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my bony fealty posted:I think this will be my next reread, its been a few years and I've read a few more Eco books since then. Thanks! Baudolino sounds fantastic! I don't think I want to dive right back into Eco right now but this sounds like an amazing read.
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# ? May 18, 2020 16:56 |
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# ? Jun 3, 2024 22:11 |
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Convenience Store Woman by Sayaka Murata just became the first book I've read in quite a while that wasn't a Star Wars book or nonfiction. I enjoyed it quite a bit. I think as somebody working customer service and not sure if I'll ever manage to escape, I think I related to Furukawa a bit too much at points. I also really wasn't expecting a decent portion of the book to be an exploration of inceldom
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# ? May 19, 2020 00:36 |
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Altered Carbon by Richard K. Morgan. Stopped reading it a couple months ago about 3/4 done and finally knocked out the last bit last night. It felt like pretty fun sci-fi. Maybe I'll read the next book in the series. I don't have much to add... I liked it, it was fun.
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# ? May 19, 2020 00:50 |
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Burned through Into The Wild (Jon Krakauer) today. Really enjoyed Krakauer's writing. I think I read, or at least skimmed parts of this book over 15 years ago. It was definitely more fascinating this time around with all my lived experience that's happened in the time since. Plus, all the traveling I did with a band gave me personal experience in a lot of the places McCandless traveled (although not Alaska). I was initially reminded of this book after a classic thread came up in the PYF SA Sagas thread: Hiking Across America: My Clothes Were Too Heavy.
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# ? May 19, 2020 10:12 |
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weed cat posted:Burned through Into The Wild (Jon Krakauer) today. Really enjoyed Krakauer's writing. I think I read, or at least skimmed parts of this book over 15 years ago. It was definitely more fascinating this time around with all my lived experience that's happened in the time since. Plus, all the traveling I did with a band gave me personal experience in a lot of the places McCandless traveled (although not Alaska). I was initially reminded of this book after a classic thread came up in the PYF SA Sagas thread: Hiking Across America: My Clothes Were Too Heavy. That's a real interesting book and it's interesting to different people's takes on it. (Or takes via the movie, which I haven't seen.) I thought Krakauer was telling quite a nuanced story - of how young men do foolish things, the events that set McCandless adrift, of how we celebrate those who dare and succeed while forgetting those who fail - but I've met many who wave off McCandless as "just an idiot, he deserved to die". Which seems an almost inhuman reaction to me.
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# ? May 19, 2020 12:22 |
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nonathlon posted:I've met many who wave off McCandless as "just an idiot, he deserved to die". Which seems an almost inhuman reaction to me. Deserved to die is perhaps harsh, but the outcome was eminently predictable and all the mistakes made along the way were McCandless's.
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# ? May 19, 2020 15:16 |
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I just finished Killing Commendatore and thought it was Haruki Murakami at his most formulaic and worst. The protagonist is so passive he barely exists, the supernatural elements mostly veered past "mysterious" into simply "nonsense", one of the main characters is basically a parody of a mysterious man of wealth and taste, and it's constantly dwelling on the budding breasts of 13 year old girls. Just re-read Wind Up Bird Chronicle if you feel the urge to read some Murakami.
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# ? May 19, 2020 15:51 |
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The Moon Monster posted:and it's constantly dwelling on the budding breasts of 13 year old girls. lol loving Murakami
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# ? May 19, 2020 16:47 |
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Killing Commentadore, by Bill O'Reilly and Martin Dugard
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# ? May 19, 2020 16:54 |
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empty sea posted:The Cabin at the End of the World by Paul Tremblay, The Luminous Dead by Caitlin Starling and Mongrels: A Novel by Stephen Graham Jones. Read Mongrels based on this and found it really fun. A lighter read for sure but definitely very enjoyable.
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# ? May 19, 2020 17:48 |
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The Moon Monster posted:I just finished Killing Commendatore and thought it was Haruki Murakami at his most formulaic and worst. The protagonist is so passive he barely exists, the supernatural elements mostly veered past "mysterious" into simply "nonsense", one of the main characters is basically a parody of a mysterious man of wealth and taste, and it's constantly dwelling on the budding breasts of 13 year old girls. Just re-read Wind Up Bird Chronicle if you feel the urge to read some Murakami. Murakami hasnt written anything good since 2005.
