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Narmi posted:That's one take on it. Though "kingdom building" (or "nation building") is kinda a catch-all for stories that measure the main character's progression by essentially "measuring" the land they control. Not just obtaining more land, but resolving political tensions, natural disasters, wars, as well as technological and social development. Essentially, they're climbing from the bottom to the top of the political/social hierarchy, and implementing change as they do so. So a story where a character becomes more powerful politically, rather than by learning new spells or gaining more magic items, or in terms of non-fiction you want biographies of politicians. There’s a three part biography about Josef Stalin by Stephen Kotkin. I haven’t read them yet but from what I’ve heard about them they seem well received, and there’re few people in history who’ve risen as high as Stalin.
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Sep 15, 2021 20:59
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The Folding Knife by K.J. Parker probably fits, as well as Sixteen Ways to Defend a Walled City. The Aubrey/Maturin series does too, except it's more about bigger ships and crews and political importance for Jack and Stephen than outright kingdom building.
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Sep 16, 2021 02:37
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Disneywar by James B. Stewart, a chronicle of Michael Eisner's rise and fall as the chairman and CEO of Disney. Disneywar is supposed to be a business book, but doesn't really read like one. Its narrative style made it an entertaining and interesting read, despite my apathy towards big business and corporate politics. Stewart was unflinchingly tough on Eisner and dutifully reported his many missteps throughout his tenure - Katzenberg, Ovitz, passing on CSI and Survivor for ABC - but I thought he was very fair in his assessments. It's hard to deny that Eisner presided over some of Disney's biggest triumphs of the past forty or so years, but to get there Eisner stepped on a lot of other people's backs and left behind people that should have been allies (like Katzenberg and Pixar Studios). You can't be a CEO of a major company without being a huge bastard.
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Sep 16, 2021 02:37
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Yeah, biographies might be the way to go. I started The Power Broker, so far it's pretty interesting, we'll see how that plays out.BananaNutkins posted:The Folding Knife by K.J. Parker probably fits, as well as Sixteen Ways to Defend a Walled City. I'm reading Sixteen Ways to Defend a Walled City, and I like it, and while it is actually pretty close, it doesn't really count since the main character jumps to the top almost immediately, and doesn't expand his influence once he gets the seal. That said, if the story were told from Ogus' perspective it would fit "kingdom building" perfectly; he's a former slave who gains his freedom, makes some money, gets some old friends together, makes political allies, and leads an army/starts a revolution that conquers various cities one by one. Narmi fucked around with this message at 15:54 on Sep 17, 2021 |
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Sep 17, 2021 15:43
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Just finished Last Tide. It 'comes out' October 1st officially but you can grab it in paperback and people seem to be getting copies already. If this seems like a strange beginning for a post in this thread I encourage you to keep reading. This was a really cool first book by a new author. The premise is that a near-future company hires employees to drive an analogue of the google street view car around, to make a visual catalog, ultimately to sell the data in bulk to developers. The story follows two such employees who find themselves doing this work on a small, somewhat remote PNW island, where they meet a variety of interesting people and end up being a part of something unexpected, captivating, relatable, and somewhat unsettling. I thought it really hits a good pace and keeps running with it. Chapters with conflict and very visceral tension are interposed with ones where the author's graceful description of the setting set me at ease.The story mostly takes place on this 'remote' island and thematically deals with the friction between the residents on the island who oppose development, and the inevitable march of progress that threatens to overwhelm them. Also, the author is my brother and a (lapsed) goon.... I recommend the novel but want to stress that I'd really have liked this novel even if the author was a total stranger.
