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DACK FAYDEN posted:I have really good news for you about the entire rest of Pratchett's work (okay fine she's only in like 33% of them tops, but I'm pretty sure she has the highest raw number and they're all good, even the short story about apples) I think I may be the only person regularly banging this drum but I also thought Pyramids was largely forgettable. Most of the book is an extended joke about a cultural phenomenon that I had never even heard of, and the parts that aren't are very boring IMO. Honestly there are a few Discworld books that are likely to fall pretty flat if you're not interested enough in some cultural touchpoint to get a lot of the jokes--I don't really know or care about classic cinema so a lot of Moving Pictures didn't mean much to me and I doubt I'll ever read it again, but maybe it's great if you're into the subject matter. I could see the same being true about Soul Music, and all of the witches books that lean heavily on theatrical/operatic references honestly.
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Jan 2, 2024 19:20
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MockingQuantum posted:I think I may be the only person regularly banging this drum but I also thought Pyramids was largely forgettable. Most of the book is an extended joke about a cultural phenomenon that I had never even heard of, and the parts that aren't are very boring IMO. What? I loved Pyramids, and I don't remember a particular cultural phenomenon (other than the Djelibeybi bit, which I also don't have). I think I picked up Sourcery, Pyramids, and Mort in roughly that order and then I was hooked.
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Jan 2, 2024 19:32
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ulmont posted:What? I loved Pyramids, and I don't remember a particular cultural phenomenon (other than the Djelibeybi bit, which I also don't have). I think I picked up Sourcery, Pyramids, and Mort in roughly that order and then I was hooked. There was a whole thing in the 80s about pyramids having mystical powers, mostly seeming to revolve around keeping food fresh and causing blunt razor blades to become sharp again. Still, it's nowhere near as important to the book as the Assassin's Guild section, which is a pastiche-cum-parody of Tom Brown's Schooldays culminating in a spoof of the UK driving test.
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Jan 2, 2024 19:42
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ulmont posted:What? I loved Pyramids, and I don't remember a particular cultural phenomenon (other than the Djelibeybi bit, which I also don't have). I think I picked up Sourcery, Pyramids, and Mort in roughly that order and then I was hooked. I had never heard of "pyramid power" before and I thought a lot of the humor hinged on knowing that was a thing in the 80s, but I might be misremembering how integral it was, but there were definitely some aspects of the book that just kind of didn't land or make much sense because of it. Either way, even if I'm misremembering, I still think it's the second worst Discworld I've read, after Eric, but it's a pretty wide gulf. For me at least, the joke references are all a little obtuse and weird, the characters were much more flat and boring than most of the mainstays, and the setting was kind of whatever. I acknowledge it's just my taste and I can understand why someone would love it, but I always feel a little obligated to at least say something about it because I disliked it enough to almost quit reading Discworld, and I'm really glad I didn't since there's so many good ones I would have missed. It probably was at least partly a factor of reading them in publication order, since Mort, Sourcery, and Wyrd Sisters were all very good IMO, so hitting this weird book that didn't feel quite like it had much to do with what I'd read already, and had a lot of jokes that just didn't make any sense to me, was a pretty big disappointment.
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Jan 2, 2024 19:43
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Jedit posted:Still, it's nowhere near as important to the book as the Assassin's Guild section, which is a pastiche-cum-parody of Tom Brown's Schooldays culminating in a spoof of the UK driving test. Yeah, that section also fell a little flat for me honestly, I got what it was referencing in general but there was still a lot of humor in it that didn't really do anything for me. I've never heard of Tom Brown or Schooldays so maybe that's part of it?
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Jan 2, 2024 19:44
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Really looking forward to Exordia now. I love an Audible but I can’t recommend enough downloading a sample to check you are good with the narrator before committing. There is Project Hail Mary narrated by Ray Porter that worked so beautifully as an audible because of the two main characters and their means of communication - a very pedestrian vague competence-porn adventure became dumbly enjoyable in a way I can’t imagine it did on the page. A narrator can really elevate (see the full cast version of a by the numbers offshoot Alien story with Rutger Hauer playing a vengeful Ash), as well as totally destroy a fine tale. Rivers of London has benefited from Kobna Holbrook-Smith doing all the main series so characters are easy to identify and recently despite owning Gnomon in hardback I got the 20+ hr Audible because Ben Onwukwe’s voice is magic. See also listening to Cumberbatch tell me about physics with the English translation of Carlo Rovelli’s recent work as I go to sleep, tiny brain being pummelled by the idea of Planck time zzzz…. As for eyeball reading, Between Two Fires was excellent, Petition was delightful, I really enjoyed Steel Frame and the sequel, got through a lot of Lavie Tidhar and Max Gladstone, liked Infinity Gate by Carey and enjoyed Empire of the Vampire far far more than I was expecting. Oh and I read a huge amount of Dan Abnett 40k because it’s just fun. So were the Murderbots. 36 Streets was a standout. Stranger Times is a fun little series about an occult newspaper in the UK that I can recommend by Caimh McDonnell I read a lot of stuff for work currently and I’m studying. It’s quite apparent how this has manifested in my desire for a more fun experience with fiction at the moment when possible. Short stories are great for a commute and Ambiguity Machines (and other stories) by V Singh was very strong in parts as was Friday Black by Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah and everything by Ken Liu.
