January Reading Thread

[The Judge]

New Year, New Reads!

For one reason and another, I’ve done hardly any reading done since September, so I closed the year with only 55 novels and 5 short story/novella anthologies read beginning to end, with another one left over from 2023 finished, three more started where I’ve rather ground to a halt but hope to continue at some point, and ten more that I gave up on and dumped. I’ve also looked at a number of non-fiction books, but only finished one. So not a particular good reading year for me.

I've no specific plans on what, if anything, to read this year, though I hope to beat the total for 2024. But I am making a resolution to buy no more books until I’ve substantially reduced both my To-Be-Read and my Started-But-Not-Yet-Finished piles which are getting out of control!

So, I'll be hoicking out some half-finished book in the next few days, with a view to finishing it or dumping it.

What are you reading this month?

 

[Chris von shannow]

Third book in the Fred Hugh’s series Prince of Britannia
Starting to struggle a bit

 

[Elentarri]

~A Certain Kind of Starlight by Heather Webber [Magical realism]

I decided to end 2024 and start 2025 with a genteel, feel-good story.
A charming, if overly sweet, feel-good novel about family, friendship, togetherness, going home, and starting over - set in a small southern town with a magical meteor crater lake in one of the fields. And secrets. Quite a lot of secrets. There isn't much to the plot, but the characters are delightful. A bit short on magic for a magical realism novel, but I loved the ravens and Aunt Bean with her bakery. This novel was a bit tame, compared to Webber's previous novels.​

 

[Dave Vicks]

DMT:THE SPIRIT MOLECULE. RICK
Strassman M.D.
2000

 

[Danny McG]

I've started book 4 Cibola Burn of the Expanse series yesterday, I've had most of the series as ebooks for a while but I only commenced reading them last month.
Enjoyable space opera so far.

I think I might finish this one and do some other writers for a few weeks. They're starting to feel a bit "samey

 

[Elentarri]

They're starting to feel a bit "samey

Hazards of long series - all the books start feeling "samey". Maybe that's why publishers take 1-2 years* to publish the next book - so readers will have forgotten the "samey" effect and demand more?

*We will not discuss authors who cannot produce anything to publish...

 

[Hugh]

Hermann Hesse "Singapore Dream and Other Adventures: travel writings from an Asian journey"
This is a 2018 translation of writings, almost all of which apparently were not previously available in English.
It concerns his 1911 return voyage, age 34, to Sri Lanka, Penang, Singapore and Sumatra (Palembang) via the Suez Canal. This took him around three months. He had planned to return via the West Coast of India, but ill health prevented this.
It's made up of @82 pages of journal reflections, 12 pages of poems, and a charming short story @40 pages, "Robert Aghion", re an idealistic young Englishman recruited in the 1790s to spread the gospel in India.
Overall what stands out for me is his respect and admiration for the local peoples and culture, his disgust with colonial exploitation, and his appreciation of the beauty of much of the landscape. There's also a fair share of hardship.
I hadn't realised that this journey was the closest he got to India, and was his only journey into Asia. (Please correct me if you know different, but this seems to be the case). Both parents and both sets of grandparents had been deeply involved in missionary work in India.

 

[Danny McG]

Hazards of long series - all the books start feeling "samey". Maybe that's why publishers take 1-2 years* to publish the next book - so readers will have forgotten the "samey" effect and demand more

Usually I don't go past trilogies for that reason.
But I've noticed a few writers now who'll do a trilogy set in the same universe, or a prequel trilogy.....then they keep banging out what's actually a long series in disguise.

 

[Elentarri]

Usually I don't go past trilogies for that reason.
But I've noticed a few writers now who'll do a trilogy set in the same universe, or a prequel trilogy.....then they keep banging out what's actually a long series in disguise.

One of the reasons I don't read as much fantasy as I used to. Never ending series, or unfinished series, or not knowing if the book is part of a series - so I just don't buy the new stuff (usually).

 

[Toby Frost]

Without Trace by John Harris. This is a factual book from 1980 or so that recounts seven maritime disasters, all of which involve mysterious circumstances. The author, a former sailor, clearly knows his stuff and his accounts are balanced and insightful, although he does use some naval terminology that I had to look up. He wisely ignores supernatural explanations and keeps his theories sensible and grounded in reality. It's not a cheerful book - it ends with Donald Crowhurst's awful spiral into madness and death - but I found it grimly fascinating.