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Sep 18, 2021 14:01
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Finished The Rise and Fall D.O.D.O by Neal Stephenson and Nicole Galland this morning and I think I liked it? I definitely enjoyed the beginning with the mystery and humour which got me hooked. But some of the middle parts were just annoying. I ended up just skimming the Walmart poem because I was just annoyed trying to read it. Maybe it's cooler if you have more history knowledge than me because apparently a lot of characters are actual historical figures including the Fugger banker people. Didn't realize this until reading things about the book after I finished. Overall I liked the book and it's a fun historical sci-fi/time travel/witchcraft read. That said, I think I liked Michael Crichton Timeline better lol
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Sep 19, 2021 03:34
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Finished up The Republic for Which It Stands: The United States during Reconstruction and the Gilded Age, 1865-1896, which met my expectations of familiarizing me with the major individuals and events of the period and giving a good look at social and economic conditions. I want to know more about many of the topics, but the book is plenty long already. It's incredibly frustrating that the next book in the series, covering 1896-1929, seems to be in publication limbo. If there are any books, textbook or narrative, that will do as a substitute, I'll be glad to know about them.
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Sep 19, 2021 08:33
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Poopelyse posted:Finished The Rise and Fall D.O.D.O by Neal Stephenson and Nicole Galland this morning and I think I liked it? I definitely enjoyed the beginning with the mystery and humour which got me hooked. But some of the middle parts were just annoying. I ended up just skimming the Walmart poem because I was just annoyed trying to read it. Maybe it's cooler if you have more history knowledge than me because apparently a lot of characters are actual historical figures including the Fugger banker people. Didn't realize this until reading things about the book after I finished. I'm conflicted about it, mostly regarding the ending. It's either the worst ending I've ever seen in a Stephenson book or kinda subversive and brilliant and I can't decide which. Probably the first one.
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Sep 19, 2021 10:37
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Solitair posted:I'm conflicted about it, mostly regarding the ending. It's either the worst ending I've ever seen in a Stephenson book or kinda subversive and brilliant and I can't decide which. Probably the first one.
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Sep 19, 2021 10:45
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Solitair posted:It's either the worst ending I've ever seen in a Stephenson book or kinda subversive and brilliant and I can't decide which. Probably the first one.
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Sep 19, 2021 18:12
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Solitair posted:I'm conflicted about it, mostly regarding the ending. It's either the worst ending I've ever seen in a Stephenson book or kinda subversive and brilliant and I can't decide which. Probably the first one. Yes I feel the same. Either the ending was clever and made some sort of point (?) or it was incredibly lame. I can't decide which it is
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Sep 20, 2021 17:50
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Armauk posted:Stephenson can't write an ending to save his life. A real shame. The good Stephenson books are the ones that are good despite the ending. I figure the cancer is now slowly spreading backwards through his work. So rather than just have the climax fizzle, you get something like Reamde that derails halfway and abandons its starting plot to do guy-with-gun hijinks.
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Sep 21, 2021 12:43
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nonathlon posted:Reamde that derails halfway and abandons its starting plot to do guy-with-gun hijinks.
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Sep 21, 2021 15:31
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I thought Cryptonomicon had a decent ending. At least, it wrapped up most of the arcs. Anathem was alright too. It got super weird and hokey but I was glad it did.
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Sep 22, 2021 22:35
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F_Shit_Fitzgerald posted:Disneywar by James B. Stewart, a chronicle of Michael Eisner's rise and fall as the chairman and CEO of Disney. Disneywar is supposed to be a business book, but doesn't really read like one. Its narrative style made it an entertaining and interesting read, despite my apathy towards big business and corporate politics. Stewart was unflinchingly tough on Eisner and dutifully reported his many missteps throughout his tenure - Katzenberg, Ovitz, passing on CSI and Survivor for ABC - but I thought he was very fair in his assessments. It's hard to deny that Eisner presided over some of Disney's biggest triumphs of the past forty or so years, but to get there Eisner stepped on a lot of other people's backs and left behind people that should have been allies (like Katzenberg and Pixar Studios). You can't be a CEO of a major company without being a huge bastard. Oh yeah that was a fascinating read. It was interesting to learn how Disney animators were kept idle in-between major projects so when Disney Afternoon came along they had A level talent available. I grew up watching that and wondered why it looked so much better than the competition. I also liked learning why Disney had put Euro Disney in France instead of the more hospitable Spain, with it coming down to that's what Eisner wanted. Helped me understand some of the decision making process in MegaCorps and how they can lead to farmers blockading roads on opening day.