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# ? May 19, 2020 18:35 |
The Moon Monster posted:I just finished Killing Commendatore and thought it was Haruki Murakami at his most formulaic and worst. The protagonist is so passive he barely exists, the supernatural elements mostly veered past "mysterious" into simply "nonsense", one of the main characters is basically a parody of a mysterious man of wealth and taste, and it's constantly dwelling on the budding breasts of 13 year old girls. Just re-read Wind Up Bird Chronicle if you feel the urge to read some Murakami. ah, murakami's signature literary device: every woman is always thinking about their breasts at all times
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# ? May 19, 2020 19:41 |
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going by the summary it seems like he is literally recycling everything he has written for the past 20 years good on him for knowing how to earn a quick buck with minimal effort I guess
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# ? May 19, 2020 19:58 |
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ulvir posted:going by the summary it seems like he is literally recycling everything he has written for the past 20 years I remember reading wild sheep, wind up, and Kafka back to back to back and when I think back I just vaguely remember one long story about feeling lazy and chill and lists of old rock albums
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# ? May 20, 2020 01:10 |
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Wuhan Diary, by Fang Fang. Originally a series of Weibo posts, now published in book form and translated by Michael Berry. It's a touch repetitive, probably due to writing just to fill time in quarantine, but I found a lot that was very familiar to my own experiences in lockdown. Mixing boredom and the occasional bit of terror. She feels hope at her neighbors being kind to each other in quarantine, the frustration at the government's slapdash and incompetent response. About halfway through, her posts have been attacked by nationalists and other figures who say she's smearing the government's response, and her Weibo posts disappear from time to time. It's something that people will praise, but I don't know how many will read it. I appreciate it, but right now I'm itching for a good travel book.
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# ? May 20, 2020 01:19 |
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nonathlon posted:That's a real interesting book and it's interesting to different people's takes on it. (Or takes via the movie, which I haven't seen.) I too thought it was a nuanced "take" on the whole thing. A cautionary tale, but I also sympathize with McCandless wanting something drastically new and different. The latest version has some new research from 2015 or so in the afterward; Krakauer paid to have the wild potato seeds chemically analyzed and found it was a toxic amino acid on the seeds that probably poisoned McCandless. Had he not eaten those, it's likely he could have held on the last 20-ish days before other visitors came to the bus. NPR article about the scientific findings
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# ? May 20, 2020 01:31 |
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Lockback posted:Read Mongrels based on this and found it really fun. A lighter read for sure but definitely very enjoyable. I kinda love Stephen Graham Jones. I'd recommend Mapping the Interior if you're down for a short horror book.
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# ? May 20, 2020 17:34 |
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The Auctioneer by Joan Samson. I picked this up on a recommendation for horror fiction from a friend. I thought it was relatively solid, but where the scariest moments were conceptually good, I feel like the writing failed to communicate the horror to me. A fun idea for a scary story and a pretty easy read, though.
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# ? May 20, 2020 20:37 |
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Just finished On Writing by Stephen King. My grandmother gave me a copy when I was around 10 years old. I read almost all of King's novels when I was 9-13 or so, but I never got through On Writing because I thought it didn't apply to me since I'd probably never write anything. I thought that this quarantine would be a good opportunity to finish it and, I have to admit, it's made me want to try and write fiction. I also realize that my grandmother probably gave it to me because she wanted me to write fiction (she was always commenting on my creativity/imagination).
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# ? May 21, 2020 00:12 |
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Just finished Neuromancer (William Gibson). Saw it on a bunch of cyberpunk/sci-fi lists. Enjoyed it - reminded me of Snowcrash and The Diamond Age; the end reminded me of the latter's end, as well as 2001: A Space Odyssey. Kind of a cinematic read, made me think of Cowboy Bebop and, of course, The Matrix when I read it. I may have burned through it a little quickly; I can see parts of the book you could want to savor more.
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# ? May 21, 2020 09:49 |
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weed cat posted:Altered Carbon by Richard K. Morgan. Stopped reading it a couple months ago about 3/4 done and finally knocked out the last bit last night. It felt like pretty fun sci-fi. Maybe I'll read the next book in the series. I don't have much to add... I liked it, it was fun. I still haven't read Altered Carbon yet, but I really loved Market Forces by the same author. I'd definitely recommend that one if you're speeding through a bunch of stuff right now.
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# ? May 21, 2020 10:28 |
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I just finished the last of the main books of the Song of Ice and Fire series that have so far been printed. They were fine, but I probably wont revisit them again. If GRRM finishes the series I'll likely finish it too though. Also, way less diarrhea than I was expecting.
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# ? May 21, 2020 23:50 |
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Eat This Glob posted:I just finished the last of the main books of the Song of Ice and Fire series that have so far been printed. They were fine, but I probably wont revisit them again. If GRRM finishes the series I'll likely finish it too though. Also, way less diarrhea than I was expecting. do yourself a favour and watch the last season of the show....just for the chuckles.
