about 1/3 of the way through right now, and having been a lot more glued to ‘the dispossessed’ not even a week ago, this is a bit of a slog.

Here because of Enshittification by Cory Doctorow. Moving on to “This non-violent stuff’ll get you killed” by Charles E. Cobb Jr.

Dune: Children of Dune

So I’m aware of the major plot device in God Emperor Dune, the 4th book and I really wanted to find out how we get there. I’ve finally got to the last few chapters in Children of Dune and just read what happens to young Leto. It’s so cool, I really hope there is some kind of promotion in the upcoming movie that hints at this scene or its outcome. I’m excited to read the next book, and I’ll probably stop there.

The most of the way through The Hobbit, it’s fine. It’s a kids book, so I wasn’t expecting a masterpiece.

I also fell a few weeks behind Dracula Daily, but I finished that last night. Can’t say I really enjoyed it outside of a few parts (Lucy was the most interesting) but it’s a classic so I’m glad I can say I’ve read it now.

I had this whole plan of what I was going to read next, a few thematic books. When it came time to start, I wasn’t feeling it anymore, so I went to the library and picked up whatever. So now I’m reading the autobiographical comic book Today is the Last Day of the Rest of Your Life by Ulli Lust. After that I’m reading the manga Talk To My Back by Yamada Murasaki.

Still re-reading all of Iain M Banks.

Currently Matter

It’s the one about Sursamen, the shellworld.

Sursamen collected adjectives the way ordinary planets collected moons. It was Arithmetic, it was Mottled, it was Disputed, it was Multiply Inhabited, it was Multi-million-year Safe, and it was Godded.

The Shellworlds had been built by a species called the Involucra, or Veil, the best part of a billion years earlier. All were in orbits around stable main-series suns, at varying distances from their star according to the disposition of the system’s naturally formed planets, though usually lying between two and five hundred million kilometres out. Long disused and fallen into disrepair, they had, with their stars, drifted out of their long-ago allotted positions. There had been about four thousand Shellworlds originally; 4096 was the commonly assumed exact number as it was a power of two and therefore – by general though not universal assent – as round a figure as figures ever got. No one really knew for sure, though. You couldn’t ask the builders, the Involucra, as they had disappeared less than a million years after they’d completed the last of the Shellworlds.

The colossal artificial planets had been spaced regularly about the outskirts of the galaxy, forming a dotted net round the great whirlpool of stars. Almost a billion years of gravitational swirling had scattered them seemingly randomly across and through the skies ever since: some had been ejected from the galaxy altogether while others had swung into the centre, some to stay there, some to be flung back out again and some to be swallowed by black holes, but using a decent dynamic star chart, you could feed in the current positions of those which were still extant, backtrack eight hundred million years and see where they had all started out. That four-thousand-plus figure had been reduced to a little over twelve hundred now, mostly because a species called the Iln had spent several million years destroying the Shellworlds wherever they could find them and nobody had been willing or able to prevent them. Exactly why, nobody was entirely sure and, again, the Iln were not around to ask; they too had vanished from the galactic stage, their only lasting monument a set of vast, slowly expanding debris clouds scattered throughout the galaxy and – where their devastation had been less than complete – Shellworlds that had been shattered and collapsed into barbed and fractured wrecks, shrunken compressed husks of what they had once been.

The Shellworlds were mostly hollow. Each had a solid metallic core fourteen hundred kilometres in diameter. Beyond that, a concentric succession of spherical shells, supported by over a million massive, gently tapering towers never less than fourteen hundred metres in diameter, layered out to the final Surface. Even the material they were made from had remained an enigma – to many of the galaxy’s Involved civilisations at least – for over half a billion years, before its properties were fully worked out. From the start, though, it had been obvious that it was immensely strong and completely opaque to all radiation.

They had been machines. In fact, they had all been part of the same vast mechanism. Their hollowness had been filled, or perhaps had been going to be filled (again, nobody could be certain this had actually been done), with some sort of exotic superfluid, turning each of them into a colossal field projector, with the aim, when they were all working in concert, of throwing a force field or shield round the entire galaxy.

Precisely why this had been thought necessary or even desirable was also unknown, though speculation on the matter had preoccupied scholars and experts over the aeons.

With their original builders gone, the people who had attacked the worlds seemingly also permanently missing and the fabled superfluid equally absent, leaving those vast internal spaces linked by the supporting Towers – themselves mostly hollow, though containing twisted webs of structurally reinforcing material, and punctured with portals of various sizes giving access to each of the levels – it had taken almost no time at all for a variety of enterprising species to work out that a derelict Shellworld would make a vast, ready-made and near-invulnerable habitat, after just a few relatively minor modifications.

Priory of the Orange Tree

The first paragraph hits hard, the first chapter hits again, and it just keeps going. It’s an epic fantasy like LOTR but with the fluff stripped away. Every single printed word of this book feels important and necessary to tell the story, and all the fantasy intrigue beats are there, but fresh with a unique setting and zero unnatural exposition.

Just started “Arctic Chill” by Arnaldur Indriðason, And on the side lots on using and cooking on a Kamado

I finished A Drop of Corruption by Robert Jackson Bennett. It was an excellent. I can’t wait to see how the story continues.

Now I’m reading The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood. It is a surprisingly gripping read. Painful in certain ways of course, but so well-woven that I find myself in awe of the author’s mastery.

I’m currently reading The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula K. Le Guin. Someone mentioned it in one of the threads here and to my surprise my library had it. It’s a really interesting story. I love how Le Guin is able to create a world that is so different yet feels like a real place.

The only issue I have is that it takes place on a planet aptly nicknamed Winter where it’s so cold all the time. And it’s been a really cold week here too, and reading about the freezing cold only makes me feel colder. If anyone knows any good books set in hot climates, I’m all ears.

Cosmos by Carl Sagan. Wonderfully optimistic, we failed him.

Just finished American Sirens, the story of the first paramedics in the US. Everyone should read this book. It should be made into a movie, ala Hidden Figures. It’s frustrating and fascinating and well written. You will be amazed at what they used to do before CPR was invented in the 60s.

Currently getting perilously close to the end of Absolution by Jeff Vandermeer (the fourth and final book in his Southern Reach series).

I’m enjoying it, but it’s a trip. Every 100 pages or so my wife will ask how the book’s going, and I’ll respond “er, it’s gotten stranger…”.

Kimono: A Modern History, by Terry Satsuki Milhaupt.

Just read “Will of the Many” by James Islington. It was fantastic. Kind of an adult Harry Potter meets Game of Thrones but the world is more Roman influenced.

Basically an empire conquers the whole continent and they have a heirarchy system where 8 people give their will/strength/life force to those above. The people at higher levels have so much will coming in that they have telepathic abilities as well. Those at the bottom are half as stong as normal. Its a very interesting magic system.

Plot wise lots of twists and turns. Betrayals and redemptions, political backstabbing and plenty of mysteries to uncover.

I had a few gripes with the boy saviour trope and the lead character Vis being good at everything but not enough to kill an otherwise excellent story.

I don’t want to say anymore than that for fear of ruining it.

The sequel “Strength of the Few” just came out. I’m holding off reading it though because i know I’ll inhale it.