Piers Anthony.... loved the Blue Adept series as a youth. Not sure I'd still love it now, and I won't reread it because I've disappointed myself that way before. But I have reread Incarnations of Mortality series, and not been disappointed. In fact, maybe I'll do it again on audio now!
When I started reading books of Piers Anthony I quite liked him (never touched the Xanth ones, I got to know him with Bio of a space Tyrant and then Incarnations of mortality).
Then I started noticing a trend: he created situations to allow under-aged girls having sex, and sex with older (often quite older) men too, and justifying that situation.
Also having rapey situations around where the hero was justified in having to have forced sex with a woman.
If it happened one or two times, I could have chalked it to a narrative decision, however unfortunate, and not thought about it anymore. But it happened again and again. And the vibe was not so much
So I got suspicious, checked online if anybody else was getting those vibes or if it was in my mind, and I heard about one of his novels, Firefly.
Tried checking it, was unable to finish, but checked the afterword as it was pointed to me that there he wrote his own thoughts on the matter.
Now I'm firmly convinced that, even if likely (one hopes) not a practicing one, at least he's either supportive or decided to pander to that crowd, and I'm not fine with that.
And I find a bit chilling that's he also the writer of a famous series of ya fantasy books that are notoriously just a tiny bit naughty.
It's even worse than the (in)famous
"Oh John Ringo, no! books.
Said that, the last bunch of books I've read and enjoyed this past couple of years.
The "janitors of the post-apocalypse" series from Jim C. Hines: light and fun.
I did *not* enjoy Space opera by Valente: I mean, I liked the idea, but something in how it's written simply turned me off.
The Penric and Desdemona books from LMM Bujold: I was already a big fan of course of her Miles series and the rest of the 5 gods world, and these does keep the trend.
The Sector General series by James White. In some ways they are a bit dated, but it's so refreshing reading a series where the true enemy is illness, and there are almost no real bad guys.
I just ended a reread of the Dresden Files by Jim Butcher due to the imminent arrival of its next book after a long hiatus.
Turning Darkness into light by Marie Brennan (a sort of follow up to her "a natural history of dragons".
I reread the Witcher series by Sapkowski in preparation to the arrival of the series on Netflix.
The Khaavren romances by Steven Brust. I enjoyed his Vlad Taltos series, and the Khaavren romances are hilarious if you've ever read Dumas.
Martine's "A memory called empire", interesting, we will see if it will keep the level in case of follow-ups.
Finished Leckie's Imperial radch trilogy.
Wells' "The Murderbot diaries".
Taylor's the "bobiverse" series
Monette's "The Goblin emperor".
In the "serious literature" department (I don't read too many of these nowaday, because good serious literature tend to be too depressing):
I finally tackled "war and peace" by the expedient of bringing only that on my vacations.
Manzoni's "The Betrothed". Its a book every Italian student have to read at school, and hate it... I wanted to check it with mature eyes.
It's really not bad, even if clearly of its time, especially by including the parts that at school they expunged. It turned out to be also quite sort of a weird anticipation of what happened, as all the last part happens on the background of one of the big plague epidemics in northern Italy and, well, when covid arrived a lot of the echoes of the book ringed quite true.
I read also "100 years of solitude" of Marquez, definitely recommended even if quite haunting.
"History" by Elsa Morante and "That Awful Mess on Via Merulana" by Gadda, to get a view of the Italian fascist years.
In the non-fiction department:
"More than human" by Ramez Naan
"1177 B.C.: The Year Civilization Collapsed" by Cline
I've also read "the world until yesterday" and I've already bought and waiting in my to-be-read pile "upheaval" by Jared Diamond.
I had already read years ago his "Guns germs and steel" and "collapse".. all interesting, the first is part of what i consider my "foundational" worldview shaping library, together with:
Desmond Morris "The naked ape", Dawkins "the selfish gene", Popitz "Phenomena of Power: Authority, Domination, and Violence", Minsky "the society of mind", Carroll "Endless forms most beautiful", Cipolla "Guns sails and empires" (also others like "allegro non troppo", with the famous laws of stupidity), Chabris and Simons "the invisible gorilla", Conway and Oreskes "merchants of doubts", Graeber "Debt: The First 5000 Years", Pinker "the better angels of our nature" (also read "enlightenment now", even if it's more of an expansion of the first), Safina "Beyond words".
(As a note, there are no titles in the more hard sciences field because my training was in that field, so I rely quite less on "general public" books to shape my worldview regarding that... but I enjoyed and recommend Einstein "The Theory of Relativity and Other Essays", Hawkings "a brief history of time", Feynmann "siex easy pieces" and "six not so easy pieces": they passed my mom test! :-p).