Earlier this year I finished Transmetropolitan, Book 1 by Warren Ellis and art by Darick Robertson among others, and loaned it to a friend. It's a comic book, but books be books dang it. That however, along with one recommendation from a YouTuber I watch, had me purchase two books to get back to reading. Blood Meridian by Cormac McCarthy and The Postman by David Brin. Never heard of Blood Meridian until recently and I only know some things about The Postman from reading through TV Tropes.

EDIT:

The fat man got out of the bath and dried off but still damp in the legs and the various crevices of his body. The music he was playing while reading his new novel still continued as he returned to his bedroom to log onto the computer and turn on the boxy desk lamp while fixing a box fan from the chair into a more comfortable position on a box a foot or two away from the chair, the air blowing where he is sitting. He pulls up an internet browser and goes onto a website, checking if there are any replies to his most recent post. A black and white dog enters the room and lays on the bed behind the fat man as he reads through the general discussion forum containing many thread titles in korean. He clicks on the Books finished in 2023 link, still grayed out without any further updates.

I read through the first couple of chapters of Blood Meridian he began to type.
It's kind of hard to read at first because it's not written in the typical novel style he further writes before pausing.

He clicked on the wikipedia tab and typed beige prose into the search bar before pressing the enter key and looked over the results before creating a new tab and typing those same words. The search results brought up a TV Tropes link as the first result, the next few further describing the concept.

The writing is more of a description of things happening he writes in the box continuing where he left off.
It doesn't use quotation marks, so it breaks up dialogues in these sections.
I think it's kinda neat but it does force you to pay more attention to the writing since the narration is minimal in its poetry.

He then clicks on the Post my message button, updating the contents of the post with elaboration mimicking the book he read before taking a bath.

I thought The Postman was solid even if not Brin's strongest. The film was about the same, good but not excellent. Maybe it strikes a chord with someone actually living in the USA.

The Hidden Life of Trees

Reading this book shortly after Brilliant Green probably made me have an even better opinion of it, since it’s so much better. The author presents a lot of information at a rapid pace, but to some extent also wraps it in a narrative and helps the reader draw some mental images that make it that much easier to read and understand. Also, while making connections and returning to various matters when appropriate, he doesn’t dwell on any one issue, avoids “preaching” and, in fact, doesn’t insist on conclusions or interpretations. They do exist, but they’re usually just mentioned briefly, along with either a reference to either a study or a personal experience that supports them, or with the statement that they’re merely personal opinions, and then the author moves on.
The overall picture is rather sad, for both trees and people. In some ways, like understanding how hurt most trees are and how many are dying for periods ranging between years and centuries before they can no longer hold on, that’s unavoidable, since that’s life. And the unpleasant feelings generated by truly understanding that any proper rewilding, or in fact even the growth of pretty much any tree that actually develops properly, can’t be observed in one lifetime, and perhaps not even over a few generations, should likely be fought against, because they’re the result of selfishness. But seeing those periods of time as how long it’ll take to fix the damage and understanding how doomed and potentially harmful even well-intentioned efforts, like planting trees or creating urban green spaces, usually are is a painful reminder of how hopeless the situation is.
Otherwise, I find little to complain about when it comes to the book itself, except perhaps that it focuses too much on local matters and experiences but is presented as generally applicable. However, the translated edition that I read could have been adapted to some extent and it wasn’t, plus that there were a handful of obvious translation mistakes, so I wonder how many others I failed to notice.

Rating: 4/5

The Thorn Birds - Colleen McCullough

A family saga full of hope, love, hardships and tragedies; a fairly popular story if I understood correctly.
I liked it more than I had hoped, wholeheartedly recommended.

It's a... reasonable rating. Something should really bother to give less and impress to give more, and the pros and cons must not balance each other out.
Plus that if you convert from out of ten or a percentage rating, three stars probably gets a wider range than anything bar possibly one star.

Helliconia Spring by Brian W. Aldiss

Helliconia is a planet with over 2500 Earth years solar orbit. Winter is almost over. Glaciers are melting. Man fights with phagors, intelligent bipedal furry beasts. A young man escapes his brutal life of near starvation lifestyle supporting his parents to a underground mountain settlement.

I started the 2nd book, Helliconia Summer, but I found large book by H.P. Lovecraft. I've heard quite a bit about him but never read a single story.

The Whitestar Queen

I randomly picked this up for free at some point, but it’s not even worth that, because there’s still the cost of the time wasted reading it, in case you actually do. As such, its one saving grace is that the page count seems wrong, because it only took me about an hour to read it and I could get it done in a single sitting, since it’d have been difficult to make myself continue if I’d have stopped.
I didn’t check, but maybe it was written by a kid, in which case that may be an excuse. And I’m not even referring to all of the mistakes, but to the childish story, structure and characters, the events that don’t stand the slightest scrutiny and, in general, the fact that it offers no reason whatsoever to put up with it even for that one hour, unless you really want to avoid leaving something you happened to grab unread. It’s the sort of thing that should make whoever put it out there want to hide from the world in embarrassment.

Rating: 1/5

I read that series many years ago and really enjoyed it.