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# ? May 22, 2020 02:19 |
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Goodbye, Mr. Chips by James Hilton is a cozy, short novella about an old teacher who does his best and is loved by everyone. This story is going for a sweet sentiment and it achieves a little bit of that in the end, but I was distracted by Chips' irritating speech tic and the story's quaint opinion of upper-class universities.
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# ? May 23, 2020 00:01 |
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The Little Girl Who Was Too Fond of Matches by Gaétan Soucy. A pretty disturbing but evocative read. By the end I was floored for how poetic the entire book was being not only an English translation but also written by a quasi-literate character.
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# ? May 23, 2020 15:20 |
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The Pale King by David Foster Wallace This is a work of genius. It is branded as being 'unfinished' due to the author's untimely death, but its actually very complete. The ending climax takes the form of a conversation between two work colleagues and is one of the best pieces of writing I've ever read. In a way, the 'unfinished' nature of the novel is actually a blessing as it does not suffer from the bloat that I felt Infinite Jest did. It was a pleasure to read. I strongly recommend. up next: either Book 6 of The Expanse, Wolf Hall or Adults in the Room...
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# ? May 23, 2020 19:09 |
French Theory: How Foucault, Derrida, Deleuze, & co. Transformed the Intellectual Life of the United States by François Cusset As an academic in the natural historical sciences, my first introduction to what is in this book called French Theory came from the Alan Sokal affair--his publication of outright nonsense in the critical journal Social Text. It seemed that "postmodernism" was useless from this perspective. Yet, my partner found Foucault and especially Derrida--once she was able to penetrate the density of the verbiage--extremely useful in her legal theory classes in grad school. I always struggled with this dichotomy; how could a useful tool of analysis also generate complete gibberish? So it was on fertile ground that Stanley Fish's review in the NY Times fell, and I went out and bought this book that would hopefully answer my questions. And it's a remarkable book! It begins with the very same Sokal affair, but then goes into the historical development of French Theory (spending a lot of time in Paris in 1968), and how in America these writers (Foucault, Derrida, Deleuze, Lacan, Lyotard, etc.) were well received and theory led to the development of communitarian based politics of what we now call "intersectionality", whereas in France there was a rejection of these academics and a retrenchment into the ideology of the previous centuries. It was a surprisingly easy read given the subject matter, but it still took me some years to work through because so much of it was new material to me, not coming up in a humanities stream of study beyond the basic liberal arts requirements of my undergraduate. Reading another introductory text on literary theory well beyond the structuralists and poststructuralists was enormously helpful for me in the end. I do wonder what postscript Cusset would write given the rapid changes in Western democracy and the rise of the new authoritarianism of the past few years.
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# ? May 25, 2020 04:44 |
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The Dark Tower VII by Stephen King It took me a little over a year to read through these, and now that I just finished this one, regardless of the quality of the ending or not, I cried a little bit knowing it was finally over. Finishing this felt like I have parted ways with an old friend. I started reading the 1st volume on the plane ride over to moving to a new country. Having these books with me gave me a sense of feeling like I was back home, even if they took me to strange places. I felt kind of bad for King that he had to explain the ending the way he did. I was fine with it as it was. But then again I read all of them over a year, I didn't have to wait however many years between books like some people did.
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# ? May 25, 2020 14:33 |
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Resurrection Man by Eoin McNamee It's a fictionalised account of the Shankhill Butchers who spent a good amount of the 1970s torturing people (usually randomly chosen Catholics) to death in Belfast. The first thing to say is the tone is very heavily indebted to Cormac McCarthy. It's basically Buckfast Meridian. That said, it does a fantastic job of encapsulating the claustrophobic inevitability of violence in the city at the time. Worth a read if you want to get a feel for what living through the troubles was like.
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# ? May 28, 2020 01:18 |
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An Army at Dawn by Rick Atkinson. Did an decent enough job of conveying the events of the North African campaign, but I'm left with the suspicion that Antony Beevor or some other writer might be more my style when it comes to narrative history. The narrow focus on the US and British Armies meant I was mostly left in the dark as to what was going on at sea and in the air. More in-depth Axis perspectives would also have improved things.
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# ? May 30, 2020 11:51 |
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Star Trek: TNG - Headlong Flight by Dayton Ward. This is the kinda thing I've been looking for in TNG novelizations. It had the vibe of a TV episode. Things wrapped up nicely in the end. No badly written sex scenes. It was a little confusing because it deals with parallel dimensions and switches between them, so you've got Picard's Enterprise, a Romulan ship, and a parallel universe Enterprise captained by Riker because Picard was assimilated and killed by the Borg but given all that it was a pretty breezy read that I knocked out in 2 or 3 days. Recommended.
