What are you reading?

thought it might be interesting to have a thread about what people are reading. we obviously have some overlap in interests, even beyond making/GF, and i thought this could be a way to discover other authors/books/series. here’s my first contribution.

technically i caught up on the Murderbot series a few months ago, but i saw this article about how the titular character Murderbot has many parallels with autism and how well it’s handled from an autistic person’s point of view. and it made me want to share the article here.

i really enjoyed all of the books. good pace, good dialog, humorous.

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I loved this series! One of my favorites!

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I haven’t read the latest yet but, the Murderbot books are fun.

If you want something in a similar vein, Ann Leckie’s Imperial Radch books are excellent. I reallly enjoyed her foray into fantasy with The Raven Tower, too. It’s exhilaratingly different.

I am eagerly awaiting release of the final book in Naomi Novik’s Scholomance trilogy later this month. Novik is producing some of the best fantasy work of recent years.

In non-fiction, I just finished The Food Explorer, which details the life and adventures of David Fairchild, who introduced a huge number of the fruits and vegetables we know to the U.S. from the far corners of the globe. It is written in a very engaging narrative style that made it an easy read.

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I’ve read her imperial series. Very good stuff.

Another sci-fi series I’m sad is over after the passing of iain banks is the culture series. Which also delves into sentient AIs.

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Yeah Murderbot is great. @shogun turned me on to that.

A few series I really like (just off the top of my head in no specific order):

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I’ve read the Old Man’s War series about 5 times now. LOVE LOVE LOVE.

Currently reading Memoirs of a Geisha for our book club:

Just finished Into the Wild - I’d never read that book and always wanted to:

Before that it was Project Hail Mary, the latest by Andy Weir - AWESOME book.

Before that it was Undaunted Courage: Lewis and Clark - something else I wanted to always read but never had:

And many more. I like to read…

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If the AI and robot stuff is your jam and, you haven’t read them yet, the “Freyaverse” stuff from Charlie Stross is also fun:

If you are a fan of Scalzi’s Old Man’s War series, the newer Interdependency trilogy might also be of interest:

I liked The Fifth Season but, haven’t read the other books in that series, yet. I believe it is being adapted as a movie now, too.

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i’ve read everything by scalzi. even have a signed copy of old man’s war (a gift from friends who considered me an old man, even in my 30s). i’ve read all of stross’s laundry series, but not the saturn’s child univers. may take a look at that.

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Scalzi is fun. I got to talk to him for a bit at a con a few years ago. He gave me (and signed) a pre-release copy of Lock In … which I still haven’t read. I think I have a general vibe issue with the premise.

In any case, I am in favor of pushing back against ageism! :grinning:

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Teixcalaan series is great.

other thoughts. all the wool, dust, and beacon 23 books by hugh howey.

the slow horses series by mick herron (which is now an apple tv series, very well done). a series about “outcasts” in MI6.
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07H3RDCR6

anything by adrian tchaikovsky, like the children of time or final architecture series.

or the lady astronaut series by mary robinette koval.
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B078MHRSY9

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yeah, i’ve been a fan of his ever since old man’s war came out. he has an interesting blog and twitter feed, too.

i like the fact that he doesn’t take himself too seriously.

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Seconded on Andy Weir’s stuff.

Oh if you like old man’s war, check out the bobiverse.

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I have read several James Patterson books recently. :smiley:
I love to read!!

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I love this topic! I am currently reading:

It is the 3rd book in the System Divine series and it is a futuristic story based on Les Miserables (my favorite book).

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I read The Daevabad Trilogy and really liked it! It’s on my list of series to buy. I just cleared a shelf with old textbooks to make room for more books.

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Just finished Reason by Steven Pinker.
I’d recommend anything from him for a good nonfiction read with The Blank Slate being something that I think should be required reading.

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Oooh sold.

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The last nonfiction thing I read for myself was the All Souls trilogy by Deb Harkness. It’s up to four books now: https://deborahharkness.com/all-souls-world-home/the-all-souls-world-books/ Most of what I read is before bed, to my 8 year old though!

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Fun fact: Back in 1993ish I took a job as MIS for a human services organization in Bryan, TX. One of my predecessors in the job was Steven Gould (author of Jumper), who left the job to start writing books. I actually only met him once, but he had developed a lot of the procedures and such, and my office was full of things with his name on them, and he had configured most of the PCs in the organization with batch file menus and such because most of them weren’t running Windows yet, so it kind of felt like I knew him. :slight_smile:

A few years later when I was leaving my next job (to move to Oregon with my then-new husband), as a developer of some of the first SQL-based dynamic websites at a little Internet startup in Bryan, they hired Martha Wells and another woman for me to train to take my place. At the time, she was working on her first novel. I later found out that Steven Gould was her mentor. Such a small world!

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