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Nobody can ever make themselves throw away books despite the fact that nobody wants a giant box of used books that are in less-than-mint condition.
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May 15, 2015 01:52
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Finally finished the Tawny Man trilogy and noticed the next series that Hobb wrote is in an entirely different setting. Is Soldier's Son worth checking out after I go through the Rain Wilds stuff?syphon posted:It becomes frustrating when certain high-profile authors use their popularity for exclusive access deals (Harry Potter) or exclude e-books for vague legacy reasons (last Wheel of Time book). I hate looking at the hoops publishers want me to jump through to buy a certain book, then noticing that the book in question is very easily pirated. I suppose it's the RIAA/MPAA all over again. This is my experience with the Empire Trilogy from Fiest's Riftwar books. If I want an ebook form it's apparently only in countries like the UK and only through platforms such as Amazon. I eventually gave up on those 3 books because I could not get an Amazon UK account made and working correctly, rather than having it go "oh lol nope you're in the US actually so gently caress you." Plus I'm not sure I'd have been able to setup UK billing anyways.
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May 15, 2015 02:10
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Evil Fluffy posted:Finally finished the Tawny Man trilogy and noticed the next series that Hobb wrote is in an entirely different setting. Is Soldier's Son worth checking out after I go through the Rain Wilds stuff? No.
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May 15, 2015 02:29
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Evil Fluffy posted:Finally finished the Tawny Man trilogy and noticed the next series that Hobb wrote is in an entirely different setting. Is Soldier's Son worth checking out after I go through the Rain Wilds stuff? Double-No.
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May 15, 2015 03:08
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Hedrigall posted:Mum got frustrated a month or two ago and got rid of a good portion of them by literally throwing them in the recycling. If nobody wants these books what else can we do? You and your mom have obviously exhausted all the reasonable and obvious options, sometimes there just isn't anything to do but toss them. I've worked in public libraries in wealthy areas and poor areas, and they had very different levels of need for donated materials based on the amount of funding that they had (in the US, most funding for libraries is supplied at the local town / county level). It's an embarrassment of riches when a library is well-funded enough that they can afford to turn away donations carte blanche. Khizan posted:Nobody can ever make themselves throw away books despite the fact that nobody wants a giant box of used books that are in less-than-mint condition. This, and we had to be careful about how we disposed of books. It never happened while I was there, but there have been situations where someone would see staff putting discards into the dumpster, then go back and fish them out and demand that they be put back on the shelf, even though they were ratty and mildewy (and had spent time in a dumpster to boot).
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May 15, 2015 03:14
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Khizan posted:Nobody can ever make themselves throw away books despite the fact that nobody wants a giant box of used books that are in less-than-mint condition. Yes I do. Hedrigall posted:My Mum and I have a ton of old paperbacks (SF/F and other) that are getting spotty with age (foxing) and are readable still but the following places have turned them away: Well, this sounds like an odd edge case. I worked in a charity shop for five years, and while we only took higher quality stuff which we sold fairly expensively, there were plenty of other shops which would sell stuff in reasonable but not perfect condition. The best thing I can think of is putting it on eBay/gumtree/Craigslist/whatever with "buyer collects", or just check there isn't anything valuable. And sometimes we got literal rubbish covered in leaf litter and what looked like baby puke.
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May 15, 2015 04:03
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To expand on this, because I don't like it when people give me such short answers: Hobb does some cool things by playing with your expectations in the prologue, and has a cool commentary on how we overgeneralise when it comes to dealing with members of an out-group. But the protagonist of the Soldier Son makes Fitz seem like an uncomplaining go-getter. He spends the vast majority of the novels sitting around having other people tell him what to do, and the grand conclusion of the trilogy is him doing what someone else tells him, and then everything works out perfectly. The actual moral of the trilogy is "Sometimes powerful people tell you do things that are wrong and make no drat sense, and you should just do them, because otherwise they will hurt you." Patrick Spens fucked around with this message at 03:18 on May 16, 2015 |
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May 15, 2015 05:18
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McCoy Pauley posted:Big time. It also has Morgan turning all kinds of fantasy tropes on their ear, like "provide some kind of satisfying ending to a trilogy," or "explain seemingly important issues being alluded to in the earlier books of your series."
