By Firelight

Still plunking along, so I have not finished anything this week.

I AM still reading:

• Monsters: A Fan's Dilemmaby Claire Dederer
  • I described this book to a friend as "It's like she's got some great points buried in a big pile of other stuff I care nothing about".  Which is accurate.  I've highlighted a bunch of the good points, but then she gets into talking about genius artists I've never heard of, and I lose interest.  At least I'm almost finished with it.
• Armageddon Science: The Science of Mass Destructionby Brian Clegg
  • This book continues to be a slog.  I at least got through the (extremely dated) climate change chapter.  I am determined to get through this book in the next week if it kills me, solely because I am tired of looking at it.  Seriously, this book is way less interesting than I thought it would be, and partly it's that it's dated and partly the author's style just doesn't agree with me.

And I started:

• A Stroke of the Pen: The Lost Storiesby Terry Pratchett
  • Newly released book of short stories Sir Terry wrote under an early pseudonym.  I've read one story, which was "eh", but at least was short.  Even if the whole book's that way, at least it, as well, is short.

I also just picked up a borrow of:

• Dead Silenceby S.A. Barnes
  • After the nonfiction and short stories, I think I'll need some space horror as a palatte cleanser.  I hope this is good, as reviews seem to be mixed on it.

What I've finished reading:  Paladin's Hope by T. Kingfisher. Still a fun series, and there were some set pieces in here that I liked, but this book didn't catch me like the first in the series.  Also, it's fairly obvious that some of the characters across the series have very similar internal monologues, which makes them come across as not really sufficiently different to be entirely satisfying.  Still, the middle plot points were interesting, and though it was wrapped up probably a bit too cleanly, it was also nice to see more of guard-gnole Earstripe.   

What I'm still reading: Armageddon Science is still going.  I haven't given up yet, though yeah, I'm going to have to skip the chapter on climate change.  The book was published nearly 15 years ago, and its discussion of climate change was probably dated for THEN.  I've also pushed through and will probably continue reading Monsters: A Fan's Dilemma, though the author and I just...have fundamentally different views on art creators. Like, the amount of the book that is like "we make these assumptions about people we don't know, and wow isn't that sad when they turn out to be bad people?" is wild to me, because I am not a celebrity person. I assume that people are a mix of good/bad/neutral until proven otherwise. Putting so much of yourself into an ARTIST because you like their art to the point where you feel personally betrayed by them when they do something bad is just...not how I work. I can see this happening in other people, sure, but...it's befuddling to me. This is a book that is not really aimed at me, I think.

What I'll read next: Don't know! Want to get through Armageddon Science and then probably start on another physical book. I have a few on writing stacked up, maybe I'll pick up one of those.