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Jan 2, 2024 19:52
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MockingQuantum posted:Yeah, that section also fell a little flat for me honestly, I got what it was referencing in general but there was still a lot of humor in it that didn't really do anything for me. I've never heard of Tom Brown or Schooldays so maybe that's part of it? e: I don't follow rock, and I didn't enjoy Soul Music at all.
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Jan 2, 2024 20:01
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Never read that, but a thread in the book barn did turn me onto the Flashman novels of which I've read a few. Flashman being one of the antagonists in that book is all I know and boy is he a poo poo.
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Jan 2, 2024 20:16
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Arsenic Lupin posted:e: I don't follow rock, and I didn't enjoy Soul Music at all. ...although some of the jokes don't actually have to be gotten to be funny imo (like when the Dean fucks up his leather jacket and it reads LIVE FATS DIE YO GNU, I think of that phrase out of the blue about once a year and just lose it laughing) I definitely missed a fair number of them as a kid - some goon here pointed out We're Certainly Dwarves was just They Might Be Giants like a year ago and blew my mind, that one's so obvious and I didn't get it at all, let alone all the Buddy Holly crap - and it was still moderately okay. Not that bad. But I think it's also low on the list. Like what I said about Shakespeare for Wyrd Sisters but for rock music.
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Jan 2, 2024 20:17
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Arsenic Lupin posted:Heh. Tom Brown's School Days is the ur-British-boarding-school book, published in 1857. It's very moral. It's not embedded in American culture, and go team us. It's most notable these days for being the origin of Harry Flashman, the antihero of George Macdonald Fraser's series of novels.
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Jan 2, 2024 20:18
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Jedit posted:It's most notable these days for being the origin of Harry Flashman, the antihero of George Macdonald Fraser's series of novels.
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Jan 2, 2024 20:24
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I was given the new hardbacks of the Vimes books for Crimbo and they are sublime. The official discworld emporium website is a delight. When you order from them the parcel turns up with stamps and franking on it to show that it did indeed come from Ankh Morpork. Everything I’ve got from there has been very good so I can really recommend.
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Jan 2, 2024 20:24
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DACK FAYDEN posted:That's a good point, Soul Music also (much more than like, Moving Pictures which is also very blatant in its references) really lives or dies by the jokes Most of the important jokes in Soul Music refer back to the song American Pie and knowing what The Day The Music Died is. For example, when Death takes the jacket you mentioned and uses it to recreate the cover of Bat Out of Hell, he is of course wearing a coat he borrowed from the Dean. The rest just encourage you to read up for all the references you missed. (One of the more obscure jokes is that Imp's master's piece, Sioni Bod Da, approximately translates from Welsh as "Johnny, Be Good".)
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Jan 2, 2024 20:25
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Jedit posted:Most of the important jokes in Soul Music refer back to the song American Pie and knowing what The Day The Music Died is. I have one friend who had never heard of either American Pie or the events it's referencing until about a month ago, so even those aren't absolute cultural touchstones anymore. It made me want to crumble into dust, and I'm not even that much older than him.
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Jan 2, 2024 20:28
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It's been fully replaced by a much more recent and important cultural touchstone, Weird Al Yankovic's "The Saga Begins."