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Sep 22, 2021 23:07
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BananaNutkins posted:I thought Cryptonomicon had a decent ending. At least, it wrapped up most of the arcs. Anathem was alright too. It got super weird and hokey but I was glad it did. I bought Cryptonomicon on kindle and just couldn't get into it which was a shame because I loved Snow Crash when I was younger. Was also around the time that I was losing interest in reading on kindle after reading about sleep problems associated with using tablets before bed so I might pick it up paperback and try again. I just finished The Trial by Kafka because I figured I needed to read something by him beyond The Metamorphosis back in highschool. I really liked it and I think the sudden ending of K being randomly taken out one day and stabbed in the heart by two bumbling oafs really drove home the message I took from the book: bureaucracies are confusing messes which are impossible to see beyond what's immediately in front of you, can seem almost comical in how mixed up and contradictory they are, but will still kill you all the same with an uncaring signature on a form. Kind of reminded me of the mess in Afghanistan for the past 20 years if I'm being honest.  Just truly hilarious that people put this together to try and explain the situation in the country at one point. None the less those same bumbling kinds of people still signed off on hundreds of thousands of drone strikes, airstrikes, and commando raids that killed a lot of people.
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Sep 23, 2021 01:25
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Cold Moon Over Babylon by Michael McDowell. It's well written, really gives a sense of place and has some good characterizations, but the ending is just not what I'm into. It felt like a lame ghost story your camp councilor would tell around the ol' campfire.
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Sep 23, 2021 01:48
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I just read The Hobbit. I had read it as a teen and this was a reread over 25 years later. I remembered most of the plot and story beats. What I(re)discovered was the writing style. You can see how it borrows from oral tradition and made it such an enjoyable book. I assume most people have read it, but if it’s been a while it may be worth revisiting.
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Sep 23, 2021 02:39
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Finished The 7 1/2 deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle by Stuart Turton It was good. It's a Agatha Christie by ways of (first 5% of the book spoiler, also spoiled by the jacket cover) a time loop and body hopping mechanic, with some good ole amnesia thrown in. I thought it started painfully slow as the 1st person narrator just kinda raged against the cage for way too long despite everyone explaining carefully how everything worked and for some reason he just refused to listen. The middle of the book was real good though and the ending was satisfying enough, though I couldn't help but feel some parts were clearly "Here's how to stage the Netflix miniseries". I was definitely feeling some popcorn-in-a-book and it scratched that itch.
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Sep 23, 2021 03:24
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NGDBSS posted:Was it worse than Seveneves, which stapled a clumsy far-future goodies-vs-baddies narrative onto the first two thirds? (I think eugenics might have been involved, it's been a few years since I listened to the audiobook.) It was the last third, but yeah, D.O.D.O. is more of a letdown.
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Sep 23, 2021 05:58
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NGDBSS posted:Was it worse than Seveneves, which stapled a clumsy far-future goodies-vs-baddies narrative onto the first two thirds? (I think eugenics might have been involved, it's been a few years since I listened to the audiobook.) You have it backwards, actually. He wrote *Seveneves* because he wanted to explain how you could have a setting like *Star Trek*, with humanoid aliens that are still close enough genetically to humans to interbreed. He wrote 2/3 of a good book to set up the 1/3 poo poo portion he'd planned for.
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Sep 23, 2021 21:20
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tetrapyloctomy posted:You have it backwards, actually. He wrote *Seveneves* because he wanted to explain how you could have a setting like *Star Trek*, with humanoid aliens that are still close enough genetically to humans to interbreed. He wrote 2/3 of a good book to set up the 1/3 poo poo portion he'd planned for.  Interestingly I would recommend a different hard scifi book from just a year prior, Kim Stanley Robinson's Aurora, in large part because it doesn't sacrifice the narrative just to accomplish its "destined" technoutopian future.
