A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms by GRRM.

I love this world so much, and GRRM really put a lot of effort into making it vivid. I remember awhile ago someone commented that they know more about Westeros history than Europe which I found hilarious because of how true it is. I found the tone of these novels to be completely different from ASOIAF, but it was a shift in tone that I enjoyed. Would recommend to anyone who enjoyed ASOIAF.

Cosmic Queries by Neil DeGrasse Tyson with James Trefil.

All kinds of answers to questions about what our understanding of the universe is, how we came to have that understanding, and where we think things are headed. As you'd expect, he does a great job of bringing scientific information down to where the common person can understand it.

Recommend for those that are into such things, but I'm a fan, so YMMV.

Just finished and agree with Kiosk. And I'm a lifelong Montaigne reader and fan. He is anti dogma and I can see that upsetting people.

Montaigne is sublime, worth a reread every few years or just to peruse a few of his essays; helps to maintain a life balance.

And I second that book by Sarah Blakewell, How to Live, which I also have. Excellent.

Almost as good as a shot of single malt scotch!

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Actually it still does.

i absolutely love the dunk n egg stories.
i would much much much rather he write some more of those than finish ASOIAF.

fwiw the audiobook of a knight of the seven kingdoms is fantastic i highly rec.

The world is such a fun setting, but since ASOIAF is such a huge narrative (and hasn't been completed) it's lacking a lot of the payoff that Dunk and Egg get from their episodic stories which complete an arc in a short amount of time.




Thanks for the heads up about the audiobook. I went with the book so I could see the artwork, but will definitely listen to the audiobook at some point.





The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry was a very cute read, while also being pretty deep on a number of topics.

RIP Martin Amis. Imagine writing a book as perfect as the Rachel Papers by 24.

London Fields one of my alltime favorite books.

Been trying to get Money to re-read on Kindle for years but for some reason not available in English. Vantage books has to get it together.

Time's Arrow another legendary work. The Information.

We will not see his like again, methinks. Certainly the best father and son combo in fiction.

Since I just read all the short-story collection posts, here's my list from a couple years ago for those who haven't see it.

Many of these are my favorites as well. Gaitskill isn't mentioned much here, but her prose sneaks up on you and you slowly realize its beauty.

A number of years ago in OOT there was a thread in which people were posting about mileage on their cars. I asked one guy are those actual miles. He didn't get it.

I always add "Bullet in the Brain" by Tobias Wolff to my list and "In the Gloaming" by Alice Eliot Dark to my list.

"The Dead" and "The Overcoat" may be the two greatest stories of all time.

Also nice to see the sci-fi you include. I might go for "The Men Who Murdered Mohamed" by Alfred Bester, but I can't quibble with your choices.

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Thanks for the recommendations, will hopefully get around to reading them all.



I thought I would love The Way of Kings by Sanderson, but I am really struggling just a few chapters in.




The Girl Who Fell Beneath the Sea by Axie Oh is a feminist retelling of a Korean folk tale. It was a fun, easy read, but several times I was surprised at the lack of detail for major events. It seemed like the story could have easily been twice as long. I suppose that might just be the nature of Korean mythology however.

Great list, Najdor!

Short story lovers should check out George Saunders's substack. He's currently reading The Overcoat.

I gave up on Way of Kings at some point, and I love Sanderson.

This is my first Sanderson book, don't think I'll be revisiting him for awhile. The writing is not very good, the characters are awful. It seems like an interesting world so I might try to power through at a later point.

I've never understood why people like Sanderson so many better writers out there.

Just finished my re-read of Tad Williams' Dragonbone Chair trilogy for the first time in 3 decades. Well worth it if you want fantasy. I suspect some of our younger readers haven't read it [or even heard of it?]

Probably a top 5 fantasy trilogy. There's a 2nd series I have not yet read. Simon and Binabik one of the greatest friendships ever created in fantasy.

These are long books too, if that's your pleasure. Not just a JRRT pastiche, either.

My top 5 on that list probably The School, The Overcoat, and the Carver, DFW and Murakami [also a short one]. But they're all great.

I love teaching The School, but I'm never sure my students quite get it, and I wonder why they don't.

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This is one of the funniest, in fact it may be *the* funniest not written by Stanislaw Lem.

The Paper Menagerie and Other Stories by Ken Liu.

This guy knows short stories, some really amazing stuff in here. I am a sucker for fantasy so all of his short stories involving fantasy elements stuck out the most for me, but his science fiction and other stuff is incredible as well.


I've also been listening to "Levar Burton Reads", and there's been some good short stories on there as well. It's a nice option for when I'm stuck in a car for 30 minutes or something. https://www.levarburtonpodcast.com/

Packing for Mars by Mary Roach. Looks into problems (food, fuel, waste, etc) around long-term space exploration, and what various agencies like NASA, JAXA, etc are thinking about it.

Not technical at all, pretty witty. Overall, a good read for people who are into space exploration.

Just read a few essays in Best American Essays of 2022. I haven't bought the collection in six or seven years, but I did have about 25 years in a row.

Just found out that in that volume that one of my favorite nature writers, Barry Lopez, died a couple years ago. If you haven't read his Arctic Dreams, then you should rectify that as soon as possible.

Somewhere buried away I have a signed copy of Crossing Open Ground by Lopez. It was a gift from my late friend and colleague.

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Lopez is great. He also had a couple of books about coyotes that I really enjoyed.

At one time I was an avid reader of Best American Essays, but they lost me several years ago. A good essay should be a voyage of discovery rather than a sermon. jmo

One of the essays was engaging. The writer was never able to write about the death of her older sister who died when she was twenty. So the writer used CHAT-GPT to help her write the essay, first beginning with a single sentence and then adding more and more until she had reached nine attempts. CHAT-GPT only added a single sentence by the end.

But I do know what you mean by that type of hectoring essay.

The 2022 edition also features a fine close reading by the series editor, Robert Atwan, of E.B White's "Once More to the Lake." Atwan does a great job dispelling the idea that White was simply a "middlebrow" essayist.

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I plan on reading this because I like both Atwan and White. But I am worried because I don't know if critics view Montaigne as highbrow, middlebrow, or, for the brighter ones, lowbrow. Now idea of where this all might lead.

Eyebrow, because you raise one while reading him; like Spock used to do on the old Star Trek Series.