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We Live Here Now by Sarah Pinborough

Another novel that was on quite a few lists when I googled “best horror novels of 2025”. About 1/4th in, and its an effective haunted house type story, with some serious marital drama thrown in. I’m digging it and eager to get deeper into the mystery of the house and its new occupants.

Never read anything by the author before, but when I was researching if I wanted to buy the book, I saw she has some good credentials/laudits.

A hat full of sky

Continuing my Discworld journey with the next Tiffany Aching book, and it's another good one.
I remain amazed at how well written Tiffany is. She's smart and powerful and she knows it, which makes her somewhat obnoxious at times, but it feels very natural, when she could easily have fallen into Mary Sue territory (Like Susan Sto Helit did IMO).

But poor Granny Weatherwax is clearly starting to get too old for this crap, I'm assuming a passing of the torch story is ahead of me.

Automatically Appended Next Post:

 BobtheInquisitor wrote:
On our road trip we read through Weird Oregon and Weird Washington. They are fun reads and helped us find some truly weird places to visit. Sadly, a couple of them have been dismantled or closed from the public since the books came out. Still fun to read about even if we couldn’t see everything.

We also picked up a book on the native peoples of the Pacific Northwest that turned out to be too academic and dry for a road trip, and the book on native legends of the PNW found in every gift shop which is good in small doses and a real snoozer read straight through.

Another interesting place for any road trip is the Atlas Obscura Book/website.

Too bad some of the Weird places were closed in the PNW. I had a similar issues on a road trip in the Midwest.

I keep forgetting that site exists. We used it years ago to find the Beach of Bones/Carcass Beach at Salton Sea. When we tried to use Google maps, it took us to the wrong place.

I’ll have to consult Atlas Obscura for our next journey.

Finished We Live Here Now by Sarah Pinborough.

Good combo of haunted house, marital drama and some murder mystery thrown in with a pretty solid twist at the end. Might check out more from the author.

Finished the Belgariad the other day.
The ending was a bit weaker then I might otherwise have liked. But overall I thoroughly enjoyed the series and am sorry I've never hit upon it before now.


I've started book 1 of the Mallorean: Guardians of the West. I'm keen to see how the sequel goes. Hopefully there's more of Mandorallan, as he quickly became a favourite character. I enjoyed his stubborn obliviousness to danger and painfully over the top Knightlyness. I think it just really worked.
He might have been a part of the group because it was ordained millions of years ago, but really, he was just along for a good quest.

Just finished the latest Mercy Thompson book. Thinking of starting the Dresden Files…or maybe a Stephen King book. With two of his movies coming out soon, I’m feeling that King nostalgia.

 BobtheInquisitor wrote:
Just finished the latest Mercy Thompson book. Thinking of starting the Dresden Files…or maybe a Stephen King book. With two of his movies coming out soon, I’m feeling that King nostalgia.

If you star the Dresden Files, just skip the first book. Even Jim Butcher said to skip it. It's not very good, and book 2 Fool Moon gets you all caught up in a chapter.

Sorry, my brain farted. I meant restart where I left off. I’ve read all but the last two or three.

 BobtheInquisitor wrote:
Sorry, my brain farted. I meant restart where I left off. I’ve read all but the last two or three.

Have you read the Codex Alera series yet?

 Lathe Biosas wrote:

 BobtheInquisitor wrote:
Sorry, my brain farted. I meant restart where I left off. I’ve read all but the last two or three.

Have you read the Codex Alera series yet?

Yes. The first book of that series also sucks, but the rest are good. The ending felt a bit rushed, but was pretty decent otherwise.

 BobtheInquisitor wrote:

 Lathe Biosas wrote:

 BobtheInquisitor wrote:
Sorry, my brain farted. I meant restart where I left off. I’ve read all but the last two or three.

Have you read the Codex Alera series yet?

Yes. The first book of that series also sucks, but the rest are good. The ending felt a bit rushed, but was pretty decent otherwise.

The first book sucks is a staple of Jim Butcher books.

I finished Gangster by Lorenza Carcaterra and it was a perfectly reasonable, mafia themed, page-turner paperback. It won't win any awards but it delivered what it set out to do.

I have now picked up Focault's Pendulum by Umberto Eco. I am about 25 pages in and I have the distinct impression I am not smart enough for this book, and it is mostly just a barrage of words on a paperback page to me at the moment. Maybe, at one point it will make sense to me?