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Sep 23, 2021 22:15
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Honestly, Seveneves would have had a pretty great ending if it had ended before the jump forward. I would have read a sequel book about the Star Trek future if it had an actual plot instead of being an extended denouement for characters we have no emotional investment in. Ending in the dark rift on the moon with all the dudes dead was dark. I loved it. But then it went on for a billion pages
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Sep 24, 2021 15:53
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Just finished The Comedians by Graham Greene. It's about a hotelier in Haiti during the Papa Doc Duvalier dictatorship, and his run-ins with a vegetarian activist and a potential spy/conman. I definitely recommend it not just because of the sparkling Greene prose and wit, but because it's apparently one of the more reliable English sources on life under the Duvaliers -- when I tried to look for books about Haiti in this period, almost every list cited this book near the top. Duvalier banned Greene from the country after its publication in 1966.
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Sep 24, 2021 16:34
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BananaNutkins posted:Honestly, Seveneves would have had a pretty great ending if it had ended before the jump forward. I would have read a sequel book about the Star Trek future if it had an actual plot instead of being an extended denouement for characters we have no emotional investment in. Same. I wish it had been two separate books.
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Sep 24, 2021 17:51
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Veniss Underground by Jeff Vandermeer. Part Bas Lag, part Central Station, touch of House of Leaves. An interesting book by an at the time newer author
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Sep 27, 2021 19:16
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World Without End by Ken Follett https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Without_End_(Follett_novel) I've been on a long sci-fi kick and had the opportunity to break the cycle with this book. I think the last historical fiction I read was the Asian Saga by James Clavell a decade ago. World Without End was immersive and engaging. The characters were pretty well fleshed out. That said, it's just people getting kicked in the dick for a thousand pages. I suppose 14th century England was a massive shitshow, but it gets a bit depressing reading about lives being squelched and spiteful monsters climb the ranks of power. This was my intro to Ken Follett. I think his writing style was palatable and engaging, but it'll be a minute before I go to another of his books. The story is kind of a bummer.
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Oct 4, 2021 17:02
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Been a while since I've done much reading but the last few weeks I've been really enjoying a few books. First up was Norse Mythology by Neil Gaiman. Really enjoyed picking this up and reading one or two of the stories at a time. Just a lot of fun and learned a lot about these characters who I only had passing familiarity with before. And then I finished The Lies of Locke Lamora by Scott Lynch. Could not put this one down and enjoyed every minute of it. Really likable characters and a cool story. Think I'll be looking for more like this (and maybe trying the sequels though I've heard mixed things). Next up - The Pillars of the Earth by Ken Follett. Girlfriend's mother gifted me this after we visited a gothic cathedral together last week and it sounds right up my alley.
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Oct 5, 2021 16:20
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Jato posted:Been a while since I've done much reading but the last few weeks I've been really enjoying a few books. I'm interested in Norse Mythology, that was on my short-list before I picked up the used copy of World Without End. Good luck on the Pillars of the Earth, I hope it's more cheerful.
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Oct 5, 2021 18:15
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Norse mythology is my favourite audiobook. I listen to that again from time to time. I just finished "the hail Mary project" by Andy Weir. Really good book! I enjoyed the Martian as well but this was somehow nicer. The Martian had a more in depth and practical science aura but the hail Mary project is the better told story I think.
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Oct 6, 2021 11:54
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just finished Neal Stephenson's Seveneves. sigh. such a good premise and first 2/3rds which was completely ruined by the Ernest Kline-ian final section. this horrible passage is representative of most of it: quote:The Ivyn singled out Ty from a distance and approached him. The family name on his uniform was Esa and he introduced himself as Arjun. The former was an acronym frequently seen in the background of shots in the Epic, standing for "European Space Agency." It had become a common name. i hated Snow Crash and finally decided to give him another chance, don't think i'm going to do that again
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Oct 6, 2021 13:32
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a.p. dent posted:just finished Neal Stephenson's Seveneves. sigh. such a good premise and first 2/3rds which was completely ruined by the Ernest Kline-ian final section. Yeah I think he's real bad at third acts. Kind of a universal Stephenson problem, except maybe in The Diamond Age.
