It's Critter Time!

This thread is here to let other forum users know what we just so happen to be reading. Be it from some dusty old tome or through some kind of new fangled device, all are welcome!

To kick things off, I'm currently reading:

The Call of Cthulhu and Other Weird Tales
by HP Lovecraft

It's a pretty neat Penguin Modern Classics paperback version. I already have a few compilations from Howard but this particular one caught my eye as it has a sizeable amount of cliff notes by ST Joshi. They point out numerous references, notes and other anecdotes connected to the original text and other goings on at the time worth a mention. Like how HP got paid a WHOPPING $350 for Whisperer in the Darkness back in the day. And how he liked to used the names of his fellow weird author peers for numerous different character names. Even tipping the hat to many other writers works, too.

Looking forward to seeing what all of you lot are on your current reading lists

That's an awesome collection of Mythos stories! Lots of classics in there.

I'm currently reading You Let Me In by Camilla Bruce. I picked it up as a blind date with a book selection. It's definitely not something I'd have chosen for myself. It's about an elderly romance writer with a troubled childhood/life who disappears and her heirs have to read a manuscript of her memoir to earn their inheritance. She recounts a lifelong relationship with a fey being, who are like a mix of ghosts and nature spirits, since young childhood, but there's the whole unreliable narrator aspect to it. I'm interested in seeing where it goes, but I'm not a fan of a book within a book format combined with unreliable narrator.

Currently about a third of the way through book 12 of He Who Fights With Monsters by Shirtaloon. I could go over to where it's hosted as a web novel but honestly Heath Miller's performance is peak and I need something to listen to while I'm working.

At this point in the series it's very much about trying not to backside into really harmful behavior and habits as a part of PTSD recovery and I appreciate how recovery isn't being shown as "And then he got better!" because good lord no he didn't.

I recently finished Camp Damascus by Chuck Tingle and it really brought me back to being a kid and reading Fear Street before I "should have been." I mean this in the most complimentary way. I think that's quite a feat now that I'm almost 40!

I'm currently reading A Fractured Infinity by Nathan Tavares. The synopsis pulled me in. I'm really early in it still but it's a really intriguing sci-fi story already!

A thrilling race across the multiverse to save the infinite Earths - and the love of your life - from total destruc- tion for fans of The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August, The Time Traveler's Wife and Everything, Everywhere, All at Once.

Film-maker Hayes Figueiredo is strug- gling to finish the documentary of his heart when handsome physicist Yusuf Hassan shows up, claiming Hayes is the key to understanding the Envisioner - a mysterious device that can predict the future.

Otherwise I've been reading a load of yuri manga that I'm afraid will result in too many words if I talk about it all at once!

In between books at the moment, but I do have the His Dark Materials series lined up next!

Finchtale wrote: Fri Jul 18, 2025 6:05 pm In between books at the moment, but I do have the His Dark Materials series lined up next!

Ah this is so good! Very meaningful to me as a kid and I feel like it holds up in a lot of ways. Hope you like it!

I’ve just started a book called Hunters Unlucky by Abigail Hilton. It is the start of a xenofiction series (talking animals/non-human focused) about several intelligent speculative species. It’s popular among other xenofiction enjoyers. I’m considering starting a thread for it because I’m enjoying it a lot and the Critter vibes are incredible. It feels a lot like how reading Warriors did as a kid - vibrant with foreign perspective, and brutally, honestly violent.

pel wrote: Sun Jul 20, 2025 1:20 am It feels a lot like how reading Warriors did as a kid - vibrant with foreign perspective, and brutally, honestly violent.

Honestly its really wild just how much kidlit gets away with because it doesn't immediately scan as violent. Animorphs was John Carpenter levels of violent and it stayed on shelves for basically forever

I just finished reading The Priory of the Orange Tree which was absolutely fantastic. I haven't read a book so long in a while but it felt near-perfectly paced throughout and I simply couldn't put it down. Beautiful queer love stories wrapped in an absolute banger of a fantasy epic. It shot to the top spots of my best books ever list.

I'm unsure what to pick up next. Lately I've been craving a reread of The Hobbit (for the fiftieth time) but I'm also halfway through The Inheritance Cycle and I'd really like to continue that (Brisingr is next).

I'm currently going back through Gaunt's Ghosts. I'm nearly finished with First and Only; I had forgotten just how good it was, so I'm very happy to have returned to it. I don't know if I'll read the entire 15 book series over again, though. I might go up to 3 or 6, as those are really solid breakpoints.

We read so slowly because we're dummies and keep going to bed too late. Enby "convinced" us to read War and Peace (did not actually try to do that just mentioned it.) That was months ago. The fight continues. Fantastic book though highly recommended

sugar wrote: Fri Jul 18, 2025 5:47 pm I recently finished Camp Damascus by Chuck Tingle and it really brought me back to being a kid and reading Fear Street before I "should have been." I mean this in the most complimentary way.

Tingle is actually a genuinely great horror writer. I have Bury Your Gays on my reading list at the moment. Damascus was a legitimate treat.

I'm on and off books at the moment. I have piles of quarter-finished works lying around. But the next on my list to finish up is Italo Calvino's Invisible Cities, which will probably be in the next day or two if I get my priorities right.

