Hey Beehaw, whatcha reading right now?
I’ve always got way too many books going at once. I’m listening to the audiobook of The Overstory by Richard Powers, one of my favorite authors who never disappoints, and, among others, I’m reading The Devil and the Dark Water by Stuart Turton—which is entertaining enough so far, but I’m reserving judgment—and Auē by Becky Manawatu, which is so emotionally devastating at times that I have to take it in small doses.
The Murderbot Diaries.
I’ve been enjoying it, it has a surprising amount of heart for a series about an emotionally damaged not-robot.
I’ve reread the series more than once, and I hardly ever reread books—I just can’t get enough of Murderbot! I’m anxiously awaiting the new release, System Collapse, due out later this year.
I was put off by the pricing on these. Full price for novella length. I really enjoyed the first one, I’ll grab the rest if they go on sale
Oh hell yes! Thank you!
If your local library doesn’t have them, they are on humble bundle right now.
I just finished re-reading Mother of Learning by nobody103.
It’s a rational webnovel about a timeloop, and ooomph I love it. I don’t like reading too much Rational stuff at a time, but MoL is such a fun read.
do comic books count? i just started reading DCeased. otherwise i’ve finally cracked open Lolita, it’s an interesting but disgusting read.
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Added it to my reading list! Huge fan of non-fiction here
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Currently working my way through The Black Company Books by Glen Cook. Just started Shadows Linger the second in the series. I’m liking it so far but not loving it, it’s hinted at quite an interesting world and villains and so far we’ve had a lot of set up and not many mysteries resolved, I’m interested in seeing how it plays out.
Just started House of Leaves! Been super interesting so far, I love when books, movies, or games break tradition and do something truly unique
Keep an eye out for the secret messages you have to decode!
The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot. It’s so good! I was expecting it to be more technical and sciency but found a very human side to the story that places Henrietta’s sotry in the overarching history of human rights. The author does a great job with her captivating writing style. Highly recommended.
Currently listening to Red Rising by Pierce Brown on Storytel. Only 3h into it yet but enjoying it so far at least :)
I’ve just started reading Cribsheet.
It’s quite interesting. I’ve seen some reviews complain that she doesn’t conclusively tell you what is better, but from the bits I’ve read so far it is really just tearing apart common advice, showing there’s very little evidence for most of it.
I read Expecting Better by the same author. It’s the same way- an investigation into the science of some of the things pregnant people are told to do and how much of it is not based in sound science (and what is). I thought it was super interesting and recommend it a lot!
Yes that book is mentioned in Cribsheet, though I haven’t read it. I’m actually a bit late reading this book, my kids are all past this age now, but it was on my list so I thought I’d read because it sounded interesting, which it has been! Plus we have plenty of friends just starting to have kids so it’s good to have a book to recommend when they are stressing about things that it turns out make very little difference. I’m only 1/3 of the way through, though.
Interestingly, a lot of child raising stuff turns out that way. Twin studies are interesting (and admittedly low numbers of subjects, given the need to find identical twins that were separated to different adoptive families at birth and are now much older - there aren’t exactly a lot of them running around). They often show that two identical twins each adopted into completely different families raising kids in different ways still end up much the same people later in life. It’s the nature vs nurture advice, and largely it seems it doesn’t matter what you do your kids end up the same. There are of course exceptions to this (the obvious one being childhood trauma), but it’s comforting knowing that if your kid has a largely normal childhood, very few decisions you make about how to raise them will have any significant impact on who they become as adults.
I am reading “Maskiner som tenker: Algoritmenes hemmeligheter og veien til kunstig intelligens” (Machines that think: The algorithms’ secrets and the way to artificial intelligence) by Inga Strümke. I have learned many new terms, as well as artificial intelligence’s history and fundamental concepts.
Not a Beehaw member, but still gotta answer it, lol.
Been enjoying post-modernist books right now, and just straight philosophy. It’s all so intriguing.
Reading the classic White Noise by Don Delillo, in the middle of Discipline and Punish: The Birth of The Prison by Michel Foucault. Finished Shibumi by Trevanian a month or two ago, one of the most funny and badass reads I’ve been through. Looking forward to picking up some Byung Chul Han books after reading a PDF of his book The Burnout Society.
Children of Time By Adrian Tchaikovsky, a piece of evolutionary sci-fi about the hubris of man.
Within the first 20 pages it threw all my expectations out the window and since then its just been a ride. Never eaten my way through a book this quick. If you like spiders, or even if you hate them but think they’re pretty cool, this book is deffos for you!
I loved Children of Time. Those ant computers are just an amazing concept and my only criticism of the book is, that Tchaikovsky didn’t find a way to run Doom on them.
Currently reading Thinking Fast And Slow. Have been wanting to read something like it for a while now but my motivation just doesn’t kick for me. I aimed to finish this book at some point this year
Finally finished with Pattern Recognition, William Gibson. It was… nice, it definitely felt like Gibson was uncomfortable writing in the present tense.
Next up is a Brazillian book, As águas-vivas não sabem de si by Aline Valek
