Snow crash

Finished Lost Worlds by Patrick Wyman, its a history of how civilizations or the starts of them formed using what we know from the archeological records and newer DNA evidence. I enjoyed it as it was easily understandable and his story telling is pretty good. 8/10 overall i think.

Still working my way through the first He who fights with Monsters book. Its a litrpg like DCC took a bit but I am slowly becomming invested, I think. There are a lot of these and they all seem pretty long 600+ pages usually. Might slowly get through these and do something different in between. Guess I will know when I finally finish the first one, if I want to dive right back in.

I'm slowly getting through Anna Karenina by Tolstoy, having taken a short break to read something else for my book club last week. I'm really enjoying it but the pacing can be slow at points and it requires a certain level of concentration. I think it's one of those books where, once I'm finished, it'll leave a bit of a gap in my life!

Just got the new Peter Straub/Stephen King novel yesterday. Very excited about it but waiting for the weekend to begin.

Volume 3 of "the wandering inn". I still like it, though I'm not as invested in some newly introduced characters.

Upgrade by Blake Crouch It’s a nice tight fast paced book. It suffers from the same problem all books about super intelligence have in that the main character just doesn’t feel all that smarter then everyone one else. But you can’t blame Crouch it’s really hard to write someone who’s mind is beyond our own. Martha Wells does a good job of it with Perihelion in Murderbot but their not the MC and we don’t spend time in their head.

Almost finished Carl’s Doomsday Scenario by Matt Dinniman. I’m intentionally dragging out the last few chapters because it’s so good.

Also, still working my way through Want Submitted by Anonymous Edited by Gillian Anderson. Fantastic book!

I'm partway through the mainstream published version of There Is No Antimemetics Division by qntm. The original was one of my favorite reads from 2024 bingo, so this kinda-reread is really comfy. I can't say I've noticed any big changes, outside of removing all mentions of SCP and reordering some chapters, but I also don't usually remember stuff in detail, so it's hard to say. I did flip back and forth between the two versions briefly at the start, and the part I was reading had definitely been rewritten, but it seemed to be mostly superficial differences rather than content.

(If your interest has been piqued by seeing other people in here read it, the original is still available here for free; just read the qntm-authored stories in order, including all of Five Five Five Five Five.)

Almost done with Hollywood, Ending by John Green

Not what I'd normally read, but i liked Greens writing in The Anthropocene Reviewed and wanted to give his fiction a shot. I am enjoying the book, which is mainly about two young Actors who meet during shooting a Movie about Andy Warhol, which puts them in the spotlight of media outlets and lands them their next role in a major Blockbuster Movie.

Both of them had traumatizing things happening to them in their childhood, which now comes into focus during the presstour for the Warhol Movie.

I'd guess the book is mainly about how past trauma still influences those who endured it and a bit about the conflict between industrialized entertainment and the work of creating art itself and the effects that industry has on the artists.

overall: good book, glad i left my fantasy comfort zone for a bit.

I've been reading Ordinary Saints by Niamh Ní Mhaoileoin.

It's about a young woman who's lesbian who grew up in a very Catholic family and moves away to England to run from it all. It's a story about revisiting her past and facing her family.

There are a lot of Irish sayings and Catholic references, but the author works it in to the book really well so you don't have to stop the flow of reading to research any given topic to understand the context.

The most trouble I had was pronouncing some of the Irish names. Had my +1 to help me with that one, but that's me wanting to learning what they sound like. It doesn't take away from the book if you "pronounce" them in English.

Fantastic book. Would recommend.

I finished Limitarianism by Ingrid Robeyns, which was a nice encapsulation of some ideas on how to make things more equal for all of us. Unfortunately unlikely to be implemented, but great thought experiments. Also continuing my Culture re-read. Look to Windward this week, and wow what a ride this one is. Loved it.

I haven't started them, and it might be a while before I do so, but I did just get used copies of Donald Knuth's books on TeX and typesetting.

Knuth is an elderly computer science better known for his more-general algorithms work, but I've been interested in pen plotting recently. Most modern font formats define areas to fill in, whuch doesn't map well to plotting. I recently discovered that MetaFont, TeX's native font format, is based on pen strokes and defining a variable width on those strokes, which is more similar to pen plotting.

Kinda dry and older books, but I've been pretty fascinated by some of the pen plotter art on Reddit, and have been looking into what the current limitations are.

The Complete Chronicles of Conan. I am re-reading it actually.

I highly recommend it

https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/828878.The_Complete_Chronicles_of_Conan

I am about half way through book 10 of He Who Fights With Monsters, still can't stop listening to it!

I had a brief beak from it with "Radical Remission - Surviving Cancer Through All Odds" which was an interesting read to prepare me for what is going to come in the future.

Currently mostly focusing on The First Socialist Schism by Wolfgang Eckhardt and although I'm still not quite halfway through I would highly recommend it. It's a primarily sourced based book about the ideological differences and figures that led to the breakup of the First International as well as the development of ideology's like Marxism, Anarchism and Social Democracy emerging form it.

Fiction: Nova by Samuel R Delaney

Non: Lies my teacher told me, forget the author but it’s great

Recently finished: dungeon crawler carl series

I just finished Moss'd In Space by Rebecca Thorne. Picked because it had a happy cover and the ebook was available immediately while I waited for another TBR book to be available from my library.

The lightness of the cover carries through the book. There's dangerous space travel, smugglers, conflicts between alien species, but overall the challenges never seem insurmountable (at least not for more than a couple sentences). It's light without being pure bubblegum. Even the romance part is light with more of the focus on familial relationship and friendships. Sequel slated for next summer and I have added it to my TBR.

Currently reading The Godfather's Revenge by Mark Winegardner

I read the first book when I was a teen and finally got my hands on the second one last week. Think I read the first one like 5 times at least lmao.

This one is proving to be quite good as well, really sucks you in that world and I think it does the Mario Puzo novel justice, definitely would recommend it to anyone who loves The Godfather book/movies.

Canyon Fires by Wes Boyd.

Endless Blue Beneath - Shannon K. English

It was not good, unfortunately. Some cool mermaid vibes, but holy hell that ending. Imagine someone committing genocide telling someone who hadn't done anything wrong to 'be better.' Not to mention, it's mostly just miserable the entire time, the main character is insufferable and repeats her thoughts about her brother all the time, and then the love interest was a choice. For what little time was dedicated to her in the first place.

Not sure what I'll read next.

Here Goes Nothing by Steve Toltz for my boom club. Its ok so far, not a big fan of the protagonist.

I’m halfway through Star Wars The Ambush at Corellia, its book 1 of the Corellia trilogy and centers around Hans home planet, which hasn’t been talked about much chronologically yet, like at all in legends.

After this, it’s Operation Bounce House by Matt Dinniman, my brother grabbed it after hearing about me reading Dungeon Crawler Carl. So we swapped books on the weekend, my 8 DCC for the one book. I have borrowed close to 70 of his Star Wars books by now though.

I rolled over a goal a couple weeks ago too, 53 books read for the year. I thought I was going slower than one a week, but I guess not. I did crush almost a dozen in January though.

S.A.T.A.N. vs C.H.R.I.S.T.: the War for the Human Mind