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Hitler?
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Sep 26, 2022 23:42
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Marion Zimmer Bradley?
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Sep 26, 2022 23:48
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David Eddings?
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Sep 26, 2022 23:50
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High Warlord Zog posted:David Eddings?
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Sep 26, 2022 23:56
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pseudorandom name posted:Marion Zimmer Bradley?
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Sep 27, 2022 00:17
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Gaius Marius posted:Hitler? Thought he was such a compelling author until I googled. 
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Sep 27, 2022 00:20
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Sep 27, 2022 00:20
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lol
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Sep 27, 2022 00:34
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Stuporstar posted:Didn’t stop my jr. high library from having a copy of Bio of a Space Tyrant The only exposure I had to "Bio of a Space Tyrant" was:  And it was surprisingly good, though not written by Anthony, which was probably why it was surprisingly good.
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Sep 27, 2022 01:03
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lolitya
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Sep 27, 2022 01:04
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Tezer posted:what books are high school students not allowed to have i remember liking Dr Strangelove an Barbarella so i found a copy of Terry Sothern's Blue Movie. what with pornography and the internet it's probably not as arousingly-confusing as i found it, just dated. anyway probably not one for a 13 yo
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Sep 27, 2022 02:10
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Stuporstar posted:Didn’t stop my jr. high library from having a copy of Bio of a Space Tyrant There's a David Langford article covering Bio of a Space Tyrant where he mentions the bad guy torments people by sending them videos of himself dancing slowly backwards wearing red tights. It is the only time I've ever been strongly tempted away from my strict "never read any Piers Anthony" stance.
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Sep 27, 2022 04:47
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when I bought a copy of American Psycho it was sold in shrink-wrap and I had to show the bookstore clerk my ID to prove I was over 18
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Sep 27, 2022 12:03
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I've finished Robin Hobb's Farseer trilogy and moved onto her Liveship Traders trilogy. The characters are annoying and so much of these books is just useless chaff. The amount of time characters repeat mindless drivel gives the books a feeling of stalling for time. The author did not know what to write next so we need to recap the first 2/3rds of the book.
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Sep 27, 2022 13:13
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Definitely seconding the confusion on calling the Locked Tomb series YA - it does seem like this thread has very different definitions, myself included. To me, YA is categorized as only really dealing with a single concept/plot thread while everything else is either not explored or explicitly labeled as not important. This felt most egregious to me in Goblin Emperor, where he just gives a specific house a bit more coal instead of wondering, boy why do my people not have coal, isn't there something I the literal emperor could do about this? It felt like that happened three or four times in increasingly stupid ways. I dropped it 93% of the way in because I realized that I was reading YA (hadn't known as friends had recommended) and that the book was going to address zero of my issues. Locked Tomb doesn't feel like YA to me, and honestly the popularity continuing surprises me given how weird the second and third novels have ended up. Not quite as surprising as the popularity of Jeff VanderMeer novels but a bit up there. Possibly some of that characterization is due to popularity? Several people I know who pretty much exclusively read YA picked up Harrow and have continued with it. Not to say YA is without value - there are several books that I read as a teen that I still think about all the time - I think I'd just find them a bit boring or straightforward these days. I've also got my own genres and mediums where I read lower effort stuff though so it's not an epithet in that sense.
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Sep 27, 2022 16:22
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The Goblin Emperor is just as thoroughly not YA as Locked Tomb, because it (Emperor) is slow and passive. This is not a bad thing, it's a book about a passively nice character being passively nice, and in the moral universe of that novel that's enough to make a positive difference. YA readers won't jump for such a low-conflict story. The real identifier of YA is prose style, it has a very on-the-page clarity and urgency of emotion which appeals not just to Young Adults but to lots of people who just want to read a book where characters are consumed by powerful and easily legible feelings.
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Sep 27, 2022 16:43
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just people who want to read about teenagers getting all hot and steamy
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Sep 27, 2022 16:46
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cover art determines what is YA and what is not
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Sep 27, 2022 16:47
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YA% is based off of how quickly the lead and their love interest fall madly in love with eachother divergent is 100% and lmao still that I read that series because my girlfriend at the time liked it
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Sep 27, 2022 16:51
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It's like a garbage author chimera. Mr Hootington posted:I've finished Robin Hobb's Farseer trilogy and moved onto her Liveship Traders trilogy. The characters are annoying and so much of these books is just useless chaff. The amount of time characters repeat mindless drivel gives the books a feeling of stalling for time. The author did not know what to write next so we need to recap the first 2/3rds of the book. The first 100 or so pages of the Liveship trilogy is some of the worst idiocy I've seen in a book, ever. At the time I think I summarized it as a competition to see who could be the worst rear end in a top hat possible. The series felt like it picked up once two POVs interact for the first time and it does get better but it is a very rough start. Some of the stuff, once it gets going, is good, but the series probably has the worst start of any of her trilogies.
