. Other suggestions - Red Rising series by Pierce Brown Winter World Series by AG Riddle Prey of Gods by Nicky Drayden
It's my favorite series of books. The first book is the weakest, especially in the beginning. Feels a little YA and tropey. But after that - the series takes off like a rocket ship. A lot of us here love it
Thinking about starting this. the second Locke of Lemora book didn’t hit quite like the first one. It’s either this or push through the red rising book no one wants
Need to read the third Wool book, books 3 and maybe 4 of Dune, books 2-6 of the Sun Eater series, then I'ma start Red Rising On another note, I'm currently about 40% of the way through Mickey7, and think it might be a good book club book. Fun read, I've actually chuckled out loud a couple times
Mickey7 is great. As is the sequel. Imo it’s the closet vibe to Andy Weir books I’ve found. Good sci-fi with humor ect. Author has a new book out this week I hope to get to soon. Also I think Mickey7 is going to be a movie
No one buys books Everything we learned about the publishing industry from Penguin vs. DOJ. https://www.elysian.press/p/no-one-buys-books Some interesting/depressing/not surprising numbers about the publishing industry
Just finished the age of madness trilogy by Abercrombie. Another great installment into the first law universe
Paul Auster, the prolific novelist, memoirist and screenwriter who rose to fame in the 1980s with his postmodern reanimation of the noir novel and who endured to become one of the signature New York writers of his generation, died of complications from lung cancer at his home in Brooklyn on Tuesday evening. He was 77. His death was confirmed by a friend, Jacki Lyden. With his hooded eyes, soulful air and leading-man looks, Mr. Auster was often described as a “literary superstar” in news accounts. The Times Literary Supplement of Britain once called him “one of America’s most spectacularly inventive writers.” Though a New Jersey native, he became indelibly linked with the rhythms of his adopted city, which was a character of sorts in much of his work — particularly Brooklyn, where he settled in 1980 amid the oak-lined streets of brownstones in the Park Slope neighborhood. As his reputation grew, Mr. Auster came to be seen as a guardian of Brooklyn’s rich literary past, as well as an inspiration to a new generation of novelists who flocked to the borough in the 1990s and later. https://www.nytimes.com/2024/04/30/books/paul-auster-dead.html
Has anyone read The Hanged Gods trilogy? Thilde Kold Holdt. Viking/Norse god fantasy. Im very early into the first book, Northern Wrath and am loving it so far. Started it, then have been super busy. Frustrated I dont have more time to read it.
Currently reading the Sword of Kaigen - it was a slow start, hard to get into but I'm starting to really enjoy it. Still not a quick read at all though
Finished Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir - t'was ok and I enjoyed it but Spoiler: spoilers I wish he'd gone back to earth at the end and met with Spatt again. Also when all the mini-farms started leaking I def thought Rocky had betrayed him due to cultural xenophobia
Pulitzer winners and finalists FICTION Winner: Night Watch by Jayne Anne Phillips (Knopf) “A beautifully rendered novel set in West Virginia’s Trans-Allegheny Lunatic Asylum in the aftermath of the Civil War where a severely wounded Union veteran, a 12-year-old girl and her mother, long abused by a Confederate soldier, struggle to heal.” Finalists: Wednesday’s Child by Yiyun Li (FSG) Same Bed Different Dreams by Ed Park (Random House) HISTORY Winner: No Right to an Honest Living: The Struggles of Boston’s Black Workers in the Civil War Era by Jacqueline Jones (Basic Books) “A breathtakingly original reconstruction of free Black life in Boston that profoundly reshapes our understanding of the city’s abolitionist legacy and the challenging reality for its Black residents.” Finalists: Continental Reckoning: The American West in the Age of Expansion by Elliott West (University of Nebraska Press) American Anarchy: The Epic Struggle Between Immigrant Radicals and the U.S. Government at the Dawn of the Twentieth Century by Michael Willrich (Basic Books) BIOGRAPHY Winners: King: A Life by Jonathan Eig (FSG) “A revelatory portrait of Martin Luther King, Jr. that draws on new sources to enrich our understanding of each stage of the civil rights leader’s life, exploring his strengths and weaknesses, including the self-questioning and depression that accompanied his