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Im looking for a somewhat specific type of scifi book right now. I want to read anything that has to do with or one of the main themes is cryogenic freezing. I am thinking of writing a short fiction piece about the subject and would like to get some other authors takes on it before I start with my idea. Any textbooks or anything dealing with ancillary technologies nanobots etc. would be appreciated too, though those are a little easier for me to find. Thanks in advance everyone.
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Jan 26, 2014 10:28
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No Longer Flaky posted:Im looking for a somewhat specific type of scifi book right now. I want to read anything that has to do with or one of the main themes is cryogenic freezing. Love Minus Eighty, The Unincorporated Man, Ubik
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Jan 26, 2014 14:11
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funkybottoms posted:The Unincorporated Man I can also recommend this one. I've only gotten about halfway through it since I got distracted by other books, but the concept is really interesting.
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Jan 26, 2014 18:24
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funkybottoms posted:Ubik Oh is that what was going on in Ubik?
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Jan 26, 2014 18:45
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Mr. Squishy posted:Oh is that what was going on in Ubik? One of the things, yeah. If I'm not missing a joke and you've only read the first bit of it, things go in a very different direction than you might think.
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Jan 26, 2014 21:37
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Can anyone recommend me some half decent romance novel that are not steeped in cartoonishly overdramatic schlock like abusive husbands and mysterious millionaires? I'll admit my standards and expectations aren't high but I think any of those cliches would turn me off the book too much to finish it.
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Jan 26, 2014 23:53
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funkybottoms posted:One of the things, yeah. If I'm not missing a joke and you've only read the first bit of it, things go in a very different direction than you might think. I read it through a couple of years ago, it's just not a book I associate with frozzed aristos. You're right though.
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Jan 27, 2014 00:17
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I'm looking for a novel about something supernatural, maybe witches. I've already read the Anne Rice witch series (the name escapes me now) but maybe something along those lines? Not super cheesy or romance novel. Could be urban fantasy or more "historical" but I'm not looking for high fantasy.
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Jan 27, 2014 03:17
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frenchnewwave posted:I'm looking for a novel about something supernatural, maybe witches. I've already read the Anne Rice witch series (the name escapes me now) but maybe something along those lines? Not super cheesy or romance novel. Could be urban fantasy or more "historical" but I'm not looking for high fantasy. John Crowley's Little, Big and Susanna Clarke's Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell are my favorite books about magic.
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Jan 27, 2014 03:53
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frenchnewwave posted:I'm looking for a novel about something supernatural, maybe witches. I've already read the Anne Rice witch series (the name escapes me now) but maybe something along those lines? Not super cheesy or romance novel. Could be urban fantasy or more "historical" but I'm not looking for high fantasy. I'll toss in another recommendation for Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell. Another possibility is One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel García Márquez, though the magic isn't as much a focal point compared to Little, Big.
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Jan 27, 2014 04:13
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Hi guys, Long shot but was reading some old punisher comics i had from when i was a kid, got me wondering if there are any books (fiction as have read most mafia true crime) set in something like 80's new york about the mafia with action etc, kind of a book form of the punisher....? Cheers!
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Jan 28, 2014 11:06
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silvercroc posted:Hi guys,
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Jan 28, 2014 11:39
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Anyone read any good books on ancient Greek history? Somehow I found my way into a 20 day university-led tour of Greece this May and after booking the tickets I suddenly realized that I don't know poo poo about ancient Greece besides what I learned in the Rome: Total War games.
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Jan 30, 2014 07:19
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Bazanga posted:Anyone read any good books on ancient Greek history? Somehow I found my way into a 20 day university-led tour of Greece this May and after booking the tickets I suddenly realized that I don't know poo poo about ancient Greece besides what I learned in the Rome: Total War games. As a quick two-fer, I recommend The History of the Peloponnesian War by Thucydides, and Histories by Herodotus, as just two key, mostly historical texts (as opposed to e.g. mostly philosophical, etc.), if you're up for reading classics. These won't serve as good surveys though, which might be more beneficial for you given the upcoming trip. In that arena I'm sorely lacking in first-hand recommendations, but I've heard good things about Jonathan Hall's A History of the Archaic Greek World and P.J. Rhodes' A History of the Classical Greek World. Ancient Greece is typically broken up into a few periods: archaic, classical, Hellenistic, and Roman, and those two books cover the first two, respectively.
