Update to “Relearning to read“. I have been reading more and more each day since my work days have ended. I decided to read light fiction to start. The Jason Pargin book was fine, but I wasn’t inspired to read another of his series yet. Also, I purchased Kindle Unlimited to save money. ($12/month) All of the books I am reading are on my iPad, not paper. My eyes are still old and crusty.
Murderbot Diaries
I read the first 7 books of the Murderbot Diaries series by Martha Wells. They were well written but very short. I didn’t read the eighth book because it was not available on Kindle Unlimited. I learned about the series from the Apple TV series Murderbot. The pacing was good and the dialog crisp. I think the best part of the books is the basic fact that the protagonist is a humanoid robot AI with some serious emotional issues; kind of a “asshole with a heart of gold” character. Most shows with a strong AI Robot protagonist will have a human as the “point of view”, like The Iron Giant, or have the entire world be robots, like Wall-E. The Murderbot Diaries has a nice balance of human and non-human characters.
Grade: B-
Dungeon Crawler Carl
I just started Dungeon Crawler Carl by Matt Dinniman. With so many ways for our civilization to collapse, this sci-fi take is refreshing and diverting. It’s easy reading and engaging. The premise is that the world is taken over by an alien syndicate and a few million people are forced to play in a survival game sort of like Hunger Games. It’s both funny and dark/gory at the same time.
Don’t judge me! I’m starting with easy reading I’m not going to dive into the Pulitzer Prize section right away.
I spent so many years reading non-fiction or design related books, It it nice to have something that doesn’t ask too much of me intellectually.
So far grade: B+
Blogging side note
I have been blogging since 1997. This is my 2,225th post. Some posts have been dumb. Some have been introspective. Some meant to help designers. Some political. And of course, sometimes I just journal to keep track of when things happened to me. Since retiring, I have been thinking about blogging and what place in my life it will take in the future.
I really am not sure what will happen. I certainly will post when the inspiration strikes me, but I really don’t know what form it will take. Hopefully, it will continue to be useful to me or someone else out there.
Whatya think?