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# ? Jun 1, 2020 07:10 |
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Eat This Glob posted:I just finished the last of the main books of the Song of Ice and Fire series that have so far been printed. They were fine, but I probably wont revisit them again. If GRRM finishes the series I'll likely finish it too though. Also, way less diarrhea than I was expecting. If you enjoyed the series (especially the first three books), be sure to check out his story collections of Dreamsongs vols 1&2. They include absolute top tier sci fi like Sandkings, a Song for Lya, and Tuf Voyaging.
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# ? Jun 1, 2020 17:26 |
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Bilirubin posted:French Theory: How Foucault, Derrida, Deleuze, & co. Transformed the Intellectual Life of the United States Having just finished The History of Sexuality by Michel Foucault for a lit analysis class, this sounds extremely interesting. Post-structualism has always intrigued me, but I think I similarly had reservations about how it felt like...overwrought but good-sounding gibberish. I was impressed, because Ithink if you really spend your time with Foucault, and map out his arguments, he does follow a very clear and logical argumentative path. Even with this, I feel like I grasped maybe 40% of his argument on my first read. Still processing how I feel about his central thesis w/r/t sex as discourse. His biopower argument and how sovereign power regulates sex and puts into discursive frameworks for optimization of its goals rings incredibly true, but his repression hypothesis did not sit quite right. Especially when a portion of his argument seemed to be that we were "more free" when we had freaky peasant sex with animals and children. I'll have to revisit and read some supplementary works before I fully grok it, I think.
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# ? Jun 3, 2020 14:40 |
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Finally popped my Franz Kafka cherry and gave The Metamorphosis a read, pretty bleak and sardonic stuff, but I'm into that sometimes. Definitely felt the suffocating, oppresive atmosphere Gregor was living through I read up a bit on Kafka after I was done, turns out he had some horrible self-confidence issues and thought everyone secretly hated him, which definitely reflects in the story, kinda curious how many parallels there are between Kafka and Gregor altogether
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# ? Jun 7, 2020 03:22 |
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Girlvert - Oriana Small Aka Ashley Blue. This is a memoir of doing cocaine, lovely boyfriends and early 2000's get spat on/strangled while doing double anal porn. It was entertaining in a morbid curiosity sense. The writing is functional, it's kind of just a collection of blog posts about notable times/incidents and insights into drugs, porn, eating disorders, more drugs, horrible relationships, drugs, etc.
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# ? Jun 8, 2020 16:12 |
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The Saga of the Volsungs, translated by Jackson Crawford A translation of the Volsung sections of the Poetic Edda of Norse mythology. Its extremely streamlined with no added characterization, but its a fun translation. It tells the story of the Volsung dynasty and is very light on myth. Odin makes some appearances, but there is no Thor, Lokie, Freya, etc. Brynhild is also mever referenced to be a valkyrie. Long story short, these Norse heroes (Sigmund, Sigurd, Brynhild, Gunnar) are some of the most bat poo poo crazy miserable melodramatic people Ive ever read about. It was a lot of fun.
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# ? Jun 11, 2020 14:49 |
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Monster Hunter International by Larry Correia. One of the books I would have never come across if I hadn't heard about it here. It tells the story of an accountant who survives a werewolf attack and joins a paramilitary organization that takes out monsters that threaten the decent folk who just want to drink beer and have barbeques. I'm used to reading fantasy novels by authors with a very strong liberal bias, so it was an experience to read an author who very much leans the other way. The story itself is pure pulp with a few well done action sequences. I know nothing about guns, but it's clear Correia knows a fair bit, and isn't afraid to fill paragraphs with details on ammunition and stopping power. The story also doesn't waste time trying to appeal to a liberal audience, going full bore, safety off about the evils of the federal government and how they couldn't find their own rear end with two hands and a map. Despite that, I enjoyed it for the redneck rollercoaster that it was. Correia has some interesting takes on Tolkien staples, to say the least.
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# ? Jun 12, 2020 02:31 |
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There was a Let's Read of that, if you're interested.
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# ? Jun 12, 2020 05:34 |
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The Blind Owl by Sadegh Hedayat. Reread. Really loving good.
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# ? Jun 12, 2020 22:57 |
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# ? Jun 3, 2024 22:11 |
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Hyrax Attack! posted:If you enjoyed the series (especially the first three books), be sure to check out his story collections of Dreamsongs vols 1&2. They include absolute top tier sci fi like Sandkings, a Song for Lya, and Tuf Voyaging. Nice! Thanks for the head's up - I'll give that a read. I'm looking for something else to read after a John Brown biography I just reread
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# ? Jun 14, 2020 02:29 |