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May 15, 2015 11:55
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Kindle Unlimited is mostly for romance/erotica at this point. I've recently become an erotica author (lol) and you get $1 for every time someone on KU reads 10% of your story. Since a lot of erotica is like 4,000-10,000 words, but sells for $3.00, people who read a lot of erotica definitely get their money's worth on the monthly KU fee. Authors really like it because they only disadvantage of listing something on KU is that you can't sell it elsewhere for a while, and MAYBE you are losing a sale or two (like someone who would have paid $3.00 for it anyway, but got it free on KU, netting you $1.00 instead of $2.00.) When you sell something on Kindle for $3.00, you get to keep 70% of the profit, so $2.00). I think there is some really cool potential for this kind of system to make Sci-fi/Fantasy actually profitable though. As much as I love the traditional publishing thing and the idea of being able to push your writing hard until Clarke's World accepts you, it really does kind of suck that you get a few hundred dollars total for all that work. A few of the really high-up publications like Clarke's World can get you noticed enough that you get a book deal, but that also means you have to want to write novels and not just shorts. I don't think there's a single sci-fi/fantasy author out there who lives off shorts. Even Ted Chiang still has a day job. That all really kind of sucks! There's one dude in the self-pub thread who is making ~$50,000-100,000/year self-pubbing military sci-fi. I don't know if he's making a lot off KU or not. Again, I'm not wishing death on traditional publishing, but let's say that each story published in CW is read 20,000 times (I think around 40,000 people read each issue, so I'm estimating here) the author would make $20,000 for a story instead of ~$500. You can't really calculate it that way though, because the whole idea of traditional publishing is that by getting put into CW, your story is guaranteed to be seen. You read CW because you know they publish a certain type of story, and you know that every story in there went through a rigorous screening process. It's also really cool that being published in places like Lightspeed, CW, Asimov, or Apex can get you on the map and net you some real money, but when you compare the OBSCENE amount of money that people are making off of self-pub--a few people in the self-pub thread are making $100,000/MONTH (yes, month) off of erotica--whatever pittance people are getting for their shorts really starts to make me sad. I don't really wish for the death of traditional publishing for shorts, especially since I enjoy being able to just read a magazine I like to find stories I like, but it sucks that authors can't make real money doing shorts yet. The most prolific CW dude at this point to me feels like Ken Liu. I have no idea how much money he's made from writing thus far, but I think he still has a day job as a lawyer or something? He has a three-book deal that he probably made a good amount from, and he's publishing stuff in CW quite regularly. I have to wonder if after he started getting really noticed after that paper animal short he did--what if he just announced he was moving entirely to self-pubbing on kindle. He could have released all of his shorts for $3.00 on Kindle and through KU. Every KU read would be $1.00, and if every sci-fi/fantasy author were also doing this, people like us could sign up for KU, get our money's worth, and get more money directly to the authors. When Liu was ready to release the Grace of Kings, he could release each novel for $5-$10 on Kindle and get way more money directly than he's getting through Saga Press. I don't think the above situation would actually happen, because most people who read sci-fi/fantasy know that everything is free to read on these various magazines, and there isn't currently a real self-pub scene for good sci-fi/fantasy shorts. I do kind of want this to change, because I have myself started writing erotica because I want to actually make money writing. I'd love to make money writing what I actually want to write. I'm definitely not trying to say these traditional publishers are evil or anything; they also are making no real money and doing this all as a labor of love. angel opportunity fucked around with this message at 14:55 on May 15, 2015 |
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May 15, 2015 14:22
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Patrick Spens posted:To expand on this, because I don't like it when people give me such short answers: Hobb does some cool things by playing with your expectations in the prologue, and has a cool commentary on how we overgeneralise when it comes to dealing with members of an out-group. But the protagonist of the Soldier Son makes Fitz seem like an uncomplaining go-getter. He spends the vast majority of the novels sitting around having other people tell him what to do, and the grand conclusion of the trilogy is him doing what someone else tells him, and then everything works out perfectly. I loved the first Soldier Son book, still recommend people read that one. Hobb just nailed that whole aristocratic military society and American frontier setting, it's just a shame that she featured less and less of it the further the series went on.
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May 15, 2015 15:22
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I just finished The Long Way to a Small Angry Planet. I picked it up during one of the free preview books for having Prime. I really enjoyed it. She did a pretty decent job of describing new species, etc and had an enjoyable story. Would be interesting to see if she sets another book in the universe.
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May 15, 2015 15:43
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Hedrigall posted:My Mum and I have a ton of old paperbacks (SF/F and other) that are getting spotty with age (foxing) and are readable still but the following places have turned them away:
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May 15, 2015 18:47
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What are some good scifi/scifi audiobooks? I already did Lies and all of Steve Pacey's readings of Joe Abercrombies work. Also everything by Neal Stephenson except the Baroque Cycle, which has the most stodgy and terrible reading I've ever heard on a book. I'm currently starting The Magicians and it is pretty well done. Anyone have any other recommendations? I need things to listen to at work, so I prefer the lighter side of prose but not a huge YA fan.