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Oct 6, 2021 18:07
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Just finished Son of a Trickster, by Eden Robinson. This is sort of an indigenous Harry Potter like tale, of a kid on the north coast of BC in a terrible family situation, makes extra cash by making weed cookies, and has occasional chats with ravens. Its really slow burning, clearly a set up for what is to come (its the first of a trilogy), and for being that its overly long. Trigger warnings for self harm, child neglect and abuse, and substance abuse. This was short listed for a Giller Prize and made second place in last year's Canada Reads so I was honestly expecting a bit more. Mind, I'm invested enough in the kid to keep reading so trap sprung I guess but I just didn't find it as amazing as some suggested. Its YA so that's got something to do with it presumably.
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Oct 6, 2021 18:27
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True, I kind of wished it stopped earlier. I did still enjoy it though
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Oct 6, 2021 18:28
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Leika posted:True, I kind of wished it stopped earlier. I did still enjoy it though Yeah I enjoyed it too, the ending was something else, and I hope Sarah gets her poo poo sorted too. Just a bit let down by the hype I guess
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Oct 6, 2021 18:30
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Jato posted:
For what it's worth, I loved the second book in that series. It's actually one of my favorite fantasy novels
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Oct 8, 2021 06:17
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nonathlon posted:The good Stephenson books are the ones that are good despite the ending. I figure the cancer is now slowly spreading backwards through his work. So rather than just have the climax fizzle, you get something like Reamde that derails halfway and abandons its starting plot to do guy-with-gun hijinks. I like it when he's fun, he can write a sci-fi type scene that could happen today in a way that's really engaging the reason I haven't finished one of his books in a very long time is that he seems to have engineer-brain when he starts going beyond technical implications, and into social implications- not that he gets them wrong, just that he doesn't seem to be thinking about them very much at all. His societies don't really make sense, which is excellent for a fast pulpy adventure! If only he would do just that, he's incredibly dull when it comes to anything else imo. Whiplash poo poo. I can't remember the name of the one that I bought and then shelved for years because he insisted on calling cell phones geejits or whatever, and didn't read until I found a pirated ebook that someone find-and-replaced- but that's the closest he gets. And the interesting things about that book have more to do with the relation of people to transport, resources, and production- which was fun to read about! But the culture depicted is just kinda, european monastic with a lil american know-how thrown in? And his idea of making this far-future tale interesting, and weird and so removed as to be alien from ours, is to keep calling a GPS a hoopus and a camera a dimgot that's the last one of his I finished and I can't remember what happened he should write, like, licensed in-universe technical manuals interspersed with interviews with in-universe nerds who have stories about poo poo they did, I'd read that, I think
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Oct 8, 2021 06:48
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If you're talking about Anathem, I bounced off that back when it was first published and it turns out that was probably for the best! Someone who's actually familiar with the philosophy dug in and found that it's mostly crankery.
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Oct 8, 2021 07:23
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NGDBSS posted:If you're talking about Anathem, I bounced off that back when it was first published and it turns out that was probably for the best! Someone who's actually familiar with the philosophy dug in and found that it's mostly crankery. That's disappointing. I guess I'll have to go and read some Umberto Eco and Godel Escher and Bach for my fill of philosophical writing.
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Oct 8, 2021 12:42
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FPyat posted:That's disappointing. I guess I'll have to go and read some Umberto Eco and Godel Escher and Bach for my fill of philosophical writing. What, no Pirsig? That reminds me, I read through Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maint.  kind of a confusing slog that resonated and made me doubt myself.
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Oct 8, 2021 13:12
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