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I also finished that Expanse book, Supernova Era, the Murderbot novel and the novella after that, since I posted ITT, dang, friggin shameful. I still have two Expanse books but I don't own copies of them yet so I'm not really sure what I'm reading next. I should figure that out.
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Jan 28, 2022 21:20
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I've been reading The Lone Ranger and Tonto. It's kinda really bad - how did THIS become so popular when there were competent writers writing westerns too? |
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Jan 28, 2022 21:23
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nut posted:after so many failed attempts throughout life, I finally properly read A Void by Georges Perec last week and very much enjoyed how dumb but also fun it is. Yeah man it's such a good book, the part with all the rewrites of all the famous poems is one of my favorite things + unless you read it in French it's also the most insane act of translation that has ever been accomplished |
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Jan 28, 2022 23:18
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beer pal posted:im reading lincoln in the bardo by george saunders and enjoying it quite a bit it's very good beer pal posted:before that i read my year of rest and relaxation by ottessa moshfegh i thought it was very good been meaning to read this beer pal posted:before that i read blackshirts and reds by michael parenti. i didnt think it was very good. agreed he sucks + is a dumb rear end |
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Jan 28, 2022 23:21
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rear end-penny posted:Hi book thread! Been a long time! I haven't read Cixin but this is a really common affliction of classic SF writers; crack open some Niven or Asimov short stories and so many of them are variations on "I have a Cool Idea and want to write just enough story to showcase it". And honestly those can be a lot of fun! But it often goes off the rails once they start writing novels, because writing novels requires a different set of skills than writing shorts, and you often end up with either (a) an entire novel with one cool idea and not enough meat on its bones plot/character wise to support it otherwise or (b) an entire novel with lots of cool ideas that don't necessarily mesh well together but that the author really wanted to get all down on the page. quote:I just finished The Worm and His Kings by Hailey Piper. This novella is short, fast paced cosmic horror kind of on the vein of how Lovecraft wrote, except Piper is actually capable of describing things occasionally. That's also my experience, I mostly read sci-fi and fantasy with a smattering of nonfiction (mostly history & technology stuff) and a lot of the stuff posted here is stuff I have never heard of by authors I've never heard of either. I keep posting, though. Although I have heard of Lincoln in the Bardo, I've just never read it and the description reminds me unpleasantly of the books I was forced to read, and hated, in high school. People seem to like it though. Maybe I should give it a chance? As for me, it's been two months since I posted here last and a lot of that time was spent reading stuff by Patricia C. Wrede and Jessica Day George that my daughter asked me to read so she could talk about them with me. I also read Nor Crystal Tears (it was fun), reread We're the Weird Aliens, read Pink One and both volumes of Humans are Weird (I kind of had a theme that week), reread an old Dave Barry book from my childhood (Dave Barry's Bad Habits -- not as good as Talks Back or Greatest Hits but still solid), and one of Pratchett's non-Discworld novels (Dodger, which I had a bit of trouble getting into but was increasingly engaging the further into it I got). Now I'm halfway through The Wrath of Trees by Bard Bloom, which is about a telepathic tree (she can use the senses of, and to some extent influence, anything that eats her berries) who is uprooted and stolen from her homeworld so that her captors can use her as a spymaster in an attempt to return their family, which is long on magical power but short on both wealth and political influence, to power. She is not at all happy about this but it's hard to escape when you're a tree. |
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Jan 29, 2022 00:11
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Warhammer 40k books, I'm going through the Horus Heresy series. 
