On my birthday, we went to the University of Kansas library (the one for humanities and social science, which was closest to their public parking lot) and I paid for a community user library card, which lets me take out up to 25 books from any branch. I can’t walk the stacks myself, but I can submit a request and have books held for me to pick up. The young woman behind the counter offered to fetch down any book I specifically wanted, so now I’m reading Indo-European Poetry and Myth, which I had seen on Amazon and was curious about (but it was too expensive to buy for simple curiosity).
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So, who made impulse purchases based off of Quinn’s “Bookshelf” video?
I picked up the first omnibus of “Casanova”, because I love me a good graphic novel, and he nudged me into getting the third Ancillary novel (Ancillary Mercy… loved the first, was lukewarm about the second and was concerned it implied a downward slope to the series, kind of like the Gentlemen Bastards, but Quinns said the third is good, so I’m giving it a shot).
Other than that, almost no overlap between his tastes/interests and mine, aside from a handful of the sci-fi novels I liked (The Three Body Problem was fine, but not my kind of sci-fi… too prescriptive… and I haven’t had the time or energy to dive into NK Jemison’s works yet).
I read The Three Body Problem a few years ago, when it was nominated for the Prometheus Award. It seemed kind of retro, like pre-Campbellian SF in the US.
Definitely worth doing.
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I’m reading A Promise of Blood by Brian McClellan. Recommended by Brandon Sanderson, its started well with a military coup having already happened, leaving you wanting to know the whys and wherefores. Like Sanderson’s books, it has an unusual and to some extent prescribed magic system that means that it seems easier to conceptually include it in the universe.
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Kind of? I ended up buying The Priory of the Orange Tree with some Christmas vouchers. It’s been on my list for a while, but after being lukewarm on The Bone Season (liked the writing and main character, hated the plot) by the same author, I hadn’t been that bothered.
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Brian McClellan is a good author. Nothing amazing but very solid and entertaining books imo. I can recommend both Powder Mage trilogies. I haven’t read his Valkyrie Collections series yet.
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Christmastime is book time for me. Here’s what Santa dropped off that I am working on:
Tomboy by Lisa Selin Davis => looked like a good historical approach to gender in childhood and something I’ll need insight into as I go from a 6 year old to a 7 year old daughter this year.
Moscow 1937 by Karl Schlögel => a cheerful tome on the great terror. Also interesting from the historiographic approach to the subject as discussed in the introduction on the topic of a synchronous narrative.
Dustbin of History by Greil Marcus => a collection of short pieces about history and pop culture. Good for considering what is omitted from the idea of history. Light and fairly quick read. First one finished.
Downward Spiral, Lonely Hill => two collections of letters between HP Lovecraft and Clark Ashton Smith. For the man who already has the collected fantasies of CAS, the collected stories of Lovecraft, the collected stories of Howard and the collected letters between Lovecraft and Howard. At this point I feel like I need to figure out what sort of an article I want to research and write.
Christmas in Duckburg and Under the Polar Ice => two collections of Carl Barks duck comics. They called him the “good duck artist” for a reason but these collections are getting to the point where he was a bit past his prime. Still fun and, in-line with the above items of considering what pop culture has hidden within about history. Disney’s foray into comic books has an interesting parallel with their streaming venture if you imagine that Disney went into publishing instead of handing it off to Western Publishing.
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Where is this vid anyway? Its not on their site or YouTube as far as i can tell?
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It’s in the newsletter.
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I’ve managed a bit of reading in between quite a bit of writing. The most notable one is probably Tintian and the King’s Claws by our very own Marx, which I thoroughly enjoyed - fun sci-fi adventure/mystery riffing on the Tintin books, very readable, and hefty enough to contain a lot of story. I only discovered that due to the NaNoWriMo thread, so that was a bonus.
I’ve also read a couple of the Kate Kane Paranormal Investigator books, which revel in the tropes of both paranormal romance and sometimes noir; you’d be amazed how many influential supernatural beings in London are Kate’s ex-girlfriends. The first one was great fun; the second also fun, but I didn’t always understand why people did things. There’s a magnificently revolting fey lord in the first. Both have quite a bit of sex in if that’s relevant. Apparently does a good job of portraying London, which I can’t comment on.