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Sep 27, 2022 17:04
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Evil Fluffy posted:The first 100 or so pages of the Liveship trilogy is some of the worst idiocy I've seen in a book, ever. At the time I think I summarized it as a competition to see who could be the worst rear end in a top hat possible. The series felt like it picked up once two POVs interact for the first time and it does get better but it is a very rough start. Some of the stuff, once it gets going, is good, but the series probably has the worst start of any of her trilogies. Ok. I hope it picks up. Most of the characters in Farseer are tremendously stupid people being outfoxed by regular stupid people and it was infuriating. Plot points would happen and it was obvious who was behind it, buy everyone was always baffled. I did laugh put loud at Fitz getting cucked by his adopted father. tremendous content. So far the Liveship characters are all too clever assholes. Vile people. I cheer for the fish monsters.
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Sep 27, 2022 17:21
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I think I'd have got on with the Goblin Emperor better if it hadn't had something on the back cover saying it had a ton of political intrigue, setting false expectations.
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Sep 27, 2022 17:46
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I read the first Liveship book about a decade ago and all I can remember about it is drowning in a sea of adverbs.
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Sep 27, 2022 18:19
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Qwertycoatl posted:I think I'd have got on with the Goblin Emperor better if it hadn't had something on the back cover saying it had a ton of political intrigue, setting false expectations. it's really a slice of life about how much it sucks to be a constitutional monarch I think. That's the way it was sold to me and I enjoyed it a lot under that framing.
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Sep 27, 2022 18:45
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Blamestorm posted:The third Scholomance book by Naomi Novik is out - the Golden Enclaves - and I thought it was Pretty Good and a fairly satisfying conclusion to the trilogy. Because it moves out into the proper world it has to throw a lot of detail out fast on stuff that had been more ambiguous in the early books and introduce a number of characters who come and go very quickly. I wonder whether it would have benefitted from being two books instead. But it wraps everything up quite neatly (I suspect some people will think too neatly) and it’s obvious in retrospect how much she was seeding in books 1 and 2 as many disparate things turn out to be more connected than perhaps they appeared early on. (Being super vague as I guessed two of the major revelations shortly before they were spelled out and I wouldn’t want to deprive others of the same satisfaction). I think one implicit point though is that (more specific spoilers inside) El's personal power is in some sense the problem. She's a balance to Orion, but the Golden Stones Sutras and the fact that it took one unreasonably powerful caster to use them in some sense created the issue of the Enclaves in the first place. The real leverage in the book is the network of allies she has, and her willingness and desire to give up being any sort of Chosen One. The modification of the Golden Stones Sutras to be manageable by a group of regular rear end-wizards is actually the most important victory, because it's really a story about cooperation overcoming a system of hierarchical domination. El could break the existing physical enclaves all by herself if she really wanted to, but she couldn't replace their system of domination without giving up her central, visible role and acting in cooperation with her friends and allies.
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Sep 27, 2022 19:24
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day-gas posted:Definitely seconding the confusion on calling the Locked Tomb series YA - it does seem like this thread has very different definitions, myself included. To me, YA is categorized as only really dealing with a single concept/plot thread while everything else is either not explored or explicitly labeled as not important. This felt most egregious to me in Goblin Emperor, where he just gives a specific house a bit more coal instead of wondering, boy why do my people not have coal, isn't there something I the literal emperor could do about this? It felt like that happened three or four times in increasingly stupid ways. I dropped it 93% of the way in because I realized that I was reading YA (hadn't known as friends had recommended) and that the book was going to address zero of my issues. Yeah, Locked Tomb doesn't read as YA for me. Locked Tomb is what happens when people who grew up with anime and got their brain broken by the internet write novels. And who am I to throw the first stone. Really liked the voice of the POV in book three though. Shows that she could have just not written all the dad jokes, but actively chose to do it.
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Sep 27, 2022 19:25
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General Battuta posted:The real identifier of YA is prose style, it has a very on-the-page clarity and urgency of emotion which appeals not just to Young Adults but to lots of people who just want to read a book where characters are consumed by powerful and easily legible feelings. This is the correct answer.
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Sep 27, 2022 19:27
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General Battuta posted:The real identifier of YA is prose style, it has a very on-the-page clarity and urgency of emotion which appeals not just to Young Adults but to lots of people who just want to read a book where characters are consumed by powerful and easily legible feelings. By that measurement Locked Tomb isn't YA, but would seem to have quite a bit of YA DNA in its ancestry. Or something.