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Jan 29, 2022 00:44
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I joined a sci-fi club just so I can read the novellas in the magazine (it's 5 euros cheaper to join than to just buy the mags). But also I find the reviews useful because I don't really know sci-fi and I want to read/watch more of rhe good stuff. E: Oh no its not a book 
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Jan 29, 2022 01:58
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bad guy posted:Yeah man it's such a good book, the part with all the rewrites of all the famous poems is one of my favorite things + unless you read it in French it's also the most insane act of translation that has ever been accomplished the raven is lmfbo I powered through On Necrocapitalism this week which was fun and very easy to read
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Jan 29, 2022 02:01
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Finished The Wrath of Trees, the ending was a lot comfier than I expected given the premise. Now I'm taking a brief break to fix some typesetting issues in the book, because once a beta reader always a beta reader I guess. Not sure what to read next. More Bard, probably. Dumb Sex-Parrot posted:Warhammer 40k books, I'm going through the Horus Heresy series. I've only read six WH40K books (Dan Abnett's Eisenhorn and Ravenor trilogies) but, even knowing basically nothing about 40k, they were pretty fun |
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Jan 30, 2022 00:01
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Lexicon by Max Barry is a solid thriller with some wicked rear end stuff happening in the margins Enjoyed Devil House by John Darnielle as well, a flipping of the script on True Crime books |
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Mar 26, 2022 04:37
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Dr. Yinz Ljubljana posted:Enjoyed Devil House by John Darnielle as well, a flipping of the script on True Crime books I have this but haven't started it yet, I liked both of his other novels although Universal Harvester maybe a little less so.
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Mar 26, 2022 13:05
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i read charles stross' invisible sun which was the finale for a series and it was good!
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Mar 26, 2022 14:44
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How Wonderful! posted:I have this but haven't started it yet, I liked both of his other novels although Universal Harvester maybe a little less so. i liked universal harvester a bit more, it felt a little more fully fleshed out than wolf in white van. i haven't started devil house either but I should get on it
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Mar 26, 2022 17:03
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i read caliban and the witch it was v g ood read it i dare u
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Mar 26, 2022 18:34
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As I've gotten older, I've begun to appreciate brevity over everything else in literature. Oh your masterpiece is 750 pages? Too bad, my wrists can only handle 250. (I tried to read a Charlie Chan omnibus on the bus and it sucked.) |
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Mar 26, 2022 18:39
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3D Megadoodoo posted:(I tried to read a Charlie Chan omnibus on the bus and it sucked.) I recommend the biography! https://wwnorton.com/books/charlie-chan/ We get it right sometimes, we shine a light sometimes |
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Mar 26, 2022 21:46
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started the discworld series, up to wyrd sisters which is send up of multiple shakespeare plays mind candy but a lot of fun
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Mar 27, 2022 00:54
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xcheopis posted:I recommend the biography! I'll check it out, thanks. e: Welp, ordered it along with Kalpa Imperial, House of Leaves, The Long Earth (I'd accidentally bought the second book in the series so now I need the first one), and Adrift (The Lego Lost at Sea book). Somehow I'm incapable of just ordering one book, even though I can go in a shop and just pick one  The first two (or three, I guess) I learned about here on the Something Awful forums.ee: Speaking of The Long Earth - or rather the copy of The Long War I bought - what's up with HUGE paperbacks? Have they been around long? I've only started seeing them a few years ago but maybe I wasn't looking. Almost too tall to read on the bus. 3D Megadoodoo fucked around with this message at 11:54 on Apr 4, 2022 |
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Mar 27, 2022 01:25
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I read Peter Pan on a whim because I wanted something light and fun. It was really quite horrifying and sad. Peter comes across as some kind of narcissistic imp who parasitically haunts the female bloodline of this one specific British family, luring away each generation of girls and then discarding them when they're used up. He also turns the boys into killers (yes, even John and Michael have blood on their hands), and they keep a running bodycount like they're playing some sort of FPS game. Sure, Captain Hook is also a merciless killer, but at least he comes across as satire. Also, the father goes mad with grief when his kids disappear and spends months or possibly years living like a dog, going around on hands and knees and sleeping in a cage. |
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Apr 12, 2022 05:28
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i recently read "Turtlehalf and Cumber" by Jonathan M Chandler it's a friggin superb book. it tickled all my fancies. it's kind of like The Moonins meets Russell Hoban with a sprinkling of Phillip K Dick. it's written in a childish style (the reason for which will become apparent) but it's not for children. there's some quite dark existentialist stuff in there. after i read it, i was inspired to make some music. one of the characters in the story is a mechanical creature who composes grandiose tunes on his old and janky organ. i tried to imagine what that might be like https://soundcloud.com/chridmeister/money-mouse-2nd-concerto-3rd-movement
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Apr 12, 2022 17:41
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HUSKY DILF posted:started the discworld series, up to wyrd sisters which is send up of multiple shakespeare plays mind candy but a lot of fun this is a funny coincidence. a mate of mine recently came back to town and immediately mentioned Terry Pratchett to me, and lent me Small Gods. I'm a little over halfway through and enjoying it, he's already talking about how he's trying to decide what order to loan them to me, but realistically I'm not going to read them back to back.
