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Philthy posted:Ultimately, this series is pretty good. It really reminds me back to reading something like the Neuromancer Spawl series back in the day. But - I will say paying $10-17 per book is absolutely ridiculous. It was a lot cheaper when it was first released and it was an unknown book by an unvetted author. Now that it's sold a ton and it's generally regarded as A Good Book Series the price went up, I guess.
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Nov 13, 2019 21:07
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Philthy posted:Rogue Protocol - The Murderbot Diaries by Martha Wells That has been the number 1 major complaint everyone has voiced about the Murderbot series. Macmillian (the book publisher) is price-gouging like mad on the Murderbot novelettes.
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Nov 13, 2019 21:10
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Jerry Cotton posted:I think you mean inter-Cold-War. drat, you're right. Now that you mention it, A Legacy of Spies, which came out a couple years ago, was less depressing than what I've read from the inter-Cold-War period.
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Nov 13, 2019 22:07
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Sarern posted:drat, you're right. On to The Honourable Schoolboy now, which I'm enjoying. It reads much snappier than the previous ones. I think Le Carré really enjoyed shifting the setting so dramatically. His prose is usually very brittle and at times wry but it just flows in THS.
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Nov 14, 2019 06:56
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quantumfoam posted:That has been the number 1 major complaint everyone has voiced about the Murderbot series. Macmillian (the book publisher) is price-gouging like mad on the Murderbot novelettes. I do see the fifth book is up for preorder and it's an honest to god 350 page book for $14 Kindle / $21 hardcover. More inline I guess.
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Nov 14, 2019 06:59
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PsychedelicWarlord posted:On to The Honourable Schoolboy now, which I'm enjoying. It reads much snappier than the previous ones. I think Le Carré really enjoyed shifting the setting so dramatically. His prose is usually very brittle and at times wry but it just flows in THS. Enjoy it! It's an interesting shift from Tinker, Tailor.
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Nov 14, 2019 15:05
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PsychedelicWarlord posted:On to The Honourable Schoolboy now, which I'm enjoying. It reads much snappier than the previous ones. I think Le Carré really enjoyed shifting the setting so dramatically. His prose is usually very brittle and at times wry but it just flows in THS. I got like 50 pages into this and stopped. I think my dumb brain forgot what the objective was, like they were trying to follow a money network back to Karla's spy ring? I loved Tinker Tailor and Spy Who Came In From the Cold but for some reason Honourable Schoolboy lost me
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Nov 14, 2019 17:38
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MeatwadIsGod posted:I got like 50 pages into this and stopped. I think my dumb brain forgot what the objective was, like they were trying to follow a money network back to Karla's spy ring? I loved Tinker Tailor and Spy Who Came In From the Cold but for some reason Honourable Schoolboy lost me Someone with a better memory of Honourable Schoolboy should correct me, but: I found it tangential to the Karla plot. You can go straight through from Tinker, Tailor to Smiley's People with little plot loss, and I think that's what the BBC adapters did for the miniseries back in the day. I can only recall a couple of references in the third book to the events in the second book. I do like the book, it goes exploring other ideas like (spoilered for Psychotic Warlord's benefit) : The oversight of the Circus yet again puts a gladhander in control of the Circus instead of a competent practitioner. The Circus itself abuses, discards, and allows to be killed good people in the name of geopolitical objectives of dubious worth. That's an obvious theme in many of his books, but I don't remember it being used much in Tinker, Tailor, and Schoolboy brings it back to the center so it's teed up for Smiley's People to drive it home.
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Nov 14, 2019 17:59
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Just finished The Stone Sky (last of the Broken Earth trilogy) by NK Jemisin. Her writing style was a bit offputting for about the first third of the first book, then something clicked and I flew through the whole series. Best books I read this year.
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Nov 15, 2019 14:06
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I recently finished Open Veins of Latin America by Eduardo Galeano. A deeply fascinating book, resonated with me a great deal given what's been going on in Brazil, Bolivia, Venezuela, and Chile lately. I strongly recommend it!
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Nov 15, 2019 20:37
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I just finished Look to Windward, by Banks, in one sitting of non-stop reading. It was a proper journey, with keening tragedy, plenty of genuinely hilarious moments (Pylonists vs Preservationeers), and some of the most compelling and interesting dialogue I've ever encountered in any novel. Having read and thoroughly enjoyed all of the other Culture books beforehand, I can confidently say this was my favorite. I wanna say that the main 'Intergalactic Revenge' plot kind of fades into the background and the pacing is a little slow, with Banks focusing more on the everyday 'mundane' lives and hobbies of Culture citizens (If you can call Lava Rafting, Exploding Asteroid Concerts, and hanging out with hyper-intelligent AI friends mundane). Would definitely recommend it as an entry point for anyone unfamiliar with the Culture novels, and for anyone already introduced but seeking to imagine more clearly what it might be like to actually live in the Culture.