determination.” Master Slave Husband Wife: An Epic Journey from Slavery to Freedom by Ilyon Woo (Simon & Schuster) “A rich narrative of the Crafts, an enslaved couple who escaped from Georgia in 1848, with light-skinned Ellen disguised as a disabled white gentleman and William as her manservant, exploiting assumptions about race, class and disability to hide in public on their journey to the North, where they became famous abolitionists while evading bounty hunters.” Finalist: Larry McMurtry: A Life by Tracy Daugherty (St. Martin’s Press) GENERAL NONFICTION Winner: A Day in the Life of Abed Salama: Anatomy of a Jerusalem Tragedy by Nathan Thrall (Metropolitan Books) “A finely reported and intimate account of life under Israeli occupation of the West Bank, told through a portrait of a Palestinian father whose five-year-old son dies in a fiery school bus crash when Israeli and Palestinian rescue teams are delayed by security regulations.” Finalists: Fire Weather: A True Story From a Hotter World by John Vaillant (Knopf) Cobalt Red: How the Blood of the Congo Powers Our Lives by Siddharth Kara (St. Martin’s Press) https://lithub.com/here-are-this-years-pulitzer-prize-winners-3/
I already watched The Fall, nothing else in the “little girl helps someone else heal through some trauma” category will measure up to that.
damn talk about living your values Book Bans Are Surging in Florida. So Lauren Groff Opened a Bookstore. It’s called The Lynx, after the wildcat native to the state. “We wanted something a little fierce,” she said. On a recent Sunday, Lauren Groff got out of bed at three in the morning, jolted by a mix of anxiety and adrenaline. It was opening day for The Lynx, Groff’s new bookstore in Gainesville, Fla., and her mind raced with all that could go wrong. So she drove over to the store, where she felt reassured by the presence of some 7,000 books, a collection she had helped to curate. Spoiler “I like being there alone, because I’m surrounded by all of my friends,” Groff, a best-selling novelist and three-time National Book Award finalist, said of the books. A few hours later, she was no longer alone: By 10 a.m., about 100 people had lined up outside the store to watch as Groff cut the ribbon. More than 3,000 people showed up throughout the day for a series of author readings, folk music, live poetry composition and, of course, to buy books. Groff and her husband, Clay Kallman, had toyed with the idea of opening a bookstore in Gainesville for more than a decade, but the timing never felt right. Groff’s writing career was taking off, and they had two young sons. But last year, as book bans surged across Florida, they decided that their town needed an independent bookstore where titles that had been purged from libraries and classrooms would be on prominent display. “This store would probably still be a pipe dream if the book bans hadn’t happened,” said Groff, who has lived in Gainesville since 2006. “I want this for me too. I don’t want to live in a place where we stifle free expression.” Last fall, they found an old building, a 2,300-square-foot former hair salon, on South Main Street in downtown Gainesville. They transformed it into a bookstore and event space, with a cozy reading nook in the children’s book section, a small cafe and large rolling display tables that can be wheeled away to make way for chairs. For the front of the building, they commissioned a 60-foot-long mural of a lynx, a wildcat native to Florida, sitting sphynx-like next to the store’s motto: “Watch Us Bite Back.” “We wanted something a little fierce,” Groff said. Banned titles are prominently placed at The Lynx. A large display near the front of the store features frequently challenged books across the United States — among them “The Handmaid’s Tale” by Margaret Atwood; “Beloved” by Toni Morrison; “Tricks” by Ellen Hopkins; and “All Boys Aren’t Blue” by George M. Johnson. Groff also hopes to make The Lynx a place where people will come together to discuss books that are being targeted. Upcoming selections for its Banned Books Book Club include “Gender Queer” by Maia Kobabe and “Flamer” by Mike Curato. The store’s mission is also resonating outside of Florida. Since The Lynx opened, it has received about $1000 in donations from around the country. Groff plans to use the funds to distribute free copies of banned titles to Florida residents who might not otherwise have access to them. “At a time when we in Florida need to speak out against the banning of books and against the restriction of reading, she’s going to