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If any you people do audiobooks, the narrator for the Murderbot books is really good.
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Apr 27, 2021 12:24
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a foolish pianist posted:I keep trying to catch her prints at release, but they're always sold out. I think you've got to watch insta for the release times and just sit by the computer to catch one in the few minutes after she puts them on the shop. It's like trying to buy a graphics card or a PS5 or something. Looks like we might have a chance soon. I really want to request a copy of Chen dissolving into salamanders https://twitter.com/kathleenneeley/status/1386687945101488131 Kesper North posted:It's by a local band so unless you're a goth in Seattle I would be somewhat surprised if you had! Well I guess not, but I've added them to my playlist for when I'm working or exercising.
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Apr 27, 2021 13:13
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I did it. I finally finished Fellowship of the Ring after picking it up and putting it down since roughly middle school. I really didn't like it. I realize how important the story is to some people so I'm not going to be "that guy." I just found it thoroughly unenjoyable and a chore to get through. There are no real characters or arcs because it feels like anytime a character speaks or even makes a move, Tolkien uses it as a prompt to go into an extended worldbuilding spiel. Google puts the page count at 423 and somehow Legolas is still just the Elf, Gimli is just The Dwarf, Aragorn is still The Human With a Secret That's Not a Secret, Gandalf is The Wizard, and the Hobbits are pretty fun but are still pretty hollow for such a long book.
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Apr 27, 2021 16:47
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Pennsylvanian posted:I did it. I finally finished Fellowship of the Ring after picking it up and putting it down since roughly middle school. Wow, I've never seen a comment that so perfectly encapsulates "this book isn't for you". I'm in the middle of Fellowship now - the Hobbits just left the Prancing Pony - and I've been in love with the rich detailing of everything, and the Bombadil chapter was an absolute delight. Can't wait to get to Rivendell!
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Apr 27, 2021 17:12
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StrixNebulosa posted:Wow, I've never seen a comment that so perfectly encapsulates "this book isn't for you". I'm in the middle of Fellowship now - the Hobbits just left the Prancing Pony - and I've been in love with the rich detailing of everything, and the Bombadil chapter was an absolute delight. Can't wait to get to Rivendell! I was actually okay with the book up to that point. Tom Bombadil was a huge bump in the road, but I was willing to give a lot of compliments to the book. Then the pacing just hit a wall for me at Rivendell and I was only reading the book just to say I finally finished it.
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Apr 27, 2021 17:20
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StrixNebulosa posted:Wow, I've never seen a comment that so perfectly encapsulates "this book isn't for you". I'm in the middle of Fellowship now - the Hobbits just left the Prancing Pony - and I've been in love with the rich detailing of everything, and the Bombadil chapter was an absolute delight. Can't wait to get to Rivendell! I think there's a subgenre of fantasy that really hinges on the question of 'do you really enjoy long evocative descriptions of rural landscapes and people rambling through them?' Lord of the Rings kind of goes to poo poo once the plot starts happening but Fellowship of the Ring is a treasure
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Apr 27, 2021 17:25
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It really is just one big book. The hobbits get more characterisation, things happen, there is the actual war going on. But if you had to struggle to read the first third, it's probably better to wait until you get the urge to try again.
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Apr 27, 2021 18:01
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I can see what people enjoy about it, at the least. When it's at its best, it gives you that "storyteller" feel like grandpa is telling you the story while you sit on his knee or you're in an open-air theatre. The world itself feels full, but what's happening in the book in the present just feels hollow a lot of the time.
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Apr 27, 2021 18:06
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I always thought it was pretty cool how the whole style of the book (dialogue and all) becomes more epic and formal the further away it gets from the Shire.
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Apr 27, 2021 18:08
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As a kid I never made it past halfway through The Two Towers. In fact I'm not sure I ever revisited and finished the books, or if my memory of them was completely eclipsed by the films and then the extended editions of said films.
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Apr 27, 2021 18:22
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Tom Bombadil was the worst thing about the Lord of the Rings and leaving him out of the movies was 110% the right move.
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Apr 27, 2021 18:24
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Khizan posted:Tom Bombadil was the worst thing about the Lord of the Rings and leaving him out of the movies was 110% the right move. "keep talkin poo poo, buddy. you're lucky Goldberry is holding me back, otherwise these boots of yellow would be up your rear end." 
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Apr 27, 2021 18:41
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I'm very much not going to even try to be objective about Lord of the Rings personally. Got the Finnish translation as a birthday gift when I turned ten, spent a month in Middle-Earth, and that literally opened the world that is books to me properly and got me dredging throught the library shelves the next five years.
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Apr 27, 2021 19:01
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A Proper Uppercut posted:If any you people do audiobooks, the narrator for the Murderbot books is really good. I have the complete opposite opinion, weirdly. I'm guessing the narrator is doing it on purpose to highlight how Murderbot is failing at humanity, but it comes off as being so wonky and awkward that it's almost impossible to get through each new release. I wish the quality of the narrator didn't affect the enjoyment of audiobooks so much for me.
