Burn by Peter Heller. Im digging it. I read The Dog Stars years and years ago. This dude can write a page turner.

The Dungeon Anarchists Cookbook.

Third book in DCC, I believe.

I’m enjoying The Princess Bride. It’s charmingly meta

Finished Pretty Girls by Karin Slaughter (5/5), now reading My Husband’s Wife by Carla Kovach.

Henry David Thoreau - Walden

So far I only read the first chapter, Economics, and I’m not sure what to think of it. On one hand HDT clearly had a great capacity for identifying issues with society and capitalism, on the other hand his reaction to these feels like a capitulation, almost like a suicide. He diagnoses all those social issues, but instead of looking for a collective solution he takes the most individualistic course possible. He even states that this isn’t feasible for everyone and that wants others to go their own way. But if everyone lived his way there would be no human society possible. He states that cooperation isn’t really possible while at the same time taking advantage of cooperation (living on people’s land, help setting up the cabin, his mom washing his clothes, etc). The Indians who he praises so much were living under very cooperative social constructs, helping one another. Looking forward to seeing where this is going…

I just finished Platform Decay by Martha Wells, and am moving back to Dungeon Crawler Carl for book four The Gate of the Feral Gods By Matt Dinniman.

I’m listening to Pole Position a racing romance by Rebecca Carrey. It’s fine, I don’t know if it’s because I’m listening instead of reading it, but it’s dragging.

After this is done, I’ll probably listen to Ready Player One.

I finished two books this past week:

The Magician King by Lev Grossman (The Magicians book 2). I mostly enjoyed this one. I felt there was a lot of character growth in certain characters and a lot of exploration of mental health and healing. The ending soured me a bit, but I think I understand why the author went that route.

I also read Macbeth by William Shakespeare. I mostly knew the story already from pop culture, but it was nice reading the full thing. I think this is one of the more enjoyable and approachable plays of his that I’ve read.

I’m now on the last Magicians book, The Magician’s Land. So far I’m liking it quite a bit, but we’ll see how he sticks the landing.

Listening to Ward by Wildbow (again). Just redid Worm, they’re both so good.

• Lord of the Rings: the Two Towers
• An Anarchist FAQ

Finally Out - Letting Go Of Living Straight by Loren A. Olson, M.D. and
Before We Were Trans - A New History of Gender by Kit Heyam

They are the first two books I checked out at the library after coming out, if anyone has any other good recommendations by all means.

I read Children of Time by Adrian Tchaikovsky which I enjoyed. I now started Children of Ruin, also by him.

Nearly done with reading A Parade of Horribles, Matt Dinniman! It felt like it took a little while to get ramped up, but I’m enjoying the chaos as things continue to spiral. Unsure what I’ll read after this.

For my audiobook, I’m about a third of the way through Isles of the Emberdark, Brandon Sanderson, which may be my favorite of his special novels so far. Very cool to see how things are all tying together in the broader cosmere. Well thought out strategy on how to expand a short story. Only quibble is Sanderson still doesn’t seem to write natural dialog. It never feels like a something someone would actually say.

Starting the bra dragonlance chronicles. I feel its aged poorly.

My library is doing summer reading, and they added a version of the challenge for adults. Their goal is to read 4 books over the summer, for bonus points one can be a non-fiction book about dinosaurs (their theme).

In the spirit of that, planning to read 4 library books. I’ve checked out Dragon’s Teeth and Thunderstones: Quest for the Meaning of Fossils (McNamara) since it was out in the display and ostensibly about dinosaurs.

So far I am not loving it, lol. It’s slow, spending a lot of time reiterating that ancient people made stuff out of rocks and sometimes those rocks were fossils and they thought those looked cool. And the author has repeated the phrase ‘they looked for all the world like _’ like 6 times. Distractly uncommon phrase to use so much. On top of that, it’s not really about dinosaurs even, most of the fossils mentioned are sea urchins. /shrug At least it’s short and has pictures to make pages go quick.

But alongside it I also checked out The Memory Police (Ogawa). In the opening pages it seems really interesting and well-written. The premise is a bit on-the-nose dystopian tho, so we’ll see how well it’s executed.