We’re nearly three months down for 2024, and I’m still sticking with my resolution to spend less time watching stuff on streaming and more time reading. So far, that’s going pretty well. Since the last update, I’ve finished eight books.
That’s 14 for the year, which is probably close to what I read in all of 2023 and a pretty poor showing compared to how much I read in my teens and 20s. Somehow past-me imagined that adult-me would have so much more time to read than adult-me actually does. Clearly, adulthood was a mistake.
The order of books I’m reading is somewhat dictated by the ebooks available via my library, as I find it more convenient to read on a device than a paper book, and I’m seeing how much of my reading wishlist can be satisfied by utilizing the library instead of buying books. Depending entirely on the library probably won’t last through 2024, but I’ve been really pleased by how much I’ve been able to find via Durham’s library system. Kudos to the folks who run those services, they are doing nice things. I may also pick a month this year and only read paper books, just because, and stick to things that aren’t available via e-reader.
This is mostly just tracking what I’m reading. Not really doing any in-depth reviews of the books, as that would take time away from reading (bad) and most of my writing hours are accounted for these days. And I’m skeptical the other editors at LWN would think it worthwhile to run book reviews of the random stream of titles that catch my interest.
Terry Pratchett
Expect to see lots of Terry Pratchett if you follow what I’m reading. Partially because I’m on a quest to read or re-read all the Discworld novels, but also because I know what I’m getting from a Pratchett book and deeply enjoy his work. Since the last update, I read Guards! Guards!, and Men at Arms. Both books are about The Watch, and follow the antics of a group of misfit (but oddly effective) members of Ankh-Morpork’s City Watch. If you haven’t read these, back-to-back is a good way to do it.
The only quibble I have with Men at Arms is that Lady Sybil Ramkin is so absent from the proceedings. The relationship between Ramkin and Vimes could’ve been explored more deeply and it seemed conspicuously absent.
But, otherwise… it’s Terry Pratchett. Of course I enjoyed both.
Jennette McCurdy
Some people have great relationships with their parents, some of us perhaps not so much. McCurdy’s I’m Glad My Mom Died is on the extreme end of “not so much.” McCurdy is best known for her role on iCarly. The book goes into great detail about how she was pushed into acting by her mother, and worse.
This one was sort of an “impulse buy” — the title caught my attention (how could it not?) as I was skimming books available from my library via Libby. It’s a quick read, I think I finished it over two days. I would hope that her experiences as a child actor are outliers, but it does raise some questions worth thinking about when it comes to putting kids into the entertainment machine.
Charlie Stross
Somehow I’ve failed to read any of Stross’s books until this year, even though I’ve been reading his blog off and on for some time. Finally laid hands on The Atrocity Archives (Laundry Files book 1) and had a great time with it. I love the mix of technology and Lovecraftian horrors. Pure fun, if there’s a deeper meaning in the book, I missed it.
Unfortunately, my library doesn’t seem to feel the need to stock the entirety of every series, so I’ll need to buy the next one(s).
Sidney Thompson
I kept seeing ads for Lawmen: Bass Reeves, which is a Paramount+ miniseries, and decided I’d see if there was a book it was based on before watching the show. (How else can you say “that’s not quite right?”) Landed on Follow the Angels, Follow the Doves which is part one of Sidney Thompson’s trilogy about Reeves.
Reeves was a Black Texan who escaped slavery and became a Texas Marshall after the Civil War. Book one coveres Reeves’s early life up through his escape. At times a hard (unpleasant) read but compelling and I’ll definitely be picking up book two.
Cory Doctorow
Doctorow doesn’t just coin terms like “enshittification,” he writes novels too. Good ones, as it happens. Red Team Blues is a fun techno-whodunnit with (you’ll be shocked, I’m sure) quite a lot of social commentary and a compelling plot. Enjoyed this enough that I’m planning to check out the other Martin Hench books.
R.F. Kuang
The first mention of Kuang’s Babel: Or the Necessity of Violence: An Arcane History of the Oxford Translators’ Revolution that I can recall came via news that it was excluded from consideration from the 2023 Hugo awards. Then I started reading reviews of the book and decided I’d be seriously missing out if I didn’t read it.
Having just finished it, I can say that was correct: Babel is a fantastic book and ticks pretty much every box for me. It’s a compelling story (check) with compelling and complex characters (check), fantastic world-building (check), and a bonus foray into translation and word histories. The book pulls no punches about imperialism or complicity in going along with systems of oppression and violence. It does lack subtlety—I’m sure that some readers will be unhappy with the choice to voice some of these messages directly and explicitly rather than implicitly—but perhaps the time for subtlety has passed.
My only complaint, and it’s tiny, is that this could’ve easily been two or three books. I’d have liked to have spent more time in this world and more time with its characters. I’m definitely going to be picking up more of Kuang’s books.
Adam Higginbotham
Because I enjoy light reading about fluffy topics I picked up… Chernobyl: The Untold Story of the World’s Greatest Nuclear Disaster.
The title pretty much sums up what the book is about. It was a decent recounting of the disaster, how it came to be and how it unfolded. If you’ve seen HBO’s Chernobyl mini-series you won’t find many surprises in the book, though the HBO series was based on Svetlana Alexievich’s book Voices from Chernobyl.
I appreciate authors who can take a complex historical event and produce a readable account, and Higginbotham does that here. Had hoped he might have a longer bibliography but his only other book-length work is about the space shuttle Challenger, to be released in May of this year.
That’s all for now. As always, open to suggestions for additional reading, or thoughts on any of the titles I’ve recently read.