It's fascinating so far. It's basically a series of descriptions of fantastical (or perhaps not-so-fantastical) cities, or descriptions of how those cities are experienced or perceived or thought about. Really, it's city as metaphor, with a framing story that I won't divulge in part because I don't know where it leads yet. But I'd recommend it enough that I picked up a second copy to try to shove into the hands of friends.

Anyway, it's both poignant and terse, which I appreciate, as I am usually reading much drier, longer works. Prior to this it was Max Weber's The City, which was certainly enlightening about how European cities were operated and organized in antiquity and the Middle Ages, or at least it would be to someone able to secure a firmer grasp on it. In my defense (as if I need to defend failing a little bit, lol) I am experiencing a hell of a lot right now and I have no formal training in how to read this sort of thing.

Hmm, I used to read quite a lot but have fallen off in the recent years...

The last books I read I believe to have been:

- Pit Fighters and the Hayven Celestia series by Rick Griffin as well as the related novels by Gre7g Luterman
- The Turning by Arilin Thorferra

On my to read list currently are Saida & Autumn and Goddess, also by Arilin, as well as Kismet by Watts Martin.

Oh man, uh. Is anyone here interested in non-fiction?? It always feels so weird when people share fictional stories, and stories that have some kind of plot in general, while most of the stuff I read and actually enjoy, is science and non-fiction I think that comics (mangas included) would be the only fictional writing pieces that I actively look for and read

I tend to read quite a bit of non-fiction, mainly relating to stuff like music or video games. I love learning more about the things I like, and it's often easier for me to picture the things being discussed than to imagine fictional characters and settings from whatever I picture from the descriptions.

I highly enjoyed Bedsit Disco Queen and Naked at the Albert Hall by Tracey Thorn (singer/songwriter best known as one half of the awesome group Everything but the Girl); the former is her looking back on her music career, and the latter features various ponderings about the nature of singing in music. They're both excellent books, I love how candidly she's able to describe things and I resonated a lot with her sense of empathy and introspection. Naked at the Albert Hall is an especially good read for that reason, and it gave me plenty to think about.

Minotaur wrote: Fri Jul 25, 2025 8:41 pmmost of the stuff I read and actually enjoy, is science and non-fiction

Non-fiction has a home here as well as the made up stuff. I read a fair bit of non-fiction, some recent include a couple of politically driven books published by Dog Section Press.

Currently though I've started a hardback horror collection by the British Library called Halloweird : Classic Stories from the Season of Samhain. It includes some vintage poetry and short stories inspired by Ye Olde Hallowe'en that we used to celebrate here in the United Kingdom. Mostly Scotland and Ireland.

Yeah, most of what I read is non-fiction, at least right now. Eugen Weber's Peasants into Frenchmen was easily the most fascinating work I've read in a while -- just piles and piles of odd notes and observations and records of how rural France, even in the early 1900s, was way less French (or Parisian) than the state desired to admit (or allow).

I read a couple of Neil Postman's books recently. Some on teaching and, of course, Amusing Ourselves to Death. I'd say that I wonder what he'd make of Twitter, but, well, it's not all that different from TV and the telegraph. What else... Fraser and Jaeggi trying to really pin down capitalism, Harvey on capitalism and geography, other stuff that has already seeped entirely out of my head.

Non-fiction is nice sometimes. I like feeling like I understand the world a bit better even if I always walk away with more questions than answers.

Recently I finished up Creaky Acers for that good horsegirl content, in this case that means girl with horse not a girl wh is a horse, that would be when I re-read Dun Lady'y Jess, though I guess thats a horse who is a girl.

Anyway, just not a notification from my library that my copy of The Witch Roads, by Kate Elliot is in so going to start that and continue my read of the first volume of Hooky, which I have a printed copy of the web comic.

Minotaur wrote: Fri Jul 25, 2025 8:41 pm Oh man, uh. Is anyone here interested in non-fiction?? It always feels so weird when people share fictional stories, and stories that have some kind of plot in general, while most of the stuff I read and actually enjoy, is science and non-fiction I think that comics (mangas included) would be the only fictional writing pieces that I actively look for and read

I'm thinking about ordering a copy of this - though probably get the epub as the paper copy is print on demand and that quality tends to be ehhhhhh https://solar.lowtechmagazine.com/2023/ ... ot-spaces/

Been keeping up with Sakamoto Days and Ichi the Witch in Shonen Jump, but I'm not sure how much interest there is here in that kind of series.

Ichi does have magical girls and a bit of gender fuckery though.

I have finished "To shape a dragon's breath" by Moniquill Blackgoose recently. Set in an alternate 1840s with dragons, a native american girl finds a dragon egg from which a dragon hatches and bonds with her. Due to colonial laws, she is forced to attend a "Dragoneer" school run by the colonizers. I liked it a lot, did write a longer thing about it over on my tumblr: https://a-random-foxperson.tumblr.com/p ... n-s-breath

Currently i reading on "The Clockwork rocket" by Greg Egan. It explores a universe with very different physical laws than ours, all stemming from one change in an equation from a + to a -. The author has a lot written up about the physics of that world on his website: https://www.gregegan.net/ORTHOGONAL/ORTHOGONAL.html