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PaperclipPerfector  1d ago (text post)   1234 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for February 22, 2026

Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?

This is your opportunity to ask questions. No question too simple or too silly.

Culture war topics are accepted, and proposals for a better intro post are appreciated.

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So, what are you reading?

I'm still on Macpherson's Possessive Individualism and the rest of the backlog. Slow progress. Also reading Legend of the Galactic Heroes again.

I'm working on finally reading the backlog of books I acquired towards the end of 2025. Just finished Monstrous Regiment by Terry Pratchett, the only book of his that I've read. It wasn't bad, but didn't really inspire me to read more. There is some wit there, but I didn't find the book as funny as the author's reputation would've had me think. And the plot, while serviceable, was nothing super interesting (and also the everyone is secretly a girl thing got kind of old by the end). Overall, meh/10.

I also read but didn't finish a book called The Expectant Detectives by Kat Ailes. Honestly not something I would normally read, but my local book store had "blind date" books and I thought it might be interesting to go with something unknown. The blurb on the wrapping promised a "funny, cozy British mystery" which sounded promising enough, but I didn't enjoy it at all. The premise of the book is that an eight months' pregnant woman moves from London to a small rural town with her boyfriend, and gets caught up in a murder mystery when the shop owner hosting her prenatal class dies in mysterious circumstances. Unfortunately, the book also reads like it was written by Reddit. Partly in tone, but also in frequent asides for the protagonist to preach the good word of feminism, and comments about "adulting" that leave you no doubt whatever about how much of an adult the speaker isn't. The worst part came towards the end of what I read, when the protagonist shares with a friend that she's worried her boyfriend is "getting into right-wing politics", and goes so far as to say that she would more easily be able to accept him having an affair than that. It was a really awful book, don't read it. I made it through a third before giving up, and flipping to the back to see who the killer was.

Next up is Isles of the Emberdark by Brandon Sanderson. I don't expect it to wow me (as the novella it is based on didn't), but I also don't expect to hate it either. We'll see.

FWIW I have consistently found Pratchett to be overrated.

He's an absolute mindblower if you're a teenager, though.

He's a great Young Adult author who is treated like a writer of adult books because he doesn't include teenage throuples in his writing.

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