What are you reading?

But do you still have enough snacks?

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Orwell 's 1984 and “Say Nothing” by Patrick Radden Keefe.

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Thanks for the reminder!
Just one bag of chips left and two new bags of pepernoten, so stocking up again quickly seems like a very good idea to me! :face_savoring_food:

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Currently reading The Tainted Cup by Robert Jackson Bennett.

Quite extraordinary fantasy/murder mystery mashup with heavy undertones of Sherlock Holmes/Nero Wolfe/Judge Dee. Fabulous in its worldbuilding with some Japanese/Asian influences in the setting - subtropical/tropical jungle and coastal locations - and a basic premise of a society constantly under attack from mysterious sea creatures. In order to face this threat society is thoroughly militarised at some pre-gunpowder, pre-steam machine level - but heavily advanced in augmentation of plants and humans to near-supernatural levels. A society based on - very specific - biological improvements and to some extent consumed by constant, annual warfare with mysterious titans who attack from a deep sea level.

At once we meet with a military hierarchy that permeates the rural setting as well as with political machinations, crime and murder at the fringes of this country under siege. Very intriguing and promising quite a bit of skulduggery and mayhem down the road. I’m only 80 pages in but it’s hugely entertaining so far…

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Sounds right up my alley, will check it out!

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I particularly like that it’s fantasy with a working - as far as one can judge from the slice revealed so far - society and economy. That’s often not the case with ‘high fantasy’ and the sword & sorcery subgenre as Tolkien and Howard imagined it. It’s nebulous how elves, dwarves and hobbits organise their societies and trade and interact with each other and the humans in their world.

Why do dwarves amass mountains of gold and gems when all they could do with it is pile more onto them? Why would immortal elves do anything at all? Who is producing all the clothes, furniture and silverware hobbits deck out their hobbit holes with? And why would a sorcerer like Gandalf moonlight as travelling fireworks organiser and who pays for them?

It all works fine until somebody asks for a recipe for their tax return…

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„They are too complex for anybody to understand and still being audited.“

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A worn torn read to shreds paperback copy circa 1975 sits on my nightstand.

It’s always good for a bed time story

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20,000 Leagues Under the Sea. Not sure how I never got around to reading it, but better late than never. Also, reading a Minecraft tie-in book to my son. It’s written by the same guy who wrote World War Z (Max Brooks, son of Mel Brooks and Anne Bancroft), but completely lacks any of the enthusiasm of that book. My son likes it though, granted he is only 7.

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