You are about to flag this comment as being inappropriate. Please tell us why, and in which thread we can find it in order to carry out our modly duties. (Because the comment links are pretty worthless.) Thanks!
I really wish that I had the time to get back to my book and movie blogging, but going full-time at the library has really cut into the amount of free time I have, and I've just been prioritizing other things for the last six months or so.
What has everyone been reading recently? I've been having trouble keeping up with much in the past few years. But the local library runs an adult winter reading challenge January through March where you get a free mug for reading 5 books, and that was enough of a kickstart to get me reading some this year. I ended reading the first nine of the Penric & Desdemona novella series by Lois McMaster Bujold.
In 2018 and 2019, I read through all of Chris Claremont's run on X-Men (pretty much the entirety of the 70s and 80s). I got sidetracked right around when the pandemic started - less because of the pandemic itself, and more because the iPad I was using to read them became so old that the new versions of the Marvel app no longer supported it. Just yesterday I decided to go back and start my read over from 1963's debut issue on, this time adding in a bunch of stuff (annual issues, miniseries, Secret Wars, etc) that I'd skipped the first time around.
That sounds fun. I'd kind of like to get back to reading the recent Hickman X-Men run. Was trying to keep up for a while after HOX/POX, which was really interesting, but fell away after a few months.
I've been bad about reading lately, but I'm trying to get back into it! I recently read Jackalope Wives and Other Stories by T. Kingfisher (aka Ursula Vernon), and now I'm reading her book Swordheart. Really great stuff! And of course I devoured Spelunking Through Hell by Seanan McGuire last month, as I love the Incryptid series (all her writing, really).
I'm rereading the Crimson Empire trilogy by Alex Marshall. It's epic fantasy with an anachronistic potty mouth, a wide variety of cultures and settings, and way too many invertebrates. Most of the protagonists are L, G, B, and/or T, and I love them. I was slow to warm toward the characters on my first read in 2019, but knowing them (and vaguely understanding the intricate plot) as I do now, I'm enjoying the reread much more.
I'm also rereading various Wheel of Time, Stormlight Archive, and A Song of Ice and Fire books for the blogs and podcasts I follow.
And I'm rewatching Mark Reads Discworld and Mark Reads Enchanted Forest Chronicles videos over and over and over, partly for the Terry Pratchett Book Club blog series on Tor and partly because they're my literary comfort food. Though that's less comforting at the moment, because the Terry Pratchett Book Club is covering Interesting Times and the blogger Emmet Asher-Perrin *likes* it and thinks the cross cultural commentary is "mostly done well," particularly praising some bits Mark and the Mark Reads commenters called out as particularly awful and racist. I'm baffled and don't know what I should do. I didn't expect this of Emmet, who has called out other problematic features in earlier Discworld books. I'm not qualified to personally judge the intricacies in this book's bout of bigotry, and I don't want to pick fights which would be prohibited in those heavily moderated comment threads anyway, but I feel like it's wrong for me to say nothing after all of the work Mark and the Mark Reads community have done to explain why the book is harmful and Not OK.
Maybe you could link to the discussions on Reads? The comments are turned off, so no one can go over there and start shit in old threads. (Not assuming the community you're talking about would do that, of course, as I know nothing about it, but even in otherwise good communities you do get bad eggs. Not even the Mark Does Stuff community has been immune to that, sadly.)
I did that in the first Tor post, and have tried to bring up some things that bothered me in non-combative ways, then seized up with anxiety when other commenters so much as said "I disagree because [...]" I'm not sure how much attention Emmet pays to comments on their Pratchett Book Club post, as they almost never comment there (except to notify us when they unexpectedly won't be posting that week).
Update: finished and loved Swordheart, am now reading The Wizard's Guide to Defensive Baking by the same author. I sense I'm gonna be at this a while (catching up on her books, that is, because there are many and I love her writing).
Logging you in...
Medli 141p · 158 weeks ago
PythosCheetah 108p · 158 weeks ago
RadagastWiz 110p · 158 weeks ago
In actual news, Mark was recently on a literary podcast, the discussion was amazing: https://www.audacy.com/podcasts/its-lit-unabridge...
Saralinda_13 94p · 157 weeks ago
What has everyone been reading recently? I've been having trouble keeping up with much in the past few years. But the local library runs an adult winter reading challenge January through March where you get a free mug for reading 5 books, and that was enough of a kickstart to get me reading some this year. I ended reading the first nine of the Penric & Desdemona novella series by Lois McMaster Bujold.
PythosCheetah 108p · 157 weeks ago
Saralinda_13 94p · 157 weeks ago
Medli 141p · 157 weeks ago
WanderingUndine 119p · 157 weeks ago
I'm also rereading various Wheel of Time, Stormlight Archive, and A Song of Ice and Fire books for the blogs and podcasts I follow.
And I'm rewatching Mark Reads Discworld and Mark Reads Enchanted Forest Chronicles videos over and over and over, partly for the Terry Pratchett Book Club blog series on Tor and partly because they're my literary comfort food. Though that's less comforting at the moment, because the Terry Pratchett Book Club is covering Interesting Times and the blogger Emmet Asher-Perrin *likes* it and thinks the cross cultural commentary is "mostly done well," particularly praising some bits Mark and the Mark Reads commenters called out as particularly awful and racist. I'm baffled and don't know what I should do. I didn't expect this of Emmet, who has called out other problematic features in earlier Discworld books. I'm not qualified to personally judge the intricacies in this book's bout of bigotry, and I don't want to pick fights which would be prohibited in those heavily moderated comment threads anyway, but I feel like it's wrong for me to say nothing after all of the work Mark and the Mark Reads community have done to explain why the book is harmful and Not OK.
Medli 141p · 157 weeks ago
WanderingUndine 119p · 156 weeks ago
Medli 141p · 157 weeks ago
richardvdhaak 71p · 157 weeks ago
So sad there will be no Mark Watches reactions though :-(
Medli 141p · 156 weeks ago