What are you reading?

oh yeah, same. I seem to remember enjoying it a lot but I don’t remember a lot about it.

 

Something different.

 

I've read a ton of books since my last post, here's the good, bad, and interesting highlights in a vague musing/no spoiler format.
Bad first:

I picked this one because it has a bunch of 5 and 1 star reviews on Goodreads, which can occasionally signal an awesome book. Also, I thought it might be interesting to read a standard fantasy story through an Objectivist lens, but it was not. The prose was too bad, the characters were one dimensional, the philosophical aspects were too overt, and everything was generally lacking in nuance and sophistication, or in the absence of those things, fun. Not every book needs to be a thought provoking masterpiece, but it wasn't a compelling story or a well formed philosophical argument AND it wasn't entertaining. I made it about halfway through the second book in the series to see if the author might find his footing but it didn't happen and was abandoned.

Now for the good:

Burningblade & Silvereye series by Django Wexler.
I was a big fan of The Shadow Campaigns series and pretty pumped for this one. It wasn't as good, but it was still well written and had some cool original concepts in addition to compelling, mostly well developed characters, and an engaging story. Great example of not needing to be a staggering work of literary genius in order to be a thoroughly enjoyable and worthwhile read.


Cormac McCarthy is my favorite author. I've read every novel of his and for the most part have felt like each one has had a lasting, non-trivial impact on my perception of life. The Passenger was no exception. It's an interesting combination of history, science, mathematics, psychology and the human experience. I didn't really enjoy Stella Maris, which was a companion piece, filling in some untold backstory from The Passenger, but I was glad I read it anyway. After reading these I felt like I've wasted/am wasting my life and also that it doesn't really matter in the big picture, but also it kind of does. Just read them, and then every other McCarthy novel you haven't read, starting with The Border Trilogy, to ease your way into The Blood Meridian.

Interesting:

The Dandelion Dynasty series by Ken Liu.
This is a fantasy/steampunkish tinged retelling of the Chu-Han war period between the fall of the Qin dynasty and the formation of the Han dynasty. It then branches off from there into more of it's own thing, with probably more allusions to Chinese history that I missed due to my total lack of knowledge about most things. Overall I thought the series was very good and well written, especially the first 2 books. It did have a tendency to get bogged down in side plots and political maneuverings that I didn't think were totally necessary and distracted from the narrative. Despite being loosely based on history I thought it was an inventive and original story, worthy of being read.

 

I can only digest about three chapters a night. And each chapter is only a few pages. So many good nuggets in here and not just about being creative, but more of a way of life.

 

Is this book good? Can you tell me a little about it? Cover and title are very intruiging.

 

Just finished this. Had never read it before. This book floored me. It sounds dumb to say, but highly recommended.