The 'Currently Reading' Thread.

[The Gaffer]

I like Pratchett but I need to do him in small doses. The frenetic writing style, running gags, lack of chapter structure etc. I'm completely worn of it after even one of his really good books. Which is fair, I guess. Nobody's prescribing a binge read and had I started reading them as they came out, I imagine only having the one new book to read each time it released was a great routine. 

I'm on a two year and counting tolerance break from fantasy books in general, as it happens. It will probably end some day, but I can say with full honesty right now it doesn't feel like it will and I don't want it to, having barrelled through most of the big, big series in the few years leading up to and during covid. 

I go through these periods where I find high fantasy/sci fi dissociating (yes, I intellectualise stuff too much. Got the t-shirt, taking the therapy...) and it genuinely bums me out. The antidote being to crave the suburban mundanity of stuff like Irvine Welsh, Douglas Coupland etc.

Music and sports books are great for it too. Reading Brian Eno's diaries at the moment and that's a nice example of the mundanity.

I'll devour music books about periods I already know like the back of my hand, though admittedly even for me the market surely by now has enough books based on how Manchester was really heavy, then really cool, then people took loads of pills and lost a load of money. 

Edited March 13, 2025 by The Gaffer

[Devon Malcolm]

@neil how the hell have you not shut this one yet?

[neil]

Fucking hell this thread is so old that Johannes Gutenberg hadn't even finished his groundbreaking invention "the printing press" when it started.