You KNOW I must ask, DJCT. You KNOW!
How’d it go? 
For the record, never got into Gibson for some reason, something in his writing prevents the story from getting in my brain. I’ve read Neuromancer 3 times and I STILL have no idea what happens in there. I’ve given up on Mona Lisa Overdrive about a third of the way through when I found the same thing was happening.
But yeah, how’d it go? 
I found Gibson’s novels unreadable, at least after the second sprawl book. The short fiction in burning chrome is great, though.
Each to their own, I like his reserved style and enjoy what I think of as sleights of hand in transition and action which do very often require a double take …
in my defence at Work Book Club it was my fourth choice in very short succession (due to an algorithm we no longer use ..) and I had given them bangers in Clarke’s Piranesi and Gray’s Poor Things as well as an unfortunately less good choice in Spufford’s Cahokia Jazz. Note this is not a an SF book club, just a normal office one and quite often we get romances, coming of age or whatever. Except for our Economist, who always chooses weighty tomes about war or politics …
So I panicked: like most here I am sure I have a massive shelf of opportunity, and while I had read The Peripheral when it came out c2014 I owned but had not had the chance to read the loose follow-up Agency. I wanted to reread the first book and picked that. Cos nothing says cosy book club like a cyberpunk time travel alternate future thriller that features an unnamed apocalypse and robots called Michikoids without explaining why they are called Michikoids…
Now normally we are a I didn’t read it or 7/10 it was fine kinda club. Not this time! It was like I had put in front of them incomprehensible gibberish specifically to make them feel thick. I got (comically) abused for a good half an hour of negative reviews. Including one -5 out of 10.
I don’t think I will be allowed to pick again …
Does anyone recommend Martha Wells, best-known for Murderbot books?
Murderbot Diaries is very good. I haven’t read the others, but I am absolutely backing that bundle on how good MBD is.
Very much so! I loved The Element of Fire when it first came out, then didn’t get on as well with City of Bones and rather lost track of her. More recently I’ve been reading through her back catalogue and very much enjoying it — even the Stargate tie-ins. Reviews on my blog (search in page for “Martha Wells”).
Yep, and a friend of mine highly recommends Witch King.
Just started reading The Gate of the Feral Gods, book 4 in the Dungeon Crawler Carl series.
I enjoyed the first 3 but this is giving off vibes of ‘same old, same old’ already. I’ll probably finish this one but unless it picks up, I think I’m probably finished with the series.I read the whole series so far. I’m not sure I’d go so far as to recommend you continue if flagging, but it provided enough for me to keep going. The threads of the overall arc and the absurdity were enough to keep me going.
To be fair, I felt like this on the 3rd book, then really enjoyed it so it’ll probably happen again! 
I adore Martha Wells’ murderbot books (my late sister collected them all as they came out), but I don’t get on with her fantasy fiction.
I’ve bought the bundle because I enjoyed the first two Murderbot at the time. Also I am interested in the Witch King.
A little stack of books read in August (though most of Daggerheart was read in July, I did then run it four times).
Have been gone for a month on vacation but I also want to say how good Kate Daniels is. I made my wife read it this year too and she is almost done with the series 
Dungeon Crawler Carl is amazing and it exploded in popularity, well deserved but it is crazy how fast it went.
@JayGarrick I feel the world building and the stuff behind the scenes so to speak, the bigger picture keeps the interest high. The humor and action is great in every book. Though I also think the author has enough new ideas with the floors and events to keep it fresh. But in the end it is fighting all the time and a lot of close battles.
Right now I am reading book 7 of the Murderbot Diaries System Collapse and it is just a really fun series. Though except one book all of them are just short stories.
I also have her Witch King on my reading list because I need it for my bingo sheet (2024 book award or best of list). Will read that soon.
I think I just wasn’t the target audience for Dungeon Crawler Carl.
Not sure it deserved the Hugo but a good read. It does have a couple of “really?” moments but then so do many detective novels. I have moved on to the next volume already so he’s doing something right.
Picked the first three books in the Absolute DC Universe (Batman, Superman and Wonder Woman). The stories are interesting enough to have me hooked already, particularly Batman and Wonder Woman, so I’ll be continuing on. Good fun.
Also re-reading The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, I’m up to Century now, before I tackle Tempest, the fourth and final volume (I just learned if its existence last week), but I want to try and track down Black Dossier and the Nemo trilogy first. Ideally in print, but I’ll go online if I can’t find them for reasonable prices.
Also also read the whole Blacksad series, fantastic noir stuff with furry animals. Since I got the French editions, I got the actual full series, all 7 books. It was SO good. Highly recommended.
Also also also, my darling wife, who loves WW2 stories, had never read Maus. I have therefore bought her a copy (I only have the English version and she speaks no English) to help remedy that situation. She is engrossed. Mission accomplished.