Finishing up the last 20 or so pages of "They Shall Not Pass" by Ian Sumner.

In short, it's a really good history of the French Army during WW1, specifically pulling as much detail as possible from the lower soldiery's personal diaries, letters home, and documents of that sort.

Just started the Gormenghast trilogy. Never read them before so probably about time.

Oh, please let me know what you think of them. I’ve had them on my shelf for years but never really knew what mood I should be in to start them.

If you can, tell us how it compares to the TV adaptation? https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0197154/

BobtheInquisitor wrote:Oh, please let me know what you think of them. I’ve had them on my shelf for years but never really knew what mood I should be in to start them.

Will do. So far so good; I think that it would be easy to see it as a parody of itself and write some of the writing off as a little cliched now, so keeping in mind the time of writing seems helpful to fully appreciate it.

Skinnereal wrote:If you can, tell us how it compares to the TV adaptation? https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0197154/

I did see the BBC adaptation and do intend to pick it up if I enjoy the books.
My only issue really is working 40-70 hour weeks depending on the time of year, and some of that includes reading texts to teach, so reading for myself often gets delayed or put on the back burner. Coming to the end of the big hours now though so hopefully I'll see it through.

Headed to a used bookstore today... maybe something amazing will materialize....

Since I have given up on Brandon Sanderson... and his archeology lessons...

Author M. John Harrison famously described it as "the great clomping foot of nerdism" and argued that a good writer should prioritize story over an exhaustive survey of a place that isn't there.

Can anyone recommend a book series like The Gentleman Bastard Sequence by Scott Lynch: This series focuses on a pair of thieves pulling off elaborate heists.

And while the world is rich and feels alive, I didn't need to read a doctoral thesis to get the gist of how the world works.

If you are just looking for pulpy fun that leans more towards the ridiculous than the nerdy, have you tried Simon Greene’s Deathstalker series? It follows an unlikely band of criminals on their space opera escapades. Dune it ain’t.

The Murderbot Diaries have a light touch for world building.

If you are just looking for safe, by the numbers stories of likeable space criminals, there are a bunch of series from the 2000s that fit the bill. I want so say William Dietz and Chris Bunch are authors of note, but I honestly don’t remember who wrote what.

The newest Witcher novel, Crossroads of Ravens released today. Despite being at the bookshop about half hour after opening, the girl behind the jump said I was the fourth person that morning to come in and buy it. Clearly a book people were keen to get! I know I'm looking forward to it.

For now it's going in the pile as I'm still plugging away through The Mallorean at the moment. Just started the 4th book, so a little while yet before I'll get around to it.

 Snrub wrote:
The newest Witcher novel, Crossroads of Ravens released today. Despite being at the bookshop about half hour after opening, the girl behind the jump said I was the fourth person that morning to come in and buy it. Clearly a book people were keen to get! I know I'm looking forward to it.

For now it's going in the pile as I'm still plugging away through The Mallorean at the moment. Just started the 4th book, so a little while yet before I'll get around to it.

I got it as a Christmas gift last year and enjoyed it a lot. I even shared more detailed impressions here on Dakka, but the search function seems to be dead and I can't find it :( Anyway it's really solid, classic, low fantasy, gritty Witcher I remember from the saga, and the language is as perfect as in those older books (no idea how it turns out in translation, though). All in all a worthy addition, not just a cheap cash grab. I recommend it to any Witcher fan (unlike the terrible Season of Storms).

Just started A Knight Of The Seven Kingdoms this week and I'm having a good time so far.

I just finished Project: Hail Mary.

My wife was in the hospital for a surgery, and started it in the waiting room, and then after also reading it in the recovery room, I literally read 250 pages of it THAT DAY.

Really great book.

Because I have a weakness for a certain.... uhhh... genre.

I picked up a book I was pretty sure was going to be bad... but I decided to hand over 4 bucks and buy:

Pacific Rim: Uprising - Ascension by Greg Keyes.

Sure, it's a prequel to a gakky sequel to one of my favorite movies of all time... but, it's written by the guy who writes movie novelization of Godzilla films.

Of your interested in how one trains to fight Kaiju in a giant fething mecha... you might enjoy this book.

It also fills in some gaps that makes Pacific Rim: Uprising a better story... kind of.

