Wow I don’t post any more! I used this site as a programming exercise (hey that’s what blogs are for, right!?) but it turns out I don’t have a ton of ideas to toss into the ether.
Oh well!
When I saw that Susanna Clarke had a new book out I kept the Amazon tab open in my browser for a few weeks, thinking that I should buy it & read it, but not committing because I wasn’t sure I’d be able to read it.
I’ve been in a book-slump for the past couple of years - where I’ll start a book that looks good but then never actually finishing the book. The last book I remember reading cover-to-cover was Ignition! by John Drury Clark (a fabulous book on the development of liquid rocket propellants). The last novel was (I think?!) The Stars Are Legion by Kameron Hurley (holy cow this one is great). I’m sure I’m forgetting something but this is what my Goodreads account is telling me.
But since then I pick up books and get halfway/partway/barely through and then set them aside. Jemisin’s new book The City We Became is great, but I think I’m 40 pages in. Somehow I managed to stop halfway through Sanderson’s third book in his Stormlight series - after that many pages I must be pretty committed, but no.
So now I am shy to even start a book because I don’t want yet another un-finished masterpiece looming over me.
Anyway! Piranesi is great & you should read it. I hesitated because some of the reviews made it sound abstract and obtuse (at least, on that end of the spectrum) but it’s really not (and not that I’m against the abstract and obtuse! But given my recent reading habits I was concerned).
Hopefully this is the start of me being able to read more often.