Effin awesome book. Sequel coming soon!
about 400 pages into jonathan strange & mr. norrell. very satisfying so far. i’ve really enjoyed ms. clarke’s subtle world-building.
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I really enjoyed that too. She has been talking about a sequel for some time, and hopefully we’ll get it eventually. I have Piranesi in my list to read once I am done with Slough House.
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Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrel left me wanting more, but I hope Clarke doesn’t write a sequel. Sometimes more is less.
Currently reading Brian Jay Jones’ Jim Henson: The Biography which is interesting but a little too detailed, and Jonathan Sacks’ Morality: Restoring the Good in Divided Times which i keep putting down because I don’t agree with Sacks that the performative exercise of religious beliefs is the path to utopia.
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I’m glad this topic got opened up again! I’ve been thinking about opening a “Whatchya Listening To” thread for podcasts, but am trying to read more so this is great.
The most recent new-ish book I read was
Escapist revenge lit where Burmese pythons are terrorizing Tromp’s Florida stomping grounds, among other things.
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Nightflyer reacted kindly to my whining and opened them all back up! There’s a “Playing”
too, for games.
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Thanks! I saw your comment about “opening up the Whatchas” and thought a whatcha was a technical term and had no idea what it was. 
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Right on, I just stumbled across and rapidly consumed Adrian Tchaikovsky’s superb Children of Time while somehow also reading Cory D’s latest and Tim Power’s Last Call, both of which are also brilliant.
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I didn’t have a great year for reading last year but I would really like to recommend Katherine Anne Porter’s Pale horse, pale rider. She wrote it 10 years after the flu pandemic and it’s obviously very lived, if not partially autobiographical.
I loved the written experience of resentment about the war effort and how people were supposed to act and also the utterly inhuman arbitrariness of sudden tragedy.
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Very much enjoying the Spellslinger books by Sebastian DeCastell.
Just finished. So incredibly different than Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell. It reminds me a lot of the feeling I would get from reading an Umberto Eco novel the first time. I dive in, being carried along by how anxious I am for the story, then later wish I had just taken more time to realize the depth of each moment of the book. I will read it again.
Next:
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Lately I’ve been flipping back and forth between sci fi like Martha Wells’ The Murderbot Diaries and old Raymond Chandler noir detective novels.
Philip Marlowe stories are still a hoot overall but the casual racism of the day does sour the ride from time to time.
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Also just finished Piranesi. Interesting read. I did sort of guess what the set up was, but it didn’t come across as “oh well, that was boring”.
Working on Kate Mosse”s The Burning Chamber. Another series about the religious wards that plagued France from the arrival of Christianity to the modern era. Really makes me dislike the Catholic Church as an institution even more.
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Some recent delectables:
Sarah Waters, The Paying Guests
https://www.betterworldbooks.com/product/detail/The-Paying-Guests-9780349004600
Rebecca Solnit, Recollections of My Nonexistence
https://www.betterworldbooks.com/product/detail/Recollections-Of-My-Non-Existence-9781783785445
Renee James, A Kind of Justice
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Murderbot is cool.
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I’m the same way with good fiction. Gobble them right up. Then when I meet someone who hasn’t yet read a book I loved, I’m so happy for them that they have yet to experience that joy for the first time, but also a little jealous. But I can’t help it and don’t want to. I’ll just read the best ones again later.
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https://archiveofourown.org/works/27478819/chapters/72409524
Oh, and the following which is a great read so far.
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Great story. Has the feel more of a scaled-up short story. Normally I am kinda meh on books always becoming series, but I hope she elaborates on that universe. It’s an interesting political situation and has so much potential for tons more material.
Next:
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Currently reading a recommendation gotten from Boing Boing itself:
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Ooh, i was looking forward to that, I got it as part of the novella collection In Our Own Worlds #2. The description reminds me of Scalzi’s The God Engines which is itself a remarkably fucked up story.
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