have a real impact,” said Mitchell Kaplan, the founder of Books & Books, an independent chain in South Florida, who shared advice with Groff when she was preparing to open the store. Groff is the latest writer to try her hand at book selling, joining Ann Patchett, Louise Erdrich, Judy Blume, Emma Straub, Jenny Lawson, Leah Johnson, Jeff Kinney and others. This January, Groff attended the Winter Institute, an annual gathering of independent bookstore owners, where she got advice from more seasoned booksellers like Straub and Patchett. Straub said she urged Groff to focus not just on the fun parts of running a bookstore, like effusing over books with customers, but also the practical elements, like learning how to manage the point-of-sales system. “A lot of us authors don’t spend that much time thinking about that part. We think about the books and the community, all of that big picture stuff, and we don’t necessarily think about the nuts and bolts, retail-ness of it,” Straub said. “Like, oh by the way, you need a mop.” Goerings, went out of business in 2010, and another longtime independent, The Florida Bookstore, which was opened by Kallman’s grandfather in 1933, closed in 2016. “Gainesville has great potential to have a literary community, but we needed a bookstore,” said Alyssa Eatherly, a Gainesville resident who stopped by The Lynx on a recent evening with her friend, Katie Dreffer, to pick up copies of books that were chosen for the store’s romance book club. “It’s nice to have something that’s not a big chain,” Dreffer added. As more people trickled in, Groff greeted customers enthusiastically and asked if they needed recommendations or help finding a book. “Can I show you where the kids’ section is?” she asked a little girl who came in with her mother. “What do you like?” The girl followed Groff to the children’s area and asked for a book about ancient history. Groff asked another shopper who was scanning the display tables if she was able to find what she was looking for. “If you see spots we need to fill, let me know, I’m on it,” she said. Groff — an acclaimed writer. She has published two short story collections and five novels, among them her 2023 novel, “The Vaster Wilds,” about a girl who flees to the woods from a colonial settlement in the 1600s, and “The Matrix,” her 2021 novel about nuns in medieval England. Part of the appeal of independent bookstores is their careful curation, and booksellers’ ability to recommend titles based on customers’ interests and moods; who better to help you choose your next book than a best-selling novelist who is also a voracious and wide-ranging reader? Next to the entrance, on a shelf full of bookseller recommendations, Groff placed a few of her own favorite novels with handwritten notes effusing about them, describing “The Transit of Venus” by Shirley Hazzard as “a work of sheer genius,” and calling “Autobiography of Red” by Anne Carson “legit bonkers brilliant.” (Groff’s husband, Kallman, has only one recommended title on the shelf — Groff’s novel, “The Vaster Wilds,” with a note that says, “It slays.”) Groff conceded that opening the store and meeting the demands of her own writing career has been exhausting. But she’s not especially worried that selling other people’s books will get in the way of writing her own. She often gets up at 5 a.m. to write and is working on three different books. “I have four to five hours of writing usually, if I’m not opening a bookstore,” she said. She plans to be intimately involved in the store’s operations, which will be overseen by the store’s three booksellers and two managers. “I want to know how to do everything so that I can step in if I have to,” she said. At the grand opening on April 28, Groff was sweaty and frazzled but buoyed by the enthusiasm of the store’s hundreds of visitors. She got up on an outdoor stage and read from a short story titled “Ghosts and Empties” from her 2018 collection, “Florida.” Over the course of the day, the store sold 1,011 books, including 56 copies of Groff’s, which sold out. The toilet clogged a few times, and some customers gave up because the cash register line was so long, but otherwise, the mood was celebratory. “Not a single one of us had a breakdown,” Groff said. https://www.nytimes.com/2024/05/10/books/lauren-groff-bookstore-lynx.html
Have probably read the Harry Potter books like 30-40 times each. Bought the illustrated versions a few years ago and sort of just flicked through to see the pictures and put them on a shelf this is an A+ reading experience