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May 15, 2015 23:53
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savinhill posted:I loved the first Soldier Son book, still recommend people read that one. Hobb just nailed that whole aristocratic military society and American frontier setting, it's just a shame that she featured less and less of it the further the series went on. Yeah, I liked the first book when it was still about the aristocratic military cadet and not about those weird feeder-fetish mages. thespaceinvader posted:Do you have a local Freecycle or equivalent? See, the thing is that I don't value old genre paperbacks enough to put myself to any difficulty in getting rid of them. Dealing with that kind of thing is more trouble than I'm willing to go to just to avoid dumping a bunch of books in the recycling. Khizan fucked around with this message at 02:21 on May 16, 2015 |
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May 16, 2015 00:08
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Any opinions on Kate Elliott's "Crown of Stars" series? I see it's got seven books, and I have an aversion to overlong series. I'm also interested in an opinion on Janny Wurts' "Wars of Light and Shadow".
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May 16, 2015 01:11
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ulmont posted:Double-No. Patrick Spens posted:To expand on this, because I don't like it when people give me such short answers: Hobb does some cool things by playing with your expectations in the prologue, and has a cool commentary on how we overgeneralise when it comes to dealing with members of an out-group. But the protagonist of the Soldier Son makes Fitz seem like an uncomplaining go-getter. He spends the vast majority of the novels sitting around having other people tell him what to do, and the grand conclusion of the trilogy is him doing what someone else tells him, and then everything works out perfectly. On to Rain Wilds it is and then after that on to a different author I guess.
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May 16, 2015 01:41
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Barbe Rouge posted:Any opinions on Kate Elliott's "Crown of Stars" series? You should read it.
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May 16, 2015 01:57
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DroneRiff posted:I'd like to echo this "gently caress you". Though also I'm weak and I admit it. I ordered the physical book copy just on the chance we don't ever get an ebook version in the future. I blame Hannu for writing stuff I think is awesome. Circling back to this, it's an edition of 2000 copies. If they can't sell that out in a reasonable time frame, you can probably kiss any chance of an ebook goodbye, at least until the rights revert to the author.
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May 16, 2015 04:47
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Evil Fluffy posted:On to Rain Wilds it is and then after that on to a different author I guess. After Rain Wilds you can read The Fitz and the Fool Trilogy, or at least the first 1-2 books depending on timing: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robin_Hobb#The_Fitz_and_the_Fool_Trilogy
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May 16, 2015 04:58
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Trailer for Syfy's The Magicians adaptation: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QS_20JPaEnA It's been picked up for a 12 episode series. Looks really stylish, although the aging-up of everyone is a bit jarring.
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May 16, 2015 11:02
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Nevvy Z posted:What are some good scifi/scifi audiobooks? I already did Lies and all of Steve Pacey's readings of Joe Abercrombies work. Also everything by Neal Stephenson except the Baroque Cycle, which has the most stodgy and terrible reading I've ever heard on a book. I'm currently starting The Magicians and it is pretty well done. Anyone have any other recommendations? I need things to listen to at work, so I prefer the lighter side of prose but not a huge YA fan. The Magicians audiobooks are very good, probably the best audiobook narration I've ever listened to. The only drawback is he absolutely mangles an Australian accent in the second one. The audiobook for Old Man's War is good too, if you like Mil SF. The narrator really polishes the turdiness of Scalzi's dialogue, actually wringing emotion out of it! It's almost miraculous.
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May 16, 2015 11:05
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If your tastes extend to Urban Fantasy, James Marsters (Spike in Buffy) reading of the Dresden Files are almost universally regarded as great.
