What did you just read?

Reading Wishsong of Shannara for like the 10th time. Not sure why but this one particular book in the series is my fav.

There Will Come Soft Rains by Ray Bradbury

Was cleaning up my shelf today and a copy of this short story was delivered. Only 5 pages so a quick read and the text is freely available online. Very cool 1950 story about a single house still standing after a nuclear war and the automations going on about their business inside while everyone else has died. Reading the take on home automation coming from 1950 is always interesting and Bradbury is almost bullseye on target with Alexa like reminders to the family.

The name of title is taken from a 1918 poem of the same name by Sarah Teasdale, that is also read within the short story by the home automation.

There will come soft rains and the smell of the ground,
And swallows circling with their shimmering sound;

And frogs in the pools singing at night,
And wild plum-trees in tremulous white;

Robins will wear their feathery fire
Whistling their whims on a low fence-wire;

And not one will know of the war, not one
Will care at last when it is done.

Not one would mind, neither bird nor tree
If mankind perished utterly;

And Spring herself, when she woke at dawn,
Would scarcely know that we were gone

Photos of the edition below:

Up through Book 8 now of Pendergast so through Diogenes trilogy and the follow up. Book 2 of Diogenes was kind of a let down. They were all good but I felt like he didn’t quite live up to the full expectation and brilliance. Wheel of Death was okay with all the mystical stuff coming back in to play, but also had a dumb B plot with the feminist trying to crash the boat bc of male white privilege.

Also the start of Book 9 is a real gut punch. Maybe after 9 audiobooks I’ll take a break. Rene Auberjonois doesn’t do as good with Pendergast as Scott Brick.

Finished reading Stone of Farewell, Book 2 of Memory, Sorrow, Thorn trilogy by Tad Williams. Still liked it, drug a little bit and seems like it could move faster. Not loving what has happened to the Miriamele character. She was cool when traveling with Simon and Binabik but now she’s turned in to a whiny brat with Cadrach.

To Green Angel Tower is 1100 pages and that was fine when I was reading Malazan. This just doesn’t feel like 1100 pages worth of world building and set up or depth. I’ll need a palate cleanser after this. Maybe swap over to Dungeon Crawler Carl y’all have been raving about.

Okay, after reading multiple series from Mark Lawrence, I have to say I am very impressed.

I started with The Red Queen's War and liked it quite a bit, I then moved on to Broken Empire. After that I read Books of the Ancestor, followed by The Book of Ice. I think my favorite was Books of the Ancestor. I did start the Library Trilogy, got half way through book two and just stopped. It just didn't capture me like the other series. I will probably go back at some point, but I felt like something new.

I started a series by a guy I have never heard of, the Riyria Revelations by Tim Gerard Reynolds. So far I like his writing style and I like the story he is setting up. I am only on chapter 4 of book 1, so I can't say for sure, but I am optimistic.

I'm currently rereading the Conan books I read as a kid. Not just the Robert E. Howard originals, but the Ace/Lancer series I knew as a kid, with L. Sprague de Camp and Lin Carter adding to them. You can't get them digitally anywhere it seems, aside from pirating badly OCR'd versions, but I own all of them in paperback anyway. There is apparently a lot of arguing online (isn't there always) about whether or not these books are "legit" but they can go fuck themselves, this was how I found out about Conan first, and they were awesome so it doesn't matter to me that some people think only the REH stories count.

Anyway, unlike when I tried to reread the Elric books and found them fairly difficult because of the dated writing style, these are still fucking great. Sure, since they are mostly short stories you get the obligatory description of him dozens of times (what color exactly are volcanic blue eyes??), and I can't remember the last time I read the word "thews" in a book, let alone a hundred times, but they are a great palate cleanser from the fantasy of today that has to be 1000 pages and full of world building or no one reads it. And compared to litrpg, they are fucking Shakespeare.

Highly recommend if it has been awhile since you read them. Not sure where you can get them legitimately though, outside of used bookstores. The pirated versions have lots and lots of bad OCR at times (it seems to come in batches), but overall are still very readable if you take that into account. I might be able to "help" if anyone is wanting to read those versions. Otherwise, the "real" REH only stories are in various collections all over Amazon for pretty cheap.

Oh, and they all have awesome Frazetta covers.

