What are you reading currently?
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I am now reading Upgrade by Blake Crouch. It’s hard to put down, I like him better than Michael Crichton which he reminds me of.1
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You're making an excellent case for Crouch. I need something really engaging!1
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I agree with Doug - Outlander books are great. I've read the first 4. Need to pick that series back up and continue on.
I've finished The Nightingale - Kristin Hannah- definitely 5 stars. Need something a little lighter after that, so next up is The Silkworm - Robert Galbraith. I really enjoyed the first one in the series - The Cuckoo's Calling. Also, it is one that I have had around for quite sometime - so works for my goal of clearing out older stuff.2 -
Glad to get another recommendation. Thanks!
I'm almost through Babel. It has moments of inspiration, but overall I've found it quite a slog. But I'm in it for the "win" so I will keep going....2 -
I finished Run by Blake Crouch and I'm now reading a series of shorts that Crouch published with Amazon, they are novellas by famous authors that he chose to each write a story in a theme.
Each story is stand alone but part of the theme. One of the authors is Veronica Roth, who wrote the awesome series Divergent (You should read it!) and one of them is Amor Towles (A Gentleman in Moscow, The Lincoln Highway). Crouch writes one of them too.
I read the first 4 of the 6 last night, they are pretty short reads. The Blake Crouch one and the Amor Towles one were 5 stars! The series is called The Forward Collection and it is available in Kindle Unlimited (with audio narration if you want to use it).2 -
Another Chicago series... I need to get that!2
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I finally finished Babel. Whew. I was disappointed...
Now I'm reading a nonfiction book about a world-famous seedbank in the Soviet Union during WWII: The Forbidden Garden: The Botanists of Besieged Leningrad and Their Impossible Choice. It's an amazing story.2 -
It had some minor imperfections, but I really enjoyed The Forbidden Garden. Next up? Hmmm... Sergei Lebedev, Oblivion, and at least 1 book from the Tin Tin series, which comes highly recommended by two friends.2
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I read the Every Day trilogy by David Levithan, it was YA, kind of fantasy but not sword and sorcery or anything remotely similar to that type of fantasy. The teenager woke up every day in a different body, inhabiting another person's life for a day. It was a cool series.
I'm finishing book 2 of Jack Campbell's sci-fi series The Lost Stars, titled Perilous Shield. I don't want to stray too far from the series or I will forget what is going on, but the next book will be longer I think.
Because I read those novella books I am 16 books ahead on my Goodreads challenge, that number is kind of arbitrary... It is the first year I have set a number for the Goodreads challenge, generally I just read what I read and the number of books doesn't make any difference (or number of pages, because that is all relative to format as well). I have a lot of long books in my TBR pile but I don't know what I want to read next yet.2 -
Every Day sounds fun! This goes WAY back, but I remember enjoying the Animorphs series as much as my children did because they so vividly depicted life as other species.2
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Wish I could somehow read more books at once…. Mount TBR just never gets smaller!
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Never going to get smaller!
I'm finishing book 2 of the Helen trilogy, Cold Vengeance, part of the Agent Pendergast series by Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child. Book 1 of the trilogy (Fever Dream) was really good, 4*. I'm thinking book 2 is also 4*. I am going to read book 3 next, Two Graves. This series started out with weaker writing, but it has great character development as the series continues and the authors have gotten their groove. It is an FBI thriller type series.
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Sounds great, Catfish!
I've got several books "burning a hole in my pocket right now." Especially excited to read a couple recent additions to the pile (the non-fiction Hotel Lux about some non-Russian "revolutionaries" in Moscow in the 1920s and Compartment No. 6 based on the Finnish author's studies in Russia in the post-Soviet era). But that's just scratching the surface of items I want to get to "as soon as possible." 🤣
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@FitMary202 - You're right TBR never gets any smaller and thanks to your review I've added Babel to it.
I finished The Silkworm finally - sad to say I didn't enjoy it nearly as much as The Cuckoo's Calling. 3 stars.
Next up the final book in the Practical Magic series -The Book of Magic - Alice Hoffman.
I also read The Pram - a novella by Joe Hill. 4 stars. I started it last weekend while waiting for an appointment, and decided to finish it since I finished The Silkworm early in the evening and wasn't feeling like much television.
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@Btrflydog Exactly!! Can't wait to hear your review of Babel (I mean, I "can" wait cuz of the TBR issue we just discussed, but I'll read it with interest when you get there).
I've started Hotel Lux. It's interesting and he weaves a lot of threads into the larger picture of foreigners drawn to the Russian revolution. But I think my next zig zag will be to Outlanders or "something completely different."
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Heading into the library tomorrow for the first Outlander and Crouch's Dark Matter. So looking forward to some engaging FUN!!
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@FitMary202 - I've read the 1st 4 of the Outlander series. Look forward to hearing what you think of them. I need to pick up where I left off. I also need to get back to the Game of Thrones series. I read the 3rd one when I was sick in bed. It was a little bit too bloody for a sick person, but I keep thinking about the ending, so time to pick that one up again as well.
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I've just started volume 1 of Outlander, looking forward to getting in deeper. And Dark Matter is fun too!