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Apr 12, 2022 20:56
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I finished The Library At Mount Char last month. Best book I've ever read, next to Clive Barker's Thief of Always. |
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Apr 12, 2022 22:31
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rereading Slaughterhouse Five, it's good
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Apr 13, 2022 00:30
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Contron posted:I finished The Library At Mount Char last month. Best book I've ever read, next to Clive Barker's Thief of Always. Does the book say why Char?
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Apr 13, 2022 05:59
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3D Megadoodoo posted:Does the book say why Char? Yep. |
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Apr 13, 2022 13:42
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rear end-penny posted:this is a funny coincidence. a mate of mine recently came back to town and immediately mentioned Terry Pratchett to me, and lent me Small Gods. I'm a little over halfway through and enjoying it, he's already talking about how he's trying to decide what order to loan them to me, but realistically I'm not going to read them back to back. the friends who recommended them to me mention things are pretty uneven and I think even the author himself recommends starting on an arc that is at least a third of the way through the books
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Apr 13, 2022 16:21
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3D Megadoodoo posted:I'll check it out, thanks. Because of JIT, I'm still waiting for the books (it's now down to just one book, The Long Earth). Reading some Rory Clements instead.
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Apr 18, 2022 15:02
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really enjoying the newly translated olga tokarczuk novel 'the books of jacob'
https://i.imgur.com/xQxnooW.png |
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Apr 23, 2022 20:34
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Buttchocks posted:I read Peter Pan on a whim because I wanted something light and fun. It was really quite horrifying and sad. Peter comes across as some kind of narcissistic imp who parasitically haunts the female bloodline of this one specific British family, luring away each generation of girls and then discarding them when they're used up. He also turns the boys into killers (yes, even John and Michael have blood on their hands), and they keep a running bodycount like they're playing some sort of FPS game. Sure, Captain Hook is also a merciless killer, but at least he comes across as satire. Also, the father goes mad with grief when his kids disappear and spends months or possibly years living like a dog, going around on hands and knees and sleeping in a cage. yeah man, peter and wendy is a really disturbing book |
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Apr 24, 2022 00:53
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I've been reading Deathtrap Dungeon and having a great time dying in ridiculous ways. Anyone know some good fantasy choose your own adventure books? I also have The Warlock of Firetop Mountain, and I'm looking for more dungeon crawls. |
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Apr 27, 2022 09:40
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Which do I start tomorrow on the omnibus: Pratchett & Baxter's "The Long Earth" or Hugh Howey's "Wool"? |
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Apr 29, 2022 01:16
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*in a bo pepper voice* wool |
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Apr 29, 2022 02:48
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OK |
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Apr 29, 2022 06:51
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bo pepper will be pleased... |
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Apr 29, 2022 09:48
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I have been very slowly working my way through Wages of Destruction: The Making and Breaking of the Nazi Economy, which as the name implies is pretty heavy going. On the side I read Legends and Lattes (cute lesbian romance about an Orcish mercenary who hangs up her sword to pursue her lifelong dream of being a barista), Heaven's Vault (the two-book novelization of the game of the same name; excellent, and if you want to get into deciphering fictional languages there is a lot of that in the books and most of it is not translated in-text), and Paladin of Souls (sequel to Curse of Chalion; didn't like it as much, but can't put my finger on why). I also needed something non-digital to read for a trip to the consulate where I couldn't take electronics with me, and I'd already finished