Eragon by Chistopher Paolini.
7.5/10
A pretty good fantasy story, but I'm liking book 2 better, so far.

Recommended

This one feels epic, doesn't it? One gets to see a whole world changing. Very suggestive.

Deteriorare Garantata (Guaranteed Deterioration)

Note: There doesn't seem to be an English edition, so I listed the Romanian title above and then translated it to English. The original French title is "Bon Pour La Casse: Les déraisons de l'obsolescence programmée".

The small size of this book makes it clear that it doesn't go in depth, but it does a good enough job of pointing out not just the problems generated by planned obsolescence, which are all too obvious, but also that the concepts and practices that it's based on are hardly new, some having existed throughout human civilization and only becoming worse and more widespread as more methods became available to those who stood to gain from them and the general public became more complicit. It also stresses the undeniably harmful role of marketing and advertising in general, points out the impossibility of endless growth and that environmental limits will soon put a stop to humanity's current production and consumption patterns, and eventually, in the conclusion, presents some solutions.
However, I'm actually tempted to say that the author tried too hard to be balanced when presenting the matter from the point of view of the economy, and even let those economic considerations cloud the attempt to discuss the ethical aspects of these practices, to the point that I found that entire section more or less meaningless. There was also far too little emphasis on the environmental aspects, at least in my view. But perhaps the biggest problem is that the proposed solutions come too late, are presented too briefly and, despite complaining that some of the quoted works and authors don't go far enough with their proposals, may be guilty of the same thing. Yes, at the end it is stated that the solutions will need to be imposed through regulations and require overhauling the economy and even society, reducing consumption most preferably without reducing the standard or quality of life, but some of the specifics are only briefly mentioned at the very end and the intermediate steps that are presented in more detail tend to bother me, especially when it comes to renting.

Rating: 3/5

Ziua Victoriei (Victory Day)

This is a collection of short stories with fantasy elements that generally take place during the current invasion of Ukraine. The one exception, in terms of setting, is the first one, which is still presented from the point of view of a Ukrainian, but takes place in an alternate, dystopian reality, where Russia seems to pretty much rule the world. And that’s also one of the better ones in the book, and it makes a good point as well. And the same can be said about the third, though it probably overdoes the effect of state propaganda on Russians, at least at this point. On the other hand, I’m not quite sure what to say about the fifth, since it’s basically Doctor Who fan fiction and those familiar with that universe would be much better placed to comment, but it does look like quite a lot of effort was put into it… Though somebody “managed” to lose count of its chapters…
All but one of the rest are little bits of imagination that don’t aim too high, but at least the fourth and the seventh are good enough overall, at least for such short stories. The sixth is less so, and I wouldn’t even consider it as having a fantasy element, plus that “managing” to misspell National Geographic made me raise an eyebrow, but I wouldn’t necessarily call it bad either. I will do so when it comes to the second and the eighth, however, and while that eighth one is just a little thing that might not have really been meant to make much sense anyway, the second one seems to have aimed higher but failed, dragging on for a while without saying much, being written in a style that I’m not fond of, and having fantasy aspects that hardly make any sense whatsoever.

Rating: 3/5

I just finished LE Modesitt Jr's Corean Chronicles Books 1-3 (The Alucius Arc) and wow. It is fantastic. I'm so glad that Feran survives to the end--I like him perhaps best of all the supporting characters. I wish more had been described of the Efran's art.
10/10
10/10
10/10
for the trilogy!

Please include me too.

Books finished:

The funny thing about Norman Foreman byJulietta Henderson
A very charming novel about a 12 year old boy who sets out to fulfil the shared life dream of his best friend who recently died. And who also tries to find his biological father on the same journey. And about a mother who will do anything to support her boy and who faces her past on this journey. Also a book about friendship and loyalty. All in all the most positive book I have read in a long time, without being kitsch. It is very funny, heartwarming and exciting. A 100% recommendation.

Sincerely me by the same author
Having been so impressed with her first book, I had to get her second one too. And she did it again. This is a charming story about a loser, who suddenly becomes responsible for his niece, his sister and a lot of strangers who look to him for advice because of a journalistic accident. While the book doesn't have as big an emotional impact as the first one, it is still a very good read.

Tales from Watership Down by Richard Adams
The sequel to the famous Watership Down. It's a collection of stories the Rabbits tell each other. Very entertaining and funny, especially if you know the characters from the main book. I think this is a very nice book for fans, but those who don't know Watership Down would do better to read the novel first, before diving into this collection of short stories.


Der Buchspazierer (The Bookwalker) by Carsten Henn
A German book about an old man who used to carry books to customers who want to have them delivered to their homes. (This is before the invention of online shopping). When he is retired, he is encouraged to keep doing his rounds by a young girl who likes to roam the streets as well. So he becomes self employed and buys books for reclusive people who don't like to go to bookshops themselves. He has a unique way of seeing the world through the lens of all the novels he has read. And following him on his journey through literature and into the lives of strange people is a very interesting read. Not much action in this book, but lots of observation of lonely people and their quirks and about the power of literature to form bonds. Recommended for readers who like thought provoking but quiet books.