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May 16, 2015 13:12
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Nevvy Z posted:What are some good scifi/scifi audiobooks? I already did Lies and all of Steve Pacey's readings of Joe Abercrombies work. Also everything by Neal Stephenson except the Baroque Cycle, which has the most stodgy and terrible reading I've ever heard on a book. I'm currently starting The Magicians and it is pretty well done. Anyone have any other recommendations? I need things to listen to at work, so I prefer the lighter side of prose but not a huge YA fan. I can second Marsters on the Dresden books. I've only listened to the first, which I've seen recommended as a skip in here before, but I really enjoyed listening to him. Thursday I finished Use of Weapons. For some reason I had a hard time getting through the middle of the A plot on Kindle, but I found the audio to be excellent. It did a good job navigating a potentially confusing structure. Listening to The Moon is a Harsh Mistress now. Pretty good! The reading is very good to me. Parts of the book feel dated, but whatever. The Childhood's End audio is just OK. Book is fine. Audio feels stilted. Not particularly bad, but the performance could be better. I found The Martian to be excellent as audio. I've heard some complain about the tone, and can see where they were coming from, but overall I really enjoyed both the book and the performance. Revelation Space was fine with audio, but I was swapping frequently between it and kindle. It worked fine in that context. Don't know how it would go as only audio. If you ever read Wool on kindle you might be tempted to buy the audio since its like 2 bucks. Don't do it-- those are two dollars you could have burned just to feel the warmth for a minute. The book is fine. The audio is hot garbage in my opinion. Awful narrator. Blindsight was pretty good on audio but again I was switching between it and kindle. I keep mentioning this because some books have a lot of jargon, or whatever, and there's some benefit in lining up what you see with what you hear. I think it would be Ok as standalone audio. Old Man's War is good on audio. Worth your time. Ring World is OK but flawed on audio. Most of the flaws are dated parts of the book, I guess, not so much the performance itself. The first couple of hours were pretty poo poo IMO but it got better when they hit the titular ring. I really enjoyed Name of the Wind/Wise Man's Fear on audio, but I realize that they're very polarizing on the various Internet forums. I found them very good driving/mowing reading and would listen again. The Dark Tower stuff is good as audio. Frank Muller for the first four; George Guidall for the last three. How wrong can you go in terms of performance? The books themselves are a bit more hit and miss. What Dreams May Come was... Ok. I wouldn't go out of my way to recommend it as audio. Guards! Guards! Was ok as audio. I think the performance is fine, and that I just don't like the book as well as some people. I remember really enjoying listening to I Am Legend a few years ago, but I don't remember much past that. Harder to evaluate it against other performances.
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May 16, 2015 14:01
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Nevvy Z posted:What are some good scifi/scifi audiobooks? I already did Lies and all of Steve Pacey's readings of Joe Abercrombies work. Also everything by Neal Stephenson except the Baroque Cycle, which has the most stodgy and terrible reading I've ever heard on a book. I'm currently starting The Magicians and it is pretty well done. Anyone have any other recommendations? I need things to listen to at work, so I prefer the lighter side of prose but not a huge YA fan. Dune is seriously the best audiobook i've ever come across. Good narrator (Simon Vance) and a loving fantastic voice cast for dialogue, especially the baron (John Ahlin). The frank herbert sequels are also good (all narrated by vance) but clearly lower budget cause they don't have nearly as many additional voice actors for individual characters. Euan Morton continues to play Paul though, and Scott Brick sticks around for a while as Stilgar and does a few of the chapter introduction epigrams, etc.
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May 16, 2015 15:16
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I tried asking in the Space Opera thread a bit ago about this, but nobody was really able to come up with what I wanted, so I'm hoping I'll get something here. I'm looking for some books, trashy is okay as long as it doesn't get Weber- or Ringo-style trashy, with ancient astronaut themes. Stuff like the Stargate shows or the Ian Douglas Heritage and Legacy series. I'd prefer stuff on the more hard-sf and mil-sf angle, but I'm not picky on that. I mostly just want stories about modern/near-future humans fighting with aliens that pretended to be our gods, and might be still doing that to humans on other planets.
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May 16, 2015 15:59
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Hedrigall posted:The only drawback is he absolutely mangles an Australian accent in the second one. To be fair to the narrator, Austrailian accents, by their very nature, are loving mangled.
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May 16, 2015 17:03
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Internet Wizard posted:I tried asking in the Space Opera thread a bit ago about this, but nobody was really able to come up with what I wanted, so I'm hoping I'll get something here. Well, Inherit the Stars is an older book, pretty decent, that is all about 'ancient astronauts' except there is no fighting them. They are truly dead and gone and the book is about discovering their history.
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May 16, 2015 17:42
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fritz posted:You should read it. I'm about a third of the way through the first one and I'll stop now. Definitely not my cup of tea.
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May 16, 2015 18:22
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Barbe Rouge posted:I'm about a third of the way through the first one and I'll stop now. Definitely not my cup of tea. There's a change in tone once Liath's away from Hugh
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May 16, 2015 21:47
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Nuurd posted:The Dark Tower stuff is good as audio. Frank Muller for the first four; George Guidall for the last three. How wrong can you go in terms of performance? The books themselves are a bit more hit and miss. I have King's reading of the first three books on cassette. It's interesting.