HV, so I randomly grabbed Med Ship off my shelves, a classic SF second hand book sale find from years ago I never got around to reading. It shows its age, and for a collection of stories about a space doctor very few of them are actually medical drama as such; there's a lot of "the 'disease' is actually a poison/electromagnetic field/propaganda/etc" plots, usually involving the space mafia trying to drive down land values. It does however have a lot of something I absolutely love in classic SF, which is incredibly wild inconsistency in how different technologies develop. So, for example, the titular Med Ship masses 50 tonnes, has life support for its two-being crew for months, three different drive systems (emergency reaction drive, reactionless drive, and FTL drive) with autopilot, and a complete onboard medical laboratory with computer assistance that can search, and draw conclusions from, the entire corpus of recorded medical and biochemical knowledge... ...but the computer stores all of that knowledge on microfilm! Also, if you misjump and have to take a parallax reading of nearby stars to locate yourself, the checklist is: - put the main display in full surround panorama view - get out the parallax camera and clamp it to the screen - load it with an unexposed image plate and take a photo - jump 5 minutes straight ahead - load another image plate and take another photo - rotate 90°, jump again, rotate back to your original heading, and take a third photo - develop the plates, then put them in the spinner and compare them by eye They have FTL autopilot and Star Trek-style medical computers but can't do digital photography, and I love it. Minutia posted:I've been reading Deathtrap Dungeon and having a great time dying in ridiculous ways. Anyone know some good fantasy choose your own adventure books? I also have The Warlock of Firetop Mountain, and I'm looking for more dungeon crawls. Lone Wolf is a classic of the genre and available online at Project Aeon, although those are gamebooks (i.e. you have stats and inventory to keep track of and there's some random rolling) and not pure CYOA. I have fond memories of the TSR Endless Quest dungeon crawling CYOA books but no idea how well they hold up now. |
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Apr 29, 2022 14:39
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ToxicFrog posted:Lone Wolf is a classic of the genre and available online at Project Aeon, although those are gamebooks (i.e. you have stats and inventory to keep track of and there's some random rolling) and not pure CYOA. Thanks, ToxicFrog! Those definitely sound fun. I am halfway through The Warlock of Firetop Mountain and having a wonderful time. Just tripped over a rock and accidentally staked a vampire. |
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Apr 30, 2022 06:20
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i read The Fifth Season and hated it, i do not understand why people think it's so great. if it did not have such good reviews i would have been like meh, but there's nothing as annoying as reading a book that people act like it's a work of genius and it's just ok beach reading |
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Apr 30, 2022 16:40
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yesterday I finished "the Ontogeny of Information" by Susan Oyama. It is a really challenging and direct confrontation of the dualist metaphors of biological development (nature/nurture most specifically) being interpreted as real life and not a metaphor. I dunno if I will ever totally integrate what she says as it feels simultaneously so obvious but so difficult to re-frame. Anyways I would suggest it if you want to spend like a month going "OF COURSE" to things and then struggling to actually seed your beliefs with them.
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Apr 30, 2022 18:13
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Nabbed three books out of storage for bedtime/lazy day/recuperating from tooth shenanigans https://www.amystewart.com/books/the-earth-moved/ https://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=7323371 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Papers_of_Samuel_Marchbanks We get it right sometimes, we shine a light sometimes |
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Apr 30, 2022 20:34
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Been listening to and reading along to the Starship Titanic audiobook. Friend introduced me to the old game that released back in the 90s and I thought it was pretty hilarious, so gave it a shot myself and loved it. The book is even better. Gonna start reading all of Douglas Adams' novels after I'm done with this one. Terry Jones (of Monty Python fame) wrote Starship Titanic while Douglas Adams was busy working on the game at the time. |
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May 2, 2022 15:05
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