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Nov 16, 2019 04:40
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Small Gay Planet posted:I just finished Look to Windward, by Banks, in one sitting of non-stop reading. It was a proper journey, with keening tragedy, plenty of genuinely hilarious moments (Pylonists vs Preservationeers), and some of the most compelling and interesting dialogue I've ever encountered in any novel. Having read and thoroughly enjoyed all of the other Culture books beforehand, I can confidently say this was my favorite. oh-! Iain Banks rules hard. I've read all the Culture novels except Hydrogen Sonata, because I know it's the last one  when it comes to the Culture, I usually recommend either Use of Weapons or The Player of Games depending on who I'm talking to- always saw Windward as a companion piece to Phlebas, tho I see how it can stand on its own. Excession might be my favorite because at its heart it's a book about posting online I finally got around to reading Leviathan Wakes, the first Expanse book, and it was as good as they say- lol that their groundbreaking spaceship reactors are called Epstein drives, tho, that was a lil distracting
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Nov 17, 2019 02:03
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Peanut Butler posted:oh-! Iain Banks rules hard. I've read all the Culture novels except Hydrogen Sonata, because I know it's the last one Player of Games is definitely peak Culture imo. I can’t get into Excision so I might just skip it. Hated Use of Weapons.
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Nov 17, 2019 02:08
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Peanut Butler posted:oh-! Iain Banks rules hard. I've read all the Culture novels except Hydrogen Sonata, because I know it's the last one Just started watching the tv series and i'll definately be picking up the books.
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Nov 17, 2019 08:57
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Lincoln in the Bardo - George Saunders Beautiful and powerful and wonderfully post-modern in all the right ways. An absolutely sublime story that I love dearly.
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Nov 17, 2019 17:09
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Captain Hotbutt posted:Lincoln in the Bardo - George Saunders The audiobook is positively phenomenal.
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Nov 17, 2019 20:32
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Exit Strategy - The Murderbot Diaries by Martha Wells Book 4. This was enjoyable. The story arcs continue and there was more world building and character growth. I really enjoy this universe and I finished this wanting more. I am really anticipating book 5 in May 2020. So after reading all four, I think book one was Wells getting a feel for Murderbot, and by book 2 she knew where to go and did so with the following three books. Thumbs up to this series.
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Nov 18, 2019 04:19
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Yeah, it’s fun!
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Nov 18, 2019 05:15
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Had a slow time of reading lately because of the difficult books I picked and bad scheduling habits. Gnomon by Nick Harkaway started off exciting and ended up predictable. I called the ending halfway through reading it and that sucked the fun out of seeing where everything would go next, which is a shame because I like a lot of the ideas introduced. Someone's comment in the SFF thread led me to picking up Ficciones by Jorge Luis Borges for sake of comparison, since Borges is the obvious source of inspiration, and most of the collection was dry and impenetrable on first read. I found "The Circular Ruins" compelling and "The Form of the Sword" trite, but otherwise the stories within are more intellectual exercises than stories, and one of them even asserts that all intellectual exercises are useless in the end, so I'm not sure what to make of the whole thing just yet. I might revisit these books in the future. The Iliad, as translated by Stephen Mitchell, was also somewhat frustrating. I'd heard that the text took time out to name and describe the past of someone who only shows up to get killed by one of the more prominent characters, but I didn't expect that to be a significant chunk of the book. This did make me wish Achilles would break his vow to stay out of fighting and make something different happen, end the cycle of bit players dying, gods arguing, and plans that go nowhere, which is what the other Achaeans felt at the time as well. I wasn't expecting the scope to be smaller than the entire Trojan War, either. I went with Mitchell's translation because I thought it would be easier to read, so I probably missed out on some of the more carefully crafted verses that someone like Lattimore would put in (as well as all of book 10, which Mitchell deemed apocryphal). Next comes The Odyssey, which I hope will prove less tedious.
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Nov 19, 2019 22:56
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Solitair posted:Next comes The Odyssey, which I hope will prove less tedious. 
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Nov 19, 2019 23:17
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Almost finished Slow Horses, after seeing that Apple+ had picked it up with Gary Oldman to play Jackson Lamb. It is my first spy/thriller. I highly recommend it.