The Paper Menagerie by Ken Liu

Similar to There Will Come Soft Rains by Bradbury, this is another short story that Conversation Tree Press published a little bit ago, just had no picked it up to read until today. The story is centered around a half American half Chinese kid named Jack whose mom is a mail order bride from China. As a child she makes him paper animals and can breathe life into them. Jack grows older and struggles with his mixed heritage eventually giving up the animals and pushing his mother away. After she dies at an early age Jack, now in college, rediscovers the paper animals and finds a note written from his mother inside. The note is the story of her life growing up in China during the revolution, being sold into slavery in Hong Kong, and then escaping to the US through the mail order bride program.

It is a very short and easy read, only 18 pages in this edition. But very well done and heavy thematically. Not a lot of resolution to it other than emphasizing how much his mother was hurt by being pushed away by her son. I guess as a parent it is relatable (even though we aren't mix or anything) in seeing our own oldest son growing up and starting to push back on us a bit. Kind of a sad story.

Pictures from the CTP edition and website.

Just finished To Green Angel Tower by Tad Williams which wraps up the trilogy. For me this series entirely wore out its welcome. It could have been edited to about half the length and probably been okay, or maybe split the final book in to two and add more actual content. I’m a very slow reader but this took me almost a month to slog through. By the end almost nothing felt meaningful, the entire conflict with antagonist #1 took place off page and was worthless. Big battle with bad #2 was resolved in a couple of sentences that basically involved hugging. Just such a huge nothing. Lots of walking and accomplishing nothing, putting characters in situation after situation to just delay moving the plot forward.

Really disappointing because overall I liked most characters, the setting, the bad guys. A lot was in place for a good fantasy series. I’ve read other Tad Williams (Otherland series) but it was quite a while ago. Maybe he suffers from the same thing there.

Started Swan Song my Robert McCammon. Looking forward to this and maybe Boy’s Life next as a change of pace.

Intrinsic said:

Started Swan Song my Robert McCammon. Looking forward to this and maybe Boy’s Life next as a change of pace.

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Both great books. Boy's Life is perhaps one of the best books I have ever read.

Gibbet Hill by Bram Stoker

Short story published in 1890 that was rediscovered in 2024 by an amateur researcher and Stoker enthusiast. It is a tale about a traveler on his way to Gibbet Hill that encounters three strange children. The children accompany the traveler to the top of Gibbet Hill, a place where public executions were performed. The narrator falls asleep and awakens to find the kids performing a sort of ritual involving a snake. He's then tied to a stone by the children and perhaps subjected to another part of the ritual. He is awakened later by another couple viewing the hilltop with no sign of the children around.

It is a pretty straightforward short. Good but not overwhelming. The best part is reading something from 1890 and the vast difference in language style. For instance, this short passage is pretty Victorian. I've never read Stoker's Dracula so can't compare it that directly.

“There was no light, save the faint glimmer of the stars overhead, and the vague sheen that came from the snow, and all around was the stillness of death. The white covering of the ground and trees gave a new aspect to the place. Even the old gallows seemed less repulsive than usual, standing out white and ghastly against the blackness of the wood behind. Somehow the mystery of the place seemed accentuated by the whiteness, as though the shroud of nature gave a mute testimony to the grim tragedy of the past.”

Full text is available online since it is in public domain:


This is the third short story published by Conversation Tree Press (Gibbet Hill). Also, interestingly, they included a letterpress Errata card. No idea what it is referring to specifically. Guessing just typos from the original 1890 text.





Void That's great to hear. So far Swan Song has been very good. I'm pretty much flying through it given the normal speed at which I read (and compared to slogging through Tad Williams). Really looking forward to Boy's Life. I have the Suntup Classic Edition (Boy's Life) along with Swan Song that I picked up just because there was so much praise for these two novels. Normally would never purchase anything like that without reading first, but it seemed an okay bet in this case.

Intrinsic said:

Gibbet Hill by Bram Stoker

Short story published in 1890 that was rediscovered in 2024 by an amateur researcher and Stoker enthusiast. It is a tale about a traveler on his way to Gibbet Hill that encounters three strange children. The children accompany the traveler to the top of Gibbet Hill, a place where public executions were performed. The narrator falls asleep and awakens to find the kids performing a sort of ritual involving a snake. He's then tied to a stone by the children and perhaps subjected to another part of the ritual. He is awakened later by another couple viewing the hilltop with no sign of the children around.

