Nineteen Eighty-Four seems appropriate

Taking another crack at the Silmarillion. I picked up the “Illustrated by the Author” editions.

10 chapters in and I think I figured out why this book is so much more challenging than the Hobbit or the Lord of the Rings…

It is 100% narrative. The author is telling you stories of long ago and far away, but there is no dialog. He’s telling you about things that happened rather than letting you witness those things happening, if you get my meaning. You aren’t present for the events, you’re inherently distanced.

So you get a lot of personal names and place names, but no real descriptions or character voices. I was 6 chapters in before I got a single character description.

It’s the difference between:

“And so it was, one fine moring in Hobbiton as Bilbo Baggins, son of Bungo Baggins and Beladonna Took, was standing outside his hobbit-hole snoking his pipe, when along came the old wizard Gandalf, inquiring as to if he were interested in an adventure or not.”

and:

"By some curious chance one morning long ago in the quiet of the world, when there was less noise and more green, and the hobbits were still numerous and prosperous, and Bilbo Baggins was standing at his door after breakfast smoking an enormous long wooden pipe that reached nearly down to his woolly toes (neatly brushed)—Gandalf came by. Gandalf! If you had heard only a quarter of what I have heard about him, and I have only heard very little of all there is to hear, you would be prepared for any sort of remarkable tale. Tales and adventures sprouted up all over the place wherever he went, in the most extraordinary fashion. He had not been down that way under The Hill for ages and ages, not since his friend the Old Took died, in fact, and the hobbits had almost forgotten what he looked like. He had been away over The Hill and across The Water on businesses of his own since they were all small hobbit-boys and hobbit-girls. All that the unsuspecting Bilbo saw that morning was an old man with a staff. He had a tall pointed blue hat, a long grey cloak, a silver scarf over which his long white beard hung down below his waist, and immense black boots.

“Good Morning!” said Bilbo, and he meant it. The sun was shining, and the grass was very green. But Gandalf looked at him from under long bushy eyebrows that stuck out further than the brim of his shady hat.

“What do you mean?” he said. “Do you wish me a good morning, or mean that it is a good morning whether I want it or not; or that you feel good this morning; or that it is a morning to be good on?”

“All of them at once,” said Bilbo. “And a very fine morning for a pipe of tobacco out of doors, into the bargain. If you have a pipe about you, sit down and have a fill of mine! There’s no hurry, we have all the day before us!” Then Bilbo sat down on a seat by his door, crossed his legs, and blew out a beautiful grey ring of smoke that sailed up into the air without breaking and floated away over The Hill.

“Very pretty!” said Gandalf. “But I have no time to blow smoke-rings this morning. I am looking for someone to share in an adventure that I am arranging, and it’s very difficult to find anyone.”

“I should think so—in these parts! We are plain quiet folk and have no use for adventures. Nasty disturbing uncomfortable things! Make you late for dinner! I can’t think what anybody sees in them,” said our Mr. Baggins, and stuck one thumb behind his braces, and blew out another even bigger smokering."

I just finished Raising Steam, and thus have completed the Discworld novels, bar the Science of thr Discworld books. What an adventure. I wasn’t much of a reader going into it and it took me years to finish them all, but I am so glad I did it and proud I stuck with it all this time.

The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas. Someone mentioned the book on Lemmy and I guess I got curious. It’s been pretty good thus far, but it is on the long side.

I finally finished The Wheel of Time series! I took forever to get through the last book, longer than with any of the slog books, but I’m so happy to be done. I do wish the last book was more satisfying. It just felt very different in tone from the rest, partly I think due to Sanderson running out of source material. But there was still a lot I enjoyed across the whole series, so I don’t regret putting the time into it.

I finished I Am Legend by Richard Matheson last night. My copy of the book contains a bunch of short stories by the author as well, so now I am reading through those. He is very effective at writing short, impactful horror.

Still on the Brandon Sanderson train. After finally catching up with Stormlight and reading his excellent secret projects, I’m a little over a book in to mistborn.

Still reading There Is No Antimemetics Division by qntm. It’s taken quite the cosmic/eldritch horror turn in the second half, which is great.

Picked up Red Rising that was sat in my backlog for months. Blitzed right through it and now I’m on book 2, Golden Son. Despite the first book getting mixed reviews, I loved it and I heard that book 2/3 are even better so I’m super excited to keep going!

The Mary Sue is a bit overdone though. I thought book 2 was taking it a step back but then it comes back out of literally nowhere with forshadowing that was just, “meh”.

Still working my way through the Matthew Scudder series by Lawrence Block. I’m on book 4, “Stab in the Dark”. The settings are dated, but for me that’s a feature not a bug I also like his writing style (for the most part), very efficient but evocative.

I’d like to thank all the lemmies who suggest Kobo e-readers to folks. I love my new Kobo. It’s so much better than my old Kindle. To be fair, the Kindle is several years old so it’s not really apples to apples here. But I love how good the Kobo is AND I didn’t have to give Amazon any money for it.

Pretty far into death’s end - the third part in the three body problem series by Cixin Liu. One of the few series I’ve read where I consider the sequels to be better than the first book.

Capital by Karl Marx + Friedrich Engels

I’m not far into it yet, but it’s pretty fucking brilliant so far.

I just started Dan Abnett’s Warhammer 40k Inquisition series, starting with Pestilence.

Just finished “The Lesser Dead” by Christopher Buehlman.

WONDERFUL vampire horror book.

Deathlands as per usual, just did a couple of books this week.

I’m also right at the end of Mr Mercedes by Stephen King, it has been a pretty good read and a departure from the usual King I am used to being more of a detective novel but I have enjoyed it.

I’m going to start Flux, the third book in the Infinite series, tomorrow.

“Mother” by Maxim Gorky and “Escape from freedom” by Erich Fromm, sadly a very relevant book. There was a book fair in my country a few weeks ago, so I grabbed whatever I could find.