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Nov 20, 2019 05:36
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Solitair posted:This did make me wish Achilles would break his vow to stay out of fighting and make something different happen, end the cycle of bit players dying, gods arguing, and plans that go nowhere, which is what the other Achaeans felt at the time as well. I wasn't expecting the scope to be smaller than the entire Trojan War, either. in Achilles' defense, he definitely does this in a rather spectacular fashion
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Nov 23, 2019 02:18
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Solitair posted:
if you have to read classical literature could you make at least a token effort to be less of a huge dumbass about it (USER WAS PUT ON PROBATION FOR THIS POST)
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Nov 23, 2019 06:44
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Timediver's Dawn and The Timegod by L. E. Modesitt Jr. A duology in one volume I picked up from my local library, Modesitt does what seems to be his usual thing: an interesting setting filled with lifeless, shallow characters where the protagonist is utterly devoid of personality or motivation and the plot is mostly an arbitrary series of events with no particular connection. And for a writer who so likes to stress how important strong, smart, independent, capable women are in his stories, Modesitt sure doesn't like to include any strong, smart, independent, capable women in his books.
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Nov 23, 2019 16:03
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We Are Legion by Dennis E. Taylor Book 1 of the Bobiverse series. After finishing the Murderbot series I wanted something along the same lines. I liked the AI-driven character with human instincts, the upgrades, the interaction between normal humans, etc. After some googling, I saw a lot of people suggesting the Bobiverse books for people in the same situation. I wasn't let down. I thoroughly enjoyed this first book. I went in not knowing what to expect. All I knew was the main character, Bob, is a wealthy tech nerd who somehow becomes an android(-ish). This book goes into so many places it's hard to describe without spoiling anything. I guess the easiest way to describe it is to imagine someone wrote a book about a 4x space game and put it into writing. This book feels like a goon wrote it. You'll come across lots of pop culture references and memes that have been beaten to death being beaten to death even more. It keeps a humorous tone throughout. At times I was wondering how great this book might be if it was just simply hard scifi without the humor and I'm not sure I could handle that. I also can't handle the main character sometimes. It's like being on SA too long, it wears thin, but is usually refreshing the next day. It's kinda like that. Sort of. I really did enjoy the book. It's light reading, and amusing. It has technology advances, battles, more tech advances, more battles, exploration, alien worlds, dead worlds, prime directives, and more. It has so much it's a lot to take in. I'm digging into book two of three. Leave your thinking cap at home, Bob will do all the thinking for you. Philthy fucked around with this message at 21:16 on Nov 28, 2019 |
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Nov 23, 2019 18:50
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Noboddy tell him
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Nov 24, 2019 08:56
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Radicalized by Cory Doctorow Read it based on someone’s review in this thread or recommendation in the other thread. It was excellent. I was really moved by the descriptions of sick and dying family members and the rawness of it all. So screw you Doctorow for making me all choked up in the gym, but thanks too!
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Nov 24, 2019 17:10
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chernobyl kinsman posted:if you have to read classical literature could you make at least a token effort to be less of a huge dumbass about it Reading The Iliad for the first time is kind of a disorienting experiencing especially if you don't know what the focus of the work is meant to be on beforehand so I'm not really surprised that they seem to be a little puzzled about what they've read.
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Nov 24, 2019 22:14
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Philthy posted:We Are Legion by Dennis E. Taylor I read all three of these books. They are so much fun.
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Nov 25, 2019 16:30
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Flaggy posted:I read all three of these books. They are so much fun. Yeah! I can say that so far of having maybe being halfway into book 2, the author has toned down the annoying bits, and turned up the more interesting bits. The retro scifi geek humor is still there, it's just taking more of a back seat as the seriousness intensifies. Seems to be a reoccurring theme lately with a series of books I've been reading. It's really great stuff, regardless! Philthy fucked around with this message at 19:08 on Nov 25, 2019 |
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Nov 25, 2019 19:05
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Since i'm spending more and more time craddling a newborn I've turned to the literary equivalent of cheap, unhealthy comfort food - crappy fantasy massmarket paperbacks. The most recent one i finished is "my life as a white trash zombie" by Diana Rowland. It's about, well, a white trash zombie - a young woman that identified as a loser that drifted from lovely job to lovely job, popping pills and living with her alcoholic dad. Until, you know, she got turned in to a zombie. But the really fun thing is that it's more about a woman getting the chance to turn her life around. She gets a job at the coroner's office driving a van to pick up bodies because as a convicted felon that's about all she can manage and even that was with a mysterious benefactor pulling some strings. Through the course of the book she gets more and more confident in herself and actually realizes that she's better than the people around her had convinced her she was. Truth be told the actual zombie parts of the book are less fun than the rest of it but it was still a fun trashy read. Not sure i'll bother with the rest of the series since i imagine it'll turn more and more focused on the zombie parts but yeah, for what it was it was really good!