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Apr 27, 2021 19:21
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In that vast shadow once of yore Fingolfin stood: his shield he bore with field of heaven's blue and star of crystal shining pale afar. In overmastering wrath and hate despate he smote upon that gate, the Gnomish king, there standing lone, while endless fortresses of stone engulfed the thin clear ringing keen of silver horn on baldric green. His hopeless challenge dauntless cried Fingolfin there: 'Come, open wide, dark king, your ghastly brazen doors! Come forth, whom earth and heaven abhors! Come forth, O monstrous craven lord, and fight with thine own hand and sword, thou wielder of hosts and banded thralls, thou tyrant leaguered with strong walls, thou foe of Gods and elvish race! I wait thee here. Come! Show thy face!' Then Morgoth came. For the last time in those great wars he dared to climb from subterranean throne profound, the rumour of his feet a sound of rumbling earthquake underground. Black-armoured, towering, iron-crowned he issued forth; his mighty shield a vast unblazoned sable field with shadow like a thundercloud; and o'er the gleaming king it bowed, as huge aloft like mace he hurled, that hammer of the underworld, Grond. Clanging to ground it tumbled down like a thunder-bolt, and crumbled the rocks beneath it; smoke up-started, a pit yawned, and a fire darted. Fingolfin like a shooting light beneath a cloud, a stab of white, sprang then aside, and Ringil drew like ice that gleameth cold and blue, his sword devised of elvish skill to pierce the flesh with deadly chill. With seven wounds it rent his foe, and seven mighty cries of woe rang in the mountains, and the earth quook, and Angband's trembling armies shook. Yet Orcs would after laughing tell of the duel at the gates of hell; though elvish song thereof was made ere this but one -- when sad was laid the mighty king in barrow high, and Thorndor, Eagle of the sky, the dreadful tidings brought and told to mourning Elfinesse of old. Thrice was Fingolfin with great blows to his knees beaten, thrice he rose still leaping up beneath the cloud aloft to hold star-shining, proud, his stricken shield, his sundered helm, that dark nor might could overwhelm till all the earth was burst and rent in pits about him. He was spent. His feet stumbled. He fell to wreck upon the ground, and on his neck a foot like rooted hills was set, and he was crushed -- not conquered yet; one last despairing stroke he gave: the mighty foot pale Ringil clave about the heel, and black the blood gushed as from smoking fount in flood. Halt goes for ever from that stroke great Morgoth; but the king he broke, and would have hewn and mangled thrown to wolves devouring. Lo! from the throne that Manwë bade him build on high, on peak unscaled beneath the sky, Morgoth to watch, now down there swooped Thorndor the King of Eagles, stooped, and rending beak of gold he smote in Bauglir's face, then up did float on pinions thirty fathoms wide bearing away, though loud they cried, the mighty corse, the Elven-king; and where the mountains make a ring far to the south about that plain where after Gondolin did reign, embattled city, at great height upon a dizzy snowcap white in mounded cairn the mighty dead he laid upon the mountain's head. Never Orc nor demon after dared that pass to climb, o'er which there stared Fingolfin's high and holy tomb, till Gondolin's appointed doom.
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Apr 27, 2021 19:26
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sorry it just kind of slipped out
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Apr 27, 2021 19:28
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Ancillary Justice is 99p on the Amazon UK Kindle store today!
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Apr 27, 2021 19:31
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Given the influence of LotR, you already kinda know the story before reading it, since it has been retold countless times after the trilogy and I would say that makes it seem less spectacular. Other genre defining books experience the same phenomena (as example Neuromancer).
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Apr 27, 2021 20:01
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Pennsylvanian posted:I did it. I finally finished Fellowship of the Ring after picking it up and putting it down since roughly middle school. I've read LOTR and I'm with you, not my thing
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Apr 27, 2021 20:17
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90s Cringe Rock posted:Fingolfin throwing down with Morgoth The fact that the Amazon 'Lord of the Rings' TV show is actually going to be focused on First and Second Age events really makes me want a tv show or movie for the War of Wrath. And then announce a new Angband game (and if it's isometric, watch as people call it a Diablo clone without a shred of awareness at the irony).
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Apr 27, 2021 20:28
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Roses are red Violets are blue I stabbed Morgoth 'Till he fed me his shoe.
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Apr 27, 2021 20:28
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The problem with the First Age is that there is no-one on the planet who can portray a dick as enormous as Fëanor.
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Apr 27, 2021 20:31
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Cardiac posted:Given the influence of LotR, you already kinda know the story before reading it, since it has been retold countless times after the trilogy and I would say that makes it seem less spectacular. Other genre defining books experience the same phenomena (as example Neuromancer). I had this experience reading The Three Musketeers in high school. "It's just a bunch of swashbuckling cliches!"
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Apr 27, 2021 20:40
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It's super not fun when you're reading old sci-fi, like Space Viking in my case, and you're kinda swimming along and going "okay no it was written by a white dude in the 50's, that's why everyone smokes and the main characters are from a feudal system that empowered them that's why it seems so fond of them," only for the book to toss in SPACE JEWS who EVERYONE HATES because of their INSCRUTABLE SPACE JEW WAYS and how every really civilized world is a feudal monarchy and how democracy is portrayed as foolish but not AS foolish as socialism. Man, H Beam Piper had some issues.
