What book are you reading now/have finished?

That’s where I started looking through things myself, but I didn’t want to narrow the scope of recommendations.[quote=“SkeleRym, post:42, topic:239”]
All Quiet on the Western Front
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That was the last novel I read before my five year non-fiction binge.

If you’d like a transition from historical texts to fiction, I recommend Matterhorn by Karl Marlantes. It’s a gut punching exploration of the tragedy and absurdity of the Vietnam War. Fiction, but written by a vet.

[quote=“SkeleRym, post:42, topic:239”]
The Terror
[/quote]I’ve wanted to hear The Host’s thoughts on that for a while now. It’s one of the best-named books I’ve ever read. And it’s kind of true. Not really.

But sort of.

I’m not saying all my secret santa cards have been Sam Vimes quotes, but…

'I’ve met a few incorruptible men,’ said Madam Meserole. ‘They tend to die horrible deaths. The world balances out, you see. A corrupt man in a good world, or a good man in a corrupt one… the equation comes out the same. The world does not deal well with those who don’t pick a side.’

‘I like the middle,’ said Vimes.
‘That gives you two enemies.’

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Just a random question here. Do most people find themselves reading multiple books at once, and if so, do they separate how/when they read them? I find that I generally read through 3-4 books at the same time. Usually a daytime book (for bathroom/time killing), a nighttime book (to wind down before bed), an audiobook (for commuting), and then maybe a learning book for evenings.

As far as that goes:
Daytime - Rebecca
Nighttime - The Great Ordeal
Audiobook - The Fold by Peter Clines

I only read one book at a time. I listen to podcasts when I commute and when in the bathroom I’m usually reading the news on my phone.

I read two books at once because I tend to read super long books and want to break to something else but still want to read. Most recently I read Jon Meacham’s Jefferson bio, switching off to a few 33 1/3 books, which are super short so I went through three or four of them in the time I read Meacham’s book.

I only ever read one fiction and one non-fiction book at a time. Ever.

One book at a time, period.

Usually one fiction and one non-fiction. If there’s time pressure on something—say I signed up to run an rpg—then I might jump to that real quick and then pop the stack.


I finished The Unbeatable Squirrel Girl & The Great Lakes Avengers trade, and it’s generic supers garbage with a very rough idea of what humor is. Stick to the North/Henderson USG trades!

At any given point in time I’m reading one dead tree book and listening to an audio book. Different use cases.

Switching between an audiobook and dead tree without losing your place or subscribing to some garbage drm bullshit (audible) is impossible.

For me reading more than one book at at a time end up with about half dozen unfinished books, so I tend to stick with one book at a time.

Currently, I’ve been reading the Xenogenesis trilogy by Octavia Butler. I finished the first book, Dawn, recently and now I’m reading through the second book, Adulthood Rites. It’s an interesting sci-fi story about the end of humanity and the aliens that save them, but at what price!?

I’m slowly making my way through Infinite Jest. It’s interesting but taking a ton of time to process.

I tried to read a few novels but comprehension was such a struggle I gave up. Going back to non-fiction, I read American Revolutions by Alan Taylor which may have been the best book I’ve ever read. I describe it as if those “what your history teacher didn’t want you to know” books was written by a two time Pulitzer winning historian – because that’s what Taylor is. Truly eye opening and revealing even to someone as knowledgeable on the subject as me.

After that I went on a music bio binge but nothing exceptional. Now I’m heading back into history by revisiting Iron Kingdom, a thorough history of Prussia. It was one of the first non-fictions I read way back in 9th or 10th grade (props to my FRCF Secret Santa that year for giving me it). I didn’t get to finish it because I forgot it on a plane 1/6 into the book. Hopefully it’ll be as good as I remember.

Started reading Leviathan’s Wake, the first Expanse novel, this weekend. I haven’t seen the TV show yet, and wanted to read the books, or at least a couple of them first, before I started watching the SyFy series. So far, about 135 pages in, I like it. It’s rare that a science fiction novel has interplanetary travel, but not interstellar travel, in that humanity has colonized Mars, Saturn, and Jupiter, but hasn’t developed FTL travel or gone beyond the solar system.

You would like Kim Stanley Robinson’s stuff if you want more solar-system restricted hard sci fi. 2312 and the Mars trilogy are both fantastic.

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Somewhat, but not enough. My auditory comprehension of novels is higher than my visual, but lower than even my visual comprehension of most non-fiction.

I’m currently in the middle of, like, ten books. Usually I limit myself to one novel, one nonfiction book, and one anthology, but then I started working on a grad degree in literature, so I tend to be juggling a lot these days. Good news is that it’s almost summer break, and I’m not taking any summer classes this year, so I should hopefully be able to whittle that pile down before the fall term dumps more books into my lap. (Not that I’m complaining about more books. Booksbooksbooksbooksbooks! :smiley:

The one I most recently finished is The Picture of Dorian Gray by my dude Oscar Wilde. Among others, I’m in the middle of The Traitor Baru Cormorant by Seth Dickinson, Dracula by Bram Stoker, and Alexander Hamilton by Ron Chernow.

I finished Charles Sumner and the Coming of the Civil War, which is the first of a two part biography of Charles Sumner by David Herbert Donald and I doubt I’ll be reading the second. It was very well researched and very well written, but at the end Donald makes it clear that he thinks the Civil War was an unnecessary calamity that should have been averted if Sumner had bit his tongue. Strangely, he has written multiple books about how great Abraham Lincoln was, which seems contradictory to his feelings towards Sumner. I might read the second volume anyway. I tried to read several other Sumner biographies and they weren’t very compelling (and its hard to not compel me to read about Charles Sumner).