 

[Elentarri]

Without Trace by John Harris.

Sounds interesting. Any sea monsters, giant squid or the like?

 

[Toby Frost]

Sort of. He doesn't dismiss them out of hand, but none of the incidents he looks at really work as the result of wildlife, unless there's some creature large enough to pull an entire ship underwater and to leave no trace (which there isn't).

 

[THX1138]

We're going on holiday in a few weeks, so I'm bringing two books.

The Genesis Fleet Triumphant by Jack Campbell

Motion: H.G Wells Short Story Competition 2023. Edited by Liz Joyce and Tony Scofield

 

[AndrewT]

Old Man's War and Ghost Brigade, both by John Scalzi. I'm almost finished with the first. I was surprised at how fast and easy to read he is. He's really quite good. After that I think I will read Comanche Moon, the fourth of Larry McMurtry's tetralogy beginning with Lonesome Dove. Number one and two were great but the third was really mediocre I thought. Then I will do another Dickens. I haven't decided which one. I've only read Great Expectations which was brilliant. So I have to read 'em all now. Which one should I do next?

 

[Victoria Silverwolf]

During my week away from the computer I read:

What If? (2014), What If? 2 (2022), and How To (2019) by Randall Monroe, all humorous books discussing absurd situations (e.g. what if you filled the solar system out to the orbit of Jupiter with soup) in scientific terms (you would create a vast black hole that would eat up much of the galaxy) with stick figure cartoons.

The Dark Cloud (2023) by Guillaume Pitron, translated from French by Bianca Jacobsohn. Describes in frightening detail the environmental cost of the digital age.

Most of The Language of the Night by Ursula K. LeGuin, edited by Susan Wood. First edition 1979; additional notes from LeGuin in 1992; my copy is a 2024 edition with a new introduction by Ken Liu. Essays on science fiction and fantasy.

 

[Elentarri]

I've only read Great Expectations which was brilliant. So I have to read 'em all now. Which one should I do next?

I enjoyed Little Dorrit and Bleak House, but both are fat enough to squash rats if you toss it at them. I didn't like Tale of Two Cities, but I had to dissect it at school which kills any enthusiasm anyone has for books. I will probably end up re-reading it at some stage to see if I still dislike it (historical fiction romances are not my thing). If you haven't read A Christmas Carol, that might be an option if you are looking for something shorter to get you into Dickens's writing style. I thought Oliver Twist was ok (it's also one of the shorter novels). My next Dickens will be The Old Curiosity Shop.​

Someone did a thread on ranking the Charles Dickens novels: Ranking the Novels of Dickens
If you search this site, there are a bunch of reviews on Dickens novels, as well.

 

[Elentarri]

~The God of the Woods by Liz Moore [historical fiction, mystery]

This is essentially a family saga that starts off slowly when one of the teenagers attending a summer camp vanishes in August 1975. A teenager whose eight-year-old brother went missing 15 years earlier, and still hasn't been found. The van Laars family and their wealthy friends are really something else. Told from various perspectives (past and present), with many red herrings, this story is strangely compelling, with interesting, flawed and realistic characters - some of them in a rather horrible way (reading about these people is like watching a car-wreck and you can't do anything about it) and a vaguely meandering, slow burn mystery plot. I wouldn't call this a thriller, but I was definitely turning pages to see what happens next.​

 

[Chris von shannow]

Beyond the stones by Martin J Lake
I have read it before it’s very good but still no part 2

 

[Foxbat]

It's taken me a while but I've finally finished Greg Bear's Forge Of God.
I enjoyed it but it left me a little traumatised reading about the end of the world from the point of view of those ending with it.

I'll probably tackle its sequel soon but, right now, I need a little lighter reading so I'm just starting Hitler's Biggest Defeat: The Collapse of Army Group Centre by Paul Adair. It cost the Germans 350000 casualties and the loss of 28 divisions out of a total of 33.

 

[Stephen Palmer]

Part 3 of Henry Treece's Viking Trilogy, Viking Sunset.