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Nov 25, 2019 20:09
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citybeatnik posted:Since i'm spending more and more time craddling a newborn I've turned to the literary equivalent of cheap, unhealthy comfort food - crappy fantasy massmarket paperbacks. The most recent one i finished is "my life as a white trash zombie" by Diana Rowland. It's about, well, a white trash zombie - a young woman that identified as a loser that drifted from lovely job to lovely job, popping pills and living with her alcoholic dad. Until, you know, she got turned in to a zombie. You should look up more urban fantasy, a lot of it is really good! I haven't read that one specifically yet but I've been touring the genre and finding that it's more than sexy werewolves and crime solving. Also good to hear - I've got Diana Rowland's Mark of the Demon and I'm gonna start it eventually in my quest to experience a lot of UF. e: Tho there is a lot of sexy supernatural critter and crime solving.
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Nov 25, 2019 20:15
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StrixNebulosa posted:You should look up more urban fantasy, a lot of it is really good! I haven't read that one specifically yet but I've been touring the genre and finding that it's more than sexy werewolves and crime solving. Oh UF is a guilty pleasure of mine. The problem i keep running in to is that i'll try the first book in a series, get invested (because i'm on a quixotic quest to find a series that grabbed me the same way Discworld did), and then run headfirst in to the bloat that always seems to happen. I'm looking at you Rivers of London.
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Nov 25, 2019 20:51
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citybeatnik posted:Not sure i'll bother with the rest of the series since i imagine it'll turn more and more focused on the zombie parts but yeah, for what it was it was really good! You are exactly right. The first one is mostly fun as a redemption story and it gets more or more cookie cutter UF. I dropped it on book three.
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Nov 25, 2019 21:07
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citybeatnik posted:Oh UF is a guilty pleasure of mine. The problem i keep running in to is that i'll try the first book in a series, get invested (because i'm on a quixotic quest to find a series that grabbed me the same way Discworld did), and then run headfirst in to the bloat that always seems to happen. This is an inexact fit but I've actually started reading a UF that reminds me heavily of Discworld in tone, if not in content: Seanan McGuire's Incryptid. It just feels...whimsical while also being deadly serious. You might check it out, but also note it's a million books and short stories long without an end in sight because Seanan is a machine.
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Nov 25, 2019 21:15
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citybeatnik posted:Oh UF is a guilty pleasure of mine. The problem i keep running in to is that i'll try the first book in a series, get invested (because i'm on a quixotic quest to find a series that grabbed me the same way Discworld did), and then run headfirst in to the bloat that always seems to happen. Kate Griffin's Matthew Swift stuff is a pretty well contained set of 4 and not so much the sexy monsters front. It's not particularly Discworldy though.
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Nov 25, 2019 21:25
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cloudchamber posted:Reading The Iliad for the first time is kind of a disorienting experiencing especially if you don't know what the focus of the work is meant to be on beforehand so I'm not really surprised that they seem to be a little puzzled about what they've read. if you go into an iron-age epic expecting it to conform to the style of a 21st fantasy novel you're gonna be pretty confused yeah
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Nov 26, 2019 01:51
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Finally finished Breakfast of Champions. Liked it, but it took a while to come together for me, probably not until Vonnegut himself appears. From that point on it blitzed forward, though. The Karabekian speech is probably my favorite part of the book.
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Nov 26, 2019 04:27
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Directive 51 by John Barnes - As someone keenly interested in information theory, the first third or so of this book is fairly interesting. Twenty minutes into the future, the end of the world as we know it comes crowd-funded and locally sourced, its agents recruited and radicalized through discord chats and memes, its weapons built in garages and make-spaces. Unfortunately, a plot has to come along and rip apart that veneer of a vaguely interesting idea to reveal the ultra-right-wing boomer wank over the end of western civilization at the hands of those dastardly liberals. And, unable to give liberals too much credit, the whole thing turns out to be a magic thought-virus from space because aliens. Sigh. Tricked into reading one of these, though I started skimming by about the halfway point. Barnes feels like a man who understands what modern movements like antifa are angry about, but cannot fathom why.
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Nov 26, 2019 18:13
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Finished up Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage by Haruki Murakami. I feel like I would have gotten more out of this book had I read it a few years ago, but I can still relate to feeling mopey about losing touch with the past and the people that created it. I liked it enough that I might re-visit it again later.
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Nov 27, 2019 00:24
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