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May 17, 2015 13:49
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Mister Kingdom posted:I have King's reading of the first three books on cassette. That's my concern with the latest addition. Not sure that I want to hear King narrate. http://www.audible.com/pd/Sci-Fi-Fantasy/The-Wind-Through-the-Keyhole-Audiobook/B007SXGJ9S/ref=a_search_c4_1_1_srTtl?qid=1431886773&sr=1-1
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May 17, 2015 19:21
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Ceebees posted:It has a smattering of Proper Stuff, some PKD, in particular? Agree that the name is a misleading joke, though.
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May 17, 2015 21:08
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Can anyone recommend something like the early parts of Leviathan Wakes? A universe where space travel/life is commonplace, but still highly dangerous. Especially something with a "lived-in" feel for the tech/locales.
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May 18, 2015 02:40
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Barbe Rouge posted:Any opinions on Kate Elliott's "Crown of Stars" series? I see it's got seven books, and I have an aversion to overlong series. I'm also interested in an opinion on Janny Wurts' "Wars of Light and Shadow". I much preferred her Crossroads Trilogy. Only three books, and I liked the characters, world and story much better. Crown of Stars was a real slog for me and I never made it past the first few books. I only liked a few of the characters and plotlines and even though it seemed like it might be getting more interesting as it went along, I couldn't stick it out for seven books. quote:Trailer for Syfy's The Magicians adaptation: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QS_20JPaEnA I didn't love the books, but the trailer for this looks really good. I think it convinced me to watch, even though I didn't make it all the way through the trilogy. Also, I was able to get the Hannu Rajaniemi story collection on eBook from NetGalley, if anyone really wants it and if you do reviews anywhere. I just review the books I get from there on Goodreads.
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May 18, 2015 02:50
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Barbe Rouge posted:Any opinions on Kate Elliott's "Crown of Stars" series? I see it's got seven books, and I have an aversion to overlong series. I'm also interested in an opinion on Janny Wurts' "Wars of Light and Shadow". Wars of Light and Shadow was one of the first fantasy series I got into and I loved it. Her prose is rather purple, though, and not for everyone. Since you're already interested enough to ask about it I'd say check out Curse of the Mistwraith regardless. If you like stories with elaborate worlds, conflicted characters, grey morality and a very broad, mythological feeling, it's a good bet. As for length, it's definitely long, but has a clearly-defined resolution in two more books (according to her forum she's nearly done with a draft for the next one), so it's not some unending series that drags itself out interminably.
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May 18, 2015 03:48
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I finished the first book of "Crown of Stars" and I'm not going to continue.Echo Cian posted:Wars of Light and Shadow was one of the first fantasy series I got into and I loved it. Her prose is rather purple, though, and not for everyone. Thank you for mentioning this. I won't be checking this one out either. My tastes go more in the way of Abercrombie and similar stuff.
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May 18, 2015 04:48
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Sextro posted:Can anyone recommend something like the early parts of Leviathan Wakes? A universe where space travel/life is commonplace, but still highly dangerous. Especially something with a "lived-in" feel for the tech/locales. House of Suns maybe?
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May 18, 2015 04:54
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Sextro posted:Can anyone recommend something like the early parts of Leviathan Wakes? A universe where space travel/life is commonplace, but still highly dangerous. Especially something with a "lived-in" feel for the tech/locales. Pretty much anything by Alistair Reynolds. Or Saturn's Children/Neptune's Brood if you want a very long tour of the solar system/Interstellar colonization with a step by step explanation of how dangerous space is and how unsuitable humans are for it. There is some self published stuff I could recommend as well, the "hard SciFi/restricted to the solar system" thing seems to be a burgeoning wave that is slowly catching on as a new trend. Unfortunately, the best of those I have ever read was a preview copy by an acquaintance years ago, that he then took for edits and has not yet sold or published AFAIK.
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May 18, 2015 04:59
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Reynolds' Blue Remembered Earth and KSR's 2312 are two novels that take place in our solar system featuring pretty realistic space travel. The Reynolds book is the first of a trilogy that then expands to other stars in the later books. The trilogy also has some politics similar to The Expanse, with the relationship between Moon- and ocean-dwelling humans being at odds with continental humans.
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May 18, 2015 05:25
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Sextro posted:Can anyone recommend something like the early parts of Leviathan Wakes? A universe where space travel/life is commonplace, but still highly dangerous. Especially something with a "lived-in" feel for the tech/locales. Other people have recommended Reynolds, I'd also add some of C.J. Cherryh's Merchanter novels, such as Merchanter's Luck and Rimrunners.
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May 18, 2015 05:53
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