Books Read 2025

[Ack]

1. When Gravity Fails, by George Alec Effinger
2. Pegasus in Flight, by Anne McCaffrey
3. Buck Rogers in the 25th Century, by Addison E. Steele
4. Gun Machine, by Warren Ellis

An aging, bookish detective who hasn't been good at his job in years sees his partner gunned down in a filthy stairwell and then ends up discovering an apartment arranged nearly wall to wall with guns, each one used in an unsolved homicide. Saddled with the case as a punishment, he launches an investigation that delves into assassinations, Manhattan history, and total insanity. Wonderful.

Warren Ellis writes his novels with a fantastic pacing and style. Gun Machine moves and flows. It's at times bizarre, gory, and wicked in how it skewers society but also entrancing and exciting. This was a wonderful read, and it also serves as a love letter to Manhattan, particularly lower Manhattan, and its history from before Dutch colonists first arrived. I absolutely loved it.

It was also a much needed changing of gears from the last book I read. I feel refreshed for it. I hope the next keeps me as excited.

[TheSSNintendo]

Finished Ready Player Two a couple weeks ago. It's decent, but the first one was better. Got plenty of other books laying around to catch up on.

[Jagosaurus]

I've been slowly making my way though the Liaden Universe... it's 28 books but a fun sci-fi "vacation read" space opera series/universe spanning back to the 80s.

Also finished (re-reads) Brave New World & Fahrenheit 451. Re-reading 1984 now. Scary much has come true... putting my phone down now lol

I've been studying & reading network engineering & wireless engineering certification/exam guide books too . Exciting stuff ... but I actually do enjoy it

[SamuraiMegas]

1) I'm Glad My Mom Died
2) Tommy Chong Autobiography

3) 12 Days In America: The Story of the Sex Pistols (I think that's the title, I don't have it sitting in front of me lol ) by Noel Monk

I'm gonna come out the gate and admit I don't really like the music of the sex pistols very much (Anarchy in the UK is a great track though), but I do enjoy old punk music and find the scene at the time interesting.
The story surrounding the band is far more entertaining than the music in this case to be honest haha.

[TheSSNintendo]

Finished reading "The Fresh Prince Project", which was an interesting look into some back story for the Fresh Prince of Bel-Air series.

[prfsnl_gmr]

I wrapped up The Fall of Numenor this morning, completing my journey with Tolkien’s works. The Fall of Numenor pulls together all of Tolkien’s notes, letters, unfinished works, etc to create a comprehensive history of Middle Earth’s Second Age. It’s awesome, and it’s right up there with my favorite of Tolkien’s works.

After reading it, it’s more apparent how Amazon’s The Rings of Power deviates from Tolkien’s vision. IMO, though, it makes me appreciate the deviations a bit more because, frankly, Tolkien’s vision wouldn’t make for great TV. (It makes a great fictional history, and would work if The Rings of Power were a faux documentary. I’m not sure that’s what viewers would want, though!)

……

Here are my thoughts on each work, in fictional chronological order:

The Silmarillion: A mythological history of Middle Earth’s First Age. It’s great background information, but a tough read and my least favorite of Tolkien’s works.

The Great Tales of Middle Earth: This three-volume series assembles the most developed of Tolkien’s great tales from Middle Earth’s First Age. All of these tales appear in the Silmarillion, but they’re more fun to read here.

- The Children of Hurin: This is the most developed of the Great Tales, chronicling Morgoth’s torment of his most-hated human foe. Mostly, it follows Turin, The Black Sword (who’s basically an OP Elden Ring summon character), as Morgoth pursues and, eventually, destroys him. Solid story that, unfortunately, drags a bit at time. Still, I enjoyed it.

- Beren and Luthien: This retells Tolkien’s first fantasy story - which chronicles the romance between a human man, Beren, and an elven woman, Luthien - three times. It’s a pretty good story, and it is very interesting to see how it changed from one iteration to the next (e.g., Sauron was conceived initially as Tevildo, The Prince of Cats!). I enjoyed this one much, much more than I anticipated, and recommend it highly to anyone interested in either Middle Earth or Tolkien’s unique writing process.

- The Fall of Gondolin: This chronicles Morgoth’s assault on Gondolin, the elves’ hidden stronghold, during the First Age. It’s awesome, and I really, really wish Tolkien had finished it. (He completed several shorter versions, but he only got about halfway through his most detailed narrative.)

The Fall of Numenor: Awesome history of Middle Earth’s Second Age, chronicling the rise and fall of Numenor, the forging of the Rings of Power, and Sauron’s attempts to conquer Middle Earth. It concludes with Sauron’s defeat, the Ring of Power’s loss, and a short history of the Third Age events leading up to The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings.

The Adventures of Tom Bombadil: This is a short collection of poems mostly about Tom Bombadil, the Lord of the Rings’ worst, most boring character. Thankfully, the poems are pretty fun, and you can get through them in less than an hour. Not exactly essential Tolkien, but not too bad (and way better than the Tom Bombadil chapters in The Fellowship of the Rings).