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Sep 27, 2022 19:45
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So, I seemed to remember a lot of love for Harry Connelly’s Twenty Palaces books. Well, he did a kickstarter and we’re getting two more books in the series. https://twitter.com/byharryconnolly/status/1574830324286394368?s=46&t=mD9YYbsXmTtJk7qTf-knDg
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Sep 27, 2022 20:05
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navyjack posted:So, I seemed to remember a lot of love for Harry Connelly’s Twenty Palaces books. Well, he did a kickstarter and we’re getting two more books in the series. I really enjoyed these, and I was really surprised to hear that they didn’t sell well. Definitely glad he’s getting to write more of them.
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Sep 27, 2022 20:11
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It's pretty easy to get a Kobo book on a Kindle, right? I want to do an ebook pre-order but the post says Amazon won't take it. Edit: nevermind it worked. Edit 2: oh duh he meant you can't pre-order a print version since they're doing print on demand. Danhenge fucked around with this message at 20:27 on Sep 27, 2022 |
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Sep 27, 2022 20:19
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Everyone posted:By that measurement Locked Tomb isn't YA, but would seem to have quite a bit of YA DNA in its ancestry. Or something. I think this is right. Man, I just read a bunch of Ted Chiang stories, and yeah he's got really good words but I am not vibing with him at all. Each story ends in sort of an eh, what ya gonna do? Like it's all incredibly competent and the sci fi idea in each story is clever enough but it's like he got the idea, slapped down a fairly generic character or two and kept typing until he got to the end.
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Sep 27, 2022 20:34
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General Battuta posted:The real identifier of YA is prose style, it has a very on-the-page clarity and urgency of emotion which appeals not just to Young Adults but to lots of people who just want to read a book where characters are consumed by powerful and easily legible feelings.
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Sep 27, 2022 21:32
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You should read his other bunch of stories still. Maybe skip the life cycle of software objects because it's so God drat long and I don't even think I remember liking it
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Sep 27, 2022 22:01
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a foolish pianist posted:I really enjoyed these, and I was really surprised to hear that they didn’t sell well. Definitely glad he’s getting to write more of them.
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Sep 27, 2022 22:18
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Oryx and Crake (MaddAddam #1) by Margaret Atwood - $2.99 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B000FC1BNI/ The Book of Skulls by Robert Silverberg - $1.99 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07B3S9TLS/
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Sep 27, 2022 22:35
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pradmer posted:Oryx and Crake (MaddAddam #1) by Margaret Atwood - $2.99 It's been said before, but Oryx and Crake is really good. It also becomes more relevant, uh, seemingly every day!
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Sep 28, 2022 02:35
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General Battuta posted:The real identifier of YA is prose style, it has a very on-the-page clarity and urgency of emotion which appeals not just to Young Adults but to lots of people who just want to read a book where characters are consumed by powerful and easily legible feelings. As I said, War and Peace is YA.
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Sep 28, 2022 03:10
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Danhenge posted:I think one implicit point though is that (more specific spoilers inside) Yeah I absolutely get all that and it makes total sense within the story. However I feel like it did remove the oppressive sense of threat and danger from the first two books. A fine third book and conclusion but perhaps a weaker individual story. I also found the balance / destiny aspects - while super well seeded and completely coherent as part of the story - a bit of a turn off with El and Orion being so closely linked metaphysically/magically as well as personally. It all made sense within the story, but dramatically I felt it stole some of the value from the first two books - eg killing the mawmouths in the first two books was less of a heroic, brave and dangerous act and more something she was destined or empowered specifically to do. I DID like the ghoulish nature of how Orion was created and I wish we’d seen his mother more as a pseudo antagonist. This is where I think potentially a fourth book would have helped - the book felt much weaker on the character front, both old and new characters. They didn’t have much time “on screen” to develop, except Liesel. El and Orion’s mothers both were big missed opportunities IMO to have a lot more development and expansion. I was thinking as I read how interesting it may have been if El’s mother was travelling with her and actively supporting her, as a shift from the more passive role she played in the past - El being away for 4 years and then the revelations about the Golden Stones etc could have catalysed a shift in her as well. But yeah, in general I liked how neatly it hung together. But it did feel like revelation, revelation, revelation, now it’s all fixed - to it’s dramatic cost I guess. Still good though! Edit: argh I screwed the tags up (phone posting) - hope that didn’t blow anything for anyone.
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Sep 28, 2022 03:15
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navyjack posted:So, I seemed to remember a lot of love for Harry Connelly’s Twenty Palaces books. Well, he did a kickstarter and we’re getting two more books in the series.  Preordered, it said the release date was 9/30!
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Sep 28, 2022 03:27
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