I'm reading "Emperor of Thorns (The Broken Empire, #3)" by Mark Lawrence. Definitely feels like YA for young boys, but the worldbuilding is so amazing. Finished with the series after this, maybe his other books have the same awesome worlds with more compelling characters.
Just started an oldie (but one I've never read before) - "Childhood's End" by Arthur C Clarke.
I am reading Don Quixote! This translation I am only like 50 pages in and it's a massive tome. I expect I will have to do reading in between reading Don Quixote; I finished the Gunslinger and my friends were kind enough to lend me The Drawing of the Three so that will be my light reading. For poetry this week I am reading Terrance Hayes' How To Be Drawn. I expect Don Quixote will take me weeks if not months tbh. The other two, maybe a week each.
The Collector by John Fowles. To be honest, the book creeps me out a little as we are shown the story through the eyes of a man whose motives are, well, might I say somewhat ulterior, and who still finds a way to justify his every thought and desire. Not sure if I like the book so far, since it's hard for me to separate the feeling of repulsion towards the main character (not sure if it changes later, I'm nowhere near the ending yet) and the actual writing itself in this particular story. All in all, however, I admire the author's ability to make me feel this way, I'm usually not easily spooked.
Finished The Big Short. Very enjoyable read, but I don't really see how the movie can do it justice without some serious handwaving to jargon. This week I read the first 4,5 hours of Black Earth: The Holocaust as History and Warning by Timothy Snyder as mentioned by b_b. It's been a while since I read a good history book and while this is definitely a good book, it constantly reminds me how little I actually know of the geopolitical landscape before the Cold War.
I've read half a dozen books about WWI, two on the Bolsheviks, and a few WWII to late 20th c histories, and I still don't think I have a great grasp of the geopolitics of the world. Right now I'm reading an expansive history of Japan from the Shogunal time on, and the most recent chapter was about how the Napoleonic wars affected Japan (rather profoundly, it turns out, since Napoleon's brother became the regent of your fair homeland, thereby screwing up relations with the one European country that Japan had relations with). The shitty thing about learning something is that you then have to learn a lot more to understand the thing you just learned. It's a vicious cycle.
The answer is ... not no. Tigana is in a class by itself but I've been reading Song for Arbonne this week ... the prose is pretty good, not as good as I'd hoped. The people and places are just fantasy people and places. For some reason all modern fantasy puts the same people in the same situations. I've soured on it, generally. I'll keep reading.
The Sixth Extinction and The Filter Bubble Just started both with the goal to be done by early next week.