Been a bit too busy to read lately, but now that the holidays are here I'm making up for that in spades.
After finally finishing Moby Dick for the second time (it took a while, but then, it's kind of supposed to), I moved on to shorter, easier to digest fiction.
John Carter of Mars by Edgar Rice Burroughs - my brother gave me an omnibus of the first five novels as a present back in September, and I finally got around to reading it. Well, the first three novels anyway. It's basically popcorn literature - sword-swinging, beautiful princesses to rescue, planets to explore, daring deeds to daring-do, etc. It's also incredibly Victorian in its world-view, with thiny disguised equivalents to racist concepts of ethnicity, and John Carter himself cast as the white saviour of Mars. It was fun in that "Oh my gosh, how could he get away with this kind of thing?" sort of way, but by the end of the third novel, I was so done.
Three Moments of an Explosion by China MiƩville - I love MiƩville's novels (some more than others), but this short story collection was kind of hit or miss for me. Some of the stories I absolutely loved (The Rope is the World, Covehithe, The Dowager of Bees, etc.), while others fell very flat for me. Worth the read, but probably won't read the whole thing again.
Welcome to Night Vale the novel - this felt like an extended version of an episode of the podcast, which worked brilliantly for someone like me, who loves the podcast. How it works for people who aren't familiar with the podcast, I can't tell, but I imagine it takes a bit of getting used to - the novel, while not spoiling or relying on pre-knowledge of WTNV to understand the plot, still very much carries the voice of the podcast, which is distinct and unusal. It's probably best to know that WTNV is magical realism at its most bizarre going in.
... and now I'm reading Jonathan L. Howard's Carter and Lovecraft, which I got for Christmas. It's interesting so far, and it's nice to see Howard actually acknowledge and deal with the fact that Lovecraft was virulently racist.
Next up after that - probably The Brothers Cabal, also by Howard.