This Spectred Isle was also a lot of fun, and also paranormal, this time 1920s and focused on ghosts and horrible weird magic. There’s some fascinating (to me) worldbuilding going on there and I really want to read more in the setting, which is a shame as the follow-up is on indefinite hold.
I think I should probably move onto the non-English pile for a while next.
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My whole family has read Kim Stanley Robinson’s “Ministry of the Future” - it manages to take a horribly dystopian subject (climate disasters) and give you hope.
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My counselor has given me a holiday reading list, so I am currently reading The Autistic Brain by Temple Grandin. It’s quite readable and interesting, although I haven’t had any amazing insights into my thinking just yet 
The rest of the list (in case anyone is interested) is:
Living Well on the Spectrum - Valerie L Gaus
Nerdy, Shy and Socially Inappropriate - Cynthia Kim
Women and Girls with
Autism Spectrum Disorder - Sarah HendrickxOdd Girl Out - Laura James
Autism and Asperger Syndrome - Simon Baron-Cohen
If anyone wants to recommend anything else, I’d be happy to add to it. My preference is for books authored or co-authored by autistic people.
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I hear from autistic people elsewhere that SBC is very sure he’s absolutely right and anyone reporting a different experience must be wrong. So fine if you agree with him…
They are thoroughly split on Haddon The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time and Moon Speed of Dark - some “this is exactly how I feel”, some “this reinforces all the stereotypes”.
Inflexible thinking eh? Where have I come across that one before 
It’s possible that I will end up rolling my eyes so hard that I pull a muscle while reading that book… We shall see.
I’ve read The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time and didn’t especially identify with the main character, but then I’ve never been a 15 year-old boy or a budding mathematician 
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Not a book, but Chris Packham’s interview on “How Do You Cope with Elis and John” is excellent. His TV programme was supposed to be worth a watch.
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Just finished one of my Christmas presents: X-Men: The Art and Making of The Animated Series. It turned out to be much more in-depth than I expected, and really interesting. Though probably not of interest to anyone who hasn’t watched the show.
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This is about The Goldfinch, which was mentioned ages ago…
I actually finished it a while ago, but haven’t got back. I enjoyed it. I actually quite liked the ending. It felt like it needed a sort of post-story coda, and the
I feel like the book was a bit long, and I often seemed to have to put some storyline that seemed major on hold for ages in order to deal with a new storyline. I don’t know whether that’s a flaw in the book or just an interesting feature - but it meant I spent a while wondering what sort of book I was reading at all. Parts of it reminded me of The Secret History, and Donna Tartt seems weirdly good at making intelligent but very troubled teenagers (maybe especially teenage boys) come across convincingly despite living lives that seem completely implausible on reflection.
Glad I listened to it - thanks for the recommendation. Tartt writes really well.
Since then I’ve got through Carry On Jeeves (escapism - excellent) and now I’ve embarked on The Mirror and the Light, which is just as good as the others so far. Hilary Mantel is astounding.
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Yeah, the ending feeling like an epilogue is what allowed me to compartmentalise it. I got the ending I wanted, then the story carried on in a way I didn’t want! It took the story into something a bit silly.
Tartt’s characters are definitely what sold me. I loved how every mistake Theo made was totally understandable, and he had emotions outside of his immediate situation. Made him feel a lot more relatable as a character. If it wasn’t for Theo’s character I probably would’ve preferred The Secret History.
And the furniture sections! I can’t believe I enjoyed reading about repairing furniture!
Also props to her for her representation of drug addiction. It felt a lot more believable for the post part than a lot of stories I’ve read. At least on the development, it seemed to be dropped quite quickly.
I do wonder if she made Boris a Russian-Australian purely to make the movie adaptation difficult. Anton Yelchin was always my Boris.
Following @Marx’s recommendation I read the first 3 books of the Old Man’s War saga and I am enjoying it a lot.
After that I read Brandon Sanderson’s Dawnshard novella as warm up to the latest Stormlight Archiv book Rhythm of War. For some reason though I haven’t started it yet.
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