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Apr 27, 2021 21:03
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darkgray posted:I have the complete opposite opinion, weirdly. I'm guessing the narrator is doing it on purpose to highlight how Murderbot is failing at humanity, but it comes off as being so wonky and awkward that it's almost impossible to get through each new release. That's kind of how I read it, but it worked for me. And yes, it really sucks when you don't like the narrator. I was like 6 books into a series with one narrator and then it went to another and he pronounced all the names differently and just sucked. I just stopped listening.
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Apr 27, 2021 21:11
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Fivemarks posted:It's super not fun when you're reading old sci-fi, like Space Viking in my case, and you're kinda swimming along and going "okay no it was written by a white dude in the 50's, that's why everyone smokes and the main characters are from a feudal system that empowered them that's why it seems so fond of them," only for the book to toss in SPACE JEWS who EVERYONE HATES because of their INSCRUTABLE SPACE JEW WAYS and how every really civilized world is a feudal monarchy and how democracy is portrayed as foolish but not AS foolish as socialism. My "favourite" bit is in Uller Uprising when the protagonist and the Hot Chick Who Turns Out To Not Be A Bleeding-Heart Liberal Do-Gooder Like He Thinks She Is bond over the hi-larious fact that they both had Nazi ancestors who fled to Brazil. I would say that REALLY didn't age well but that might imply it wasn't loving awful at some point. 
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Apr 27, 2021 21:19
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My friend's book came out today: https://www.amazon.com/Folklorn-Angela-Mi-Young-Hur/dp/1645660168 I'm not totally sure how to describe it. It's not really fantasy or sci fi - more magical realism and a lot of Korean myths. And particle physics. But I bet some of you will dig it.
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Apr 27, 2021 21:47
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Man I'm a couple chapters into Harrow the Ninth and I have absolutely no idea what is going on.
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Apr 27, 2021 22:02
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Spite posted:My friend's book came out today: Congrats! Your friend has a real publisher so prob can't run a sale at will, but I recommend doing a Cover Reveal on the r/fantasy reddit and post a link to the book in the comments . I did that for my first novel and it got 2k likes, jumped to #1 Best Seller in Epic Fantasy for a full day, and got downloaded over 2000 times. It's like a super effective blog tour that doesn't cost anything, especially cause the book will probably be picked up by a lot of their "Reading Champions" who will post reviews on their blogs. Ccs fucked around with this message at 22:17 on Apr 27, 2021 |
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Apr 27, 2021 22:02
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A Proper Uppercut posted:Man I'm a couple chapters into Harrow the Ninth and I have absolutely no idea what is going on.
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Apr 27, 2021 22:03
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I went through the entire Pathfinder series by Orson Scott Card. The first book was pretty fun. The second book was okay. The third book makes me wish time travel was real so I could warn my former self that the last half of the last book, especially the ending, was completely trash. I don't think I've ever been so disappointed in a book series before.
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Apr 27, 2021 22:05
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not to chomp pradmer's flavor but: Use of Weapons by Iain M. Banks - $2.99 https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0015DWLTE/ I'm slowly accumulating Culture novels.
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Apr 27, 2021 22:07
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A Proper Uppercut posted:Man I'm a couple chapters into Harrow the Ninth and I have absolutely no idea what is going on. Yeah.. I wasn't really happy with how long it takes in that book to clear up what's actually going on
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Apr 27, 2021 22:08
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A Proper Uppercut posted:Man I'm a couple chapters into Harrow the Ninth and I have absolutely no idea what is going on. Nor does Harrow, at this point.
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Apr 27, 2021 22:17
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mewse posted:Yeah.. I wasn't really happy with how long it takes in that book to clear up what's actually going on On the other hand, I loved that about it.
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Apr 27, 2021 22:20
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It was real tough for me to get through the first act but once I got a handle on the dynamics between the characters again it was fine. The first bit is so disorienting because Harrow is not acting like the same person from the first book at all and I couldn't visualize the space stations they were on very well and who the heck is Ortus.
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Apr 27, 2021 22:24
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Gats Akimbo posted:My "favourite" bit is in Uller Uprising when the protagonist and the Hot Chick Who Turns Out To Not Be A Bleeding-Heart Liberal Do-Gooder Like He Thinks She Is bond over the hi-larious fact that they both had Nazi ancestors who fled to Brazil. Jesus loving Christ.
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Apr 27, 2021 22:27
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Harrow was confusing and lovely. Unlike the end of the first book, which was just lovely.
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Apr 27, 2021 23:53
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I started enjoying Harrow once I gave up on understanding what was going on. Early on it provides a lot of new information that doesn't fit together at all.
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Apr 28, 2021 00:08
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Hubbardologist posted:not to chomp pradmer's flavor but: Some days I'm slow and I'm sure I miss plenty of books I just don't recognize. It's all good. The Black Song (Raven's Blade #2) by Anthony Ryan - $1.99 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0818XJTFX/
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Apr 28, 2021 00:08
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