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PaperclipPerfector  1mo ago (text post)   2314 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for July 20, 2025

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So, what are you reading?

I'm adding Jews in the Soviet Union, Vol. 1, another open access book, to my list. Looks like the full series isn't published yet, but volumes 1, 3 and 5 are out.

  • Tried Annihilation Score the second time after a break, but then caught myself thinking "why I am forcing myself to read a book which I clearly hate? I'm not even paid for this!" and dropped it. Probably done with Stross for a while.
  • Read Classified: The Untold Story of Racial Classification in America, which, unsurprisingly, is an overview of how racial classifications work in the US. No partisan politics (well at least not noticeable to me, with all my biases), just a meticulous description of the whole thing. I thought it's a mess but boy was I underestimating it by orders of magnitude. Truly eye-opening, though not in any optimistic way.
  • Started Hemingway's A Moveable Feast and got about halfway so far. I wasn't sure I was going to like it, but so far it's going surprisingly well, even though I'm getting a bit of "show about nothing" vibe.

I had to stop reading Stross too, quality fell off.

Just finished Master & Commander. It was very good! I found the writing style a bit slow to read, but it was a page-turner all the same.

After finishing The Secret of My Success I wanted something light, so I devoured The Murder of Roger Ackroyd in three days. Even though the ending had been inadvertently spoiled for me years ago, I couldn't put it down, and enjoyed spotting all the little clues about the killer's identity which I would have presumably overlooked if I hadn't known. After Ten Little Redacted, it's now my favourite Christie novel.

This morning I started reading a book my mother recommended, Free by Lea Ypi, a memoir of the author's growing up in Albania in the nineties.

Long ago I would similarly devour Agatha Christie books, my favorite was Lord Edgeware Dies. Since I read them when I younger, I wonder how much of the social situations went over my head and how enjoyable it would be to reread them now.

I loved Agatha Christie as a kid and she's how I learned-and-it-stuck that adults really under estimate kids. I was in the gifted and talented program and my 4th grade teacher still publicly accused me of plagiarism for my book report on one of her books. Not that he ever explained who he thought I was cribbing from, but apparently 8 year olds aren't supposed to be reading and writing coherently. After he quizzed me, right then, in front of the class, he stopped. No apologies were made.

It amuses me that 3? Of my foundational childhood memories involve her books as a critical element.

Still working through Grant. Finished listening to the audiobook Nickel Boys and gave up on Trust. Relistening to Stephen King's The Wind Through The Keyhole which is essentially The Dark Tower 4.5. I also just picked up a bunch of Pulitzer Prize books from eBay (Oscar Wao, Interpreter of Maladies, To Kill a Mockingbird, and Poisonwood Bible (not a Pulitzer winner)).

I just started Oathbringer, the third novel in the Stormlight Archive series. I really enjoyed the second half of The Way Of Kings and the first two-thirds of Words Of Radiance, but I found the totally forced love triangle her appears to be building between Shallan, Kaladin, and Adolin extremely tiresome and off-putting. I’m hoping he abandons this as the series continues, but clearly he put it there for a reason. (The reason, I suspect, is that he realized he is creating a commercial product which is likely to be consumed by a large audience of women, who want and expect that sort of thing. Perhaps I’ll be proved wrong and he’ll develop it in a way that is more artful and plot-relevant than he has this far.) I’m loving the world-building, I just need the characters to be more consistently well-written if I’m going to continue the series after this one.

Yeah I wouldn't worry about that. Even in the third book (let alone further), it isn't a factor any more. And to be fair, I don't think it was ever much of a love triangle. I think the story was just there to show Kaladin and Shallan mistaking normal human relationships for romantic feelings because they are kind of screwed up, not to have there be a serious contention.

Oh good. The worst parts of the books so far have l been Sanderson’s various pathetic attempts at insult humor, which he apparently considers the height of wit, and that entire mini-arc brought out the nadir of it.

Stormlight Archive is where I pretty much bailed on Sanderson. I really liked the first book, but the second was so tedious I lost any desire to continue the series.

This is, in fact, what seems to happen with all his series. A decent first novel increasingly becomes self-referential Cosmere wank in the later books. And more and more it's Brandon Sanderson (tm) writing a Brandon Sanderson (tm) novel. The man has no range.

I have not read any of his other stuff (I read a lot of fantasy literature in middle school and high school, but took a very long break from the genre) so I have no preconceived notions.

You probably know he's hugely popular, and I'll admit I've read quite a few of his books because he's got a pleasant and entertaining style, but in my opinion he's very overrated. However, if you like the series (SA is his "flagship" magnum opus), he (unlike GRRM and Patrick Rothfuss and Scott Lynch) will probably actually finish it.

And he'll also write like five other books per year along the way.

You probably know he's hugely popular

Yeah, I definitely wanted this to be my bridge back into the genre, and had heard a lot of great things about it. I agree that the characterizations are dicey at times and that much of the dialogue writing is awful. I find the cosmology interesting, though, and I admit I’m a sucker for the “here’s a list of factions with distinct personality traits and iconography, sort yourself into the one that you’d be a part of” trope.

I’ve read all five. Don’t worry about it. The quality is a bit uneven IMO but that’s not going to be a big part of things going forward.

White Witch, Black Curse (The Hollows, Book 7), by Kim Harrison. Book 11 of He Who Fights With Monsters was fine, and it wrapped up all of its major plot arcs, but I don't feel the need to run out and read book 12 right now.

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