It is a pretty straightforward short. Good but not overwhelming. The best part is reading something from 1890 and the vast difference in language style. For instance, this short passage is pretty Victorian. I've never read Stoker's Dracula so can't compare it that directly.

“There was no light, save the faint glimmer of the stars overhead, and the vague sheen that came from the snow, and all around was the stillness of death. The white covering of the ground and trees gave a new aspect to the place. Even the old gallows seemed less repulsive than usual, standing out white and ghastly against the blackness of the wood behind. Somehow the mystery of the place seemed accentuated by the whiteness, as though the shroud of nature gave a mute testimony to the grim tragedy of the past.”

Full text is available online since it is in public domain:

Gibbet Hill - Wikisource, the free online library

en.wikisource.org

This is the third short story published by Conversation Tree Press (Gibbet Hill). Also, interestingly, they included a letterpress Errata card. No idea what it is referring to specifically. Guessing just typos from the original 1890 text.

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Void That's great to hear. So far Swan Song has been very good. I'm pretty much flying through it given the normal speed at which I read (and compared to slogging through Tad Williams). Really looking forward to Boy's Life. I have the Suntup Classic Edition (Boy's Life) along with Swan Song that I picked up just because there was so much praise for these two novels. Normally would never purchase anything like that without reading first, but it seemed an okay bet in this case.

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Glad to hear you are liking Swan Song. To be fair, it is kind of just a variation on King's The Stand, but with better writing (in most parts, King was still the king of character back then) and more likable characters. It came out after The Stand so it suffered a LOT of comparison, and probably rightly so. Still a great book.

Boy's Life, however, is just miles and miles beyond it, and most other books I've ever read. It is good you are reading it second, because Swan Song would pale in comparison. No spoilers or anything, but despite it being from a time period just slightly before most of us, it will bring you back to those glorious days of being a kid where everything was amazing and an adventure. It might not have the same effect on female readers (the title is a giveaway there) but last time I read it I was literally grinning from ear to ear most of the time. If I had to pick one book I was stuck with on a deserted island, it would be Boy's Life, even given how much of a Black Company fan I am.

I realize I'm raising expectations far beyond what they should be, but I'm hopeful you'll agree after reading it.

Void said:

Glad to hear you are liking Swan Song. To be fair, it is kind of just a variation on King's The Stand, but with better writing (in most parts, King was still the king of character back then) and more likable characters. It came out after The Stand so it suffered a LOT of comparison, and probably rightly so. Still a great book.

Boy's Life, however, is just miles and miles beyond it, and most other books I've ever read. It is good you are reading it second, because Swan Song would pale in comparison. No spoilers or anything, but despite it being from a time period just slightly before most of us, it will bring you back to those glorious days of being a kid where everything was amazing and an adventure. It might not have the same effect on female readers (the title is a giveaway there) but last time I read it I was literally grinning from ear to ear most of the time. If I had to pick one book I was stuck with on a deserted island, it would be Boy's Life, even given how much of a Black Company fan I am.

I realize I'm raising expectations far beyond what they should be, but I'm hopeful you'll agree after reading it.

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Finished Swan Song finally, took a bit longer due to work and just being too tired at night to put in time. It was really great though. Highly enjoyed it and maybe didn’t keep the same level of greatness the whole way through, it was absolutely worth reading.

So I’ve also started Boy’s Life and in between did a little reading up on McCammon. Had no idea he is from Birmingham, AL seeing as how I grew up there. Really got me interested in the book. Even though it is set way before 1980 , still it is the South and I’m sure parts are relatable.

HOWEVER!! I’m like 10 pages into this and he’s spelling “y’all” as ya’ll. This is completely ridiculous. No way does someone who grew up down here make that mistake. And I can’t fathom why it would be intentional. It almost completely takes me out of the story. It was similar to Swan Song where he referred to every magazine as a “clip.” But this is about 1,000,000 times more egregious as a southerner. I’m honestly pretty rustled.

Shmoopy said:

Damn this shit is good. Best I've read in a long while.

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I have this book. I started his high fantasy series Licanius and lost interest a little ways into book 2. I found his writing style to be kind of mundane.

Is this more sci-fi fantasy? Why did you like it?