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I read a series of those novellas from Kindle Unlimited again, artificially bumping up my book count for the year. They could have been compiled into one omnibus in my opinion, not count separately. The theme for this was The Far Reaches (of space, it was sci-fi) and the authors were:
James S.A. Corey - How it Unfolds (5*)
Veronica Roth - Void (4*)
Rebecca Roanhorse - Falling Bodies (2*)
Ann Leckie - The Long Game (3*)
Nnedi Okorafor - Just Out of Jupiter's Reach (5*)
John Scalzi - Slow Time Between the Stars (5*)
Overall it was worth the reads, as with all compilations you get hits and misses. Because these and a previous series like it were listed separately I am now 24 books ahead of schedule to get to my "goal" of 100 this year, sitting at 43 read.
Now I am reading an omnibus compilation of short stories edited by George R.R. Martin and Gardener Dozois called Warriors. It is a real compilation and over 700 pages long, the theme is (obviously) warriors and the genre is not defined, something of everything. Right in the introduction a quote captivated me and I was thinking about it, I got a lot from what George R.R. Martin said:
"Books should broaden us, take us to places we have never been and show us things we’ve never seen, expand our horizons and our way of looking at the world. Limiting your reading to a single genre defeats that. It limits us, makes us smaller."
So I hope to broaden myself by reading from various genres, not just sticking primarily to SFF (although I do keep returning to it as a favorite). I do read a lot of books of varying genres already, from Adult Fiction to Westerns and a lot in between.
Happy reading!
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So impressive, @Catfish_Fan !!! 43 books before St. Pat's is astounding. I like the Martin quote too. I try to roam the world while reading, but I've been less adventurous with genres so that's what I'm trying to expand at least a bit. I'm not sure I would have stuck with Dark Matter without you and the tv series as encouragement, but now that I've got going, I'm enjoying it. And it's a quick read! Onward!!
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@Catfish_Fan - that is a great quote George R.R. Martin. I'm still reading The Book of Magic - so far I think it is my favorite of the 4 books in the series. I hope the 2nd Practical Magic movie follows along this story line.
@FitMary202 - What you were feeling about Dark Matter sounds about like how I was feeling about you while I was reading The Station. Don't think I would have finished it if it hadn't been for you wanting to know my opinion of it once I had read it.
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Yeah, @Btrflydog, I just didn't "get" The Station…. It's amazing what others can show us though!
I'm just about to finish Compartment No. 6 by a Finnish author. Same story. I never would have picked it up (or finished it) if I hadn't read that it inspired someone else. I still don't get it (or like it), but I'm going to finish just so I can say I gave it the "old college try"!😃
Onward!
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Started Sunrise on the Reaping by Suzanne Collins (a Hunger Games novel) today that I got from the public library.
I mention the public library because I support those and have written to my Congressmen before in support of library funding, and again now as the Institute of Museum and Library Services was disbanded by the Administration. I oppose that.
I got the email today from Houston that Out of State library memberships will no longer be renewed, joining the list of libraries that will be cutting services due to the gutting of federal funding. Not to be overtly political here, but I oppose this elimination of federal funding for services that the middle and lower economic classes use with every bit of my being.
"Greetings HPL Cardholder,
We are writing to inform you that, as of April 7, 2025, we will no longer be able to renew your out-of-state resident library card. This decision was made after careful consideration of changes in library funding and operational needs."
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Finished The Book of Magic - Alice Hoffman - it was definitely my favorite of the series.
Next up Southern Man - Greg Isles
@Catfish_Fan - I agree it is a shame that public libraries are losing their funding. I don't know what my life have been like had I not had access to both school and public libraries as a child. There is a group here in Phoenix that helps support the public library system with fundraisers and used book sales. Maybe there is something similar in your area.
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I don't know very much about the library funding, except that it costs a lot of money to run a library cooperative. The scope of the money escapes me, I know they rely on funding from Federal and local taxes to operate, as well as Friends of the Library and such like that with used book sales, but that is small compared to the tax funding. I expect many smaller rural libraries like my own will have to scale back on the electronic offerings they have available as well as cut staffing if they no longer get Federal money for operations. It's hard to believe that congress sits back and lets the Administration eliminate departments who's funding is already appropriated by congress in funding bills that are already passed. Courts are ruling against it in a lot of areas, but the Administration is flouting courts, so the checks and balances that stop a runaway executive branch are failing in our land.
I really liked Sunrise on the Reaping, a Hunger Games novel by Suzanne Collins. I thought it was the best one yet, better than the original trilogy that I liked quite a lot. It was the story of Haymitch. I couldn't put it down.
Today I may start the fifth Kingsbridge novel by Ken Follett, the series that started with Pillars of the Earth, called The Armor of Light.
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Taking money away from libraries is so shortsighted!! I agree that we need to try to do what we can with letters, small donations, and vocal gratitude. I have to keep hoping that this will pass. The alternative is just too dreadful.
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FINALLY dragged myself to the end of Compartment No. 6. I need a palate cleanser… I have many choices, including the first volume of Outlanders!
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I have been reading the Murderbot novellas by Martha Wells that I read last in 2019 and not all together as a set. They are a continuing storyline with characters that recur but reading them as they were released far apart is quite different than reading them all together as a set. They are short, 150 pagers, except for the one novel length book, I think it is book 5? I have read the first two and I'm into book 3 now.
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