For non fiction I’d probably say Autumn in the Heavenly Kingdom by Stephen R. Platt.
A history of the taiping rebellion, it takes a very close eye to some of the more prominent people of the conflict and examines the whole thing in much more detail than you can usually get from English language sources.
For fiction I’m split between The Free People’s Village by Sim Kern. A tragedy focusing on a fictional protest encampment in an alternate present where Al gore won in 2000 rather than bush, and instead of declaring war of terror declared war on climate change. ‘Green tech’ and carbon credits stand ascendent yet the oil refineries are still going strong, and the real cost being put on those least capable of handling it.
I forgot to mention what I was split with and that’s probably Light Bringer by Pierce Brown, the 6th book in the red rising series. A quintessential space opera with all the grand scale and melodrama that brings with it, while also defying many of the cliches of that genera with less one dimensional villains and more moral grey area, (and a heaping helping of edge). Not for everyone but I thoroughly enjoy it.
I put down The Prague Cemetery by Umberto Eco and lazily enjoyed Charles Stross’ The Atrocity Archives.
According to wikipedia it mixes the genres of; Lovecraftian horror, spy thriller, science fiction, and workplace humour, which is quite accurate for a starter IMO.
I’ve read 3 books by Dostoevsky, Crime and Punishment, Demons and The Brothers Karamazov. TBK’s my favourite. When I first read C&P, I read the Constance Garnett translation. I found the book to be OK but a little slow. Later when I read the P&V translation, I some how found it to be a faster read. I guess the translation that you try (provided you are not reading the original Russian) matters as far as reading enjoyment goes. I would say C&P is a faster read (as far as I remember) compared to TBK. I think it can be a good starting point for trying out Dostoevsky. And yes, The Master And Margarita is definitely amazing.
I actually split between reading and listening to the audiobook. It was long either way! I didn’t care for it as much as I thought I would. The first part took me a while to get into, I loved the second part, but after
I remember where I was driving when I listened to the first part, the narrator was excellent and made the whole tree section a surprisingly engrossing listen.
I agree about where the story started to falter, too. There was a lot of build-up to that point and it felt like it kinda meandered to the end afterwards.
I love history books, so a long history of the Targaryan dynasty written as a history book just really, really hit with me, though I wish he’d write a novella spelling out Saera Targaryan’s story in full.
Upgrade by Blake Crouch put his work on my radar. The premise sounded intriguing and I couldn’t put the book down. It led me to Dark Matter, Recursion, Pines, and Abandon, of which only Abandon I opted to quit reading. He went from essentially nobody to me to “Ooo, there’s a new book coming out!” in the span of this year.
My other surprising hit was getting back into reading comic books and diving into Radiant Black and the associated Massive-Verse stories. It felt like a blend of superhero and Power Rangers style storytelling and parts of it felt very unique and interesting to me (how they handle the main character and where the power of Radiant Black is in the comics releasing now is really cool, trying to avoid spoilers!). It also comes across as a more realistic version of the stories that superhero/PR tell where there’s social media and dialogue that comes across as real speech. I think of it akin to Star Trek vs. The Orville, both great but I see the path of how we get from here to the type of world The Orville embodies but the people on Star Trek don’t feel exactly like real people by today’s standard and it seems that much farther out.
My favorite book was The Winners by Fredrik Backman! It felt like a decent conclusion to the trilogy and I really loved living with all the characters again. My second favorite fiction would probably be The Dark Tower, I’m glad to finally have that series wrapped up! I avoided most major spoilers too so it was a satisfying conclusion.
My favorite nonfiction would be I’m Glad My Mom Died, Jennette McCurdy narrates her audiobook and that added a lot to the already tragic story.
I couldn’t get into Beloved when I attempted it (I definitely will try it again, though), but I read Song of Solomon this last year and really enjoyed it!
For nonfiction, I’d have to say How to Say Babylon by Safiya Sinclair. It’s a memoir of a woman who grew up in a strict Rastafari household in Jamaica. Safiya is a poet and she has a beautiful command of language that makes her descriptions lyrical, haunting, or painful as needs be. However, if you generally need content warnings I would highly recommend looking them up for this book because she does not pull any punches.
For fiction, my favorite would probably be Emily Wilde’s Encyclopaedia of Faeries by Heather Fawcett (Storygraph went down in the middle of me writing this lol, will edit the link in later). It’s a lovely fantasy novel set in an alternate Earth where fae are real. You follow a Dryadologist as she works on documenting a rare type of fae while she works on her encyclopaedia of faeries (hence the title lol). I enjoyed being in Emily’s head as she worked through the problems presented to her, and as she interacted with her colleague.
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