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Jan 30, 2014 11:29
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No Longer Flaky posted:Im looking for a somewhat specific type of scifi book right now. I want to read anything that has to do with or one of the main themes is cryogenic freezing. I am thinking of writing a short fiction piece about the subject and would like to get some other authors takes on it before I start with my idea. Any textbooks or anything dealing with ancillary technologies nanobots etc. would be appreciated too, though those are a little easier for me to find. Cryoburn, from Lois McMaster Bujold's Vorkosigan series, gets into some of the social issues associated with large-scale cryogenics.
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Jan 30, 2014 11:40
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Thanks guys, I already own Ubik, but I ordered The Unincorporated Man, Cryoburn, and Love Minus 80.
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Jan 30, 2014 11:51
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This may seem oddly specific: I'm looking for good books on the history of land surveys, regardless of country. If I had to pair down, I'm especially interested in the history of surveys in the US, India, and the PRC, but pretty much anywhere would be interesting to me. Even better if they're not too dry, but I'll take what I can get.
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Jan 30, 2014 15:15
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Tempura Wizard posted:This may seem oddly specific: I'm looking for good books on the history of land surveys, regardless of country. If I had to pair down, I'm especially interested in the history of surveys in the US, India, and the PRC, but pretty much anywhere would be interesting to me. Even better if they're not too dry, but I'll take what I can get. Oddly enough, I know of one: Sarah Hughes' Surveyors and Statesmen, which, if the internet is correct, seems to be out-of-print (I managed a college bookstore and sold this book for an urban planning grad course). Simon Winchester's The Men Who United the States and Andro Linklater's recently published Owning the Earth are on my to-read list, and Linklater previously wrote Measuring America, which also looks interesting. As for something I have read, it's not exactly what you were looking for, but George Stewart's Names on the Land is pretty cool. funkybottoms fucked around with this message at 16:42 on Jan 30, 2014 |
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Jan 30, 2014 16:32
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Tempura Wizard posted:This may seem oddly specific: I'm looking for good books on the history of land surveys, regardless of country. If I had to pair down, I'm especially interested in the history of surveys in the US, India, and the PRC, but pretty much anywhere would be interesting to me. Even better if they're not too dry, but I'll take what I can get. In addition to the better suggestions above, there is A history of the rectangular survey system (1983), an official Bureau of Land Management publication, which looks pretty dry but has the advantage of being free. Also Mapping an Empire: The Geographical Construction of British India, 1765-1843 by Matthew Edney. Perhaps also of interest to you is Map of a Nation: A Biography of the Ordnance Survey by Rachel Hewitt, which I've actually read and enjoyed.
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Jan 30, 2014 17:24
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Tempura Wizard posted:This may seem oddly specific: I'm looking for good books on the history of land surveys, regardless of country. If I had to pair down, I'm especially interested in the history of surveys in the US, India, and the PRC, but pretty much anywhere would be interesting to me. Even better if they're not too dry, but I'll take what I can get. In addition to the ones already posted, The Mapmakers by John Noble Wilford. It's been several years since I read it but remember there were sections on doing land surveys in Europe and the United States.
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Jan 30, 2014 19:37
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Bazanga posted:Anyone read any good books on ancient Greek history? Somehow I found my way into a 20 day university-led tour of Greece this May and after booking the tickets I suddenly realized that I don't know poo poo about ancient Greece besides what I learned in the Rome: Total War games. HDF Kitto's The Greeks is a concise look at Ancient Greece, covering everything from Homer to the city-state to mythology in under 300 pages. It's something you could probably read on the plane on the way over. Plus. you can get used copies - they'll probably be the blue Pelican edition, not the one I linked, but I think they're the same - dirt cheap all over the internet, too. I also just finished a book that's a little more specific: Moses Finley's The World of Odysseus. It's more about the dark ages of Ancient Greece than a look at the society as a whole, but it's a really fascinating look at a long vanished society. And yeah, Herodotus and Thucydides are great. Plutarch, too: he wrote little biographies comparing figures from Ancient Greece and Ancient (to us, not to him) Rome and while I'd take anything he writes with a grain of salt, they're really fun reads.
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Jan 30, 2014 23:29
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Bazanga posted:Anyone read any good books on ancient Greek history? Somehow I found my way into a 20 day university-led tour of Greece this May and after booking the tickets I suddenly realized that I don't know poo poo about ancient Greece besides what I learned in the Rome: Total War games. Herodotus is the best storyteller of those recommended to you so far. Keep in mind (especially for Herodotus and Plutarch) that ancient historians often cared as much (or more) about telling a good story as they did telling an accurate history (and weren't really writing 'modern histories' of their time) The some of the war and events Herodotus covers are what 300 is about, and he's also just a really entertaining read. Thucydides pointedly distinguishes himself from historians like Herodotus by setting out to write a more 'serious' history.