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Jan 2, 2024 22:40
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I’m probably a few days late, but I thought I’d join the gang and share my favourite SFF novels that I read in 2023 Cold Water (and the Fractured Europe series) - I wanted to re-read Fractured Europe because the new book had come out, and it turned out they’re all available free to Audible members. Who doesn’t want to read spy stories in a near future semi-dystopian Europe which may or may not be connected to a parallel world created by and English landholder in the nineteenth century? This series deserves to be more widely read and talked about. If anything I enjoyed them even more this time round, and it is ever more disturbing how close Europe is getting to Hutchinson’s predicted future. Cold Water is every bit as good as the original quartet, but I have to say the audiobook is not as good as the previous four. It is also a standalone, though there are numerous hints and links to the first four books. Tomorrow - Probably the closest thing to a cosy novel that I read this year, though it has some pretty dark moments. An ultimately heartwarming story about a dog trying to find its master across the centuries. Venomous Lumpsucker - Brilliant, dark, made me laugh a lot. Hasn’t lived with me quite as much as I’d thought it might, but it was thoroughly enjoyable while I was reading it. Metronome - On the edge of sci-fi, thanks to the conceit of a timed pill which the protagonists have to take twice a day. Another dark book, exploring the reactions of a couple who are effectively imprisoned on an island but are no longer sure that the society that sent them away still exists Alien: The Cold Forge - Recommended in this thread, well worth the read. I’d already read and enjoyed A Big Ship At The Edge Of The Universe by the same author, and this book turned out to be the best Alien movie they never made. Declare - Also recommended in this thread, also well worth the read. It’s a very effective urban fantasy horror, and a very well plotted spy novel, and to pull off both is quite an achievement. A Canticle For Liebowitz - Not the only classic sci-fi novel I read this year, but certainly the best. I wasn’t expecting the time jumps but in the end they make the book. I haven’t enjoyed many sci-fi novels of this era, but this one I would recommend to anyone. Slade House - In many ways this is David Mitchell having a bit of fun, but it’s a really entertaining little book. Benefits from having read The Bone Clocks, which is a brilliant novel. Skyward Inn - I didn’t know what to expect from this but it was a neat and well-written novella with some clever ideas. How High We Go In The Dark - Out of all the books I read in 2023, this is the one that will stay with me the longest. It is dark and sad, uplifting in places, optimistic in others; it’s a novel of humanity surviving after a pandemic, and understandably it speaks to these times. It’s beautifully written, and formed (David Mitchell style) of a sequence of loosely linked short stories. This novel gives you small scale humanity in the face of large scale events and I can’t understand how it didn’t win every award going. The audiobook is excellent, for those who prefer them.
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Jan 2, 2024 22:51
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I need some help. I've stopped enjoying things I used to enjoy because I can't find enjoyment in them anymore. Manga and anime aren't doing it for me anymore, Mecha Anime is almost never what I want and it's not the kind of thing that people who look like me get to show up in (Read: Black), except maybe Obsolete. I'm tired of kid heroes and falling into cockpit and Military "Geniuses" who's biggest power is the plot and maybe landslides. LOGH is too politically conservative for me. So I try to get into Military sci-fi and Fiction in general to scratch that itch, and it works for a start. I like Team Yankee and Mission of Honor Retold and David Drake's stuff, but when I try to read other Mil sci-fi I just slide off of it. I'm tired of one sided power stomps, I'm tired of the English and Space English. I'm tired of Mil Sci-fi being fashy as gently caress. Basically, I'm looking for books that don't exist.
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Jan 2, 2024 23:22
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When I get in an "everything is poo poo" mood, sort of like how you open the fridge and look everywhere but there's nothing you WANT to eat, I go back and reread the space team series. I might be rereading a book I've read a bunch, but at least I'm laughing while I'm doing it.
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Jan 2, 2024 23:31
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I’m saying this with the greatest amount of love and affection possible for this thread, which is about SFF. There’s a whole world out there outside of genre trash!!!
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Jan 2, 2024 23:36
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This book is an oral history of the Vietnam War from the perspective of Black soldiers. It’s amazing!!! Bloods: An Oral History of the Vietnam War by Black Veterans https://a.co/d/1AuRUbq buffalo all day fucked around with this message at 23:41 on Jan 2, 2024 |
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Jan 2, 2024 23:39
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ClydeFrog posted:Stranger Times is a fun little series about an occult newspaper in the UK that I can recommend by Caimh McDonnell
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Jan 2, 2024 23:40
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Fivemarks posted:Basically, I'm looking for books that don't exist. It's hard to know for sure what to recommend without hearing more about what you like, not just what you don't like, but some things that came to mind:
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Jan 2, 2024 23:42
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You could read Steel Frame because that’s coming at mecha from an interesting angle which many in the thread have enjoyed. It’s got some gritty moments but the humanity of it all was what interested me most and made it stick. There are people in the thread with an encyclopaedic knowledge of fiction who I am sure will soon shower you with other suggestions.
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Jan 2, 2024 23:44
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anilEhilated posted:Hey, someone else has read those. I only really liked the first two, though, the third one drops a lot of the comedy and doesn't really handle the tone change well. Have you read Slow Horses, because I would believe the two main characters were separated at birth. Fffff edit, quote, new post… how does this new-fangled forum stuff even work
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Jan 2, 2024 23:46
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Lex Talionis posted:Welcome to the Quest for Really Good Books. There are no easy answers and everyone in this thread is looking for slightly different things, but at least we're all on the same journey. Part of what doesn't help is that whenever I talk about characters and people with agency who look like me, It's never anything about black men, and it's always invariably about Black Women. There's nothing wrong with that, it's just a feeling that's hard to put into words.