The Hobbit: Bilbo’s adventure is a stone-cold classic and Tolkien’s best standalone tale.

The Lord of the Rings: This is Tolkien’s masterpiece and still, arguably, the best high fantasy series of all time.

[MrPopo]

After reading it, it’s more apparent how Amazon’s The Rings of Power deviates from Tolkien’s vision. IMO, though, it makes me appreciate the deviations a bit more because, frankly, Tolkien’s vision wouldn’t make for great TV. (It makes a great fictional history, and would work if The Rings of Power were a faux documentary. I’m not sure that’s what viewers would want, though!)

Amazon is also restricted to just what's in the Appendices, which means they can't pull from other sources like stuff in Unfinished Tales and other notes. And, as you point out, the way the story is told is over centuries, which doesn't make for great TV.

The Silmarillion: A mythological history of Middle Earth’s First Age. It’s great background information, but a tough read and my least favorite of Tolkien’s works.

See, this is my favorite because it focuses on the worldbuilding, and only has traditional prose in a few spots (Beren and Luthien, Tuor Turambar). And I find Tolkein's prose to be pretty clumsy. I've only made it through rereads of The Hobbit, not LotR. But I've done Silmarillion multiple times because it focuses on what I find to be his strengths; the worldbuilding.

[prfsnl_gmr]

See, this is my favorite because it focuses on the worldbuilding, and only has traditional prose in a few spots (Beren and Luthien, Tuor Turambar). And I find Tolkein's prose to be pretty clumsy. I've only made it through rereads of The Hobbit, not LotR. But I've done Silmarillion multiple times because it focuses on what I find to be his strengths; the worldbuilding.

That is a hot take!

I think Tolkien writes beautifully, and I think he tells great stories…when he finishes them. I feel like he so often got so lost in his own lore (and, in his lifetime, faced with so many professional setbacks) that he just couldn’t cross the finish line on what might have been some of his best work.

Have you read The Fall of Numenor? If you like The Silmarillion, I think you’d like that too.

[ElkinFencer10]

Ohhh lemme get in on this. I've been reading a lot lately.

1. Everything's Eventual by Stephen King
2. Rose Madder by Stephen King
3. Desperation by Stephen King
4. The Regulators by Stephen King
5. The Dark Tower I - The Gunslinger by Stephen King
6. The Dark Tower II - The Drawing of the Three by Stephen King
7. The Dark Tower III - The Wastelands by Stephen King

To give some more context to my reading spree, here's what I read from August to December last year (since my brain will always think in terms of academic years).

1. Expeditionary Force - Zero Hour by Craig Alanson
2. Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee by Dee Brown
3. Expeditionary Force - Mavericks by Craig Alanson
4. It by Stephen King
5. The Stand by Stephen King
6. Salem's Lot by Stephen King
7. The Eyes of the Dragon by Stephen King
8. Hearts in Atlantis by Stephen King
9. The Talisman by Stephen King and Peter Straub
10. Black House by Stephen King and Peter Straub

[Ack]

1. When Gravity Fails, by George Alec Effinger
2. Pegasus in Flight, by Anne McCaffrey
3. Buck Rogers in the 25th Century, by Addison E. Steele
4. Gun Machine, by Warren Ellis
5. The City and the Stars, by Arthur C. Clarke
6. Ship of the Line, by C. S. Forrester

My introduction to Arthur C. Clarke was Childhood's End, and I always appreciated its big ideas about a racial memory and evolutionary growth. But it didn't prepare me for the farthest future of The City and the Stars, where humanity has expanded throughout the galaxy and then contracted back to a small piece of Earth, where they then reside for a billion years, intentionally giving up the desire to go out and explore until a unique individual is created by the city machines to potentially break the stalemate.

I have never read anything this far out, and it is both uplifting in how it recaptures the human need to explore and despairing in the inevitability of running out of things to explore and retreating to a life of unproductive leisure for the species, only to go back out and learn that the galaxy is largely empty now and left for the superior interdimensional beings that will inherit it at its end.

It is both bleak and somehow not at the same time. But it's a big outlook on where we will possibly go many, many millennia from now. It may actually be the furthest science fiction book I have ever read, set so far in the future that our pre-space flight days are barely even a sneeze in the lifespan of our species. Brilliant.


Ship of the Line is the second of the Horatio Hornblower novels to be released, though it's set around the middle of the series timeline. Hornblower now finds himself captaining a ship of the line as part of a small fleet in the western Mediterranean, where he harasses Napoleonic French and their allies while dealing with the problems of an unhappy ocean, the realities of weak alliances, and the frustrations of an untalented senior officer. Annoyingly, it ends on cliffhanger.

Hornblower also captures the majestic and disgusting nature of early 19th century naval life and combat. It's a generally unromantic view of nautical adventure, seen through the lens of a man who also struggles with his own anxieties and depression despite his obvious talent. Hornblower is intensely relatable for me, which is part of why I enjoy these books so much despite being so often put off of ever going out on the ocean. Still, I'm happy to experience it here. I recommend the Hornblower books from what I have read and look forward to more.