What are you reading right now?
Nearly through Max Gladstone's Last First Snow, the fourth or first Craft Sequence book. I did not expect urban planning to make a central appearance in these, though really I should have. I appreciated the awareness and explication of both sides (resident and developer) in the fight over the Skittersill slum. The book changes tone markedly about halfway through, of course: you know how this has to end, based on the status quo in Two Serpents Rise, but the change in tone is handled so deftly it's not really a problem that you're almost reading two different books.
One could in theory read these in chronological order: you'd lose the sense of dread and the familiarity of the characters of Elayne and the King in Red, which would I think detract from the book's atmosphere, but I guess you'd gain an appreciation for Temoc's arc. I dunno. Same argument as for Star Wars I-VI, and I don't buy it there either. I'm sympathetic to "Machete Order" (4-5-2-3-6) but I tend to think setup-payoffs mostly only work in the direction they're written.
Hm, the other comparison is eBear's first two Edda of Burdens books, where All The Windwracked Stars does a lot of heavy-lifting for the worldbuilding and By The Mountain Bound gives the tragic backstory. (And then, based on my one read of it, The Seas Thy Mistress doesn't satisfactorially pull them together, but I should reread them before passing judgement like that.) Yeah. I definitely prefer the sense of impending tragedy one gets from reading in pub order.
What did you just finish reading?
Reread of William Gibson's Blue Ant trilogy. I picked up a remaindered Pattern Recognition when I was working at Waldenbooks and enjoyed it better than I'd expected to. Then, before we moved to Vancouver, I went on a book binge-and-purge: things I hadn't read or didn't remember well got fifty pages and if I didn't like them, away they went. Pattern Recognition was one of two books where that resulted in acquiring /more/ books rather than fewer: I reread it, and enjoyed it enough to go in search of the rest. (The other was Walter Jon Williams's Metropolitan.)
So. Pattern Rec is deeply of its time. All three are, really, but it's especially noticeable in Pattern Rec, written in 2003 and set in 2002. An internet of forums, a lack of smartphones. It's about tech, in a time when the tech was changing rapidly, and that makes it a fascinating snapshot. It doesn't hurt that it's a great read, or that Cayce Pollard is just a lot of fun to hang around with. I want to reread it sometime soonish, so I can get a better feel for how it's playing with its themes. This is unlikely to be a hardship.
Spook Country is the reason I'm rereading these. Emily read them for the first time a couple of years ago and couldn't get over how solid and real Vancouver felt (in the second half of the book), compared to, well, every other setting he's written. And it's really neat to know exactly what he's talking about: the confusing array of bridges when you leave the airport, the ex-industrial area by the port. (I think I know exactly where Chombo's apartment is, and I am definitely going to look up the restaurant where Hollis et al meet up at the end.) As a book ... it feels slight, though a little less so than it did the first time I read it. Of the narrators, Milgrim's almost a nonentity, and he and Tito are interesting mostly for plot reasons. And I like Hollis Henry a little less than Cayce, both as a character and as a narrator.
Which is deliberate, I think, based on how Zero History turns out. Of the three it's the one I have the least sense for the shape of it. There's a lot going on in it, plotwise and character-relation-wise, and I don't think I managed to keep it all straight in my head. Intricate and exciting, and decidedly my kind of thing.
What do you think you'll read next?
Almost certainly an ebook, since all my physical books are now in boxes once more. Likely Craft #5.
Also, having re-read Pattern Rec, I really want to re-watch The Wire, to see if the sense of being Of Its Time is consistent across 2000s media (post-internet, pre-smartphone) or if it's specific to the tech-centricity of Pattern Rec.