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What book(s) are you currently reading or listening to? January 06 (discuss.online)
submitted 10 months ago by to c/books@lemmy.world
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Welcome to year's first weekly thread! How are you all doing? And what are you book / reading related resolutions for this year?

I started Ultra-processed Food by Chris van Tulleken

Just started it, but looks like an interesting read. It's about the ultra-processed food we eat these days.

Also skimming through Ryder Caroll's The Bullet Journal Method. Read this last year (or was that year before that?) and wanted to check something but decided to skim through most of it.

Still reading The Bands of Mourning by Brandon Sanderson, 3rd book in the 2nd era of Mistborn. It was going great but didn't get to read much last week or so, should be getting back to it now.

What about all of you? What have you been reading or listening to lately?

For details on the c/Books bingo challenge that just restarted for the year, you can checkout the initial Book Bingo, and its Recommendation Post. Links are also present in our community sidebar.

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[–] 6 points 10 months ago (4 children)

I’m halfway through Star Wars “The Truce at Bakura”. Follows immediately after movie 6, and follows Han, Leia and Chewy.

But what I’m excited for is after I’m done, reading book 2 of Silo series next. The first book I read in 2.5 days…

As an aside, watching the show with the wife too, done episode 3. No spoilers, but it tells a slightly different story with the same major plot points so far. Big differences that could affect book story lines are, book has steel stairs and doors on every level, the show is concrete and open. They also pulling future stories, so if you want to read the books, episode 2 spoils the ending of book 1.

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  • [–] 4 points 10 months ago (3 children)

    I still own and occasionally re-read some of the Star Wars Expanded Universe (EU) novels, which are relabeled to the non-canon "Star Wars Legends" now. IMO, they're so much better than the direction the Disney canon went. Since they're by so many different authors, the quality varies wildly, but I'd say my favorites are Timothy Zahn, Michael Stackpole, and maybe Kevin J. Anderson. But some other individual books or trilogies are great, too. The whole thing is huge, but frankly just fun serialized reads, so not too difficult to get into.

    Truce at Bakura kind of kicks off the whole thing, but the best intro is the trilogy by Timothy Zahn, which starts with Heir to the Empire. There's a few books in-between Truce and Heir if you want, like The Courtship of Princess Leia and the excellent X-Wing series, but I think the Zahn trilogy really sets the bar high for everything. If you're interested in following up, that's where I'd go next, and then you can go back and fill in the others if you wish. One of the issues with the EU is that while you don't need to read every book/comic, they do form a continuity, so it can be mildly confusing if you read a reference to something you haven't read about yet.

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  • [–] 3 points 10 months ago* (2 children)

    Thrawn was the first trilogy I read, then I did the two horror ones. Now I’m reading them in chronological order, so I’ve read 90ish of the 150+ legends books.

    I do enjoy seeing each of the “random” authors be able to tell a story about their profession, like med star, the author was a biologist. So lots of medical jargon.

    The only things I haven’t read are the YA stories and the comics. My brothers collected all of the books, and he’s started on the comics slowly as well.

    I’m excited to get to the X-wing 10 book series, it’s one of the few my brother has also read. He’s read most of the new Jedi order era.

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  • [–] 3 points 10 months ago (1 child)

    Oh, I thought you were a newbie; you're an expert! I never really read much of the comics or YA novels either, except for Dark Empire, because I was tired of references to the revived Emperor that I didn't understand.

    The X-Wing books are great, but take place in a few spots in-between the other books, so that'll be a fun revisit of older stories. The New Jedi Order is a re-envisioning that is over a massive number of books, but feels like every book goes so fast or has major consequences. Be prepared to be upset about characters you might love, but I think it's close to the peak. I believe the many authors got together and plotted out the whole thing before it started, which is nice. What comes after is okay, but I think they knew Disney was buying by that point, so there's not a great "ending," even if some novels are still delightful. Also, if you haven't read some of the Tales books, like Tales of the Bounty Hunters, those are fun (mostly) self-contained stories you can hit in-between the main novels.

    Man, I wonder if I should start a full reread. I'm sure I've forgotten so much that I would still be surprised by plots.

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  • [–] 1 point 10 months ago*

    It’s interesting you mention the Tales of, and the NJO being good because that one they worked together. The Tales of worked like that, a collection of short stories that combined at one point.

    I enjoy OLD (ancient?) scifi-fi and it’s predominantly short stories as full books were too risky to publish at first. So the short story collections almost worked as a homage to them for me.

    I started about 3 years ago and have read a SW book and then another book, and back. I’ve read Dune, The Expanse, and hitchhikers to name drop a few books/series. Sometimes it’s takes a couple months to finish a book, good the later Dunes were slow, sometimes a few days. Life’s fun.

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