{"id":5333,"date":"2023-11-27T17:58:45","date_gmt":"2023-11-27T17:58:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.novonon.com\/blog\/?p=5333"},"modified":"2023-11-29T21:34:12","modified_gmt":"2023-11-29T21:34:12","slug":"recent-ish-books","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.novonon.com\/blog\/2023\/11\/27\/recent-ish-books\/","title":{"rendered":"Recent-ish Books"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>A friend recently asked me via email what books I&#8217;ve been liking over the past few years, and I figured I&#8217;d copy\/paste my answer here. Some of these I may have recommended before.<\/p>\n<hr \/>\n<div><\/div>\n<ul>\n<li><em><a href=\"https:\/\/www.goodreads.com\/book\/show\/42036538-gideon-the-ninth\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" data-saferedirecturl=\"https:\/\/www.google.com\/url?q=https:\/\/www.goodreads.com\/book\/show\/42036538-gideon-the-ninth&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1701184466338000&amp;usg=AOvVaw3ukTjENVZvkav5NtUY6bCA\">Gideon the Ninth<\/a><\/em> and its sequels (three of four books are published) is a spectacular, extremely genre-bending (sci fi \/ fantasy \/ horror \/ queer fiction \/ mystery \/ etc), and very funny book that Charles Stross described as &#8220;Lesbian necromancers explore a haunted gothic palace in space! Decadent nobles vie to serve the deathless emperor! Skeletons!&#8221;<\/li>\n<li>There&#8217;s an interesting (very long!) work, <em><a href=\"https:\/\/www.projectlawful.com\/board_sections\/703\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" data-saferedirecturl=\"https:\/\/www.google.com\/url?q=https:\/\/www.projectlawful.com\/board_sections\/703&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1701184466338000&amp;usg=AOvVaw2IqyByvufJ-eaGMLSXTurB\">Project Lawful<\/a><\/em>, which is &#8212; a bit hard to describe. It&#8217;s written collaboratively in the form of a web forum, and is sort of partway between a novel and a role-playing game. It&#8217;s about someone from an advanced society ending up in a D&amp;D world, in a deeply evil country ruled by devils, and trying to work with them. Lots of BDSM although that&#8217;s skippable if you&#8217;d prefer. It&#8217;s by the same author as <a href=\"https:\/\/hpmor.com\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" data-saferedirecturl=\"https:\/\/www.google.com\/url?q=https:\/\/hpmor.com&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1701184466338000&amp;usg=AOvVaw0ntFQSARKrVpGZSgMm-lmV\">Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality<\/a>, and if you haven&#8217;t read that one before I&#8217;d probably start there unless the subject matter of the first one seems more appealing.<\/li>\n<li><em><a href=\"https:\/\/www.goodreads.com\/book\/show\/25499718-children-of-time\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" data-saferedirecturl=\"https:\/\/www.google.com\/url?q=https:\/\/www.goodreads.com\/book\/show\/25499718-children-of-time&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1701184466338000&amp;usg=AOvVaw1xuKQgSN_w3Vw8iosgfj05\">Children of Time<\/a><\/em> (first of a trilogy) is sci fi, and one of the best books I&#8217;ve ever read at presenting aliens that aren&#8217;t just humans with funny foreheads but are <i>truly<\/i> alien&#8230;although they <i>are<\/i> based on kinds of animals you&#8217;re familiar with.<\/li>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/qntm.org\/fiction\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" data-saferedirecturl=\"https:\/\/www.google.com\/url?q=https:\/\/qntm.org\/fiction&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1701184466338000&amp;usg=AOvVaw0oSxMkMIqnLKWd4aKht4Vm\">qntm<\/a> is a mostly-online writer, kind of horrorish but often more like meta-horror, who I&#8217;ve been really into in the past year or so. His short stories are terrific (<a href=\"https:\/\/qntm.org\/mmacevedo\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" data-saferedirecturl=\"https:\/\/www.google.com\/url?q=https:\/\/qntm.org\/mmacevedo&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1701184466338000&amp;usg=AOvVaw3iQOGHWLYq5-HgdByWA78k\">this<\/a> is probably his best known), and my favorite book of his (also free online) is <em><a href=\"https:\/\/qntm.org\/mmacevedo\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" data-saferedirecturl=\"https:\/\/www.google.com\/url?q=https:\/\/qntm.org\/mmacevedo&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1701184466338000&amp;usg=AOvVaw3iQOGHWLYq5-HgdByWA78k\">There is no Antimemetics Division<\/a><\/em>, set in the massively collaborative alternate reality of <a href=\"https:\/\/scp-wiki.wikidot.com\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" data-saferedirecturl=\"https:\/\/www.google.com\/url?q=https:\/\/scp-wiki.wikidot.com\/&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1701184466338000&amp;usg=AOvVaw2-UNz4jkN-UyL4RKcuWX2m\">the SCP Foundation<\/a>.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A friend recently asked me via email what books I&#8217;ve been liking over the past few years, and I figured I&#8217;d copy\/paste my answer here. Some of these I may have recommended before. Gideon the Ninth and its sequels (three of four books are published) is a spectacular, extremely genre-bending (sci fi \/ fantasy \/ [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[4],"class_list":["post-5333","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-books"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3pfIY-1o1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.novonon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5333","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.novonon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.novonon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.novonon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.novonon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5333"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.novonon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5333\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5345,"href":"https:\/\/www.novonon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5333\/revisions\/5345"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.novonon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5333"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.novonon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5333"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.novonon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5333"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}