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Jan 2, 2024 23:48
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Fivemarks posted:Part of what doesn't help is that whenever I talk about characters and people with agency who look like me, It's never anything about black men, and it's always invariably about Black Women. There's nothing wrong with that, it's just a feeling that's hard to put into words. Rivers of London series?
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Jan 2, 2024 23:52
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Fivemarks posted:Part of what doesn't help is that whenever I talk about characters and people with agency who look like me, It's never anything about black men, and it's always invariably about Black Women. There's nothing wrong with that, it's just a feeling that's hard to put into words. The best SFF book (and one of the best books I’ve read in the last five years period) that I read with a black male protagonist was Black Leopard Red Wolf by Marlon James but it’s definitely fantasy and has a shocking lack of spaceships.
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Jan 2, 2024 23:56
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ClydeFrog posted:Have you read Slow Horses, because I would believe the two main characters were separated at birth.
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Jan 2, 2024 23:57
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buffalo all day posted:The best SFF book (and one of the best books I’ve read in the last five years period) that I read with a black male protagonist was Black Leopard Red Wolf by Marlon James but it’s definitely fantasy and has a shocking lack of spaceships. Don't worry, I like Fantasy too, and had the exact same problems with Fantasy. And everyone was like "no you'll feel represented by these books about Necromancer Lesbians making bone puns" and wouldn't listen when I said I wasn't really down for that. I liked the Belisarius books, in part, because of characters like Ousanous and the Ethiopians, so that says something about me.
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Jan 2, 2024 23:58
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MockingQuantum posted:I have one friend who had never heard of either American Pie or the events it's referencing until about a month ago, so even those aren't absolute cultural touchstones anymore. It made me want to crumble into dust, and I'm not even that much older than him.
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Jan 3, 2024 00:01
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Fivemarks posted:Don't worry, I like Fantasy too, and had the exact same problems with Fantasy. And everyone was like "no you'll feel represented by these books about Necromancer Lesbians making bone puns" and wouldn't listen when I said I wasn't really down for that. Fantasy is easier. In addition to BL,RW, have you read A Wizard of Earthsea? White author but the main character and most of society is black. Main guy learns to be a wizard and confronts his own problems which don’t go away despite being a magical prodigy. Stone cold classic, an easy and short read, and unlocks rest of Earthsea books which are also S tier.
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Jan 3, 2024 00:03
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buffalo all day posted:Fantasy is easier. In addition to BL,RW, have you read A Wizard of Earthsea? White author but the main character and most of society is black. Main guy learns to be a wizard and confronts his own problems which don’t go away despite being a magical prodigy. Stone cold classic, an easy and short read, and unlocks rest of Earthsea books which are also S tier. Think I saw the anime made from that. People in that sure didn't look anything close to black. Maybe a bit Brownish, or Tanned.
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Jan 3, 2024 00:05
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An historic issue with adaptations of Earthsea is that no one quite gets (or got, and ignored) that LeGuin's intention was that those characters were capital-b Black.
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Jan 3, 2024 00:08
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Seconding Rivers of London. Of the top of my head American Gods and Anansi Boys by Gaiman and Rosewater by Tade Thompson (trilogy set in future Lagos) are all black male protagonist.
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Jan 3, 2024 00:10
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Fivemarks posted:Think I saw the anime made from that. People in that sure didn't look anything close to black. Maybe a bit Brownish, or Tanned. Yeah, it was significantly whitewashed in the adaptation, among other changes.
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Jan 3, 2024 00:12
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Fivemarks posted:Think I saw the anime made from that. People in that sure didn't look anything close to black. Maybe a bit Brownish, or Tanned. Ged (the main character) has “red-brown” skin and the author was majorly pissed that they hosed this up. Seriously, the books are amazing. Try them! Also I forgot but the main character in The Left Hand of Darkness (SF) is also black. Also a stone cold classic
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Jan 3, 2024 00:14
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Fivemarks posted:Don't worry, I like Fantasy too, and had the exact same problems with Fantasy. And everyone was like "no you'll feel represented by these books about Necromancer Lesbians making bone puns" and wouldn't listen when I said I wasn't really down for that.
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Jan 3, 2024 00:16
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Fivemarks posted:I need some help. I've stopped enjoying things I used to enjoy because I can't find enjoyment in them anymore. Manga and anime aren't doing it for me anymore, Mecha Anime is almost never what I want and it's not the kind of thing that people who look like me get to show up in (Read: Black), except maybe Obsolete. I'm tired of kid heroes and falling into cockpit and Military "Geniuses" who's biggest power is the plot and maybe landslides. LOGH is too politically conservative for me. Read David Mace
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Jan 3, 2024 00:30
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SF&F Fantasy Megathread - I don’t think we quite got the book to its best or ideal state—but at least it will finally be released!
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Jan 3, 2024 00:30
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Maybe you'd like Charles Saunders's Imaro books? They're African-based fantasy by an African-American author.
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