Well onto my second love: Donald Hamilton 's Matt Helm series (This one is The Threateners).

I wish they would make a decent Matt Helm series, unlike that hot garbage they released a long time ago starring Dean Martin. Those movies were as close to Donald Hamilton's books as Mortal Kombat: Annihilation was to Mario Puzo's The Godfather.

So today at a second hand book store with my daughter I found a book I had gotten when I was her age at another second hand book store across the country. It was the first book in a series. I never could find the rest of the series. This was before the internet provided information like if the second book in a trilogy had been published and to make it worse the author changed his name after the initial print run of the first book apparently.

Either way, off and on over the years I've thought about it as I lost it in some move or another. I tried random internet searches but it was so long ago I just didn't remember details the internet probably needed like the character names or ship name. It was a trashy sci-fi novel but for some reason I loved it when I was in my teens. This is a sci-fi book published in 1989.

Without further ado:

Star Frontier Trilogy: Alien Death Fleet

And it's still as glorious as it sounds. But even better news the internet now lets me know the rest of the books in the trilogy AND they're all available on Kindle!!!!!

Today is a truly amazing day.

Actually reading my own 40k fanfic Secret War: The Annihilation Plague https://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/0/802529.page#11495192 right here on Dakka Dakka, I do roll my eyes a bit due to the censorship of the "S" word becoming "gak", but that's just the way the site rolls. I don't know why, but it has more views on here than both Secret War and Secret War: Upon Blood Sands combined. I'm up to a debriefing sequence with Attelus and his team with their boss Inquisitor Jelcine Enandra of the Ordo Hereticus I didn't enjoy writing and I'm not enjoying reading, but I felt I had to get through the scenes as it went over the events of Secret War: Upon Blood Sands and people who didn't read Upon Blood Sands would need to know this stuff and it's important to show how Attelus and company managed to get from the scrutiny of the Inquisition. I tried to "break up" the sequence by switching perspectives from Attelus to the psyker Karmen Kons, and the the former commissar Tathe. I guess, despite being an exposition sequence, the "conflict" (which all fiction revolves around, really) in it is will Attelus and company manage to pull the wool over Enandra's eyes? Will Enandra get offended and order a fight? I already know how the sequence will end, so maybe that's why it's boring for me? Doesn't help over the last five chapters or so, my grammar and punctuation (even more) went down hill for some reason.

I remember the relief of finally getting through writing that sequence and getting onto the main plot and the planet of Quoranda where the events start.

Anyway, sorry for my rambling, lol.

I recently started reading Retrotopia by John Michael Greer.

It's set in a post American civil war era after the us has broken into several different countries.
It follows a man named Peter Carr as he travels from Pittsburg to the Lakeland Republic on state business. As best as I can tell because I'm only 3 chapters in so far.

The theme is a journey forward into the past. It showcases ideas put forth from his book Green Wizardy.

 Lathe Biosas wrote:


Well onto my second love: Donald Hamilton 's Matt Helm series (This one is The Threateners).

I wish they would make a decent Matt Helm series, unlike that hot garbage they released a long time ago starring Dean Martin. Those movies were as close to Donald Hamilton's books as Mortal Kombat: Annihilation was to Mario Puzo's The Godfather.

Yeah sure, but they have a certain zany, cheesy 1960's super-spy charm. Austin Power's owes them a whole lot. Plus, you can find them for free all over the internet to watch now.

After watching them, I started writing a rules-lite RPG to mimic that feel.

Cyel wrote:

 Snrub wrote:
The newest Witcher novel, Crossroads of Ravens released today. Despite being at the bookshop about half hour after opening, the girl behind the jump said I was the fourth person that morning to come in and buy it. Clearly a book people were keen to get! I know I'm looking forward to it.

For now it's going in the pile as I'm still plugging away through The Mallorean at the moment. Just started the 4th book, so a little while yet before I'll get around to it.

I got it as a Christmas gift last year and enjoyed it a lot. I even shared more detailed impressions here on Dakka, but the search function seems to be dead and I can't find it :( Anyway it's really solid, classic, low fantasy, gritty Witcher I remember from the saga, and the language is as perfect as in those older books (no idea how it turns out in translation, though). All in all a worthy addition, not just a cheap cash grab. I recommend it to any Witcher fan (unlike the terrible Season of Storms).

When in the timeline does it take place?