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Jan 30, 2014 23:47
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I enjoyed Robin Lane Fox's The Classical World, but its more a long survey of Greek and Roman civilizations. I found it good for providing some context to the primary texts I've read.
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Jan 31, 2014 03:28
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regulargonzalez posted:I'm concerned that the above sounds terribly condescending and it's honestly not my intent whatsoever. It is great you want to read more. I just think you'll have the most success with certain types of books now and branching out from there. barkingclam posted:If you're really curious about Hemingway and aren't sure if you'll like him, his short stories are pretty rad and will give you a taste of what his writing is like. I especially liked The Snows of Kilimanjaro and Hills Like White Elephants (interesting annotations on that one, too), but I don't think you can go wrong with picking up any collection of them and opening at random. (And I'll freely admit I did not "get" the latter story and had to read up on it.)
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Jan 31, 2014 13:53
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VagueRant posted:Oh thanks for the links, took me a while to get around to reading them. Also made me think I shouldn't read the rest of his stuff, because the run on sentences and everything drove me quite mad. Yeah, from what you said in your original post, I was pretty sure you weren't gonna dig him. You ever try short stories? Personally, I like Bradbury and Philip K Dick a lot, but if you're not a science-fiction/Twilight Zone kinda guy, they might not be for you (King's early short stories are great, too). Houghton Mifflin's The Best American Short Stories is a yearly anthology of all kinds of writers and is of generally high quality, so maybe look into that, and they have a bunch of others in the series, like mysteries, comics, non-required reading, etc, which are also very good.
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Jan 31, 2014 15:17
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Dystopia future, two people or a solid group of people fight the bad dudes or whatever?
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Jan 31, 2014 15:44
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noirstronaut posted:Dystopia future, two people or a solid group of people fight the bad dudes or whatever? You're looking for recommendations for something like this? I'd say check out "Ape and Essence" by Aldous Huxley. It's a cool book.
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Jan 31, 2014 20:00
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VagueRant posted:No, it was interesting. (I probably should check out Animal Farm sometimes, it always sounded interesting.) If you want literary but more accessible than Hemingway, try George Saunders' Tenth of December (short stories) or David Mitchell's Cloud Atlas. The prose style for both authors is way less conspicuous than Hemingway's. They're also both more relatable for a modern audience, I think, given their subject matter and thematic interests. Saunders is quite funny. Mitchell deals in sci fi and genre bending.
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Jan 31, 2014 21:11
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I can't believe how excited I am about the Jeb campaign!
H5N1 fucked around with this message at 23:53 on Oct 18, 2016 |
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Jan 31, 2014 22:18
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noirstronaut posted:Dystopia future, two people or a solid group of people fight the bad dudes or whatever? I just got an Amazon email about this: A Taste of Tomorrow - The Dystopian Boxed Set. It's kind of a dystopian taster set, with a bunch of "part 1" type things that lead into longer series. It's all self-published authors, but they're self-published authors who care about things like presentation and hiring line editors and copy editors, designers, etc.
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Feb 1, 2014 11:40
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H5N1 posted:The Windup Girl Picked this up. DirtyRobot posted:I just got an Amazon email about this: A Taste of Tomorrow - The Dystopian Boxed Set. It's kind of a dystopian taster set, with a bunch of "part 1" type things that lead into longer series. It's all self-published authors, but they're self-published authors who care about things like presentation and hiring line editors and copy editors, designers, etc. Bought this. Looks like the authors has solid reviews across the board too.
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Feb 1, 2014 16:34
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Cross-posting from the psych thread: I have decided I need a book about lobotomies. The ideal would be a combination technical manual/case studies/aggregate statistics, with actual anatomical detail and descriptions of behavioral change. Initial browsing makes me think most of what's been written has a much greater focus on historical context and ethics than the details I'm looking for. If anyone has any suggestions, I'd very much appreciate them.
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Feb 1, 2014 21:38
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Speaking of, I'm traveling tomorrow and wondered if anyone has any good short story collection suggestions Ted Chiangs stuff is great and if there's more like that (weird sci-fi and fantasy that uses other cultures and religions for inspiration while discussing human conditiony stuff) that'd be ace. I'm reading Neil Gaimens right now but its a bit eeeh.
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Feb 1, 2014 21:40
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Irony.or.Death posted:Cross-posting from the psych thread: I have decided I need a book about lobotomies. The ideal would be a combination technical manual/case studies/aggregate statistics, with actual anatomical detail and descriptions of behavioral change. Initial browsing makes me think most of what's been written has a much greater focus on historical context and ethics than the details I'm looking for. If anyone has any suggestions, I'd very much appreciate them. The only thing I got for you is My Lobotomy by Howard Dully, which goes a little in history and science, but is mainly a memoir with first hand experiences and effects from being lobotomized.
