Books

1. Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid by Douglas R. Hofstadter
2. The Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien

Just finished "blackpilled" by Reeve and enjoying "Go tell it on the mountain" by Baldwin.

Blackpilled is about Reeve and her reporting on the alt-right. (you may remember her as the bespectacled blonde reporter for Vice embedded with the Nazis at Charlottesville).

Go tell it on the mountain is a semi-autobiographical coming-of-age story about a black homosexual teen-aged boy in 1930s Harlem.

Three authors I hadn't read before:

• Senlin Ascends by Josiah Bancroft
  First part of a tetralogy; I liked it so much that I'm keenly waiting on an opportunity to read the 2nd book, and the rest of course. This goes under Fantasy but imo its more alternate history with a dash of SciFi: the tower of Babel exists; it's huge and inhabited on levels each about the size of a small town. Technologically situated in +/- 1900, steampower and wildly sparking electricity. I love how the author keeps up a magical and mysterious athmosphere while everything remains realistic (just unlikely); both the science and the plot.
• Cop Town by Karin Slaughter
  A woman in the Atlanta Police D. in 1974. Sexism & misogyny & sisterhood. A nice plot as well. I enjoyed it. Gritty right until the end, when everything suddenly turned roses, peace & happiness. Blergh!
• Nothing Ventured by Jeffrey Archer
  A young and unlikely policeman becomes part of a London art theft task force in the 1980s. I only started it; it's a mild, cultured and easy read with just enough suspense to keep you going, but I can't give any judgement so far.

Homage to Catalonia Mostly out of curiosity

Almost finished And All So Quiet by Mareike Fallwickl. Only a few pages remaining and then my bingo is in arm's reach.

I've listened to a few recently. Had a run of a few really great Deathlands books that have started pushing the story forward a bit more in a new direction and have been really enjoying it.

I've also been listening to more of the Infinite Timeline books by Jeremy Robinson.

I listened to Infinite 2 which has just blown the entire series of books wide open, it has made all of the previous books make a lot more sense, made a lot of connects and really linked everything together in a great way. Going through the series of books they often only had really small links to one another even though they are all good stories in their own right. Now so much makes sense and everything seems so much more intertwined.

I'm also now halfway through The Order, with only two more books in the series after this one things are now really picking up a lot of speed and this book links heavily to Exo Hunter that came prior. It is really a great series of books!

Reading Wyrd Sisters by Terry Pratchett. 'Nuff said.

Finished The Orb of Cairado by Katherine Addison. Set in the world of--and very similar to--her Chronicles of Osreth series; in other words, if you want more Goblin Emperor or Witness for the Dead, this is a nice little tidbit. Works as a standalone, but the societal naming conventions will probably confuse you if you start here.

I finished lightbringer about 2 weeks ago! All caught up until red god comes out. Overall I loved the series. I have to say, the second trilogy was much stronger than the first trilogy. I rather enjoyed the different narrators of iron gold and dark age, so was a bit disappointed when it went back to 1 for lightbringer, though it was still excellent

Since then I finally decided to start malazan. I’m most of the way through gardens of the moon, I think. It’s the complete main run as one big audiobook, so it’s a staggering 388 hours in total. So far I’m really enjoying it. It reminds me a bit of the black company

Finished "the colapsing empire" by John Scalzi. It was okay, but too much world building and too little story for my taste. Overall I liked it less than any book in his "old man's war" series. I then read "Saturn's children" by Charles Stross. Nice book, got through it pretty fast. I also might have skimmed through some pars where it got too technical. Then I read "red shirts" by John Scalzi, which was a great little book, just finished it today. I find with John Scalzi it's kind of hit or miss for me. I'm now starting "Neptunes brood" by Charles Stross, so will report on that next week.

Right now I'm reading Endnotes 1.

Reading Thrawn Ascendency Greater Good. Just finished Chaos rising, and I'm planning to read Lesser Evil after this. After that, no idea. Probably more star wars though.

Still working my way through Godel, Escher, and Bach. I also just got The Wok by Kenji Alt Lopez, that's my browsing book for now.

I'm almost finished Dayspring by Anthony Oliveira. It's been a thoughtful trippy ride.

• reading Is This Autism by Donna Henderson
• listening to Children of Time by Adrian Tchaikovsky, mostly while drugged and undergoing painful procedures - so honestly I'm losing a lot of the details and the story is becoming incoherent the way a book does when you have a fever when you're sick

Listening to the second book of Dungeon Crawler Carl.