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Feb 2, 2014 01:41
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Nemesis Of Moles posted:Speaking of, I'm traveling tomorrow and wondered if anyone has any good short story collection suggestions Ted Chiangs stuff is great and if there's more like that (weird sci-fi and fantasy that uses other cultures and religions for inspiration while discussing human conditiony stuff) that'd be ace. I'm reading Neil Gaimens right now but its a bit eeeh. Axiomatic by Greg Egan and Beyond The Rift by Peter Watts are two sf short story collections that both reminded me of Ted Chiang's work in the best way.
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Feb 2, 2014 05:54
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Irony.or.Death posted:Cross-posting from the psych thread: I have decided I need a book about lobotomies. The ideal would be a combination technical manual/case studies/aggregate statistics, with actual anatomical detail and descriptions of behavioral change. Initial browsing makes me think most of what's been written has a much greater focus on historical context and ethics than the details I'm looking for. If anyone has any suggestions, I'd very much appreciate them. The Saturday Evening Post ran an Irving Wallace article in 1951 called Operation of Last Resort. It's not technical by any stretch of the imagination but fascinating in how early it was. The patient's family in the article was trying to reconcile his decision to have one and their involvement with it. If you can access the right EBSCOHOST database, it's available there.
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Feb 2, 2014 08:13
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I'm looking for a book that focuses on love and trust in the face of adverse circumstances, instead of lust and romance. Something that has some depth and leaves things for you to figure out on your own, and isn't just a quick read/feel-good type of story. I'd like to learn something new about love and why it's valuable enough that we should make an effort to have it in our lives even though relationships can be really lovely. Thanks for any recommendations.
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Feb 2, 2014 20:30
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Hedrigall posted:Axiomatic by Greg Egan and Beyond The Rift by Peter Watts are two sf short story collections that both reminded me of Ted Chiang's work in the best way. Thanks for this, I got Beyond The Rift and read the whole thing on the plane. Exactly what I wanted.
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Feb 2, 2014 20:34
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My Rhythmic Crotch posted:I'm looking for a book that focuses on love and trust in the face of adverse circumstances, instead of lust and romance. Something that has some depth and leaves things for you to figure out on your own, and isn't just a quick read/feel-good type of story. I'd like to learn something new about love and why it's valuable enough that we should make an effort to have it in our lives even though relationships can be really lovely. Thanks for any recommendations. Maybe The Idiot by Fyodor Dostoevsky Maybe also Of Human Bondage by W. Somerset Maugham. The main male character's love for the main female character is similar in both and rather unconventional. Both deal extensively with trust (or, rather, the breaking of it). That said, I'm not sure if either will be precisely what you're looking for but to say why would kind of spoil it.
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Feb 2, 2014 21:50
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My Rhythmic Crotch posted:I'm looking for a book that focuses on love and trust in the face of adverse circumstances, instead of lust and romance. Something that has some depth and leaves things for you to figure out on your own, and isn't just a quick read/feel-good type of story. I'd like to learn something new about love and why it's valuable enough that we should make an effort to have it in our lives even though relationships can be really lovely. Thanks for any recommendations. David Mitchell's The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet is about how and why we can choose to love and do the morally right thing, even when doing so is decidedly unpleasant and there is no reward above and beyond the act of loving and/or doing what's right itself. If you're considering poetry, Elizabeth Barrett Browning's Sonnets from the Portuguese are the very personal poems she wrote to Robert Browning, and they're very, very good. For a "negative" version of what you're talking about, I recently read The Demonologist by Andrew Pyper, which is about what happens when you lose love. The answer is isolation/hell, because he's building off Milton's Paradise Lost. (Also, Milton's Paradise Lost would sort of fit here, doing the negative and loss-of-love thing when the focus is Satan, and then the positive thing when the focus shifts to Adam and Eve.) regulargonzalez posted:Maybe The Idiot by Fyodor Dostoevsky -- Also, when I first saw the question, I felt like an exclamation mark popped up above my head, because I knew, knew I've just read a book that would be perfect. But... then I couldn't for the life of me think of it. I honestly think it's because a big, big chunk of literature deals with exactly what you're talking about, but often in a kind of peripheral sense -- that is, alongside other main themes. See Paradise Lost, for example. And I feel like the idea informs almost everything Julian Barnes ever wrote... but he just never did it really, really directly. I just finished The Goldfinch, and it fits too, but that's kind of weird when you consider both what it's about and what happens to the protagonists and the nature of his romantic relationships.
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Feb 2, 2014 22:29
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